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EU Talks on Its Future Budget Collapse
Las Vegas Sun ^
| June 17, 2005 at 20:00:37 PDT
| BETH GARDINER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Posted on 06/17/2005 8:05:55 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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To: Calvin Locke
IF this were just about throwing good money down the drain for a cause that will not see positive result since accountability isn't at the heart of the relief, I'd agree with you.
IF a little money gives Blair the ability to Leverage Chirac and Schroeder out of determining the direction of the European Union....possibly leading to their replacement by people that favor strong Trans Atlantic ties rather than enemy combat, I consider the investment of the money to be worth the end result. As it will benefit not only our national security but economy to not be in a stage of friction with them 24/7.
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
People gripe about our budgets and then I see things like this and I just shake my head.. Italy has deficits that are more than 200% of their gross national product and they're a net giver to the EU?
Just insane.
22
posted on
06/17/2005 9:05:56 PM PDT
by
kingu
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
If "selfishness" of "rich states" is so appalling, why doesn't rich France agree to give up all payments to France under the CAP? Oh right, because they are too selfless for that...
23
posted on
06/17/2005 9:13:30 PM PDT
by
JasonC
To: kingu
People gripe about our budgets and then I see things like this and I just shake my head.. Italy has deficits that are more than 200% of their gross national product and they're a net giver to the EU?That is insane!
To: JasonC
Do they have any accountants over there that can deal with Facts?
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said, "We are in one of the worst political crises Europe has ever seen. We could not get an agreement because of the stubbornness of Great Britain and the Netherlands."Europe is not in a crisis. All that has happened is that French and German influence has been greatly reduced in the political and economic affairs of Europe.
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
If you think that's insane, let's toss on a few more here...
Japan, one of the most vocal critics there is when it comes to our budget deficits, has a deficit of 164.3% of their GDP. By comparison our debt is 65% of our GDP. Germany is a little ahead of us, but you'd never guess by their comments about our outrageous budgets.. 65.4% of their GDP. How about France? Remember them being critical of our budgets? 67.7% of their GDP. Tony Blair might have a valid point to make since their debt is only 39.6%, but since they spend 2.4% of their GDP on military versus our 3.6% (some of which goes for their defense), it does ring a bit hollow.
Oh, and I was wrong - Italy is 105.6% of their GDP. Not 200%, but a far cry above ours. (They're number 3 in the world behind Lebanon and Malawi, though Malawi's debt will mostly be going away with the debt forgiveness deals floating about.) We're #34 on the world list...
(source CIA World Factbook 2005 edition)
27
posted on
06/17/2005 9:43:16 PM PDT
by
kingu
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
that Constitution is a piece of Marxists trash! And that piece of trash was written by a bunch of unelected, unaccountable elitists many of whom prefer to speak french. The irony is that the French rejected this marxist trash because it was not leftist enough to convince them that they could manipulate Brussels enough to protect their socialist preferments when they are threatened by globalization. The preferment du jure are the preferments in the form of agricultural subsidies which unequally favor the French over the Brits and which subsidize a sector which accounts for only 2% of employment while sucking down 40% of the EU budget.
Without the farm susidies, the rebate to the British would be unecessary, certainly negotiable. But, like most budget squabbles, this quarrel is really over values and power or rather the budget battles reflect the reality below and supply the language and metaphor for those stuggles.
In this budget battle, Chirac wants the political process to select a favored class (in this case French farmers) and to redistribute to them wealth taxed from a less favored group (in this case British and Dutch mercantile class). Blair is tacitly (one must guard one's speech in socialist Europe) saying that it is the market and not a parliament which should determine the prosperity of these groups.
To us Americans this is a no-brainer: Of course the market must allocate resources. In the age of globalization, there is no option but to keep the economy as lean and mean as possible or the Asians will be redistributing our wealth for us. So we say that with this philosophy, Chirac is courting a crack-up in the real world of international competition. Let us acknowledge a caveat before we choke on our own righteousness, America is not without sin in this temptation to jigger market allocations with class politics, witness Bush's own recent farm subsidies. Bush is our conservative champion, the good guy, but his administration has abandoned any restraints of States' Rights in granting federal subsidies to local education; it has endorsed the New Deal/Great Socity conception of Federal activism with its Prescription Drug program, creating a new entitlement for a class (the elderly) without even a means test. In doing so, God knows how much we will have distorted the market for pharmecuticals.
So in making our judgments about European socialism, we Americans must be circumspect and more than a little humble lest we be dismissed for hypocracy. The best we can say is that we are talking about differences of degree here. We tend to be less socialistic and more free market oriented than the French, and the Brits tend to fall in between.
But just because our virtue is not entirely pristine does not mean we cannot make some valid judgments against French gamesmanship. In essence we and the French are playing a different game but we don't get the rules.
To a Frenchman, the game is not to be won within the rules, the game is to write the rules. We like to think we share with the British a sentiment and a committment to the addage that, "it is not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game." To a Frenchman the notion of "sportsmanship" is naive and dangerous. The world is rigged against him and all games, (read, all endeavors,) are inherently unfair. Only a sheep would submit to a shearing. A Frenchman is no fool and he will never conscent to be manipulated by a system which, no doubt, has already been manipulated by an Englishman.
In this cynacism, the Frenchman is really only a figure for the whole of the Left. In countless examples from the French Revolution through the absuridites of feminism, the Kafkaesque Cultural Revolution, and even to the EU Constitution, the Left has invariably sought to have its way with the world by changing the rules of the game. Again, we Americans are not without sin.
Consider, as one example, how the Left has changed the rules of the game at home by distorting the Constitution, the document which codifies those rules, and standing it on its head. To do this, the Left forum shops, seeking liberal judges. Liberal judges in turn, abandon origonal intent and invent meanings like privacy and wilfully ignore the plain language, like reservations of rights to the people and the states. Worse, liberal judges go beyond the written set of rules and expand the Constitution to include new rules called foreign laws. The document, and therefore the rules which govern us, has been rendered so plastic and malleable that the commerce clause can now be invoked to justify any federal activity, as Justice Thomas has recently despairingly concluded in dissent. The process has gone so far that the left has not just suceeded in overcoming the Constitution when it rules act as a shield against their schemes but now they have suceeded in perverting it and using it as a sword to achieve their ends in legalising universal, unfettered abortion. Truly, the game was to write the rules of the game.
In repudiating the EU constitution, the French socialists and fellow travelers have made a tactical error, perhaps a strategic error, in misjudging the potential offered in such a ponderous document for rule jiggering and other mischief. But the game is not over. The Left in Europe cannot alter its behavior any more than Hillary can become a patriot Unless God in his misterous ways visits an epiphany upon the lot of them the French and Hillary will keep on doing what they do.
Round two is about to begin and now the Germans will step on stage and they will tip this affair one way or the other.
28
posted on
06/17/2005 10:53:14 PM PDT
by
nathanbedford
(The UN was bribed and Good Men Died)
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach; Berosus; blam; dervish; Do not dub me shapka broham; FairOpinion; ...
29
posted on
06/18/2005 12:15:35 AM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(FR profiled updated Tuesday, May 10, 2005. Fewer graphics, faster loading.)
I meant to point out that all of those EU Observer articles were linked from the EU Observer homepage, IOW, those are almost the entire set of stories linked there. There is nearly nothing that isn't about the various crises.
30
posted on
06/18/2005 12:17:55 AM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(FR profiled updated Tuesday, May 10, 2005. Fewer graphics, faster loading.)
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
I don't know how you can say that the constitution is a piece of Marxist trash, when nobody, not even the experts can understand the consitution in the first place. For all we know, it could be far worse...
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
"I don't know ....but that Constitution is a piece of Marxists trash! They need to start over...." The French said NON because it wasn't Marxist enough. If they start over they'll need to make it even worse by our standards to get Francois and Pepe Lepeu to like it.
32
posted on
06/18/2005 1:59:22 AM PDT
by
libs_kma
(USA: The land of the Free....Because of the Brave!)
To: maine-iac7
France should be France. Germany should be Germany. England should be England and Andorra should be Andorra.
You get the picture.
Some of these Euro "elites" seem to have lost touch with who they actually are and where they are from. Sovereignty starts with Self and emanates outwards to : A Partnership; A Family; A Neighbourhood; A Community; A Suburb; A City; A Region/State; A Nation; A Planet.
Eliminating one's National Identity is akin to spiritual suicide. The vast majority of human beings are not really interested in suicide. These Euro twits should wake up.
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach; All
34
posted on
06/18/2005 3:06:51 AM PDT
by
backhoe
(Just an old Keyboard Cowboy, ridin' the trakball into the Dawn of Information...)
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
It is Chirac himself who has brought on this "crisis," and for this we should be grateful. He arrogantly insisted on a referendum wrongly thinking that it would easily pass, and it was he who insisted on making an issue of Britain's "rebate," forgetting that the Brits who are no fools would counter by putting France's cherished "Common Agricultural Policy" on the table. French newspapers are now saying that Chirac is in a daze, not realizing what is happening to him.
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Germany gets the shaft on the EU budget by an order of several magnitudes. You have to wonder why they're such big supporters of the EU.
36
posted on
06/18/2005 6:53:57 AM PDT
by
Dog Gone
To: nathanbedford
To: Killing Time
38
posted on
06/18/2005 9:59:13 AM PDT
by
nathanbedford
(The UN was bribed and Good Men Died)
To: Red Sea Swimmer
Most "excellently" put - the whole ball of wax.
But we know what EU is about - it's about breaking down the personal connections and freedoms and choices - it's about getting everyone so busy trying to figure out what's happening and who's on first that by the time get it, they'll discover the walls - altho' invisible - will be up. And they will be as imprisoning as the Berlin Wall ever was..
France and Germany want to rule Europe - thus to gather strength and manpower to overtake the US...
ain't gonna happen.
39
posted on
06/22/2005 9:40:50 PM PDT
by
maine-iac7
("...BUT YOU CAN'T FOOL ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME." Lincoln)
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