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Monday, March 2, 2020
Paul Krugman | When a Pandemic Meets a Personality Cult
02 March 20
Paul Krugman | When a Pandemic Meets a Personality Cult
Paul Krugman, The New York Times
Krugman writes: "So, here's the response of the Trump team and its allies to the coronavirus, at least so far: It's actually good for America."
READ MORE
Paul Krugman, The New York Times
Krugman writes: "So, here's the response of the Trump team and its allies to the coronavirus, at least so far: It's actually good for America."
READ MORE
Democratic presidential candidates speak after the Democratic presidential primary debate at the Charleston Gaillard Center on February 25, 2020 in Charleston, South Carolina. (photo: Win
Trump Says Buttigieg's Exit Is Start of "Dems Taking Bernie Out of Play." Polls Tell a Different Story.
Daniel Politi, Slate
Politi writes: "President Donald Trump is continuing his role as commentator in chief of the Democratic presidential contest and was quick to react to word that Pete Buttigieg is dropping out of the race."
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Daniel Politi, Slate
Politi writes: "President Donald Trump is continuing his role as commentator in chief of the Democratic presidential contest and was quick to react to word that Pete Buttigieg is dropping out of the race."
READ MORE
Ken Cuccinelli speaks on Feb. 7 in Washington, D.C. A federal judge said his appointment to lead USCIS was unlawful. (photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Judge Says Ken Cuccinelli Was Appointed Unlawfully to Top Immigration Post
James Doubek, NPR
Doubek writes: "A federal judge ruled on Sunday that Ken Cuccinelli's appointment to a top immigration position in the Trump administration was unlawful, saying several directives issued by Cuccinelli to tighten asylum rules must now be 'set aside.'"
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James Doubek, NPR
Doubek writes: "A federal judge ruled on Sunday that Ken Cuccinelli's appointment to a top immigration position in the Trump administration was unlawful, saying several directives issued by Cuccinelli to tighten asylum rules must now be 'set aside.'"
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A US Marine Corps F-35B drops a laser-guided bomb during a test at Edwards Air Force Base in California. (photo: Reuters)
Mandy Smithberger | Creating a National Insecurity State: Spending More, Seeing Less
Mandy Smithberger, TomDispatch
Smithberger writes: "The Trump administration continues to give the Pentagon free reign over taxpayer dollars."
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Mandy Smithberger, TomDispatch
Smithberger writes: "The Trump administration continues to give the Pentagon free reign over taxpayer dollars."
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A delivery person leaves a DoorDash Kitchens location last year in California. (photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News)
Gig Workers Face the Spread of the New Coronavirus With No Safety Net
Nitasha Tiku, The Washington Post
Tiku writes: "Some workers here who provide on-demand rides and delivery services, but are independent contractors without many protections, are bracing for the spread of the novel coronavirus."
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Nitasha Tiku, The Washington Post
Tiku writes: "Some workers here who provide on-demand rides and delivery services, but are independent contractors without many protections, are bracing for the spread of the novel coronavirus."
READ MORE
Relatives mourn Mohammad Mudasir, 31, who was killed in rioting in Delhi. (photo: Manish Swarup/AP)
Inside Delhi: Beaten, Lynched and Burnt Alive
Hannah Ellis-Petersen, Guardian UK
Ellis-Petersen writes: "He lay in a bloodied ball on the floor, but the baton blows kept on coming. As the 30 strangers beat him without stopping, Mohammad Zubair closed his eyes, brought his forehead to the ground and prayed."
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Hannah Ellis-Petersen, Guardian UK
Ellis-Petersen writes: "He lay in a bloodied ball on the floor, but the baton blows kept on coming. As the 30 strangers beat him without stopping, Mohammad Zubair closed his eyes, brought his forehead to the ground and prayed."
READ MORE
Elon Musk. (photo: Mike Blake/Reuters)
Elon Musk Is Not the Climate Leader We Need
Brian Calvert, Slate
Excerpt: "His ideas are certainly ambitious. They're also misguided, and actively dangerous."
Brian Calvert, Slate
Excerpt: "His ideas are certainly ambitious. They're also misguided, and actively dangerous."
ack in 2009, nearly 3 in 4 Americans believed climate change was real. In the runup to the 2008 presidential election, Sen. John McCain, a Republican, even had climate action as part of his election platform. After Barack Obama’s election, however, Republicans changed their tune on the climate, to denialism. When the message changed, the number of those surveyed who believed “global warming is happening” plunged, from 71 percent in 2009 to around 57 percent the following year, according to surveys by the Yale Project on Climate Change. Anthony Leiserowitz, who directs the Yale program, told the Harvard Business Review recently that the drop was driven by “political elite cues,” which, he said, “is just a fancy way of saying that when leaders lead, followers follow.”
That means we need good leaders, leaders who consider the consequences of their actions and rhetoric. Elon Musk, the billionaire businessman, is not that leader. But a look at his rhetoric can help separate big thinking from bad thinking. Musk’s two biggest ideas—electric vehicles and the settlement of Mars—are underpinned with fallacies as specious as those of land speculator Charles Wilber, who claimed in 1881 that the arid West could be colonized because “rain follows the plow.”
Consider Musk’s electric vehicles. Musk regards technology as a kind of wonder, citing science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, who said, “A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But tech isn’t magic; it’s material. And it requires material resources. A world full of electric vehicles (which, granted, would have some environmental benefits) would also demand a massive power grid, and that would require either burning more fossil fuels, building more nuclear facilities, or plastering open spaces with solar panels, wind turbines, and hydrodams. It would also require huge amounts of rare materials, aggressively mined at great cost to landscapes, wildlife, plants, and people.
Tesla is currently being sued, along with Apple, Dell, Google, and Microsoft, for allegedly contributing to dangerous forced child labor in the cobalt mines of Congo. Musk’s massive battery factory east of Reno, Nevada, meanwhile, will use as much water as a small city. A recent USA Today investigation found a high rate of injury in the so-called Gigafactory, which has also strained Reno’s first responders, exacerbated a housing shortage and, ironically, clogged roads with traffic. Musk has suggested “high-quality” mobile homes as an answer, but so far, none have been built.
Musk, who was born in South Africa in 1971 and arrived in California in 1995, made a fortune with digital endeavors, including the development of PayPal. Like many successful entrepreneurs, he espouses a jingoistic brand of Americanism. In explaining his desire to expand into space exploration, Musk expresses a deterministic view of American greatness that is deeply problematic. “The United States,” he told Caltech graduates in 2012, “is a nation of explorers … [and] a distillation of the spirit of human exploration.” This romantic view of imperialism echoes John O’Sullivan, the man who coined the term “Manifest Destiny” and who declared in 1839: “The expansive future is our arena. … We are entering on its untrodden space, with the truths of God in our minds. … We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can.” Such thinking was used to justify the genocide of North American Indigenous peoples.
Musk’s romantic worldview holds another assumption: that humans would be inherently better off as a multiplanet species, rather than a single-planet one. Thus colonization of other planets will help us in case this planet fails. “I think things will most likely be OK for a long time on Earth,” Musk told the Caltech graduates (a dubious claim in itself). But on the small chance that Earth won’t be OK, he said, we should “back up the biosphere” and create “planetary redundancy” on Mars. That’s not great thinking. Consider the stellar wisdom of astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz, at a 2015 TED Talk: “For anyone to tell you that Mars will be there to back up humanity is like the captain of the Titanic telling you that the real party is happening later on the lifeboats.” There is no reason to assume a cosmic destiny toward expansion, just as there is no reason to assume that American colonialism is attributable to an inherent benign spirit.
Musk’s “elite cues” are misdirections. They may not be as despairingly cynical as the GOP’s climate denialism, but they are dangerous nonetheless. Those of us concerned with the climate crisis need a vision of the future that admits the trouble humanity is in and understands the myth of progress. We need a vision that does not require magic vehicles or the settlement of inhospitable planets. We need to seek out and support leaders who point us in the right direction—and that direction, I suspect, is earthbound.
Mashpee tribe leader turns to Trump for help
Mashpee tribe leader turns to Trump for help
By Jessica Hill
Posted Feb 28, 2020
Appeals court ruling on land-in-trust status another setback in bid for sovereignty.
MASHPEE — The leader of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe has called upon President Donald Trump for help in the wake of another court ruling that threatens the tribe’s land-in-trust status.
“We’re relying on our courts thinking justice is taking place,” Tribal Council Chairman Cedric Cromwell said. “Justice doesn’t take place ... I need our president to help us. He is the only one who can fix this.”
Cromwell wants to invite Trump to visit the Wampanoag Tribe and learn about its history in hopes he will understand where the tribe is coming from and “extend an olive branch” to secure the tribe’s homelands. Cromwell said he would meet with the assistant secretary of Indian Affairs and work to coordinate a meeting with the president.
The tribe has been caught up in legal battles for years over whether it qualified to have its land taken into trust, which cleared the way for it to build a proposed $1 billion casino and resort in Taunton. The latest ruling, issued Thursday by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, upheld a 2016 decision by Federal Judge William Young that the tribe was not under federal jurisdiction at the time the Indian Reorganization Act was passed in 1934. The Interior Department therefore lacked the authority to take land into trust for the tribe in 2015, the appeals court found.
One path forward for the tribe is legislation before Congress that would reaffirm that initial decision by the Interior Department.
The bill, called the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act, could stop litigation and confirm the tribe’s homeland, Cromwell said.
Sponsored by U.S. Rep. William Keating, D-Mass., the bill passed the House in May but has not been acted on by the Senate.
“The recent court decision is disappointing, which is why my bill is so critical to the Tribe,” Keating said in a statement Friday. “It’s beyond comprehension that the first tribe mentioned in our history books is having its very existence questioned.”
“We’re cautiously optimistic about winning in D.C. and getting our legislation passed,” Cromwell said.
Based on the outcome of the litigation in Boston, Cromwell is concerned about another case pending in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In that case, the tribe sued the Interior Department for reversing its decision to take the land into trust after Young’s ruling.
Historically, Cromwell said, it has been one injustice after another for the tribe, whose members have been treated as “second-class citizens.”
The Interior Department had taken 321 acres of land in Mashpee and Taunton into trust for the tribe. The federal government has long acted as trustee for tribes for the purpose of self-government.
The tribe had planned to use the Taunton land for economic development, mainly the resort and casino, and the Mashpee land primarily for housing, according to the appeals court ruling.
Crowell said the tribe was asking for only 1% of what its total land base once was.
A group of Taunton residents led by David and Michelle Littlefield went to court to fight the planned casino.
“We said in 2012 that if the federal government took land into trust in Massachusetts, it would be against the law and we would fight it at the local, state and federal level,” the Littlefields said in a statement after Thursday’s court ruling. “We had a small group of citizens who committed eight years to researching and learning. It was an uphill battle and we were outspent and outnumbered at every turn.
“We kept our word,” their statement says. “We fought hard. We stayed the course, and we won.”
The legal arguments focused on specific definitions in the Indian Reorganization Act, such as the words “such” and “now.”
″‘Such’ is not animate,” Cromwell said. “It’s inanimate. We’re talking about lives here. We’re talking about people. ... We are the first Americans.”
Cromwell remains hopeful that he and the tribe will get help.
“Our land is still in trust,” he said. “And we’re going to continue to fight for our homelands. We’re not going to give up. We need our commander in chief to help us.”
CC News Letter 02 March - NPR-NRC-CAA: The Troubling Triad
Dear Friend,
Government’s inflexible and resolute NPR-NRC initiative is causing country-wide unrest, testing the credibility of statements made by top politicians. With the date for starting NPR registration being April 1, 2020, some issues need to be addressed and understood.
Kindly support honest journalism to survive. https://countercurrents.org/subscription/
If you think the contents of this news letter are critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/news-letter/.
In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
Countercurrents.org
NPR-NRC-CAA: The Troubling Triad
by S G Vombatkere
Government’s inflexible and resolute NPR-NRC initiative is causing country-wide unrest, testing the credibility
of statements made by top politicians. With the date for starting NPR registration being April 1, 2020, some issues need to be addressed and understood.
Over 350 Acadamics Issue Statement on the anti-Muslim pogrom in Delhi
by Press Release
Courageous reportage and heart-breaking eyewitness accounts of the affected areas paint a very clear picture of the nature of this violence: it is anti-Muslim, and are not, as the mainstream media has continued to paint it, composed of “clashes” between “pro-CAA” and anti-CAA camps.
Over last few months we have witnessed a reawakening of the democratic ethos led by Muslim women all across the country. These near-uninterrupted protests against the passage of the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and it’s bigoted twins, the NPR and NRC, have clearly not gone down well with the BJP government, and many attempts have been made at demonising and discrediting the protesters.
The culmination of this barrage of vile and hateful propaganda was when BJP leader Kapil Mishra issued an ultimatum to the protesters in Delhi on 23 February, 2020 warning of the dire consequences that were to follow if the protest sites were not cleared. He did so in the presence of a senior police officer. This was followed the same afternoon by an eruption of violence instigated by fanatical right-wing mobs in the areas of Jafrabad and Maujpur. The violence quickly spread to other parts of north east Delhi [1], and the death toll has risen to over 40 [2].
Courageous reportage and heart-breaking eyewitness accounts of the affected areas paint a very clear picture of the nature of this violence: it is anti-Muslim, and are not, as the mainstream media has continued to paint it, composed of “clashes” between “pro-CAA” and anti-CAA camps. Extremist Hindutva rioters mobilised by upper-caste leaders have run amok in the national capital, setting fire to and vandalising cars and shops and homes belonging to Muslim families, and also schools and mosques [3], all the while mercilessly brutalising Muslim residents of these areas [4].
It is clear to us that this comprehensive breakdown of law and order, which comes on the heels of the sickening attacks on students in Jamia, AMU, and JNU, is happening with the complicity of the Delhi police, who are acting in near-perfect coordination with the right-wing mobs, either by actively assisting them or by turning a blind eye to their actions [5]. We also regard it as no coincidence that the Delhi High Court judge who called the Delhi police to account for its willful inaction was transferred on the same day he held the emergency hearings [6]. We are, in short, witnessing the unfolding of an anti-Muslim pogrom in Delhi, with eerily familiar echoes of the modus operandi deployed by the RSS and it’s affiliates eighteen years ago in Gujarat, and more recently in Uttar Pradesh [7].
The violence has claimed the lives of many innocents, most of them from marginalised sections of society, including daily wage labourers, auto-rickshaw drivers, a police head constable, and an intelligence official. There have been deaths across religious divides. We place the blame for all these deaths squarely on the fascist upper-caste Hindutva forces who have orchestrated this pogrom. We also emphatically appeal to fellow progressive-minded individuals to recognise that there is a world of a difference between the violence of these fanatical mobs and attempts made to defend one’s life, family, home, and livelihood against this violence. We stand firmly in solidarity with the affected families in this regard—there are no two sides to this story, there is no nuance, only senseless violence fuelled by the communal agenda of the upper-caste Hindu right-wing.
We, the undersigned academics, condemn in the strongest possible terms those aiding or abetting the various indignities visited on Muslim men and women in Delhi by these right-wing terrorists affiliated to the RSS and sister organisations.
We also protest the reprehensible manner in which this government has conducted itself, by dropping all pretense of functioning in a democratic manner and acting blatantly as a ministry run by the RSS.
We demand that a judicial inquiry be set up to investigate the actions of the Delhi police, as reportage, video footage, and eyewitness accounts clearly point to their complicity in the violence.
We appeal to the judiciary to ban terrorist organisations like the Bajrang Dal which, as always, were at the forefront of this pogrom and which have been emboldened under the Modi regime.
We finally demand that the state immediately and adequately compensate those whose houses, shops, and livelihoods have been destroyed.
New Delhi and More
by Dr Samina Salim
Some have a problem with the Mughal history, others with Muslim head coverings, some with public praying, some with what Muslims eat and the rest blame Muslims for some sort of an unidentified negative vibe. Jeez, how do you remove a hatred of this
nature that you can’t even put your hands on, as to what is it that they actually hate about Indian Muslims.
The Viral Blame Game: Xenophobia, Attribution and Coronavirus
by Dr Binoy Kampmark
Follow the virus, find the maligned scapegoat. For COVID-19 (2019 novel coronavirus), a not negligible spray of suggestions claim that China, from eating habits, to politburo to laboratory, is responsible for cultivation and transmission. One purportedly scientific paper authored by Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao claimed that the supposed origin of the virus – bats carrying CoV ZC45 – “were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometres from the seafood market [in Wuhan].” As the authors observed drily, “The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market.”
Kashmir And Turkey
by Haider Abbas
It must have been music to China ears, battling with Coronavirus rising number of deaths in its Wuhan province , when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced from Pakistan alongside Pakistan PM Imran Khan that Turkey is ready to join CPEC, China’s most ambitious project slated to change the ‘business of world’ for the next century. If China is head of CPEC then Pakistan is its neck as that would enable China to reach-out to the world, through CPEC, under BRI, where already 68 countries have joined.
No evidence of fraud in Bolivian election that saw Evo Morales ousted in military coup, finds MIT study
by Countercurrents Collective
A new MIT study has found no evidence of fraud in Bolivia’s 2019 election, despite allegations of serious irregularities by the Organization
of American States (OAS), which led to the ousting of Evo Morales in a military coup.
A new MIT study has found no evidence of fraud in Bolivia’s 2019 election, despite allegations of serious irregularities by the Organization of American States (OAS), which led to the ousting of Evo Morales in a military coup.
John Curiel and Jack R. Williams examined the OAS’s report and published their findings in the Washington Post on February 27, 2020.
“As specialists in election integrity, we find that the statistical evidence does not support the claim of fraud in Bolivia’s October election,” they wrote.
The analysis by two researchers in MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab, made public last week, stated that an OAS finding that fraud helped Morales win was flawed and concluded that it was “very likely” the socialist president won the October vote by the 10 percentage points needed to avoid a runoff.
The MIT researchers said the OAS had adopted a “novel approach to fraud analysis” and that its statistical conclusions would appear to be “deeply flawed.”
Under the OAS’ odd criteria for fraud, it is even possible that U.S. elections, in which votes counted later in the day tend to lean Democratic, could be classified as fraudulent, the researchers said.
Curiel and Williams said they had reached out to the OAS for comment, but did not receive a response. The researchers ultimately warned that “relying on unverified tests as proof of fraud is a serious threat to any democracy.”
The study prompted Morales, who fled Bolivia first to Mexico and then to Argentina, to call on Sunday for the “democratic” international community to steward the May election carefully.
“The coup-mongers intend to disqualify our candidates,” Morales wrote on Twitter.
The MIT study was commissioned by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Its director Mark Weisbrot said on February 27, 2020 that the OAS “greatly misled the media and the public” about Bolivia’s election. “The OAS needs to explain why it made these statements and why anyone should trust it when it comes to elections,” he said.
Since the OAS claimed “deliberate” and “malicious” attempts had been made to rig the vote in favor of Morales the false accusation by the OAS headlines across the world unquestioningly declared “overwhelming evidence” of fraud.
The allegations were quickly seized upon by opposition forces and eventually led to a military coup, which saw a right-wing government headed by Jeanine Anez came to power. Morales was even forced to flee to Mexico and from there on to Argentina, where he was granted political asylum.
Morales told last November that the OAS had made a “political decision” and played a key role in deposing him, though Western media roundly dismissed him at the time including the Washington Post, which published the latest findings.
He even recalled attempting to contact OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro and warning an aide on the phone: “If you do not review your report … you are going to set Bolivia on fire and there are going to be deaths.”
Deaths did follow. Bolivia was engulfed in riots and protests between Morales supporters and security forces.
A Santiago, March 2, 2020 datelined Reuters report said:
The study by MIT experts that called into question the alleged election fraud that drove Bolivian President Evo Morales to resign has triggered sniping between left and right-leaning governments in Latin America.
The “Study casting doubt on Bolivian election fraud triggers controversy” headlined report said:
The OAS in a statement on Friday dismissed the MIT study as “unscientific.”
Bolivia will run a fresh election in May.
A spokesman for MIT said the study was conducted by its scientists on an independent basis for the Washington-based CEPR and did not necessarily reflect the views of the university.
Morales has said he will return to Bolivia, but has been charged by the caretaker government with sedition and blocked from running as a candidate for senator.
Latin American leaders’ reaction
Leaders of a number of left-leaning Latin American countries supportive of Morales have weighed in since the release of the MIT report, with Mexico asking the OAS to clarify its findings.
Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro reiterated his claim that the OAS is a tool of the U.S., posting on Twitter on Sunday that the MIT study was “more proof that the Ministry of the Colonies (OAS) threatens the will of the free peoples of the continent.”
Argentine President Alberto Fernandez said the report’s findings justified his continued support for Morales.
“We demand the prompt democratization of Bolivia, with the full participation of the Bolivian people and without prescriptions of any kind,” Fernandez wrote on Twitter.
Conservative leaders in Latin America backed the OAS.
Ernesto Araujo, Brazil’s foreign minister, said fraud in Bolivia’s election had been “crystal clear.”
Tuto Quiroga, a former Bolivian president who is running in the next election, called the MIT study a “rehash of old lies.” Quiroga pointed out that Morales had himself asked the OAS to review the October election, called a fresh vote after the OAS report on the matter and dismissed members of Bolivia’s electoral board.
‘When Kings/Rulers Become (Man-eating) Lions Then Judges/Officials Behave Like Dogs!’: Nanak
by Dr P S Sahni
Ever since the present regime in India betrayed the people of Kashmir through Presidential proclamation of August 5-6, 2019 – and whose constitutionality is being reluctantly and belatedly tested by the Supreme Court of India – Nanak’s quote is being rendered more and more apt day by day. In one fell blow the assurance of plebiscite to Kashmiris was shelved. No talks were held even with a single Kashmiri prior to this act of betrayal.
Russia-Turkey: A Perfect Storm On The Horizon
by Askiah Adam
Russia is pushing back the Turkish Army in Idlib. As the Turks broke through
the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) defence the latter called for air assistance from Russia. The fighters came and victory was the SAA’s. With that all uncertainty is gone. Russia will keep its promise of maintaining the integrity of the Syrian state, even when an “ally” is attempting to force her to break that promise. Relations with difficult Turkey is no reason for Russia to betray a decades-old major ally in West Asia.
The Conservatives swept the Parliamentary Election in Iran
by Akbar E Torbat
The conservatives swept the parliamentary elections held on February 21, 2020, in Iran. The election was for the eleventh parliament (Majles) since the 1979 Iranian revolution. The conservatives (or “Principlists”) obtained about two-thirds of the seats, which will give themthe control of the Majles to challenge the so-called “moderates” who want friendly relations with the West.
Letting the Pentagon Loose With Your Tax Dollars
by Mandy Smithberger
Hold on to your helmets! It’s true the White House is reporting that its proposed new Pentagon budget is only $740.5 billion, a relatively small increase from the previous year’s staggering number. In reality, however, when you also include war and security costs buried in the budgets of other agencies, the actual national security figure comes in at more than $1.2 trillion, as the Trump administration continues to give the Pentagon free reign over taxpayer dollars.
Hold on to your helmets! It’s true the White House is reporting that its proposed new Pentagon budget is only $740.5 billion, a relatively small increase from the previous year’s staggering number. In reality, however, when you also include war and security costs buried in the budgets of other agencies, the actual national security figure comes in at more than $1.2 trillion, as the Trump administration continues to give the Pentagon free reign over taxpayer dollars.
You would think that the country’s congressional representatives might want to take control of this process and roll back that budget — especially given the way the White House has repeatedly violated its constitutional authority by essentially stealing billions of dollars from the Defense Department for the president’s “Great Wall” (that Congress refused to fund). Recently, even some of the usual congressional Pentagon budget boosters have begun to lament how difficult it is to take the Department’s requests for more money seriously, given the way the military continues to demand yet more (ever more expensive) weaponry and advanced technologies on the (largely bogus) grounds that Uncle Sam is losing an innovation war with Russia and China.
And if this wasn’t bad enough, keep in mind that the Defense Department remains the only major federal agency that has proven itself incapable of even passing an audit. An investigation by my colleague Jason Paladino at the Project On Government Oversight found that increased secrecy around the operations of the Pentagon is making it ever more difficult to assess whether any of its money is well spent, which is why it’s important to track where all the money in this country’s national security budget actually goes.
This year’s Pentagon request includes $636.4 billion for what’s called its “base” budget — for the routine expenses of the Defense Department. However, claiming that those funds were insufficient, Congress and the Pentagon created a separate slush fund to cover both actual war expenses and other items on their wish lists (on which more to come). Add in mandatory spending, which includes payments to veterans’ retirement and illness compensation funds and that base budget comes to $647.2 billion.
Ahead of the recent budget roll out, the Pentagon issued a review of potential “reforms” to supposedly cut or control soaring costs. While a few of them deserve serious consideration and debate, the majority reveal just how focused the Pentagon is on protecting its own interests. Ironically, one major area of investment it wants to slash involves oversight of the billions of dollars to be spent. Perhaps least surprising was a proposal to slash programs for operational testing and evaluation — otherwise known as the process of determining whether the billions Americans spend on shiny new weaponry will result in products that actually work. The Pentagon’s Office of Operational Test and Evaluation has found itself repeatedly under attack from arms manufacturers and their boosters who would prefer to be in charge of grading their own performances.
Reduced oversight becomes even more troubling when you look at where Pentagon policymakers want to move that money — to missile defense based on staggeringly expensive futuristic hypersonic weaponry. As my Project On Government Oversight colleague Mark Thompson has written, the idea that such weapons will offer a successful way of defending against enemy missiles “is a recipe for military futility and fiscal insanity.”
Another proposal — to cut A-10 “Warthogs” in the Pentagon’s arsenal in pursuit of a new generation of fighter planes — suggests just how cavalier a department eager for flashy new toys that mean large paydays for the giant defense contractors can be with service members’ lives. After all, no weapons platform more effectively protects ground troops at a relatively low cost than the A-10, yet that plane regularly ends up on the cut list, thanks to those eager to make money on a predictably less effective and vastly more expensive replacement.
Many other proposed “cuts” are actually gambits to get Congress to pump yet more money into the Pentagon. For instance, a memo of supposed cuts to shipbuilding programs, leaked at the end of last year, drew predictable ire from members of Congress trying to protect jobs in their states. Similarly, don’t imagine for a second that purchases of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the most expensive weapons system in history, could possibly be slowed even though the latest testing report suggests that, among other things, it has a gun that still can’t shoot straight. That program is, however, a pork paradise for the military-industrial complex, claiming jobs spread across 45 states.
Many such proposals for cuts are nothing but deft deployments of the “Washington Monument strategy,” a classic tactic in which bureaucrats suggest slashing popular programs to avoid facing any cuts at all. The bureaucratic game is fairly simple: Never offer up anything that would actually appeal to Congress when it comes to reducing the bottom line. Recently, the Pentagon did exactly that in proposing cuts to popular weapons programs to pay for the president’s wall, knowing that no such thing would happen.
Believe it or not, however, there are actually a few proposed cuts that Congress might take seriously. Lockheed Martin’s and Austal’s Littoral Combat Ship program, for instance, has long been troubled, and the number of ships planned for purchase has been cut as problems operating such vessels or even ensuring that they might survive in combat have mounted. The Navy estimates that retiring the first four ships in the program, which would otherwise need significant and expensive upgrades to be deployable, would save $1.2 billion.
The Pentagon’s Slush Fund: the Overseas Contingency Operations Account
Both the Pentagon and Congress have used a war-spending slush fund known as the Overseas Contingency Operations account, or OCO, as a mechanism to circumvent budget caps put into place in 2011 by the Budget Control Act. In 2021, that slush fund is expected to come in at $69 billion. As Taxpayers for Common Sense has pointed out, if OCO were an agency in itself, it would be the fourth largest in the government. In a welcome move towards transparency, this year’s request actually notes that $16 billion of its funds are for things that should be paid for by the base budget, just as last year’s OCO spending levels included $8 billion for the president’s false fund-the-wall “national emergency.”
Overseas Contingency Operations total: $69 billion
Running tally: $716.2 billion.
The Nuclear Budget
While most people may associate the Department of Energy with fracking, oil drilling, solar panels, and wind farms, more than half of its budget actually goes to the National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the country’s nuclear weapons program. Unfortunately, it has an even worse record than the Pentagon when it comes to mismanaging the tens of billions of dollars it receives every year. Its programs are regularly significantly behind schedule and over cost, more than $28 billion in such expenses over the past 20 years. It’s a track record of mismanagement woeful enough to leave even the White House’s budget geeks questioning nuclear weapons projects. In the end, though — and given military spending generally, this shouldn’t surprise you — the boosters of more nuclear weapons won and so the nuclear budget came in at $27.6 billion.
Nuclear Weapons Budget total: $27.6 billion
Running tally: $743.8 billion
“Defense-Related” Activities
At $9.7 billion, this budget item includes a number of miscellaneous national-security-related matters, including international FBI activities and payments to the CIA retirement fund.
Defense-Related Activities total: $9.7 billion
Running tally: $753.5 billion
The Intelligence Budget
Not surprisingly, since it’s often referred to as the “black budget,” there is relatively little information publicly available about intelligence community spending. According to recent press reports, however, defense firms are finding this area increasingly profitable, citing double-digit growth in just the last year. Unfortunately, Congress has little capacity to oversee this spending. A recent report by Demand Progress and the Project On Government Oversight found that, as of 2019, only 37 of 100 senators even have staff capable of accessing any kind of information about these programs, let alone the ability to conduct proper oversight of them.
However, we do know the total amount of money being requested for the 17 major agencies in the U.S. intelligence community: $85 billion. That money is split between the Pentagon’s intelligence programs and funding for the Central Intelligence Agency and other “civilian” outfits. This year, the military’s intelligence program requested $23.1 billion, and $61.9 billion was requested for the other agencies. Most of this funding is believed to be in the Pentagon’s budget, so it’s not included in the running tally below. If you want to know anything else about that spending you’re going to need to get a security clearance.
Intelligence budget total: $85 billion
Running tally: $753.5 billion
The Military and Defense Department Retirement and Health Budget
While you might assume that these costs would be included in the defense budget, this budget line shows that funds were paid by the Treasury Department for military retirement programs (minus interest and contributions from those accounts). While such retirement costs come to $700 million, the healthcare fund costs are actually a negative $8.5 billion.
Military and Department of Defense Retirement and Health Costs total: -$7.8 billion
Running tally: $745.7 billion
The Veterans Affairs Budget
The financial costs of war are far greater than what’s seen in the Pentagon budget. The most recent estimates by Brown University’s the Costs of War Project show that the total costs of the nation’s main post-9/11 wars through this fiscal year come to $6.4 trillion, including a minimum of $1 trillion for the costs of caring for veterans. This year the administration requested $238.4 billion for Veterans Affairs.
Veterans Affairs Budget: $238.4 billion
Running tally: $984.1 billion
The International Affairs Budget
The International Affairs budget includes funds for both the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Numerous defense secretaries and senior military leaders have urged public support for spending on diplomacy to prevent conflict and enhance security (and the State Department also engages in a number of military-related activities). In the Obama years, for instance, then-Marine General James Mattis typically quipped that without more funding for diplomacy he was going to need more bullets. Ahead of the introduction of this year’s budget, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Admiral Mike Mullen told congressional leaders that concerns about great-power competition with China and Russia meant that “cutting these critical investments would be out of touch with the reality around the world.”
The budget request for $51.1 billion, however, cuts State Department funding significantly and proposes keeping it at such a level for the foreseeable future.
International Affairs Total: $51.1 billion
Running tally: $1,035.2 billion
The Homeland Security Budget
The Department of Homeland Security consists of a hodgepodge of government agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Security Administration, the U.S. Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, and the Coast Guard. In this year’s $49.7 billion budget, border security costs make up a third of total costs.
The department is also responsible for coordinating federal cyber-security efforts through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Despite growing domestic cyber concerns, however, the budget request for that agency has fallen since last year’s budget.
Homeland Security total: $52.1 billion
Running tally: $1,087.3 billion
Interest on the Debt
And don’t forget the national security state’s part in paying interest on the national debt. Its share, 21.5% of that debt, adds up to $123.6 billion.
Interest on the debt total: $123.6 billion
Final tally: $1,210.9 billion
The Budget’s Too Damn High
In other words, at $1.21 trillion, the actual national security budget is essentially twice the size of the announced Pentagon budget. It’s also a compendium of military-industrial waste and misspending. Yet those calling for higher budgets continue to argue that the only way to keep America safe is to pour in yet more tax dollars at a moment when remarkably little is going into, for instance, domestic infrastructure.
The U.S. already spends more than the next seven countries combined on a military that is seemingly incapable of either winning or ending any of the wars it’s been engaged in since September 2001. So isn’t it reasonable to suggest that the more that’s spent on what’s still called national security but should perhaps go by the term “national insecurity,” the less there is to show for it? More spending is never the solution to poor spending. Isn’t it about time, then, that the disastrously bloated “defense” budget experienced some meaningful cuts and shifts in priorities? Shouldn’t the U.S. military be made into a far leaner and more agile force geared to actual defense instead of disastrous wars (and preparations for more of the same) across a significant swath of the planet?
Mandy Smithberger, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Originally published in TomDispatch.com
Copyright 2020 Mandy Smithberger
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