"Let It Be an Arms Race"

In late May of this year, President Donald Trump's special envoy for arms  control bragged before a Washington think tank that the U.S. government was prepared to outspend Russia and China to win a new nuclear arms race. "The president has made it clear that we have a tied and true practice here," he remarked. "We now how to win these races and we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion."

This comment was not out of line for a Trump administration official. Indeed, back in December of 2016, shortly after his election, Trump  himself proclaimed that the United States would "greatly strengthen and expand" the U.S. government's nuclear weapons program. adding provocatively: "Let it be an arms race. We will outmarch them at every pass and outlast them all." In a fresh challenge to Russia and China, delivered in October 2018, Trump again extolled his decision to win the nuclear arms face, explaining: "We have more money than anybody, by far."

And, in fact, the Trump administration has followed through on its promise to pour American tax dollars into the arms race through a vast expansion of the U.S. military budget. In 2019 alone (the last year for which worldwide spending figures are available), spending on the U.S. military soared to $732 billion. (Other military analysts, who included military-related spending put the figure at $1.25 trillion.) As a result, the United States, with about 4 percent of the world's population, accounted for 38 percent of world  military spending. Indeed, the United States sent more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.

In February 2020, the administration introduced a 2021 fiscal year budget proposal that would devote 55 percent of the federal government's $1.3 trillion discretionary spending to the military. By 2030,the military proportion of the federal budget would rise to 62 percent.

Trump has continued pouring money into purchasing Lockheed Martin's F-35 combat aircraft, which, though an operational disaster, had cost U.S. taxpayers $1.4 trillion by 2017. Another pet project, quickly embraced by Trump, was the newest and costliest U.S. aircraft carrier delivered with fanfare to the Navy in late May 2017 for $13 billion. It only problem was that it had difficulty launching lanes from its deck and facilitating their landing. Yet another very expensive military project is U.S. missile defense.

America's 5,800 nuclear weapons, capable of being launched from and sea, and air, provide staggering firepower -- more than enough to destroy most life on earth. The current nuclear arsenal, however, is viewed as insufficient by the Trump administration, which is engaged in a vast 'modernization' program to rebuild the entire nuclear weapons complex including new production facilities, warheads, bombs, and delivery systems. The price tag for this enormous nuclear buildup, which will occur over the next three decades, has been estimated as at least $1.5 trillion.

ADDENDUMS:

*As many as 23 million voters are at risk of eviction.

*More than 97,000 kids in the U.S. were infected in the last two weeks in July, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association.

*A National Parents Union poll of 500 K-12 parents found that 34% of white parents feeling uncomfortable of sending kids back to school, and just 19% of nonwhite parents feel the same.

Comparison Job Creation Statistics of Obama and Trump

 Dear Joe,

President Trump has often bragged that he has been a better job creator than Barack Obama. The record doesn't show this. There are many comparison markers.

The economy added more jobs in each of Obama's last four years than in Trump's first year. Obama (in millions of jobs): 2013 - 2.302; 2014 - 2.998; 2015 - 2.713; and 2016 - 2.240. Trump: 2.040 in 2017.

Under Obama: 4.3 million jobs were added in the first 20 months, versus 3.8 million under Trump. Under Obama: 8.1 million jobs were added in his first three years, versus 6.6 jobs under Trump's first three years. Trump's first big job creation month was August 2017, when 232,000 jobs were added. That number was exceeded in 28 months in Obama's two terms.

It should be understood that every comparison month is eight years later than Obama's comparison month. Therefore, given that the U.S. population continues to grow, Trump has more adults in the workforce, and his numbers should be higher on that fact alone.

Military Might Is Our National Religion

Military Might Is Our National Religion: A Profession of 21st-Century All-American Faith, appeared in the Winter January 2020 issue of the Peace Action of Michigan newsletter entitled "FLASH!" The piece merits whatever added circulation this post can bring. 

#We believe in wars. From Korea to Vietnam, Afghanistan to Iraq, the Cold War to the War on Terror, and also many military interventions in between, including Grenada, Panama, and Somalia, Americans are always fighting somewhere...

#We believe in weaponry, the more expensive the better. The under-performing F-35 stealth fighter may cost $1.45 trillion over its lifetime. An updated nuclear triad ... may cost $1.7 trillion. New (and malfunctioning) aircraft carriers cost us more than $10 billion each. And all such weaponry requests get funded ... despite a history of their redundancy, ridiculously high price, regular overruns, and mediocre performance. Meanwhile, Americans squabble bitterly over a few hundred million for the arts and humanities.

#We believe in weapons of mass destruction. ... We work overtime to ensure "infidels" and "atheists" (the Iranians and North Koreans, etc.) don't get them. Historically, no country has devoted more research or money to deadly nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponry than the United States.

#We believe with missionary zeal in our military and seek to establish our "faith" everywhere. Hence, our global network of perhaps 800 (or more) overseas military bases. We don't hesitate to deploy our elite missionaries,like the Jesuits, the Special Operations forces to more than 130 countries annually. Our present supreme leader, Pope Trump I, boasts of military sales across the globe, most notably to the "infidel" Saudis. ... His rationale: weapons and profits should rule all.

#We believe in our college of cardinals,otherwise known as America's generals and admirals. We sometimes appoint them (or anoint them) to the highest positions in the land. While Trump's generals -- Flynn, Mattis, McMaster, and John Kelly -- have fallen from grace at the White House, America's generals and admirals continue to rule globally ... in sweeping geographical commands that... cover the planet (digitally, operationally and even with a planned space command) ... satirized in Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove") ... with the ability  to commit mass genocide and worldwide destruction with nuclear weapons. Indeed, Pope Trump ... his unelected college of cardinals with their mission of "full spectrum dominance" ... means they grant themselves god-like powers over our lives and that of our planet. 

#We believe that freedom comes through obedience. Those who break ranks from our militarized church and protest,like Chelsea Manning, are treated as heretics and literally tortured.

#We believe military spending brings wealth and jobs galore, even when it measurably doesn't. Military production is both increasingly automated and increasingly outsourced, leading to far fewer good-paying jobs compared to spending on education, infrastructure repairs of and improvements in roads, bridge, levees, and the like ...

#We believe, and our most senior leaders profess to believe, that our military represents the very best of us, that we have the "finest" one in human history.

#We believe in planning for a future marked by endless wars, whether against terrorism or "godless" states like China and Russia, which means our military church must be forever strengthened in the cause of winning ultimate victory.

#Finally, we believe our religion is the one true faith. More pacifist "religions" are dismissed as        weak, misguided, and exploitative.

Blessed are the Peacemakers

#...A more likely ending (than apocalyptic worldwide destruction) is a slow-motion collapse of America's imperial empire and the church of the military that goes with it, the resulting chaos possibly leading to a Second Coming,not of Christ but of medieval levels of meanness and misery. 

#Or maybe, we might start anew by questioning our militarized profession of faith. We might began to realize our warrior-church isn't all it's cracked up to be. We might begin to seek meaning and salvation not through wars and weaponry,not through generals and their admirers,not through impossible dreams of total dominance,but through compassion and a desire for global justice.

Edited by Dan Butts from William Astore, TomDispatch.com 8/13/19. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), is a TomDispatch regular.

Update of Trump's Executive Orders and Memos

 I. The Trump Watch: an Update of Executive Orders and Memos

1.) Student Loan 0% Interest Pause

On August 8, Trump issued a memorandum ordering an extension of the 0% interest rate and a payment pause for federal student-loan borrowers until December 31. To some extent,  it was a redundant copy of the CARES Act, which suspended payments, interest and collection of government-held student loans.The bigger problem is that Trump's order leaves out 9 million student borrowers, according to Seth Frotman, executive director of Student Borrowers Protection Center. Once more, the order is considered to be "vague," and less expansive than Congress would prefer.

2.) Extra Unemployment Benefits

Officials in Montana, Texas, and Arizona have said that their states have exhausted the six weeks of extra unemployment money from the FEMA budget. And FEMA has confirmed to Yahoo Money that funding is available for six weeks only, with the starting date being August 1, 2020. Fifteen states have started paying out funds from the FEMA budget, which has a cap of $44 billion -- Trump took the money from FEMA without going through Congress, to which the Constitution gives the power of the purse. 

Fifteen states have started paying out funds from the FEMA budget, and a total of thirty-one states have been approved for funding (these numbers are as of September 10, 2020). 

3.) Eviction Memorandum

As I said in a prior post, all the Trump memo did was request federal agencies to see what they could do about evictions relief for renters. Trump may have found an end-around the "toothless" memo he put out -- assuming he is behind the new CDC order. The CDC issued an order banning landlords from evicting tenants that can no longer pay rent due to a pandemic-related expense or hardship through the end of 2020. This is a test of the CDC's power that will likely prompt several legal challenges. Advocates for both tenants and the real estate industry fear that the eviction protections expiring at the end of the year could create a dangerous housing crisis at the start of 2021.

4.) Suspension of the Payroll Tax

There doesn't seem to any movement in corporations and companies in regard to suspending the collection of the 6.2% payroll tax from their employees through December 31. These business entities are concerned that they will need to claw back the suspended taxes from their employees after December 31, or need to pay the taxes themselves. Meanwhile, President Trump is stuck with his public declaration that he will eliminate the payroll tax in the near future. 

II. A Summary of Illegal Orders to Whistleblower

A document released by the the House Intelligence Committee summarizes numerous complaints that Brian Murphy, the principal deputy under secretary for the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis, had previously filed with the DHS's inspector general. 1) Murphy said he was illegally directed to manipulate intelligence to support aggressive border policies.He refused to say that intelligence assessments he prepared for Homeland Secretary Kirtjen Nielsen supported the policy argument that large numbers of KSTs ("Known or Suspected Terrorists") were entering the country. There is a distinction between a  SIA (Special Interest Alien), and a KST. 2.) Murphy made the case that Nielsen repeatedly and deliberately lied to Congress. 3.) Acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security, Ken Cuccinelli, illegally tried to distort intelligence reports he viewed as too favorable to asylum seekers. 4.) Under secretary David Glame was almost fired by Trump after he confirmed Russian interference with U.S. elections. (Trump's staff convinced him that it would be a mistake). 5.) Acting Secretary of DHS, Chad Wolf, told Murphy to stop reporting on Russian interference, and to focus on China and Iran. Wolf stated that these instructions came from the White House National Security Adviser, Robert O'Brien. 6.) Trump officials were concerned that discussing the threats posed by white supremacists and Russian intelligence operations would reflect badly on Trump, and they preferred that Murphy's team work on "violent 'left-wing' groups like antifa." 

I. Food Insecurity 

45M - Number of people in southern Africa who lack sufficient access to nutritious food -- up from nearly 10 percent from 2019.

8.4M - Children who are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition across southern Africa this year; some 2.3 million of them will require lifesaving treatment.

820M - Number of people worldwide who suffered from hunger in 2018 -- up from 784 million in 2015.

60% - Share of food-insecure people who are women or girls.

2B - People who are unable to access safe, nutritious, and sufficient food year-round.

132M - Additional people who could become chronically hungry this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic. (Source: The Nation, August 24/31, 2020).

II. Express Lane to Immigration Detention

Driving in Gwinnett County, Georgia can be an express lane to immigration detention.

1.) Primary charges filed against people held by the Gwinnett County Jail: a. Driving without a license and other traffic violations: 45%; b. DUI; 7%; c. Other charges: 48%. 

2.) The pandemic slowed ICE's ability to pick up people held in the Gwinnett County Jail. But sheriff's deputies kept flagging more people than the agency could take. a. Dec '19 - ICE holds - 175 --- ICE pickups - 155; b.  Jan '20;  ICE holds - 160 --- ICE pickups - 150; c. Feb '20 -  ICE holds - 180 --- ICE pickups - 165; d. March '20 - ICE holds - 150 --- ICE pickups - 120; e. - April '20 - ICE holds - 60 --- ICE pickups - 40; f. - ICE holds - 40 ---  ICE pickups - 10. (Source - Mother Jones, September + October 2020). 

III. Biden' Plan to Tax the 1%

According to the Tax Policy Center, Biden' plan would raise upward of $3.7 trillion over 10 years, similar to the amounts that would be raised by a wealth tax.

It would also remove the cap on Social Security payroll taxes for those making above $400,000, generating revenue for low-income retirees.

Biden's plan would tax the capital gains and divided income of those earning more than $1 million as regular income at the increased 39.6% rate. 

All told, Biden's tax plan would reduce the after-tax income of the top 1% by around 17 %. The top 0.1% would see an after-tax income drop of an estimated 23.4%. (Source: Mike Konczal, "The Serious Plan," The Nation, September 7/14, 2020, and the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center).

ADDENDUM:

*In just the first three  quarters of 2018, big business quietly pocketed stunning savings they would have (and should have) paid to support America's public needs: $4.5 billion for Apple, $2.2 billion for AT&T, $2.4 billion for Bank of America, $1.7 billion for Verizon, and $1.6 billion for Walmark. 

A Raw Deal for American Workers

Comparison Statistics Among Advanced Industrial Countries 

How does the record of the United Stares compare with that of other advanced industrial countries?

"Among the three dozen industrial nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United States, in 2019,was exceeded only by Latvia in having the highest percentage of low-wage workers. This is not surprising, as the U.S. minimum wage has been kept at $7.25 an hour since 2009, placing the United States behind Luxembourg ($13.78), Australia ($12.14), France ($11.66), New Zealand ($11.20), Germany ($10.87), Belgium ($10.38), Britain ($10.34), Ireland ($9.62), Canada ($9.52), and Israel ($7.94). [1]

Furthermore, American workers put in more hours on the job than did their foreign counterparts. At the beginning of 2020, full-time U.S. workers had a longer work week than full-time workers in 24 OECD nations. In addition, the United States remained the only country with an advanced industrial economy that did not guarantee workers a paid vacation. The European Union guaranteed workers at least 20 paid vacation days a year, with some countries mandating as many as 30. Although the U.S. government failed to require any paid holidays, most advanced industrial countries offered at least six per year. Consequently, American workers averaged many more days on the job than did workers in almost any other advanced industrial society. The United States also remained the only advanced industrial nation that failed to guarantee paid maternity leave to workers."

Lawrence Wittner, political science professor at Albany University in New York, has found that in 2016 (the last year for which comparative statistics are available), the death rate for U.S. workers on the job was considerably higher than the rate in comparable nations --more than twice as high as in Japan, three times higher than in Canada, and more than five times higher than in Sweden. Furthermore, in 2019, unemployment insurance benefits were considerably lower than in many advanced industrial societies.

Another finding of professor Wittner is that roughly half of unorganized workers said they would join a union if they could, "union membership in the United States fell to an all-time low, with severe consequences for workers."

ADDENDUMS:

*Trump's rant in Cleveland on August 6: "He's [Biden] following the radical left agenda. Take  away your guns. Destroy your Second Amendment. No religion. 'No anything! Hurt the Bible! Hurt God! He's against God! He's against guns! He's against energy, our kind of energy. Uh, I  don't think he's going to do well in Ohio."

*Acting Homeland Secretary Chad Wolf and Acting Deputy Secretary Cuccinelli were illegally appointed to their positions says the Government Accountability Office. They violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. 

*Trump says that Michelle Obama's speech at the Democratic Convention was "extremely divisive." "She was over her head, and frankly she shouldn't made the speech live, which she didn't do. She gets these fawning reviews..."

*Trump's tweet of August 18: "Somebody explain to Michelle Obama that Donald J. Trump would not be here, in the beautiful White House if it weren't for the job done by your husband, Barack Obama. Biden was merely an afterthought, a good reason for the very late and unenthusiastic endorsement..."

*The Rio Grande section of Trump's border wall is collapsing due to erosion and faulty construction.

*The Congressional Budget Office finds that this year's deficit will reach $3.3 trillion,more than double the $1.4 trillion in 2009 during the Great Recession.

Standing Firmly for Endless Wars

 I. Standing Firmly for Endless Wars

In the Oregon Peace Worker, Robert Koehler writes in the organization's newsletter, the PeaceWorker, that: "Yes, there are progressives, antiwar Democrats out there gaining power, getting elected to office, almost winning presidential primaries -- scaring the bejesus out of the Democratic establishment -- but the party itself still stands firmly in the middle of nowhere, fully in favor of empathy and compassion,and yet, somehow fully supportive of the endless wars most of its own voters hate and [are]utterly unwilling to challenge the bloated and ever-expanding defense budget. [1]

Citing the analysis of William Hartung and Many Smithberger, the Milwaukee Independent described that budget thus: 'As of 2019, the annual Pentagon base budget, plus war budget, plus nuclear weapons in the Department of Energy, plus military spending by the Department of Homeland Security, plus interest on deficit military spending, and other military spending totaled $1.25 trillion...' " Koehler says this is "untouchable money -- not just to Trump and the Republicans but to most congressional Democrats.

Indeed, as Alexander Sammon points out in the American Prospect, Democratic majorities were crucial this summer to the defeat of three separate bills introduced by progressive Democrats, to reduce military spending and/or undo the militarization of police departments. These included amendments in both the Senate and the House to the National Defense Authorization Act,diverting 10 percent of the Department of Defense budget to health care, education and jobs; as well as a Senate proposal to end the 1033 Program,which allow the the Pentagon to transfer military gear to the police.  The amendment's defeat in the House was especially an outrage,' Sammon notes,'is that the Dems hold a majority in the House and could have passed it.' " 

" 'If Democrats are going to enact anything that resembles their own agenda,' Sammon writes, 'they're going to aim higher than cutting defense to near Obama-era highs. Taking military spending not to pre-Trump but to pre-9/11 levels should be a starting point. Democratic voters after the War on Terror; it's what helped deliver Obama the presidency back in 2008. It's incumbent on Joe Biden to deliver on that preference, not just to end engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan but to bring an end to the bloated defense budgets of the War on Terror era. His silence on the proposal even in the thick of a campaign against Trump sends a troubling message.' "

II. The Militarism of Sports

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, writes in the August 8, 2018 TomDispatch, that since 9/11, "sports and the military have become increasingly fused in this country. Even when taxpayers aren't footing the bill for displays of massive American flags or camoflage-printed uniforms, the melding of sports and military should be seen as inappropriate, if not insidious...

Nowadays,it seems as if professional sports simply couldn't occur without some notice of and celebration of the U.S. military, each game being transformed is some way into yet another Memorial Day or Veterans Day lite...

When I watched this year's version of the game,however, I didn't relive my youth; I relived my military career. As a start, the previous night featured a televised home-run derby. Before it even began, about 50 airmen paraded out in camoflage uniforms, setting the stage for everything that would follow. (As they weren't on duty, I couldn't help wondering why they found it appropriate to don such outfits.)"

"Highlighting the other pre-game ceremonies the next night was a celebration of Medal of Honor recipients. I have deep respect for such heroes,but what were they doing on a baseball diamond? The ceremony would have been appropriate on Veterans Day in November.These same pre-game festivities included a militaristic montage narrated by Bradley Cooper (star of 'American Sniper'), featuring war scenes and war monuments while highlighting the popular catchphrase 'freedom isn't free.' Martial music accompanied the montage along with a bevy of flag-waving images. It felt like watching a twisted version of the film 'Field of Dreams', reshot so that soldiers,not baseball players, emerged early on from these rows of Iowa corn stalks and stepped onto the playing field."

Footnote:

[1] Robert Koehler, "Listen Democratic Party: Your Supporters Want Military Budget Cuts," Oregon Peace Works, August 24, 2020.