defense budget

Don't Kill Schools To Keep War Alive

Isaiah J. Poole — Mon, 24 May 2010 12:59:14 -0400

The Senate is starting debate this week on a $60 billion supplemental spending bill that includes additional money for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as money for disaster relief and some other spending choices. But while few voices are being raised questioning the dollars we are spending on these wars, there appears to be a bipartisan willingness to draw the spending line on educating our children.

The apparent message: We'll throw dollars at the Pentagon, even giving them military hardware the Defense secretary doesn't want, but when it comes to paying for our children's education, well, we don't want to saddle our children with debt. We'll just saddle them with overstuffed, inadequately funded classrooms and inadequate preparedness to face the future.

Right now Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, with the support of the Obama administration, is trying to get the Senate to add to this spending bill an additional $23 billion that would be used to prevent the impending layoffs of 275,000 teachers in school districts around the country.

That is a pittance compared to the $726 billion that is expected to be in this year's defense appropriations bill, and yet there is widespread hand-wringing among so-called Senate "moderates" over not spending this money unless it is "paid for," even as they are too timid to approach the very people who could in fact "pay for" this—namely, the wealthy individuals and corporations who are the only ones who have recovered from Wall Street's despoiling of the economy.

The layoff figure is based on a recent study by the American Association of School Administrators.

The new study, based on responses from 1,479 school administrators in 49 states received in April 2010, finds that 82 percent of districts will cut or eliminate 27,516 education jobs in 2010-11 and 53 percent will freeze hiring. Based on these survey results, AASA estimates that the national total for education jobs cuts will be 275,000 in 2010-11, representing 92 percent of the 300,000 jobs saved by ARRA.

According to Dr. Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, every 100,000 education jobs lost translated into roughly 30,000 jobs lost in other sectors due to reduced spending by schools and those laid off. Collectively, then, 275,000 education job cuts will translate into an additional 82,000 job losses in other sectors, bringing the total job losses to 357,000.

These senators are badly misreading the mood of the public if they think schools can be sacrificed on the altar of fiscal austerity.

One indication of that is this past weekend's rally in Trenton, N.J., against education cuts being pushed by New Jersey's right-wing governor, Chris Christie. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that 35,000 people protested the governor's refusal to protect thousands of state teachers' jobs by continuing a surtax that had been set to expire that would have only affected 16,000 of the state's wealthiest residents.

If individual governors are too timid, or feel they are unable, to tap their wealthy residents to keep teachers on the payroll, then surely the federal government can do so, with tools that are not necessarily at the disposal of state governments. Some form of transactions tax on Wall Street trades, for example, or a levy on profits from certain sources, should never have been taken off the table in Congress. Even most strident deficit hawks, in an honest moment, say that you cannot narrow the federal deficit merely by cutting spending alone. And when it comes to education, we shouldn't.

A coalition of progressive organizations have declared this week "a week of action" on jobs. Few jobs are more valuable right now than those of teachers. When they succeed in educating our children, those children become the innovators and workers who are capable of maintaining America's leadership in the global economy. If we cared about these children, we wouldn't be sending their teachers to the unemployment line and claim we're doing our kids a favor. If you agree, tell your senator.

With F-22 on Endangered List, a Signal for Progressives?

Armand Biroonak — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:11:53 -0400

Facing a stern veto threat from President Obama, the Senate voted to strip funding for the F-22 Raptor jet on Tuesday. The contentious vote came after the House authorized F-22 funding, and amid weeks of pushback between Administration officials and members of Congress – the former looking to rein in wasteful defense spending, the latter backed by the defense lobby. Although I caution against proclaiming the F-22 dead just yet– the bill heads for reconciliation later this year – its potential demise may bode well for progressives to push harder for future Pentagon reform.

The F-22 jet labeled by experts as an “expensive weapon in search of a mission” has never seen the battlefield. Designed for a Soviet threat that no longer exists, the F-22 has been stuck in continuous, costly modernizations in preparation for “the next fight.” To date the F-22 program has cost over $65 billion, with a single F-22 costing $350 million. The jet’s latest modernization program alone faces cost overruns of over 200 percent, worth billions.

It has a dismal performance record. For every hour in the sky, the plane requires more than thirty hours of maintenance, placing its hourly cost to fly at more than $44,000 – far higher than any other warplane it replaces. The Undersecretary of Pentagon Acquisitions even stated that its mission capable rate is “troubling.”

Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, too voiced strong opposition to the F-22, but his recent comment on why the cut was necessary is most striking:

“Every defense dollar diverted to fund excess or unneeded capacity – whether for more F-22s or anything else – is a dollar that will be unavailable to take care of our people, to win the wars we are in, to deter potential adversaries, and to improve capabilities in areas where America is underinvested and potentially vulnerable... If we can’t get this right – what on earth can we get right? It is time to draw the line on doing Defense business as usual.”

It may be a stretch to call Gates’ statement progressive, but it does mark a fundamental shift in the direction of the Pentagon. This is why progressives should build on this momentum and continue calling for future cuts to wasteful defense programs– that certainly are abundant. Faced with collapsing infrastructure, failing schools and a broken health care system, progressives know that we no longer can afford to put off these priorities, while writing a blank check to the military industrial complex. What is the value of maintaining the strongest military in the world if we are defending an empty shell?

To be sure, cuts to the F-22 are small compared to the gargantuan Pentagon budget, but the amount is not miniscule. To grasp perspective, here is an idea of what we could achieve by redirecting just the F-22’s $1.5 billion:

Provide 280,400 students the maximum Pell Grant (at $5,350) for the upcoming school year.
Hire over 31,500 new teachers.
Deploy an extra 630 police officers to each state nationwide.
Nearly double bus transit investment.

2044: Big Brother Inc.

Eric Lotke — Fri, 22 May 2009 11:13:26 -0400

I just finished a new novel, 2044.

2044 starts where George Orwell’s 1984 left off. The problem isn’t Big Brother and the leviathan government. The problem is Big Brother Inc., and the all-powerful marketplace.

Orwell was right for his time, of course. Europe lay in smoking ruins, and the statist Stalin peered over the wall with his Big Brother mustache. Orwell sounded the alarm.

But history didn’t unfold that way. The government didn’t take over. It got taken over. Nowadays the commercial sector is in control. Everything is produced en masse and for profit, from clothes to music to political campaigns. Amazon.com knows what I read. Microsoft makes me write with Windows™. ToysRUs tells my kids what they want.

Check out the fights over the new federal budget. Look what the insurance and pharmaceutical industries are doing to health care reform, and how the good old Military Industrial Complex grows the defense budget. Watch giant agribusiness conglomerates dress up like family farmers and milk the government for subsidies. 2044 follows the pattern to the endpoint.

The heroes of 2044 are two overworked professionals who spend long days at the office and short nights in tiny apartments. Malcolm Moore is an engineer who designs security devices for the titanic Tentek Corporation. Jessica Frey is a lawyer who defends such corporations in court. Both are single and both are lonely — though Jessica has a six-year-old son, her sperm-banked answer to isolation.

The story begins when Malcolm discovers a cheap, easy way to take the salt out of seawater. Fresh water is scarce enough right now. By the year 2044, people will die and countries will go to war for water. A microorganism that takes the salt out of seawater could benefit literally billions of people.

But it also threatens business interests who are happy the way things are. Malcolm’s effort to persuade Tentek to sell his discovery gets him fired. His effort to strike out on his own gets him branded a terrorist. People who assist him are harassed, jailed and even killed.

It’s an exciting ride. The action scenes are fun and the politics of terrorism are haunting. There are even touches of humor and occasional references to 1984 — like the corporate merger that creates the new Big Brother Inc., with its happy slogan, “Big Brother is looking out for you.”

I like it, anyway. But then I wrote the thing.

It started some years ago with the idea of a private sector sequel to 1984. The idea didn’t go away, and eventually I stopped waiting. I decided to do it myself. My precise inspiration: “You’ve read a lot of crappy books. You can probably write one that’s no worse.” So I did. And it turned out pretty good.

Publishing it was a different story, though. A story about consolidation in the publishing industry (someone could write a novel about that!), the devotion to proven authors, and the aversion to unhappy endings (true to the original, I’m sorry to say).

So I took the self-publishing route around industry bottlenecks. Now you can buy 2044 direct from the publisher or at Amazon.com, of course. You can read Chapter One for free on my web page or, if you ask me nicely, I’ll send you a PDF (though I kept the purchase price almost as low as the printing costs). If you have any other ideas for outreach or distribution, I’m all ears.

Now it’s onward, back to my nonfiction life (and the outline of a new novel, uplifting with a happy ending). Meanwhile, enjoy the book.

The Department of Defense Contractors

Armand Biroonak — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:12:27 -0500

The conservatives proclaiming now is a time of “fiscal responsibility” must have forgotten that they enacted tax cuts for the rich and spent $12 billion a month in Iraq. Now there is a growing right-wing movement to cut so-called “wasteful entitlement” programs such as Social Security as a means of balancing the budget. Meanwhile, make any attempt to cut defense spending and conservatives are ready to attack. Why are conservatives so hostile to cuts? Those lucrative defense contracts would be placed in jeopardy, of course.

Defense consumes more than one-third of all government expenditures. DOD’s expected expenditures in 2009 are $741 billion; include other affiliated agencies and operations this figure comes to nearly $1 trillion. Since 2001, defense spending has increased over 110 percent and is at its highest compared to any other period except World War II. This level of spending is astonishing, considering that the U.S. spends more on defense than the next 45 highest spending countries combined—including 5.8 times more than China (2nd highest), 10.2 times more than Russia (3rd highest), and 98.6 times more than Iran (22nd highest) – and will account for 48 percent of the world's total military spending.

Criticize this obscene level of funding and conservatives are armed with their empty rhetoric of “supporting the troops” and “protecting America.” In reality, the defense budget serves as a profit bonanza for defense contractors. Over the past eight years defense contractors have seen their profits soar to record levels, even amid the recession.

For instance, the Iraq War is the most privatized war this nation has seen, with nearly 20 percent of funding for operations—about $85 billion—going to private contractors such as Halliburton or Blackwater.

Our intelligence community is outsourced also, with 70 percent of the intelligence budget going to contractors. Moreover, funding does not even stay on American soil, approximately one-third of defense contracts for the Iraq and Afghan Wars have gone to foreign companies.

Amid the funding blitz, the Defense Department continues to fail nearly every audit performed. According to a July 2008 General Accountability Office report, the Defense Contract Audit Agency (responsible for all DOD accounting and contract audits) “improperly influenced the audit scope, conclusions, and opinions of some audits. Problems call into question the reliability of pricing audit reports issued connected with over $6.4 billion in government contract negotiations."

This outright fraud and lack of transparency is nothing new for the Pentagon, as numerous examples point to their mismanagement and waste. The most infamous of DOD contract failures is the F-22 Raptor fighter jet program developed by Lockheed Martin; originally slated to be delivered in the mid 1980s, delivery has yet to be completed with an ever ballooning cost over $65 billion. The Air Force began in 2006 another multibillion dollar redevelopment of the Cold War era jet.

More highlights of waste:

The Pentagon faces $300 billion in cost overruns for 72 weapons systems acquisitions provided by contractors such as Boeing and Northrop Grumman.
In Iraq, $13 billion for development and reconstruction paid to contractors is unaccounted for, while little work was completed.
The Pentagon still rewarded private contractors with $8 billion in performance bonuses without consideration of cost overruns and delays.

The revolving door of the military industrial complex must shut. According to the GAO, between 2004 and 2006 2,435 former DOD officials were hired by one or more defense contractors, many former DOD employees working on contracts related to their former agencies and influencing contract decisions. Moreover, defense contractors have been found to cost more due to overruns and billing, endanger troops’ lives due to delivery delays or shoddy construction and jeopardize the success of military objectives.

Conservatives and deficit hawks who continue to attack important social programs that benefit average Americans must be shamed. Our nation’s fiscal and national security shall no longer be used as a pawn to enrich the defense establishment and contractors. Barney Frank is a proponent of cutting the defense budget by as much as 25 percent and will hold a Congressional hearing next week. We will see if the Obama administration too begins to cut the lifeline of the military industrial complex when the OMB releases their budget next Thursday.

Butter Over Guns

OurFuture.org Staff — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:56:28 -0400

Defense Budget is Over $1 Trillion a Year

Armand Biroonak — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400

At $700 billion, the defense budget is about equal to the combined military spending of the rest of the world. Add in the cost of caring for our veterans, arms aid in the State Department budget, homeland security measures, and more, and actual spending climbs to over $1 trillion a year.