There are so many things wrong with House Resolution 1595. Let’s start with the premise that the United States is under any current obligation to pay off the residents of Guam for atrocities committed by Imperial Japan during WWII, especially since we did so in 1945-1946 (link to the text of the Guam Meritorious Claims Act of 1945). Indeed, there is no provision in the current resolution against double-dipping.
Second, we’re talking about $126 million for this double-dip. Here I thought the Feds were in a budget crunch.
Item #3 in the failure of this smell test – what in the hell is Guam’s observer doing introducing legislation? Last I checked, Guam was not a state.
Finally, with a hat-tip to Fred (I would have got to this on my own, but Fred got to it before I clicked on the co-sponsors), why in the hell is F. James Sensenbrenner co-sponsoring this money-wasting abortion? I noticed that not even Gwen Moore is sponsoring it.
Revisions/extensions (7:55 am 5/8/2007) – More people blogging on this:
- Jeff Emanuel at RedState (I really should’ve given him the big H/T yesterday, but I got this from my e-mail before my feed reader got up to speed)
- Curt at Flopping Aces
- Gateway Pundit
- Michelle Malkin
- Leo at Blogs for Bush
- Rob at Say Anything
- Emperor Misha at Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
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Pardon my ignorance, but shouldn’t the Japanese being paying restitution for their actions?
But, but, but it’s all the eeeeeevil Republicans’ fault </sarcasm_moonbatty>
As for the Japanese, I could’ve swore that we were supposed to be a subsidiary of Japan Inc. by now. Well, at least the DhimmiRATs are (when they’re not a subsidiary of Al Qaeda, or the ChiComs).
More Lunacy From The Democrats – Reparations For Guam…
So the Democrats take control of both houses and accomplish NOTHING. Now to put the exclamation point on the nothing part they have decided to put a bill up that will require the United States to pay reparations to residents……
The reaction to this bill is typical of American attitudes — we’ll enjoy the privileges of being an American, but we sure don’t want to bear the cost the United States places on the world around us.
The privileges we Americans enjoy are in large part because we never really have to pay they true cost of anything. We export the cost to other people, by force.
The native Americans bore the cost of the United State’s initial land grab. African-Americans bore the cost of the first hundred years of economic expansion, by working for free. Guam hosts the war with Japan. The whole world hosts our pollution. The third-world countries host our sweatshops. The middle east hosts the war on terror.
Everybody pays for the United States’ lifestyle — except Americans. Whenever we attempt to step up and bear some of the costs, there’s a gut reaction on the part of many that this is just WRONG.
Phil, you ignorant lieberal self-loathing slut. Nothing prevents you from paying the good people of Guam out of your own pocket. Of course, that’s not the lieberal way; it’s to make the rest of us pay again and again and again to assuage your guilt trip.
While I have you on the line and your desire to renounce your American citizenship is apparent, allow me to tell you just how to do so. You can go to your country of choice, head to the American embassy or consulate there, and do so. Oh, that’s right, you’d be completely out of power wherever else you might head, and in many places, you’d be dead.
This is not a good day for the conservative blogsphere I fear. I am researching this and I think the blogs have got it wrong. This is a pretty complex issue and the Commision that reviewed these claims was bipartisan.
It also appears that this money is really Japanesse money that the Japanese are giving us so we can move troops Okinawai to Guam. That figure is either 7 or 9 billion. I am still researching this but if this is true then maybe we should see some retractions. Especially since the Guam National Guard is the Horn Of Africa right now serving this country. It appears that in a way the people of Guam have got the reparations from Japan they always wanted.
Also note. The Republicans hold most of the offices on Guam. Anyone think about calling them up to get their take on it?
JH
Louisiana
JH, it looks like you missed the first upshot I gave this, so I will now lock the caps key and type slowly – WE ALREADY PAID OFF THE RESIDENTS OF GUAM IN 1945-1946. Yeah, all the settlements had to be approved by somebody (unlike the blank checks the members of the “bipartisan” Party-In-Government want to hand out now; more on that in a moment), but those that had legitimate claims got compensation.
Now, if that little bit had never happened, I would be at least a bit open to this request. However, I realize that this is ultimately not about the residents of Guam (side note; time to stoke the fires a bit more and see what fresh trolls pop up).
Now, for the partisans. There is a reason why I called the PIGs “bipartisan”; both the Pubbie members and the Rat members love to spend, nay, waste other peoples’ money.
I take it you don’t read this blog much. Otherwise, you’d know the stock answer I’m about to give you on the “whose money is it” question. Fund transfers between various governments are simply ways for the government receiving the cash to spend money on items it would otherwise not spend on without having to cut anywhere else. Specifically, I rather doubt that the Japanese money has a string that says that $X must go to compensation to Guam residents for what the Japanese did to them, especially since Japan was let off the hook for that back in 1952. I would think that if it did, SOMEBODY would have pointed this little item out.
“Nothing prevents you from paying the good people of Guam out of your own pocket.”
Right, I could, and perhaps should, bear the cost myself, so you don’t have to share it. That’s a common theme among those who object to this bill.
The point of my post was about dividing the costs and benefits of hosting the war with Japan in Guam and other Pacific Islands. The U.S. benefitted from having the Pacific Islands as a buffer zone between it and Japan in the war; Guam was flattened, its residents put through a meat grinder.
All of that could have happened in Hawaii, or California, and the U.S. would have born the cost of hosting the Pacific war. But it didn’t. Instead, the U.S. enjoyed peaceful prosperity at home, and the residents of Guam bore the cost of hosting the war.
Now, sure, you can say, “It happened that way, and we don’t owe them a damn thing.” And then you can go about your business as a happy, privileged American, as the folks on Guam go about their business with thousands of limbless, mateless, traumatized elderly who got stomped on by our war.
After all, that’s what we ordinary Americans do every day — we enjoy the many benefits that arise from events that cost others (including, of course, the many American soldiers who lost their lives in that horrible war) untold suffering. Benefits we didn’t pay a dime for ourselves, but feel very, very entitled to.
Go ahead and do that, and object indignantly when I suggest someone might impose a cost on you. I bet the residents of Guam made just such indignant noises as first the Japanese, and then the Americans, rolled violently over their homeland as the two superpowers pounded away at each other.
Phil – Nice of you to excuse the Japanese for deciding that they needed 3/4ths of the Pacific under their malignant feudal fist, and nice of you to forget that the residents of Guam did get their shot at the American treasury. Also, it was VERY nice of you to forget the three thousand Americans who gave their lives and health to undo what the Japanese did. </sarcasm>
Now that I’m done being nice, how about I start up a collection to buy you a one-way ticket to the country of your choice, complete with transportation to the nearest consulate, so you no longer have to be anguished about being an American? I would have suggested Switzerland, but they’re too militaristic for your tastes. How about Sweden?
I’m not anguished about being an American, Steve; I feel very lucky to be an American. That’s right — lucky. Not entitled. I recognize that the benefits I enjoy are a result of luck, and not something I’ve earned myself.
Therefore, when I see those less fortunate, like those in Guam, my first instinct is not to say “stop looking so hungrily at this big pile of rights and opportunity (and/or inherited wealth) that fell into my lap when I was born an American.”
My first instinct is to say “geeze, that could be me.” And so I don’t get furious when people with bad luck get helped out by the U.S., even if it does cost a little.
As for your claim that I’m forgetting the Americans who DID in fact suffer and die in Guam, that’s simply not true. I expressly listed them in my previous post — I said that “the many American soldiers who lost their lives in that horrible war” were among those who bore the cost of the benefits we now enjoy.
The fact remains that I (and as far as I know, you) had nothing to do with keeping the Japanese off American soil in WWII (although my grandfather did help keep Hitler off the east coast). I consider myself lucky that they never came here, and I respect and appreciate that our elected officials are compensating those who did bear some of that cost.
I might have been a wee bit hard on you, but you sure came off as a self-loathing anti-American idiot. Now, let’s see if I can get through to you….
We did compensate the people of Guam for the destruction wrought on them and their home, both by the Japanese in their invasion and occupation and by us in the liberation – 60 years ago.
So, why did Congress, 60 years later, all of a sudden need to do this again, when for most of those 60 years, the current party in power in Congress was in power there, and for a chunk of that time, it also had the Executive? It sure isn’t to give them too much money. After all, what the Department of the Navy was authorized to dispense on its own authority in the 1940s, after inflation is taken into account, was better than 3 times what the Dems want to dole out now (plus those with larger claims, or claims that were not covered by the previous legislation, could still pursue those claims, only those had to be approved by Congress).
I think all of your most recent questions are legitimate, and if you find out the answers I’d like to hear them, too.
Those questions aren’t the same thing as the knee-jerk outrage at “reparations madness” that I’m seeing on Malkin and various other blogs. The primary argument there is that we shouldn’t be compensating anyone for what the Japanese did. That line of reasoning is what I disagree with.
[...] No Runny Eggs [...]
In short, you finally actually read what I wrote instead of assuming that I would have the exact same take as everybody else that showed up to this little party.