David Swanson's Blog, page 206
August 29, 2011
Why My 9-Year-Old Niece Is Smarter Than Our Genius President
While the evidence suggests that President Obama is not terribly bright and has just benefited from succeeding a downright moron, and while voluminous evidence to which I am privileged suggests that my 9-year-old niece Hallie is extremely intelligent, consider just this one way in which Hallie would make a wiser president than Barack.
Infants live in the moment, and toddlers can't plan much beyond the next day or so, but as we grow we become able to consider longer periods of time. Obama seems able to manage consideration of the next funding cycle, for example. Hallie seems to do considerably better than that:
August 28, 2011
August 27, 2011
Drowning Government in a Hurricane (Why Wait for a Bathtub?)
"Shrinking government" in American political discourse has, for decades now, meant the following. We enlarge the government's budget through taxation and penalties on working people and through borrowing and printing money. We not only tax the wealthy and corporations less, but we massively subsidize them with public funds. We move away from taxes and fees meant to limit the damage greed can do to the world, and we defund regulation of and law enforcement against the oligarchy. We transfer an ever greater share of the budget to the military. We expand the domestic and international surveillance-police states while merging the two. This, again, we call "shrinking government."
August 22, 2011
MIC 50 Conference Adds Speakers
The Military Industrial Complex at 50 is adding speakers and participants.
The lowest rate for registering ends September 1st, so register now:
http://warisacrime.org/registermic
New speakers:
Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy. Mr. Naiman edits the Just Foreign Policy daily news summary and writes on U.S. foreign policy at Huffington Post. Naiman has worked as a policy analyst and researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. He has masters degrees in economics and mathematics from the University of Illinois and has studied and worked in the Middle East.
Dave Norris is the Mayor of Charlottesville. He was the Executive Director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Central Blue Ridge until June 2011. Norris has been employed as Executive Director of PACEM, the Associate Director of Madison House, the Interim Director of PHAR (the Public Housing Association of Residents, and the former Chairman of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board of Commissioners.
Register. | Speakers. | Agenda and Location. | Sponsor. | Donate. | Volunteer. | Flyers and PSAs. | Offer Room. | Request Room. | Contact. | Resources
August 17, 2011
Antiwar.com Radio Takes on Panetta's "Doomsday" Defense of Military Waste
David Swanson, author of War is a Lie, discusses "The Military Industrial Complex at 50" national conference in Charlottesville, VA from September 16-18; the paltry defense spending cuts decried by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta as a "doomsday mechanism" that will endanger national security; how Swanson helped turn former Congressman Bill Delahunt against the wars; and Paul Krugman's half-serious plan to boost the economy by preparing for an alien invasion.
MP3 here. (12:54)
David Swanson is Co-Founder of WarIsACrime.org (formerly After Downing Street), creator of ProsecuteBushCheney.org, Washington Director of Democrats.com and a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, the Backbone Campaign, Voters for Peace and the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution. He was the press secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and worked three years as communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
Panetta's Weak Case for Potential Military Weakness
Leon Panetta, who holds the position that we used to more usefully call "Secretary of War," makes a weak case. Panetta considers $350 billion over 10 years, or $35 billion per year, to be serious cuts to the national security budget. But consider the budger from which that is to be cut. It includes, each year, about $545 billion for the "base" military budget, at least $200 billion extra each year for wars (Panetta uses Afghanistan and Libya as reasons not to cut spending, and Congress has never yet appropriated a dime for Libya), $71 billion for "Homeland" security, $19 billion for nuclear weapons, $8 billion for a miscellaneous Pentagon slush fund, $53 billion (that we know of) for spying and secret operations agencies, $129 billion for veterans, $18 billion for mili
August 16, 2011
Richard Clarke Is Being Too Nice to George Tenet
Former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-Terrorism Richard Clarke suggests that former CIA Director George Tenet blocked the sharing of information within the government on two members of al Qaeda in the United States, information that Clarke believes could have prevented 911. The CIA admits it knew about the two future hijackers but claims the Director was not informed.
August 15, 2011
Virginia Militarized
By David Swanson with Shepherd Johnson
The U.S. military is a permanent and pervasive presence in Virginia. Were the state of Virginia to ban participation in wars of aggression, weapons sales to brutal dictatorships, and the manufacture of aggressive and illegal weapons, the Military Industrial Complex would be obliged to help itself to many billions of public dollars just to cover the cost of moving operations to the other 49 states or abroad.
The Pentagon and all of its surrounding weapons corporation headquarters are in Virginia. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff lives in Quarters Six at Fort Myer in Arlington. The Army and Air Force chiefs of staff live on "Generals Row," also in Fort Myer.
Bunny Greenhouse Is Coming to Charlottesville
Bunnatine (Bunny) H. Greenhouse is a former procurement executive and chief contracting officer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In 2004-2005 she revealed waste and fraud in secret no-bid contracts for Halliburton in Iraq. She was demoted and marginalized in retribution. In 2011 a U.S. District Court awarded her $970,000 in restitution.
Greenhouse will be speaking in Charlottesville with over 20 other speakers on the Military Industrial Complex at 50. To attend, you need to register here: http://MIC50.org
Time Magazine broke the Bunny Greenhouse story in 2004: PDF, followed by CBS, the Guardian, NPR, NBC, AP, and everyone else. Here's a transcript of one of Greenhouse's presentations testifying before Congress. Here's Greenhouse's recent appearance on Democracy Now!
Greenhouse is back in the news because she has finally been awarded compensation, and she believes the corruption she came into conflict with is alive and well. "My story is in the news," she told me last week, "but there are many good people who are leaving the government because somebody cannot tolerate their honesty and their desire to see things done right. I know at some point we are going to get this military-civil relationship right. It may not be in my lifetime, but sometime I know we are."
Maybe this conference can be the start of that: http://MIC50.org
As if to emphasize the problem Greenhouse points to, today's Charlottesville Daily Progress carries a front-page AP aticle reporting that the 12 members to which Congress has been reduced for the Super Congress that will determine budgetary priorities for years to come consists of senators and representatives from the states with the biggest military contractors: Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics Corp., Raytheon Co., and Boeing Co.
If you have any doubt where that will lead if left to its own devices, or if you know darn well what such a committee is designed to do and you want to change the course we're on, you need to be a part of this conference. Reserve your spot: http://MIC50.org
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
