Defense Spending

The Navy now has a new destroyer-the USS Zumwalt-a stealth vessel that was built with the idea of making it undetectable by enemy radar or surveillance.  The cost of the ship is reported as $ 3.8 BILLION.  It will not join the fleet until  2018.  Two sister ships-the USS Michael Monsoon and the USS Lyndon B. Johnson-are in the works at the Bath Shipyard in Maine.  Those ships with cost $ 2.8 BILLION  and $ 2.4 BILLION respectively. And this to fight a land-based terrorist organization far from the sea.

"Every Gun That is Made..." IKE

In April of 1953, upon leaving office, President Dwight Eisenhower (a republican, for those who think the GOP only had Donald Trump) gave a speech known by the above title.  It is more pertinent now than ever before and I will record some of it below.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired  signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of it's laborers, the genius of it's scientists, the hopes of it's children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.  It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8000 people.
This, I  repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any sense.  Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

(I would only add that the cost of those weapons might very well be greater today than in 1953).

Trump and "war on terror".

Trump says he will impose a process of questioning Muslim immigrants that would include "extreme vetting" (sounds like torture to me) and would deny entry into the US "...not only those with terrorist sympathizers but those who believe in Shariah law, don't believe in the US Constitution (how are immigrants going to know what's in the Constitution when most Americans don't know what' in it) or support BIGOTRY AND HATRED" (my emphasis).  This from the man supported by the American Nazi Party and the Klu Klux Klan?

Some thoughts today

Green Party candidate Jill Stein noted on his site and something called "Ring of Fire" that the US has 700 to 800 military bases around the world and "only 16 % of the US budget is  spent on military operations at home and abroad".

Huffington Post on 8/16/16 reports that 64 million Americans are paid less than $ 15 an hour.  This group of workers has recently held a "convention".  I have no other information on this convention at this time.  Research is required.

47 % Americans pay no income tax bit.

My friend Steve posted on Facebook recently that Mitt Romney claim that "47 % of Americans who pay ZERO federal income tax are voting on what to charge everyone else".

My response to Steve:  But they pay social security taxes, federal excise taxes, state income taxes, sales taxes and many pay property taxes.  How many of this number are wealthy who pay not federal income taxes; I know at (least )two.  To our knowledge Donald Trump pays no federal income tax, and the only way that can be disproved is if the Donald releases his income tax records like all other major presidential candidates.  Prove me wrong and "I'll kill your ass in Macy's window".

To Kill a Mockingbird

I came across the following passage while re-reading one of the great literary classic of our time.

Atticus Finch, while talking to his young son Jem, defends a neighbor who Jem believes is the worst person he knows.  He says the following;

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand (Atticus is talking about himself).  It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.  You rarely win, but sometimes you do.  Mrs Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her.  According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody.  She was the bravest person I ever knew"

My guess would be that Harper Lee was also foretelling a tribute to Atticus who takes on the defense of a black man accused of a sex crime he did not commit.  He knew the Alabama of the 1930's will find his client guilty simply because a white man accused him.  Hopefully today the verdict would be different.

July 31,2016 Thoughts

We were told by the US Supreme Court that corporations are akin to people and have to be afforded the same rights as people; the Citizens United case.  I recently read in The Nation (March 7, 2016)-ok I am behind on my readings-that corporations can deduct on their income taxes "customized company-sponsored pension plans" paid to their CEO's.  Being done by half of the 383 Fortune 500 companies that provided info.  The plans cover the CEO's for the "rest of their lives", while the same companies  have done away with "guaranteed monthly compensation" for the average employee.

Now if corporations are people, then people must also be corporations and allowed the same rights.  Thus I will pay my wife-as the CEO of our family-a monthly pension check and then deduct that cost from my income taxes.  Seems only fair. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

I am one to be more concerned about domestic policy, but foreign policy developments are setting us up for some major disaster. 

First, we have been building up or modernizing our military forces and arsenals at a considerable rate.  The new F-35 plane will cost us billions, the Navy wants a new class of submarines with nuclear capability, the Air Force says we need to replace the B-52 long range bomber and build another ICBM missile to replace the Minuteman III.  

Second, we have allowed NATO (and the US) to take on the defense of former Soviet republics in the Baltic region.  We now have Russia completely surrounded by our military might.

Third, we are about to elect as President (Hillary Clinton) who is clearly a "hawk" on foreign policy, meaning she is want to flaunt our military power in the name of national interest.

(I hate to note this here, but Donald Trump says we should not pledge ourselves to the defense of countries that do not pay their share of the expenses of NATO; specially Baltic nations.)

Fourth, it should also be remembered that when nations are in the midst of domestic turmoil and bordering on civil war-racial or economic-their develops and atmosphere that is ripe for governments to use warfare to take their citizens minds off their differences and unite to defend the homeland.  A case could be made that the domestic issues in this country are at that point.