Pubdate: Tue, 20 Feb 2007
Source: Columbian, The (WA)
Copyright: 2007 The Columbian Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.columbian.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/92
Author:  Tim Hatfield

WAYS TO FUND THIS WAR

I hear all the time how we should "support our troops" and as a 
former air assault infantryman, I do.

Our leaders, on the other hand, have failed miserably. Our president 
is the architect of a horribly flawed strategy based on rosy 
scenarios. You plan for the worst and hope for the best, not the 
other way around.

Our vice president has yet to be correct on hardly anything he has 
said of the war. And our congressmen and women went along with the 
whole thing for fear of being called unpatriotic.

That's not how you support our troops, that's not even how you do your job.

Let's start supporting our troops by funding them for this war of our 
generation. I understand President Bush won't raise taxes but I have 
four recommendations.

First, put funding in the actual budget, not a supplemental.

Second, issue war bonds so we can actively fund the war.

Next, put a box on our tax forms so we can forfeit any tax refund 
towards the war effort.

Finally, tax and regulate marijuana as the late Nobel Prize winning 
economist Milton Freidman suggested. We could raise billions of 
dollars if this is proposed.

We hear that everything changed after 9/11, let's act like it.

Tim Hatfield

Vancouver
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom