Z S's List: Politics

• Lord’s Resistance Army
• Joseph Kony
• Northern Uganda
• February 2004
• LRA massacred approximately 200 civilians
• National Resistance Movement (NRM)
• President Yoweri Museveni’s
• brought relative stability to the country.
• First
• between the government and the LRA
• Secondly
• between
• • Acholi, also called Gang or Shuli,  ethnolinguistic group of NORTHERN Uganda and SOUTH Sudan. Numbering more than one million
• Thirdly
• fuelled by animosity between Uganda and Sudan
• who support rebellions on each other’s territory
• marked Ugandan politics
• North-South conflict
• since independence
• lacks any clear (and negotiable) political objective
• Because LRA actions are difficult to place
• it is
• difficult to develop an effective counter strategy
• President Museveni
• the war helps him justify and maintain the status quo in Ugandan politics
• curtailing freedom of expression
• As long as the situation in the North is dominated by security matters
• power and wealth by Southerners is not put into question
• Without the active support of the Acholi, however, the government is unlikely ever to defeat the LRA.
• Museveni’s response
• has been sceptical at best
• LRA’s desire for genuine dialogue appears minimal
• Although the
• to promote a settlement.
• Khartoum government
• A purely military solution could conceivably deal with the immediate manifestation of Uganda’s northern problem, the LRA, but would make solving the North-South divide and achieving national reconciliation even more unlikely.
• The army’s operational deficiencies in any event make such a solution unlikely
• main vulnerability of the LRA
• Joseph Kony is central not only to its organisation and tactics but also to its very purpose
• opportunity to split the insurgency by isolating or removing him
• The Acholi must be made to feel more a part of Ugandan society.
• role of the international community has been central to the conflict and will be central to achieving a resolution
• populations in the North
• increasing dialogue with Acholi
• Create a single authoritative team to represent the government
• announce that a ceasefire is available as a first step towards comprehensive political negotiations if the LRA makes a clear gesture,
• negotiations
• Exclude Joseph Kony
• but continue to offer amnesty to all other LRA commanders in order to develop potential divisions within the leadership
• improve reintegration incentives
• for amnestied LRA returnees
• investigations into army corruption
• prosecuting publicly,
• creating an independent body to investigate human rights abuses by army
• greater protection to civilians and IDPs
• Return IDPs
• Work to improve the relationship with the government
• creating a single authoritative body to represent a unified Acholi view
• publicly rejecting the LRA
• To the U.S. Government:
• pressure on Sudan to stop aiding the LRA
• Refashion its Northern Uganda Peace Initiative (NUPI)
• focus more directly on the political and security issues influencing the LRA
• incentives for LRA commanders and fighters to drop out of the insurgency.
• security sector reform
• Focus the Social Action Fund
• building the Ugandan government’s
• capacity to deliver services in the North

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• Erskine Bowles
• Alan Simpson
• Obama’s Deficit Commission
• The Zero Plan
• devote $80 billion annually to reduce the deficit
• pare away most tax expenditures
• remaining revenue gains to cut tax rates
• Zero Plan
• except for the child credit
• Eliminate all tax expenditures
• earned income tax credit, foreign tax credits
• Eliminate the alternative minimum tax
• Replace the current six-bracket individual tax rate schedule with a three-bracket schedule with rates of 9, 15, and 24 percent
• Tax capital gains and dividends as ordinary income
• Index tax
• using the chained Consumer Price Index
• Increase the Social Security wage base
• Phase in
• increase in the federal excise tax on gasoline of 15 cents per gallon
• Eliminate corporate tax expenditure
• reduce the corporate tax rate to 26 percent
• Alternative Retaining
• retirement saving
• retain tax benefits for mortgage interest
• employer-sponsored health insurance
• higher tax rates to make up the revenue lost by those changes
• restructure them and reduce their costs to 80 percent
• Convert the mortgage interest deduction to a 15 percent refundable
• Replace
• with flat credits of $1,058 for single coverage and $2,433 for family
• employer-sponsored health insurance
• Reduce the limits on contributions to employer-sponsored
• retirement plans and individual retirement accounts to 43 percent
• retirement accounts
• Cap the amount of tax-free accruals
• Replace the current six-bracket individual tax rate schedule with a three-bracket schedule with rates of 12 percent, 20 percent, and 27 percent.

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