Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

The awesome power of really big numbers

The press constantly talks about how much the reconciliation plan currently under consideration in congress might cost. Of course, they know what the limit is, since the reconciliation process requires Congress to set one – it’s $3.5 trillion in spending. This is without consideration of the pay-fors, namely tax increases, savings on prescriptions drugs through national purchasing, etc.

More importantly, they characterize this high-end number as impossibly large. In fact, Meghan McCain on Meet The Press even inflated the number by $1.5 trillion, and Chuck Todd (a.k.a. Fuck Wad) didn’t seem to notice. So there’s no upper limit on exaggeration. But WTF – is $3.5 trillion really that much when you’re talking about a ten-year plan?

Lavish military spending

Look at the Defense Authorization Act the House just passed 316-113. It is $768 billion for one year. If you did the same thing with military spending as we routinely do with domestic spending, we would be talking about an 8 trillion-dollar Pentagon budget over the next ten years. That’s probably a conservative estimate, given the fact that the DOD budget increases by something like 7 to 10 percent every year.

So the obvious question for all those budget-conscious legislators questioning the price tag of the reconciliation package is this: why don’t you complain about the much more massive spending on the Pentagon? The answer is obvious. It’s the same thing Eisenhower warned us of back in 1961, as he was preparing to leave office. The military-industrial complex is alive and well.

Various flavors of Keynesianism.

Fiscal stimulus has a long track record in capitalism. Championed by British economist John Maynard Keynes back in the 1930s, the standard story goes that it fell out of favor during the Reagan era. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Reagan spent enormous amounts of money on the U.S. military. It comported with his bellicose rhetoric and policies regarding Cold War international conflicts, but there was more to it than that. Reagan’s unprecedentedly high peacetime military budgets sluiced money into high tech industries. That money made its way into virtually every congressional district in the country.

In short, it was a massive public spending program funded by debt. That model has held steady since those heady days of the 1980s, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Biden is no exception. During the 2020 primary campaign, I pointed out the lack of information on his web site about foreign policy. I think that was largely because there would be very little difference.

In any case, the next time someone tells you the reconciliation package is too big, remind them of our OTHER massive spending bills – the ones that blow money on tanks, planes, bombs, etc.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Begging for an invitation to the Hague

Well, the U.S. military finally conceded that the drone strike in Kabul was a “tragic” mistake that killed ten civilians. The dead include a contractor with a non-profit and seven children, who piled into the targeted car when their daddy/uncle pulled into the driveway. In other words, we killed them for being happy and enjoying themselves.

How is it that people like these victims look to our military like some kind of threat? The drone warriors and their superiors apparently thought the drinking water they were loading into their car was some kind of explosive. Just like Amadou Diallo’s wallet became a gun in the eyes of the NYPD Street Crimes Unit, the shooters saw this family’s actions as deserving of annihilation.

Where no one can see

As many know, U.S. drone strikes in Afghanistan have been going on for many years, principally out of view of the mostly Kabul-based international press. Anand Gopal’s amazing article in the New Yorker – The Other Afghan Women – reports that the ominous buzzing of drones was an almost constant feature of rural life in Afghanistan. The toll from the retail death-dealing by these unmanned weapon systems is one of the untold stories of our twenty-year war in that unfortunate country.

Frankly, I have zero confidence that the military’s drone war didn’t mainly kill civilians, even if unintentionally. The reason why we know what happened in Kabul a few weeks ago is that there were witnesses and members of the media within eyeshot. Most of our strikes occur in extremely remote sections of Afghanistan, where no such accountability is possible.

Brutality is a feature, not a bug

I don’t want to give the impression that the drone campaign is the only problem with our war in Afghanistan, or elsewhere, for that matter. We have routinely killed significant numbers of civilians in rural Afghanistan, typically a handful or one at a time. Our allies in that country have been remarkably brutal, in addition to their obvious corruption.

Gopal writes about the experience of families in the Sagnin Valley in Helmand Province. One woman he focuses on lost 16 members of her family over to the war over the course of the American occupation. Some were killed by warlord militia groups that the U.S. allied itself with, some by U.S. forces, some by Afghan government forces. Sometimes an individual walked too close to a military installation. Others died in night raids.

This is why the official death toll in Afghanistan is very likely way, way too low. I don’t think those official numbers included any of the members of this woman’s family, and her family’s experience was pretty typical, with the average loss of life running around 10-12 per family.

What is accountability?

The general who acknowledged the civilian deaths told his audience that he is fully responsible for this “tragic” mistake. But what does accountability mean in these cases? Will anyone spend time behind bars? Will anyone appear before a war crimes tribunal at the Hague? Will anyone be demoted or discharged for their actions?

It seems unlikely. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t push for it. We should attach a political cost to these policies – that’s the only reasonable way to roll them back … or, at least, begin to.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

An extra shaky finger on the button … again.

I’m not an avid reader of blockbuster books about the current political moment, whatever that moment might be. On the contrary, I tend to spend my time listening to what others have to say about it. That’s my approach to the new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa entitled Peril.

As with practically every book about the Trump administration, Peril sounds like a rough mix of the hilarious and the terrifying. In the first category, there’s a supposed transcript of a call between Mike Pence and his fellow Hoosier, former VP Dan Quayle. Quayle reportedly talks Pence down from any thought of giving Trump what he wants, namely the nullification of the 2020 election result. That’s right – Dan Quayle as the savior of democracy. Who would have guessed it?

Hands across the water

Now, I’m not suggesting that the Quayle call isn’t scary – it is, as we came very close to a coup. More disturbing, though, is the passage about Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Mark Milley taking steps to separate a psychotic president from the means of starting a war. If true, this adds another layer to Trump’s plan to stay in power indefinitely, and a particularly toxic one at that.

This is what the pundits call “pulling a Schlesinger,” in reference to Nixon’s late-stage meltdown and Defense Secretary James Schlesinger’s orders to the Pentagon not to follow Nixon’s commands. (Scarborough used the example of Kissinger during the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict, telling allies not to freak out … though to suggest Kissinger was a steady hand on the tiller is kind of a reach). It’s kind of worse than that, though. Milley’s contention was that Trump was toying with starting a war against China in order to distract the public into allowing him to cling to power. That’s just nuts, and not at all out of character, as previously noted.

Best laid plans

I think it’s fair to say that Trump became fond of the office of the presidency and all the power and protection it afforded. He most certainly did not want to let it go. I wasn’t the only one who thought throughout 2020 that Trump wouldn’t leave if he lost. And now it looks like he had a plan for doing so.

Fortunately, the plan broke down at every level. But someone around Trump is paying close attention to this issue. The ex-president is pushing for replacing pretty much all of the officials who stood in his way last year. He might not end up the direct beneficiary of these moves, but someone in his party will.

Already, the cries of fraud are rising from the smouldering ruins of California’s recall effort. That is 100% the playbook for the GOP now – yell fraud, like the thief who cries “Thief!” We’ll have to see how far they can get with this strategy.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.