Expenses Quotes
Wilson was very candid that there would be high cost to war and sacrifice would be needed. See {584570} for other similar candor. This quotation was often used by critics of George W. Bush who initiated the Iraq War and then cut taxes for the rich, but then financed the war through the budgetary emergency appropriations bypassing the budget rules that the revenue must be specified to pay for it. His administration even claimed at an early stage in the war that the oil revenue from Iraq oil would defray the costs.
3rd Viscount Palmerston. This historical quotations illustrates the worst of the British Empire. British merchants were making large profits shipping opium to China and selling it there. Drug addiction became a major problem and some local Chinese Authorities passed laws banning the importing and selling of opium. However, the English merchant ship captains paid no attention to these laws claiming their rights as Englishmen to free trade. The Chinese finally seized a number of shipments of opium and burned them. The British then appointed Captain Elliot to lead a squadron of ships to China, arrange for payment in compensation for the value of the seized opium and to open up the opium trade, by force if necessary. The Chinese position was not unreasonable and Captain Elliot was not able to secure the concessions the English government wanted without starting a small war with the loss of many lives. Temple, who was the Foreign Minister at this time, fired Elliot and replaced him with someone who was less concerned about problems of drug addiction and the Chinese. Thus began the First Opium War. Note that the then British view of equity was that if they had to send an expedition of ships and soldiers to force the Chinese to allow the English to sell opium, then part of the terms must be that the Chinese pay the costs for the British ships and soldiers who invaded their country and forced them to keep poisoning their own people. See {621319} for Captain Elliot’s view.
This quotation shows that in 1922 a major state prison was operated at a profit with NO COST to the taxpayer. They key was that the Warden was an experienced successful businessman who put the prison into a number of different businesses which paid the expenses and taught the inmates marketable skills like stone carving. The model however has been opposed by businesses in the area which saw the prison as competition and labor unions which saw the model as taking jobs away from honest, non-criminal workers and not paying high wages.
This is the 17th century French equivalent of base closings. Since there were no legislators from the districts of the closed castles he had to contend with the process was then easy. What is particularly interesting is that they did not just close them and put them to other use. They demolished them, so that subsequent administrations could not change their mind and re-garrison the castles.
Although this was a very generous gesture, Washington’s personal expenses were quite high. His saddle for example was many times the cost of an average saddle. Over the 8 years of his tenure as Commander-In-Chief his expenses amounted to $449,261.51 in 1780 dollars. Year 2000 value would be about $5 million.
