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[Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

"The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the 
stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct." - Marcus Tullius Cicero"


According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Urban 
Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, households in the 
middle 20 percent of the income scale -- the "middle class" -- receive 
only 9 percent of the benefits. Their average saving will be $162. Those 
in households with incomes from $200,000 to $500,00 will be $2,390 
better off.

It is important to remember that these latest tax cuts are ALL being 
financed with borrowed money -- money that must be paid back---THE TAX 
CUTS ARE NOT TAX CUTS, they are simply increases to the Public
Debt by "The Borrow and Spend" President and "The Borrow and Spend" 
Congress---which means exactly the same as if you max out your personal 
credit card---it has to all be repaid PLUS COMPOUNDED INTEREST!!


The leading edge of the American baby boom generation is now just TWO 
presidential terms away from claiming its Social Security and Medicare 
benefits. "With UNFUNDED entitlement liabilities at $74 TRILLION in 
today's dollars - an amount FAR EXCEEDING THE NET WORTH OF OUR NATIONAL 
ECONOMY - and with payroll taxes needing to double to cover the 
projected costs of Social Security and Medicare, how can any serious 
person not call entitlement reform the transcendent domestic policy 
issue of our era?" asks former Commerce Secretary Peter G. Peterson, 
whose book on this subject, "Running on Empty," provides a blueprint for 
a bipartisan solution to this problem for any president daring to lead.


The SECOND group of boomers barreling down the highway are the young 
people in India, China and Eastern Europe, who in this increasingly flat 
world will be able to compete with your kids and mine more directly than 
ever for high-value-added jobs. Attention Wal-Mart shoppers: The Chinese 
and the Indians are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to 
the top. Young Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs are not content just to 
build our designs. They aspire to design the next wave of innovations 
and dominate those markets. Good jobs are being outsourced to them not 
simply because they'll work for less, but because they are better 
educated in the math and science skills required for 21st-century work.


The THIRD group of boomers our next president will have to deal with is 
from the Arab world. The Arab region has had the highest rate of 
population growth in the world in the last half century. It has among 
the highest unemployment rates in the world today. And one-third of the 
Arab population is under the age of 15 and will soon be entering both a 
barren job market and its child-bearing years. There are eight Saudis 
under age 15 for every one between ages 45 and 60.

It is important to try to salvage Iraq in spite of the mindless blunders 
by the Bush Administration---we need to make Iraq our partner---we have 
no other Mideast possibility which can act as a blueprint for 
governmental, cultural and economic change in the Arab world.  It is now 
an iffy propostion, having step-by-step been converted from an odds-on 
favorite, to heavy odds against.  But it is impossible to cut and 
run---an absolute guarantee of Mideast chaos, and the waste of all the 
money and lives we have spent and are continuing to spend.

If we fail,  the next president is going to need PLAN B - some 
combination of oil conservation that reduces our exposure to this 
region, a new military strategy and a renewed focus on promoting better 
government there through diplomatic and economic means. The Arab world 
is not even close to educating its baby boomers with the skills needed 
to succeed in the 21st century. Left untended, this trend is a 
prescription for humiliation and suicide terrorism---a stronger return 
to the religious waus of Salah Al Din and the Christian Crusaders..