Written by Ron Rabatsky   

Defense Spending.

Defense spending has doubled over the past 10 years. We spend more than all of our potential enemies—including China—combined. This spending must be reduced dramatically to reflect the changes in how wars will be fought in the future, as well as what our national participation might be. Expenditures on building and maintaining expensive large weapon systems, tanks, and battleships do not reflect the types of wars we find ourselves in today: Insurgencies, piracy, and cyber warfare. Drone warfare. We cannot project the savings inherent to this, because defense contractors have done such a wonderful job of placing their manufacturing facilities in key Congressional districts. We recently had the Speaker of the House and the Republican House Majority Leader voting to maintain spending on the F-35 JSF an expensive fighter plane with extra engines that the Pentagon including the Secretary of Defense clearly did not want. An odd coalition of right wing Tea party members and Democrats joined together to defeat this potential misappropriation of billions of dollars. But there are costs to local economies when these factories are shut down, and these costs need to be reconciled with the savings inherent to changing how we will wage wars in the future.

Secondly, we demand the timely recall of all troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Current speculation regarding an ongoing base in Iraq needs to be put to rest immediately by President Obama, unless the Iraqi government plans to pay for it. As for Afghanistan, troops are supposed to be drawn down later this year. The estimated 5,000 troops are for public relations alone, it is not a serious draw-down of troops. We must not forget that the reason we were in Afghanistan was to locate Osama bin Laden and his top commanders and bring them to justice for their participation in the 9/11 attack on our country. President Obama has achieved that goal.

We can also not forget that Osama bin Laden predicted that the United States would bankrupt itself trying to eliminate Al Qaeda. We cannot let him be correct.

The current budget for the SW Asian Theater is $50 billion for each of 2011 and 2012. I cannot find any reliable estimates for subsequent years because there are too many intangibles subject to change. However, the Congressional Research Service which provides much of the research to the CBO estimates that the actual expenditures in SW Asia will be about $92 billion in FY 2011 and $70 billion in FY 2012. They also note that it is estimated that the repair and replacement of equipment from SW Asia is expected to cost another $16 billion per year for the two years after we have left.

That’s $100+ billion of deficit spending which can be identified for elimination. But Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that the Pentagon can cut $1 trillion over the next 10 years, and the Secretary of Defense should know.

We also call for the immediate withdrawal of most of our “forward stationed” troops. Our military maintains 716 U.S. military bases in 38 countries and regions outside the United States as of the end of September 2008 (excluding bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.) We even maintain two bases in Great Britain!

Military bases in Germany are evaluated at 37.7 billion dollars in total, while those in Japan are 406 billion dollars, but true number are very hard to find, and these could be wrong—Germany understated and Japan (including Okinawa) overstated. If those countries think that our presence on their soil is still necessary for security purposes, and for the economic benefits derived from local businesses servicing those bases, let them pay the cost of maintaining these bases. But barring that, we do not believe in starting wars, so only basic maintenance of the bases and enough troops to police and protect the emptied bases should be continued. We recognize that this is not a perfect world and these bases might need to be put into use at a future date, but they do not need to be kept mission ready at all times. The amount of deficit spending which could be saved here is unclear, but would appear to be quite substantial.

But we cannot just simply cut back the size and scope of our military. Something needs to be done to accommodate all of our soldiers who will be returning to the U.S. with jobs and places to live. The Pentagon, subject to review of the Congressional Armed Services committees will determine how many people this involves, and one thing that can be done is to reopen some of our domestic bases to keep our professional warriors mission ready. This is costly—as costly as the expense of all our forward bases? But this will help to revive some local communities’ economies.

CONCLUSIONS

So far we have been talking about ways to reduce the deficit and maintain our social safety net. But there is a lot more that needs to be done, and the deficit does need to be reduced in order to pay for the investments in the future greatness of our country, which is why we have started this discussion with deficit reduction.

However, with no training in accounting we have presented more than $10 trillion in spending reductions over 10 years. More than the Obama and the radical Ryandontcare proposals combined! Forensic accountants working with the various departments will undoubtedly identify additional savings. So, in reality, our deficit is relatively easy to reduce, compared with the great debates between partisan politicians about how we need to cut spending. It takes political commitment to your country over the desires of those who seek to “play” our country, to privatize it, to take it away from having our strength as one large county.

The problem we have is getting our congresspeople to stop preaching old, disproven economic theories at us so they can at the very least protect the status quo if not roll it back further. Past congresses might have seen that there are good trade-offs in these recommendations which let everyone win something—the rich get an effective tax cut, business gets an effective tax cut, small business gets an effective tax cut, and people—which contains so many small businesses—get an effective tax cut. Businesses get even more with Medicare-for-all as their cost of health insurance for their workers should be run like Medicare—a basic plan which they can then supplement or not. But their taxes will be as low as they can be on a revenue neutral basis.

We do not have a spending problem as conservatives are fond to say, we have a revenue problem. It is clear on any graph showing the change in revenues from 2000-2010. When our Congress started passing bills without even trying to pay for them, they cut our revenues then and still now.

Conservatives are trying desperately to cut important social programs under the guise of deficit reduction—the same safety net bills that they have opposed since their inception. Polls show that the vast majority of Americans do not want to see cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or Education. Likewise, a vast majority want to see cuts in defense spending and increased taxes on millionaires. All we ask is that millionaires pay the same taxes as every other person and business in our country.

Why is OUR Congress not reacting to the will of the people? There is a simple reason. With the Supreme Court ruling on the Citizens United case, corporations now legally have the same political rights as citizens. Corporations are free to donate as much to any political candidate as they like, and in some cases like ALEC or Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS they can do it anonymously—and without the approval of their stockholders, pooling their monies for maximum reach and effect. As corporations have chosen the Republican Party to grace with their largesse, Republicans are in fact voting to reflect the wishes of their constituency—Corporate America, not American voters.

Most people at this point have read about the Koch Brothers and the money they spend to support certain politicians and how much they will pay to defeat certain legislation. But the republican subversion of the legislative agenda of the voters started back in 1973 with the founding of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). In 2002 a paper found its way to the media which detailed the activities of ALEC. Since then they have gone back under the radar, with only an occasional reference sneaking out to be uncovered by search engines.

It is counter to the very one-man-one vote basis to our way of life and our Constitution how much ALEC spends, and how much influence they wield. On their own web site ALEC states that they “serve as the “state legislators’ think tank.” ALEC’s policy staff provides research, policy analysis, scholarly articles, reference materials, legislative bill tracking, and expert testimony on a wide spectrum of issues. They and the Koch Brothers are quite willing to state their agendas like this because they are not breaking any laws. In many countries, opposing the official laws of the country would be considered Treason. Here it is called Freedom of Speech. Whatever you care to call it, there is a self-proclaimed “Trojan Horse” spending its way to subvert the will of Congress and the voters, by buying the legislation they need to overturn laws that do not benefit their members.

“The mission of the American Legislative Exchange Council is...

“...to advance the Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty, through a nonpartisan public-private partnership of America's state legislators, members of the private sector, the federal government, and general public.

“...to promote these principles by developing policies that ensure the powers of government are derived from, and assigned to, first the People, then the States, and finally, the Federal Government.

“...to enlist state legislators from all parties and members of the private sector who share ALEC's mission (of overriding legislation that might have a negative impact on their members).

“...to conduct a policy making program that unites members of the public and private sectors in a dynamic partnership to support research, policy development, and dissemination activities.

“...to prepare the next generation of political leadership through educational programs that promote the principles of Jeffersonian democracy, which are necessary for a free society.” (Author’s note: I have a great deal of trouble reconciling this devotion to Jeffersonian ideals with his virtual removal from the ALEC prepared and approved History textbooks. Here, continued from the same ALEC text is condemnation of Jefferson :

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports on the new Texas history books and curriculum: “In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.

Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.
“We are adding balance,” said the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

Battles over what to put in science and history books have taken place for years in the 20 states where state boards must adopt textbooks, most notably in California and Texas. But rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.

Efforts by Hispanic School Board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one Latina member to storm out of a meeting late one Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

Meanwhile, what do we say to people visiting Mt. Rushmore who ask who the figure carved next to George Washington might be?

A very obvious question is “why do people who are not rich vote against their best interests to vote for Republican candidates?” Because unlike the mixed bag of messages they get from the Democratic Party, the Republicans are masters at using Perception Management to confuse and propagandize.

On Fox News, an entertainment channel misperceived as a political channel, Roger Ailes has talking points distributed to their entertainment hosts and repeated all day long on all Fox News programming. People watching Fox News hear the same message stated by numerous “different” hosts and believe that there is wide spread approval for the various talking points.

Watch closely, for example, all of the ads promoting domestic production of various energy products. They talk about green energy and natural gas and “clean coal” (there is simply no such thing as yet, but it should be researched) and drilling in coastal waters and in the Alaskan tundra despite having achieved any ways to prevent wells from blowing up again.

Watch closely and take note of the companies producing those ads. When you track them back you will find they lead back to the same sources (American Petroleum Institute) who are trying to convince you to “drill baby drill”. But sitting there watching TV one thinks “look at all the different companies saying we have all the power we need domestically. This must be true or all these companies would not be saying it.”

THE POINT OF THIS SERIES IS TO ADVANCE THE MESSAGE THAT INDEED OUR “DEFICIT” CAN BE READILY ELIMINATED—AND OUT BUSINESSES BOTH LARGE AND SMALL CAN BE MORE COMPETITIVE—WITHOUT UNDOING ALL OF THE SOCIAL PROGRESS MADE SINCE CORPORATE AMERICA LAST OWNED THE COUNTRY IN THE 1920’S. IT ALMOST JUST HAPPENED, AND THERE IS NOTHING STOPPING IT FROM HAPPENING AGAIN—EXCEPT FOR OUR KNOWLEDGE. IF WE KNOW THAT THE BUDGET CAN BE SO EASILY RESOLVED—IF POLITICIANS DO THEIR JOBS.

CORPORATE AMERICA AND THEIR REPUBLICAN PUPPETS ARE TRYING TO COMPLETE THEIR JOB OF CUTTING SOCIAL SECURITY, PRIVATIZING MEDICARE, REINSTATING JIM CROW LAWS, ELIMINATING COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS, DRILLING FOR OIL IN STATE PARKS, DRUG TESTING PEOPLE WITHOUT CAUSE, DECLARING FINANCIAL MARTIAL LAW IN OUR CITIES—NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!!--AND RETURN US TO THE DAYS WHEN THE BIG CORPORATIONS RAN AMERICA—AND THAT DID NOT WORK OUT TOO WELL. WHY SHOULD IT NOW?

GREED HAS NO MEMORY OR CONSCIENCE. GREED IS NOT GOOD, IT HURTS MANY PEOPLE.