Elizabeth Rose - The Pentagon’s Spending Spree

Are you wondering where your tax dollars are going? Then take a look at the $642.5 billion stuffed into the National Defense Authorization Act, which the House of Representatives recently approved.

House Republicans may spout plenty of concern about the nation's budget deficit, but their version of the Pentagon's budget tops the spending levels they had agreed to a few months ago by $8 billion. It's also $4 billion above the total that President Barack Obama and the Pentagon requested.

These politicians are trying to fund Cold War-era weapons that our military doesn't want and that have been dismissed as outdated and unnecessary by the top brass — leaders like Gen. James Cartwright, the retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former commander of the country's nuclear forces.

The U.S. military budget is six times that of China, and tops the next 17 highest-spending countries combined.

Military spending has played a significant role in increasing the national debt. Over the last decade, the Pentagon's budget has nearly doubled.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have also contributed to this soaring increase in defense spending and to record deficits.

The drawdown of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq should mean the Pentagon will spend less. But giant military contractors have dumped a fortune into campaign contributions and lobbying, making sure that any and all anticipated savings are going to expensive weapons systems — all paid for by you through your taxes.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/pentagon-s-spending-spree-1338198664 

Kelley B. Vlahos - War Inc. Shifts Homeward

It’s been said many times that the war is a self-sustaining industry that requires a constant threat overseas to keep the machine thriving at home. Looking at the millions if not billions of dollars spent on securing “national special security events” against its own citizens, it’s clear that protesters have become the threat that has allowed, in part, the warfare state to flourish on American soil.

Sound dramatic? One need only to look at the lockdown of our cities during these “events” — whether it be the NATO Summit in Chicago today, or preparations to militarize the cities of Tampa and Charlotte for the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer — to see that the constitutionally protected, American tradition of protest has become a reason for law enforcement to spend their quickly evaporating budgets each year on new toys and overtime — including the latest in surveillance, crowd control gear and communications equipment, not to mention the helicopters overhead and armed vehicles on the ground.

Just as important, this threat allows the federal government to extend its own powers under the Patriot Act onto Main Street, all in the order of counterterrorism and national security.

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=150891

Michael Brenner - Seven Sins of the Democrats

The Democrats are in a shambles. Progressives, ne liberals, are in particularly dire straits. They have been marginalized and their influence on public policy wanes even as events reconfirm their values, their philosophy and their historic cause. They face an election that pits extreme rightists against an incumbent president who fits comfortably into the national establishment’s moderate wing. They have no standard bearer. Their core constituencies are being ignored or patronized. The terms of debate on the great issues of the times have been set without reference to them or their ideas.

They have themselves to blame since they have committed the Seven Sins of politics.

SLOTH 

Democrats are slow on the uptake. Their reaction time – whether to events, shifts in public mood, or Republican actions – is lethargic compared to the quick response of the latter. This goes along with a tendency to drift lethargically with the tides rather to make their own waves and to ride them resolutely. Exhibit number one is the swelling anger in the country after the financial breakdown of 2008.  This was a natural for the Democrats. The discrediting of Republican dogma and their business underwriters, the abuse of financial power, exposure of the fatal flaws in the snake oil of market fundamentalism, a spotlighting of the huge gap between the fortunes generated by casino capitalism while mean earnings for salaried people stagnated. Yet it was the crackpot right through the subsidized Tea Party movement that channeled all that passion to the reactionary end of the political spectrum? Democrats, liberal Democrats anyway, still can’t figure it out. Nor can they accept the glaring truth that they were sold out by the Obama administration in the name of the White House’s own self-serving commitment not to rock the boat by doing anything that challenged seriously the status quo. The same scenario developed with the 2010 volte-face in the direction of ‘austerity’ and subverting Social Security and Medicare in the name of budgetary discipline.

Read More:

HTTP://WWW.COUNTERPUNCH.ORG/2012/05/22/SEVEN-SINS-OF-THE-DEMOCRATS/

Rob Kall - 15 Playbook Strategies Corporatists and Conservatives Use to Strip Mine America and Erode Democracy

There is a playbook with a collection of tools and strategies conservatives use to erode democracy and strip mine the treasures, assets and strengths of the USA. They are almost always masked as changes aimed at serving democracy, the constitution, rights or capitalism. They are not separate. They are not coincidental.

Naomi Klein described a systemic approach to strip mine nations and weaken freedoms in her profoundly important book, Shock Doctrine. This article continues, in that tradition,  to list ways that the the Right is exploiting and despoiling America for corporations that are not at all loyal to the US and that do not care about the people of the nation.

When you see one of these approaches being employed or if you are victim to one of them, you should be aware that they come from the same play book.

These include:

De-regulate-- To increase profits or power, eliminate regulations that protect people, workers, the environment. Glass Steagall was a case of de-regulation that dreaded trillions of economic suffering on the middle class. Every day there are thousands of lobbyists aiming at deregulating ecological, economic, worker and many other  protections. 

Read More:

http://www.dailycensored.com/2012/05/22/15-playbook-strategies-corporatists-and-conservatives-use-to-strip-mine-america-and-erode-democracy/

Prof. James F. Tracy - THE FRAMEWORK FOR SUPPRESSING INFORMATION: Public Opinion in America's 21st Century Police State

The police state’s framework for suppressing information and opinion arguably threatens all forms of independent thought and appears poised to intensify as the “war on terror” continues. As the recent emergence of US plans for indoctrination in reeducation camps reveals, Western governments’ actual enemy is the capacity for a people to exercise critical thought en route to intervening in and altering political-economic processes.

Public opinion—defined by 19th century English political thinker William MacKinnon as “that sentiment on any given subject which is entertained by the best informed, most intelligent, and most moral persons in the community”—is fundamentally at odds with police state prerogatives also exemplified in recent US Department of Homeland Security documents.

The technocratic mindset of agencies such as the DHS and Federal Bureau of Investigation that oversee federal, state, and local policing procedures seeks to short-circuit and quell dissent by identifying transgressive thought that deviates from an assumed normalcy, then interlinking it with perceived threats or violent actions against the state. In a grand governmental exercise of Freudian-style projection, the DHS’s usage of inflammatory terms such as “terrorist” and “extremist” are routinely utilized to emphasize the nature and degree of various activist groups’ alleged deviant ideologies. This practice proceeds in light of the fact that most every “terrorist” act within the US since 9/11 has been carefully guided by the FBI or, as was the case with the initial “underwear bomber, Western intelligence agencies likely working in concert.

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30947

Ben Adler - It’s Official: Watching Fox Makes You Stupider

People who work at Fox News might like to think that they are despised by real journalists only because they are conservative and most journalists are liberal. Anyone who read the admiring obituaries of William F. Buckley Jr. in mainstream and liberal outlets would know that is nonsense. Journalists, both liberals and ones with no ideology in particular, are quite capable of respecting conservative pundits and reporters who deserve their respect.

But Fox does not. The reason is not because it holds a set of values that others may not share. And that is only partially because it claims to be “Fair and Balanced” when it is neither.

Rather, it is because it fails the fundamental test of journalism: are you informing your audience? According to a new study by Farleigh Dickinson University, Fox viewers are the least knowledgeable audience of any outlet, and they know even less about politics and current events than people who watch no news at all.

Read More:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/167999/its-official-watching-fox-makes-you-stupider

Matt Stoller - In Greek Humanitarian Crisis, It Will Be Leftists Or Neo-Nazis

Austerity doesn’t just lead to unemployment and misery.  If it goes on long enough, it will inevitably lead to the emergence of “swamp thing” extremists into positions of power.  Take the situation in Greece, a country which until recently was a wealthy Western democracy with a relatively stable political system.  After five years of depression, voters in Greece just fired their equivalent of the Democrats and Republicans, and replaced them with anti-bailout groups, mostly on the left (Syriza and Communists), but also with the neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn on the right.

This should be a wake-up call to political elites globally, because Greece could simply be the start of a trend of collapsing centrist politics and the rise of dangerous political actors.  7% of Greeks, including a substantial number of the police, voted for a fascist anti-immigrant party whose platform is a mixture of economic populism and xenophobic racist lunacy.  21 Golden Dawn members were elected to Parliament.  Golden Dawn political machine includes roving gangs of thugs that routinely beat up immigrants, and its political platform includes placing mines on the border between Greece and Turkey to prevent immigrants from coming into the country.

This is what austerity produces – extremism.  Fortunately, Golden Dawn only got 7% of the vote, and only 21 seats in Parliament.  And mostly, the Greeks voted for parties on the left who reject austerity.  Greeks don’t want neo-Nazi groups running the country, they just don’t want corrupt bankers running it either.  The man who garnered the most power from the election, leftist Alexis Tsipras of Syriza, has called the situation in Greece a “humanitarian crisis”.  That’s just reality.  Greece has a large, untouchable patronage system, a big defense sector, wealthy who escape from taxation – and yet international bankers are demanding radical cuts in wages, pensions, and jobs for honest workers.

Read More:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/in-greek-humanitarian-crisis-its-liberals-or-nazis.html

Michael Lind - Why Do Conservatives Hate Freedom?

Why do conservatives hate freedom? The question may be startling. After all, don’t conservatives claim they are protecting liberty in America against liberal statism, which they compare to communism or fascism? But the conservative idea of “freedom” is a very peculiar one, which excludes virtually every kind of liberty that ordinary Americans take for granted.

I distinguish conservatives from libertarians, who, on issues of personal liberty, tend to side with liberals. Since World War II, mainstream conservatives have opposed every expansion of personal liberty in the United States.

During the civil rights era, the leading conservative politician, Barry Goldwater, and the leading conservative intellectual, William F. Buckley Jr., along with most of their followers opposed federal laws banning racial discrimination. To their credit, they later admitted they had been mistaken; indeed, both Buckley and Goldwater supported gay rights late in their careers. But at the time that conservative support for a color-blind society might have made a difference, the leaders of American conservatism sided with the Southern segregationists. They claimed they did so, not because of racial prejudice, but because they feared federal tyranny — a weaselly stance that, in practice, made them side with white supremacist tyranny at the state level. If they had truly believed in their own propaganda about federalism, conservatives could have opposed federal civil rights legislation while campaigning for civil rights laws at the state level. They didn’t.

Read More:

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/15/why_do_conservatives_hate_freedom/

The Founding of theThe Center for Science and Democracy

The United States has enjoyed sustained prosperity, security and health over much of its history in large part because of our strong commitment to independent and rigorous science. Sound decisions start with the best possible information, grounded in fact and tested by reason. And free inquiry flourishes best in a free society.

The Founding Fathers understood the importance of this partnership, as did leaders from Lincoln to Eisenhower, FDR to JFK. Because of our nation's high regard for scientific expertise, the United States became recognized in the 20th century as the global leader in science and innovation.

A Troubling Trend

In recent years, however, understanding of science and respect for its role in decision making have declined. An excessively partisan political climate and an increasingly noisy media landscape have combined to produce an environment in which science is easily drowned out by misinformation or manipulated for the benefit of private interests.

And this couldn't be happening at a worse time. Our leaders are grappling with some of the most complex and daunting problems in our history: stemming the tide of global warming, finding sustainable ways to feed, power and transport ourselves, reducing the threat of catastrophic war. We cannot hope to solve these problems without the aid of rigorous, independent science.

Restoring Science's Role

In response to these challenges, the Union of Concerned Scientists has launched a new intiative: the Center for Science and Democracy. The Center is dedicated to restoring the essential role of science, evidence-based knowledge, and constructive debate in the U.S. policymaking process, using three core strategies:

Read More:

http://www.ucsusa.org/center-for-science-and-democracy/

Richard Eskow - Will Democrats Embrace American Austerity? Crash This Party and See

Heard about the meeting that's being held to decide your economic future? No? Don't feel bad: That's because you weren't invited.

But Tim Geithner was. So was Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican member of Congress whose radical right-wing plans for cutting Medicare have made him the subject of a Mitt Romney "bromance." And so was Bill Clinton, who showed up last year and uttered the usual Beltway insider's falsehoods [1]about what's really wrong with Social Security.

Maybe your invitation to billionaire Pete Peterson's "Fiscal Summit [2]" got lost in the mail. Or maybe they really, really didn't want you there. Who cares? That's no reason not to go anyway.

Hey, Sen. Bernie Sanders wasn't invited, and his proposal for Social Security was more popular with the American people than anything that's likely to be discussed at this little get-together.

It's Your Party

That's right: There's a "summit," and nobody invited the American people. They didn't even invite the guy who proposed the fiscal plan that most Americans - including most Republicans - wanted, according to the polling data [3]. But he's going anyway.

That's Bernie for ya.

In fact, there will be a rally outside [4] and Bernie will be speaking there. The rally's at 1 pm on May 15 (next Monday, in front of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation Fiscal Summit. The address is 1301 Constitution Avenue NW in Washington.

Read More:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/richard-eskow/43146/will-democrats-embrace-american-austerity-crash-this-party-and-see