Below is an important and interesting analysis of John Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World of the “mood” of the House on defense issues. I do not agree with all of the characterizations or implications (and I agree with some), but I do believe John (whom I have known professionally with respect for almost four decades) has collected some significant information. From this and other data, I conclude:
1) No one should be surprised at the House' ambivalence on a defense issue like Libya. It has been the hallmark of Congress for longer than I can recall to permit presidents to do as they please internationally while sniping from the sidelines and avoiding taking responsibility;
2) Congress pats itself on its own back for pretending to support frugality in the Pentagon by taking easy votes such as against the second engine for the F-35 (which SecDef Gates successfully painted as a pork program) and against a piece of the DOD funding for military bands (see below). The size of the votes on matters that are actually significant, such as the Barney Frank/Ron Paul and the Mulvaney amendments to cut from $8.5 to $17 billion from the 2012 DOD budget, shows a new high-water mark for budget cutting in the Pentagon not seen in Congress since — by my recollection — in the mid-1980s when the so-called Military Reform Caucus and budget cutters like Chuck Grassley were fully active.
From a Human Intelligence perspective, below is a very strong signal that the Arab Spring and its “Days of Rage” are spreading; even well-managed countries such as Malaysia (and one speculates, badly-managed ones like the USA) appear to be in line for Electoral Reform protests and perhaps Open Source Insurgency.
Demonstrators march in defiance of ban, call for electoral reform
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Police fired repeated rounds of tear gas and detained more than 1,600 people in the capital on Saturday as thousands of activists evaded roadblocks and barbed wire to hold a street protest against Prime Minister Najib Razak's government.
Phi Beta Iota: All governments are in the process of collapse as credible sole focal points for governance. None are gearing up for the inevitable emergence of bio-regional hybrid governance networks based on accountability, information-sharing, transparency, and a common interest in sustainable peace and prosperity.
A former Microsoft exec, who has experienced C-level meetings with CEO Steve Ballmer, said he doesn't think Microsoft would have bought Skype to help Facebook compete with Google. “Steve is one of the smartest people you'll meet, processing-power smart,” he said. “But he's not a complex multivariate thinker, meaning he doesn't think 15 chess moves out. So that's why I don't think anything more complex went into the decision, other than they thought the company would make a strong asset.”
The new defense chief says intelligence uncovered in the Bin Laden raid showed that 10 years of U.S. operations against the terror network had left it with fewer than two dozen key operatives. Panetta is visiting Afghanistan for the first time as defense secretary.
Phi Beta Iota: Panetta had so much potential at CIA, and failed to rise to the possibilities. Now at Defense there would be no more sublime illustration of lunacy than this. As we recall, Al Qaeda started in 1988 with fewer than two dozen key operatives. Four trillion borrowed dollars later, this is the best he has to offer as a success story? The US military is bad for real business.
A new coalition called Move To Amend is working to abolish corporate personhood in the US; they're working at the local and state level to pass laws to undo the work of Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that equated money with speech.
Boulder is not alone in this fight, nor is it the first community to consider such a resolution. In April, voters in Madison and Dane County, WI overwhelmingly approved measures calling for an end to corporate personhood and the legal status of money as speech by 84% and 78% respectively. Similar resolutions have been passed in nearly thirty other cities and counties. Resolutions have also been introduced in the state legislatures of both Vermont and Washington..
Released Wednesday by the sponsoring Watson Institute of Brown University, a new multi-author study of the costs of the post-9/11 wars is available. Most prominently, the study finds the appropriations thus far to have been between $2.3 and 2.7 trillion; with an additional $884 to $1,334 billion to already have been incurred for future costs for veterans and their families. This would make a total, incurred thus far, of from $3.2 Trillion to $4.0 trillion. (Find a summary of these costs at http://costsofwar.org/article/economic-cost-summary.) It is important to note that these are basically budget costs to the federal government, not the broader economic costs to the economy or other costs to state and local governments.
The study also addresses still other expenses, such as the human costs in terms of civilian dead, the wounded, refugees, and more.
There is certainly some you will find to disagree with, but it is clear that advocates of the various conflicts who pretend the costs have been only the $1 trillion that President Obama articulated last week are feeding the nation grotesquely inaccurate information. Others, like departing SecDef Gates, who pretend that DOD spending is not a major factor in the size of our deficit are not particularly skilled in “math,” an elementary skill for government types that Secretary Gates has chosen to deride and to leave to others to perform.
I participated in the Costs of War study; see my paper on the DOD . It makes two basic points on p. 14:
1) “… while [the Congressional Research Service] and others have done long, hard, and excellent work to capture the identifiable appropriations to the Pentagon for the Post-9/11 wars, the $1.2 trillion CRS has, for example, identified in current dollars is problematic, but the fault is not with CRS, CBO, or GAO. The available figures have gaping holes and problems in them because of the sloppy, inept and misleading accounting of the costs by the Defense Department and Congress.”
2) “The $667 billion in 2011 dollars ($617 billion in current dollars) appropriated to the Defense Department's base budget since 2001 as a result of the wars, while squandered, should be included in any comprehensive attempt to capture the total cost of the wars. These amounts would bring the total DOD costs of the wars to $1.98 Trillion in constant 2011 dollars and $1.82 trillion in current dollars.”
A Reuters story below summarizes the overall “Costs of War” study.
(Reuters) – When President Barack Obama cited cost as a reason to bring troops home from Afghanistan, he referred to a $1 trillion price tag for America's wars.
Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come, according to a study released on Wednesday.
The final bill will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project “Costs of War” by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies.
Phi Beta Iota: Emphasis added above. Brown, like Rutgers, is a hotbed of left-leaning intellectuals who probably wonder how a Democratic President could have become a neo-fascist war-monger. The answer is simple: corruption has no ideology. It is pervasive. Interestingly, the wire services (AP, Reuters, AFP, Bloomberg on occasion) and Russian Television as well as Al Jazeera, are emerging from this period as examples of integrity in action.
The big deficit facing the U.S. is mostly Republican in origin, the Congressional Budget Office says. The Bush tax cuts alone have added $3 trillion in red ink, yet the party wants to double down on its failed policy.
By Mike Lofgren
June 26, 2011
. . . . . . .
Polarization based on juvenile talk radio sloganeering is dragging this country to the cliff's edge. If neither the Democrats nor the party I have served for three decades is willing to act like adults, perhaps it's time for a party that is willing to step into the void.
Move to Amend: coalition to abolish corporate personhood
