Sunday, October 10, 2010
But why should anyone want to cut the U.S. military budget?
But why should anyone want to cut the U.S. military budget?
One reason is that—with $549 billion requested for basic military expenditures and another $159 billion requested for U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—the record $708 billion military spending called for by the Obama administration for fiscal 2011 will be nearly equivalent to the military spending of all other nations in the world combined. When it comes to military appropriations, the U.S. government already spends about seven times as much as China, thirteen times as much as Russia, and seventy-three times as much as Iran.
Is this really necessary? During the Cold War, the United States confronted far more dangerous and numerous military adversaries, including the Soviet Union. And the U.S. government certainly possessed an enormous and devastating military arsenal, as well as the armed forces that used it. But in those years, U.S. military spending accounted for only 26 percent of the world total. Today, as U.S. Congressman Barney Frank has observed, "we have fewer enemies and we're spending more money." / Where does this vast outlay of U.S. tax dollars—the greatest military appropriations in U.S. history—go? One place is to overseas U.S. military bases. According to Chalmers Johnson, a political scientist and former CIA consultant, as much as $250 billion per year is used to maintain some 865 U.S. military facilities in more than forty countries and overseas U.S. territories.
The money also goes to fund vast legions of private military contractors. A recent Pentagon report estimated that the Defense Department relies on 766,000 contractors at an annual cost of about $155 billion, and this figure does not include private intelligence organizations. A Washington Post study, which included all categories, estimated that the Defense Department employs 1.2 million private contractors.
Of course, enormously expensive air and naval weapons systems—often accompanied by huge cost over-runs—account for a substantial portion of the Pentagon's budget. But exactly who are these high tech, Cold War weapons to be used against? Certainly they have little value in a world threatened by terrorism. As Congressman Frank has remarked: "I don't think any terrorist has ever been shot by a nuclear submarine."
Furthermore, when bemoaning budget deficits, Americans should not forget the enormous price the United States has paid for its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the highly-respected National Priorities Project, their cost, so far, amounts to $1.06 trillion. (For those readers who are unaccustomed to dealing with a trillion dollar budget, that's $1,060,000,000,000.)
When calculating the benefits and losses of these kinds of expenditures, we should also include the opportunities forgone through military spending. How many times have government officials told us that there is not enough money available for health care, for schools, for parks, for the arts, for public broadcasting, for unemployment insurance, for law enforcement, and for maintenance of America's highway, bridge, and rail infrastructure?
Admittedly, there are other reasons for America's failure to use its substantial wealth to provide adequate care for its own people. Some Americans, driven by mean-spiritedness or greed, resent the very idea of sharing with others. Furthermore, years of tax cuts for the wealthy have diminished public revenues.
Even so, it is hard to deny that there is a heavy price being paid for making military power the nation's top priority. With more than half of U.S. government discretionary spending going to feed the Pentagon, we should not be surprised that—in America, at least—it is no longer considered feasible to use public resources to feed the hungry, heal the sick, or house the homeless.
We would do well to recall an observation by one of the great prophets of our time, Martin Luther King, Jr.: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
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Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).
Saturday, October 9, 2010
The Zapruder Film of 9/11
Saturday, September 18, 2010
22 Statistics That Prove The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America
The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
The top 1% of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
More than 40% of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
The top 10% of Americans now earn around 50% of our national income.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Vote for the Looney Tune Party!
The Campaign Begins
The Campaign Begins
Now is the time to get excited
- Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009: When the conservative judicial activists on the Supreme Court ruled that there was a statute of limitation to be able to file an equal-pay discrimination suit, Congress stepped in an amended the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Republicans defeated an earlier version of the bill, and the new version was the first act of Congress signed by the new president.
- State Children's Health Insurance Program which provides matching funds to states for health insurance to families with children.
- American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 aka The Stimulus. This is not to be confused with the Troubled Asset Relief Program aka TARP or The Bailout, which passed under Bush. By all measures, the stimulus was a success, heading off the worst of the Bush recession. Many economists thought it should have been larger, and many think more capital should be pumped into the economy. Unlike TARP, the stimulus was well thought out beforehand and well managed after passage.
- Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act aka Health Care Reform. This is a major step forward, even if it didn't have everything it could have. The bill passed the Senate and the House without a single Republican vote. And they can't admit they lost, much less admit they were wrong. Republicans want to repeal Health Care Reform, even though HCR reduces the Federal deficit and saves lives. Right now, the conservatives are the baby killers. Thanks to large Democratic majorities, the United States is finally catching up to the rest of the world.
- Obama overturns Bush policy on stem cells (There's more to this story, later.) In addition, Obama set standards for hiring people who actually know what they're talking about: Obama Puts His Own Spin on Mix of Science With Politics
- Obama Overturns Bush Exec. Order on Project Labor Agreements
- Obama overturns Bush order on access to White House records
- Obama reverses 'global gag rule' on family planning organisations
- Similarly, Obama Proposes Overturning Bush's 'Right to Conscience' Rule. Bush and the radicals restricted your right to know about your own medical treatment. Obama restored your rights.
- Executive Order -- Presidential Records governing assertion of executive privilege by incumbent and former Presidents
- New Obama Coal Regulations Would Overturn Weaker Bush-Era Plans, EPA Says
- Obama Stands up for State Authority; Overturns Bush's Suppression of States' RIghts
- And perhaps the purest example of the difference between Big Government Republicans who want to control every aspect of your life and the Democratic Party, which wants all citizens to thrive, Obama overturns Mexico City Policy, pro-lifers react:
Pro-life leaders reacted critically to President Barack Obama's Friday reversal of President George W. Bush's ban on federal funding for international groups that promote or perform abortions. One Latin American commentator charged that the policy weakens anti-poverty efforts and had enabled a coercive sterilization campaign in Peru under the Clinton administration.
The ban, known as the Mexico City Policy, earned its name from a population conference that took place in the Mexican capital in 1984, where it was introduced by President Ronald Reagan. It was reversed by President Bill Clinton in 1993 and then reinstated by President Bush in 2001.
A similar take on the same story: Obama reverses 'global gag rule' on family planning organisations
Saturday, September 4, 2010
ABOUT BICYICLE CRASHES
Injuries from bicycle crashes are most often to the limbs, and include fractures, abrasions, and lacerations. Fractures account for about 25 percent of bike crash injuries, and facial injuries account for about one third of injuries. The most disabling and serious injuries are brain injuries. These are so severe because they can result in a permanent defect or disability. Head injuries are also more likely to be fatal.
What To Do When In a Bike-Car Crash
To the extent possible and practical to avoid further accidents or injuries after a bicycle crash, do the following:
*Keep completely still if you may be severely injured. Wait for medical help.
* Accept medical help, even if you do not feel severely injured.
* Wait for the police so an accident report can be filed with statements from witnesses, and the at-fault driver, and the crash scene investigated.
* Leave damaged property and equipment as it was until police arrive.
* Contact a personal injury lawyer who understands bicycling.
Bicycle Safety and Crash Prevention
Not surprisingly, helmets can protect again head injuries – both brain injuries and upper facial injuries. Statistics have shown that of the 75 percent of bike riders who got severe brain injury in an accident were not wearing helmets. To provide proper protection, helmets must be fitted correctly.
Although helmets can protect against head injury, they do not protect from getting hit by cars! To help prevent personal injury, bicyclists must use common sense and remain alert when cycling on roads to avoid crashes with cars. Although drivers should be more attentive to the presence of bicyclists, the odds of injury favor the bicyclist. This is why it is so important to follow some basic common sense prevention guidelines which include:
* Follow the law – ride on the right side of road; stop at stop signs and red lights; use a headlight at night (also beneficial in the day).
* Avoid stopping in the blind spot of a car at a red light. You can be hit if it turns right and you go straight.
* Use a bell or horn to signal or alert drivers of your presence.
*Use a rear light and headlight, especially when it is dark outside.
* Use a mirror to glance at traffic behind, especially when approaching intersections.
* Be attentive and alert to the cars. Watch for left turning cars crossing in front that may not see you, and pay attention to parked cars for which a door may open.
*Do not ride very fast in case you need to stop abruptly.
* Avoid riding on sidewalks.
* Avoid busy streets, especially as a novice rider.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
ARIZONA
Vitriolic, conspiracy-minded and just plain mean, Coe routinely refers to Mexicans as "savages." She claims to have exposed a secret Mexican plan (the "Plan de Aztlan") to reconquer the American Southwest. Last May, at a "Unite to Fight" anti-immigration summit in Las Vegas, she launched the kind of defamatory rant for which she is infamous. "We are suffering robbery, rape and murder of law-abiding citizens at the hands of illegal barbarians," she warned her cowering audience, "who are cutting off heads and appendages of blind, white, disabled gringos."More recently, she attacked the new Hispanic mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, accusing him of seeking to return Southern California to Mexico.But the most curious thing about the former police clerk -- whose friends have said she told them she was forced from her job in 1994, after using a city-owned camera to photograph people she thought were illegal aliens -- may be her offhand comments to the Denver Post this November. In a profile of her close friend, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), the paper said Coe described speaking to and belonging to the Council of Conservative Citizens. That group, which has called blacks "a retrograde species of humanity," has long been listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group -- as has Coe's own California Coalition for Immigration Reform.
Barak [sic] Obama and his anti-American "czars" are taking a page from Hitler's Nazi Germany playbook - only worse, much worse. Be afraid, be very afraid!
“There’s a concerted effort behind promoting these kinds of laws on a state-by-state basis by people who have ties to white supremacy groups,” she continued “It’s been documented. It’s not mainstream politics. (Legislators) are being approached by folks, who are front organizations for white supremacist hate groups. They propose the language of these bills and get people to carry these bills in the state legislatures.”
Monday, August 9, 2010
AFL-CIO
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was honored at the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting where union leaders laid out a road map to revamp the nation’s economy to put workers first.
Talk about out of touch. Putting Americans back to work isn’t good for the economy, according to House Republican leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). He says the Senate’s just-passed jobs bill is just a “pay off” to “special interests.” No, it’s paychecks for workers.
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Got comments? Post them at blog.aflcio.org.
Republican Leaders Boehner, Cantor Trash Workers
Executive Council Focuses on Jobs, Election, Workers’ Rights
AFSCME: Whitman’s $100 Million Finances ‘Outright Lie’
Egypt’s Workers Struggle to Keep Unions Free
Unions Texting for Jobs and Political Action
Monday, August 2, 2010
GREECE USES MILITARY TO BREAK STRIKE
Greek military mobilised to break truck drivers strike
By Robert Stevens
2 August 2010
The decision by the social democratic PASOK government to use the military to break a nationwide strike by truck drivers is a stark indication of the polarisation of class relations in Greece and throughout Europe.
The 33,000 truck drivers stopped work on Monday in protest at government plans to revoke the current system of licensing trucks. The change threatens many owner-operators with bankruptcy.
The measure is part of a series of demands for the “liberalisation” of so-called “closed-shop” professions, including haulage, laid down by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund as part of the austerity package to be imposed in return for the EU-IMF €110 billion ($142 billion) bailout package for Greece.
Late Sunday night it was announced that the truck drivers had voted by a narrow margin to call off their strike. For days, the drivers had faced down the hostile propaganda of the government and its supporters, the mobilisation of the army to move gasoline and other critical supplies, and attacks by riot police on picket lines. The strike had crippled the Greek economy, causing fuel shortages across the country and food shortages on the Greek islands.
Last Friday, the drivers defied a government directive ordering them to return to work or face prison. But they received no serious support from the national trade union federations, which did nothing to mobilize the rest of the working class in their defence. The trade union leadership worked from the outset to isolate the strike and bring it to a rapid end, leaving the truckers to face the full force of the state on their own.
The six-day action contains critical lessons and must be taken by the working class as a whole as a warning of the preparations being made by Europe’s political elite to deal with growing social unrest.
On Wednesday, as the strike led to a shortage of fuel, PASOK Prime Minister George Papandreou issued a civil mobilisation order “to end a strike that has caused serious disruption to economic and social life.”
The order, based on a law that goes back to World War II, allows for the compulsory provision of services. It meant that the striking truckers were either to return immediately to work or face having their trucks requisitioned and being imprisoned for up to five years.
A statement by Transport Minister Dimitris Reppas underscored how all the official political parties, most particularly the social democrats, now function openly as instruments of state repression against the working class. “The state is not unfortified and society is not defenceless,” Reppas said.
In a report for the British Broadcasting Corporation, Malcolm Brabant explained that the order meant, in effect, the imposition of “martial law” on the hauliers. He added, “Of all the strikes that have affected Greece during the eight-month-long financial crisis, this is the one that posed the most serious threat to the government’s determination to impose austerity measures and liberalise the economy.”
Throughout the week, riot police clashed with truck drivers at oil refineries. On Thursday, police fired tear gas at hundreds of truckers demonstrating outside the Transport Ministry in Athens. The same day, riot police clashed with pickets outside a refinery in Thessaloniki.
Beginning on Friday, the government brought in the army to move fuel supplies to airports, electricity plants and hospitals. It threatened that navy landing craft would be mobilised if necessary.
The unions played the critical role in ending the strike. In a politically revealing comment following the issuing of the civil mobilisation order, truck drivers’ union president Georgios Tzortzatos told Alter television station, “We are now soldiers of the Greek state and we'll wait to see our orders.”
This was a clear signal from the union bureaucracy that it would do everything possible to end the protests.
By Friday, Tzortzatos was openly arguing for an end to the strike. “They [the truck drivers] must consider the difficulties their actions have caused for society at large and the difficult economic conditions that are currently prevailing in Greece,” he told the media.
That day, in what the Athens News Agency (ANA) described as a “stormy general meeting” in Athens, strikers had to wait an hour for Tzortzatos to appear and report on his talks with the government.
In a clear indication of the opposition to the bureaucracy’s attempts to terminate the action, the ANA reported, “Other voices in the meeting, especially from tanker truck owners, called for a more militant stance, however, and these eventually carried the day.”
ANA indicated that the union had tried to get agreement to hold a secret ballot on continuing the action, but this was rejected. “A vote in favour of continuing to strike was taken after roughly three hours of debate, and not by secret ballot but by a show of hands,” said ANA.
The truckers then marched to Parliament to protest, chanting, according to another report, “Our [union] president is mad.”
Saturday’s Le Monde reported the leader of the gas section of the truck drivers’ union, Giorgios Tsamos, saying, “We will not let our members go to jail or get arrested. I think that starting this afternoon, the resupply of gas stations will pick up again.” At the same time, he warned that he could not “be answerable for the reaction of union members, who are very upset.”
Drivers voted by a small majority Sunday to end the strike on the proviso that the government would withdraw the civil mobilisation order. According to ANA, drivers “warned that they will resume strike action if the government failed to honour its side of the bargain.”
Neither the private sector General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) nor the public sector Civil Servants’ Confederation (ADEDY), which represent several million workers, organised a single strike or protest in support of the drivers. The GSEE has spent the last several weeks concluding an agreement with the PASOK government that imposes a pay cut on its 2 million members.
The intervention of the army into the political life of Greece—a country that was ruled by a military junta from 1967 to 1974—must serve as a warning to the working class. The last surviving officer of the junta recently said, “In our time, there was no debt. Not one drachma went astray. The Greeks are not disciplined like the Germans or the British. They need authority.”
Commenting on the austerity measures being imposed by PASOK he warned, “We are neither at the middle nor at the end of political developments … we are at the beginning.”
Over recent months, tens of billions of euros in cuts have been announced by governments in Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Romania. In the face of the social opposition these measures are generating, the ruling elite is preparing to resort to repressive, extra-parliamentary means, including the military, to impose the requirements of international finance capital. In June, attempts were made by the Spanish social democratic PSOE government to use the army against striking metro workers in Madrid.
Every attempt by workers to defend their jobs, wages and livelihoods is now directly and immediately a political struggle against the capitalist state and its political agents, including the trade unions.