Views From The Left- WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

THE TRILLION-DOLLAR NATIONAL SECURITY BUDGET

You wouldn’t know it, based on the endless cries for more money coming from the military, politicians, and the president, but these are the best of times for the Pentagon.  Spending on the Department of Defense alone is already well in excess of half a trilliondollars a year and counting.  Adjusted for inflation, that means it’shigher than at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s massive buildup of the 1980s and is now nearing the post-World War II funding peak.  And yet that’s barely half the story.  There are hundreds of billions of dollars in “defense” spending that aren’t even counted in the Pentagon budget…  Given the Pentagon’s penchant for wasting money and our government’s record of engaging in dangerously misguided wars without end, it’s clear that a large portion of this massive investment of taxpayer dollars isn’t making anyone any safer…  Most taxpayers have no idea that more than a trillion dollars a year is going to what’s still called “defense,” but these days might equally be called national insecurity.   More

Military Spends a Lot More on Viagra than Transgender Medical Costs

On Twitter this morning, President Trump announced a ban on transgender people serving in the military, citing “medical costs” as the primary driver of the decision…   While Trump didn't offer any numbers to support this claim, a Defense Department-commissioned study published last year by the Rand Corp. provides exhaustive estimates of transgender servicemembers' potential medical costs…  “The implication is that even in the most extreme scenario that we were able to identify … we expect only a 0.13-percent ($8.4 million out of $6.2 billion) increase in health care spending,” Rand's authors concluded.  By contrast, total military spending on erectile dysfunction medicines amounts to $84 million annually,according to an analysis by the Military Times — 10 times the cost of annual transition-related medical care for active duty transgender servicemembers.  The military spends $41.6 million annually on Viagra alone, according to the Military Times analysis — roughly five times the estimated spending on transition-related medical care for transgender troops.  More

Democrats' 'Better Deal' for workers leaves a tough question unanswered

Leading Democratic politicians announced their economic agenda for next year's midterm elections on Monday, calling for measures to bring down prices for prescription drugs, control monopolies and help companies pay for training for their workers.

The documents distributed to reporters, however, mentioned taxes only in passing, glossing over what could be a crucial aspect of any Democratic platform in the coming years. Democrats can use tax policy to pay for their other proposals, to equalize incomes directly and to answer frustrated voters' questions about where the party really stands on the economy…  As of 2010, about 60 percent of all U.S. household wealth had been inherited, according to Piketty and his colleagues' rough estimate. That figure has increased from about 50 percent between from 1960 through 1990, the economists found.  “Half of all the capital invested by Americans today comes not from my labor but from my having chosen my parents wisely,” Kleinbard said.   More

Sanders Showed Values Matter, But Democrats Continue to Focus on Tactics and Gimmicks

The Democrats have just unveiled their new slogan: "A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages." It looks like they were trying to do a rift on Roosevelt’s New Deal, but ended up with something that sounded more like a pizza slogan.  This follows their much-mocked attempt to have people select a sticker from amongst the most idiotic options imaginable. One of those stickers sort of summed up the Democrat’s approach for going on three decades now: "Democrats 2018. I mean, have you seen the other guys?"  …In announcing the Better Deal, Schumer spoke about how Trump got elected because of his populist message, and suggested that a more populist economic focus would do the same for Democrats…  At the end of the day, no amount of messaging will change the fact that the neoliberal branch of the party is in bed with the oligarchy…  Democrats should be wooing the largest block of voters – the 40 to 45 percent who stay home – to show up.  The young, who overwhelmingly voted for Sanders, are the biggest source of votes and the key to a Democratic victory in 2018 and 2020. But to appeal to them, Democrats would need to go beyond tactics, gimmicks and slogans, and embrace a real progressive and populist stance, something the neoliberals controlling the party are loath to do.   More

Bosses want capitalism for themselves and feudalism for their workers

If some employers had their way, you would have to pledge eternal fealty to them just to get a paycheck.  You would bend the knee, bow your head, and swear to serve them faithfully, now and forever, even if someone else tried to hire you away for more money. And in return for this loyalty, you of course would get none. Your company could fire you whenever it wanted and wouldn't have to take care of you when you got old. If you were really lucky, it might, just might, give you a small 401(k) match. In other words, it'd be capitalism for bosses, and feudalism for workers.  Now, as much as this might sound like a caricature, it's actually the way things are in Idaho. Well, except maybe for the genuflecting…  This is not, to put it mildly, the way things are supposed to work. When unemployment is as low as it is now, companies are supposed to have to fight over workers by paying them more. If there's one thing chief executives excel at, though, it's cutting every cost other than their own bonuses.   More

Why Corrupt Bankers Avoid Jail

In the years since the mortgage crisis of 2008, it has become common to observe that certain financial institutions and other large corporations may be “too big to jail.” The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which investigated the causes of the meltdown, concluded that the mortgage-lending industry was rife with “predatory and fraudulent practices.” In 2011, Ray Brescia, a professor at Albany Law School who had studied foreclosure procedures, told Reuters, “I think it’s difficult to find a fraud of this size . . . in U.S. history.” Yet federal prosecutors filed no criminal indictments against major banks or senior bankers related to the mortgage crisis. Even when the authorities uncovered less esoteric, easier-to-prosecute crimes—such as those committed by HSBC—they routinely declined to press charges.  This regime, in which corporate executives have essentially been granted immunity, is relatively new.   More

(An article on environmental doom that has received a lot of criticism. . .)

Are We as Doomed as That New York Magazine Article Says?

In a widely shared article, David Wallace-Wells sketches the bleakest possible scenario for global warming. He warns of a planet so awash in greenhouse gas that Brooklyn’s heat waves will rival Bahrain’s. The breadbaskets of China and the United States will enter a debilitating and everlasting drought, he says. And millions of brains will so lack oxygen that they’ll slip into a carbon-induced confusion…  It’s a scary vision—which is okay, because climate change is scary. It is also an unusually specific and severe depiction of what global warming will do to the planet. And though Wallace-Wells makes it clear that he’s not predicting the future, only trying to spin out the consequences of the best available science today, it’s fair to ask: Is it realistic? Will this heat-wracked doomsday come to pass?   Many climate scientists and professional science communicators say no. Wallace-Wells’s article, they say, often flies beyond the realm of what researchers think is likely.   More