Insatiable Greed Gutting Public Education

Source: National Priorities Project crunching 2024 data from USASpending.gov, OMB  [emphasis mine]

In my 30's I decided to leave the private sector and become a teacher, and I enrolled in grad school to earn education credits enough for certification. One of my most pragmatic professors shared a fact that seemed doubtful at the time but soon proved to be all too true: most school board directors, he said, are involved because they want to make decisions about school sports.

I think of this when I hear the rationale for 47 and the elongated muskrat firing 50% of the staff at the federal Department of Education: students will benefit from local funding and local control. No, they won't.

In fact, nearly every time I attended a school board meeting in districts where I was employed for 25 years, the insane amount of time spent discussing topics like whether or not the boys basketball team should get new jerseys a year ahead of schedule filled me with dismay. The board would vote to cut a social worker position with NO discussion after spending an hour on sports uniforms, or scoreboards, or coaching positions. And I would drive home thinking, I can't work for these people -- we don't share the same values. I did keep working, though, and mostly I just avoided going to school board meetings.

Here's what I have to say to those who argue that cutting the DOE won't affect teaching positions: you don't know what you're talking about. Yes, Maine pays for about 50% of public school costs via federal/state funds and about 50% locally. This makes the school systems in wealthy areas outperform those in areas with high poverty and unemployment. It's partly about local property values, partly about local poverty levels, and partly about whether or not parents in the community have college degrees. (Standardized testing mostly measures the latter i.e. whether or not your parents are doctors vs. work for minimum wage will largely determine your score.)

Federal funding for education also plays a huge role in equitably educating special needs students. That is a benefit to those students, their peers, and society as a whole. Research suggests the regular ed peers are less likely to turn out like the elongated muskrat, throwing around the slur "r***rd" and citing empathy as a fundamental weakness of Western society.

Federal funding also contributes to improvement plans to shore up schools lagging in reading or math scores. I've helped write and administer three such grants and can attest that some were a boondoggle that wasted taxpayer money e.g. sending a team several thousand miles to study a program they would never faithfully implement, while others funded an entire reading specialist/instructional coach position for several years to support learners in a high poverty area who were struggling with literacy skills.

U.S. federal budget expenditures in 2023 (Koshgarian, Lusuegro, Siddique, 2023)

For context, let's look at the overall federal budget -- as it has been, and as it will be. The temporary funding bill passed by the House this week would cut $13 billion in non-military spending from the levels in the 2024 budget while increasing military spending by $6 billion. To see where we are now, the bar graph at the top of this post shows the first two categories -- contractors who build weapons systems, and Pentagon staff like troops -- dwarfing other categories. According to the National Priorities Project federal budget analysis, "In 2023, the average U.S. taxpayer paid $11 for Musk's SpaceX."

The question of whether a billionaire with extensive federal contracts should be empowered to cut competing federal expenditures is a conflict of interest issue, not an educational issue, so I'll leave that for now. 

FY2023 military spending of $921 billion (easily $1 trillion with hidden budget items like nuclear weapons and CIA black sites) could instead have funded 9.5 million elementary school teachers, or 23.65 million scholarships for university students. Students who might become doctors or teachers themselves. But who needs an educated populace? Not billionaires who will pay to educate their own children privately with other elites while believing that robotics and AI will replace most workers. 

According to NBC News:

Around 3,000 people work in the [DOE]'s Washington headquarters, and roughly 1,000 are in 10 regional offices — making Education one of the smallest Cabinet-level federal departments. Its $268 billion appropriations last year represented 4% of the federal budget.

[Incoming DOE Secretary Linda] McMahon said in an interview Tuesday night that the layoffs were the first step on the road toward shutting down the department.  

Back in Maine, school budgets are being formulated locally to put before voters in late spring. A relatively large, diverse district in South Portland heard from their superintendent this week about how shortfalls in federal funding are likely to affect their school system. Per reporting in the Portland Press Herald:

Matheney unveiled his proposed $73 million budget.., a 5.98% increase over last year. It includes reductions that will impact all seven schools and dozens of other programs and departments. The layoffs include 11 teachers, seven educational technicians and several administrative staff or districtwide employees (including the director of curriculum).. 

In recent years, Matheney said, the district has declined in enrollment but increased in special education students, multilingual learners,.. and homeless students. At the same time, staffing has continued to rise. The district will need to fund more than 10 positions in special education and teaching that were previously supported by outside funding sources. 

Guess which countries fund schools entirely at the local rather than national level?  Not France, not Australia, not China, not Japan, not Russia.. I could go on but you get the picture.

I believe the current administration in the U.S. especially wants to defund schools because teachers unions are powerful. And if there's something that billionaires really hate, it's workers who have organized to bargain collectively for salary, benefits, and working conditions. They are also historically the strongest advocates for student needs. Because nobody goes into teaching as a career to make a bunch of money. Most do it because they care about kids.

Finally, just because I believe in robustly funded schools for everyone doesn't mean that I think all meaningful education takes place in a school setting. When faced with the either-or attitude toward homeschooling often expressed by parents, my question is: Weren't you planning to do both?

Empires Eat Children -- Change My Mind

This is a really depressing post, so let's get to it before the longest, darkest day of the year is upon us a week from now.

What got me started down this dark path is the news that presumed CIA spook Anne Sacoolas failed to appear for trial in the UK after she killed teenager Harry Dunn. The victim was doing nothing wrong, simply riding his motorcycle along on the road near RAF Croughton, used by the Pentagon as a spying outpost. 

Sacoolas, with typical imperial hubris, was driving on the wrong side of the road. 

Probably a simple tragic accident but Sacoolas turned it to a real crime by fleeing the country. It has taken Dunn's family three years to have their day in court but they were denied the opportunity to see justice: Sacoolas was acquitted of driving dangerously, convicted of driving carelessly, and received a paltry 8 month sentence which she will not have to serve if she kills no other kids in the coming year. Even if she did, the UK appears unable and/or unwilling to have her extradited to face charges.

Left to right: Anne Sacoolas & Harry Dunn

Her attorney's explanation for Sacoolas' failure to appear in court and hasty departure from the country following the accident: "diplomatic immunity." According to Sky News:

The court heard that she had been advised by American officials not to fly to the UK, as her return "could place significant US interests at risk".

If one of Sacoolas' own three children is murdered someday, I'm sure she will understand that U.S. interests will receive higher priority than bringing the family some justice.

Okay, so one evil lady and her enabling government. What's the other evidence for my claim?

JROTC students on parade

How about the news -- being treated as a blockbuster exposé  -- that teenagers in places like Detroit, Michigan (i.e. low income with a high proportion of students who are Black or otherwise of color) are enrolled in JROTC programs without their consent. Told if they ask that this Pentagon program requiring them to wear military uniforms and be shouted at by military personnel posing as "teachers" is mandatory. Which is a lie, but if your guidance counselor in 9th grade won't change your schedule after you request it, becomes a de facto truth.

I know you will be shocked to learn that the textbooks used in middle school and high school JROTC programs paint a rosy picture of the U.S. worldwide empire of military bases. And the intentions behind them.

If I'm not shocked it's because as a high school teacher for many years I organized against the presence of military recruiters in the lunch room, their access to students during the school day, and the allegedly mandatory ASFAB test harvesting demographic and knowledge base info on teenagers without parental consent. My state does have JROTC programs also though I never taught at a school that had one.

When you look up groomers in the dictionary what you should see is a military recruiter handing a teenager the gift of a cell phone. But, this word has been hijacked by right-wingers claiming teachers are trying to turn students gay or trans.

Left to right: Prince Andrew, American teen Virginia Giufrre at age 17, & Ghislaine Maxwell

Speaking of groomers, let's talk about Jeffrey Epstein's little black book of contacts none of whom have been outed or charged for actual pedophile crimes. Grooming is a key component of convincing teen girls to have sex with old, powerful men and the currently incarcerated Ghislaine Maxwell was in charge of that operation.

It's generally understood that Epstein (who supposedly committed suicide in prison when the guards fell asleep and the security cameras malfunctioned) and Maxwell worked for Mossad. Israel's international spy agency functions as an integral if secretive part of the U.S. imperial system of coercion. (Though NATO's war against Russia may be weakening this alliance.)

The black book names we do know about, most prominently Prince Andrew of the UK royal family, were only revealed because individual victims like the immensely brave Virginia Giuffre pursued legal action against her rapist. Before Queen Elizabeth II died the monarch had stripped Andrew of his honors and titles, and had UK taxpayers shell out a settlement presumed to be enormous.

Of course teenage girls in nations invaded by imperial troops do not even need to be groomed.

 They can be raped at will, then murdered along with their families to cover up the crimes.

My final piece of evidence: 

the U.S. Congress just voted $858 BILLION for next year's military budget.

Actual figures for 2021. The $858 billion is budgeted for 2023.

Meanwhile, 1 in 6 children in the U.S. are growing up in poverty. 

This makes them the poorest age group of any here in the heart of an empire hungry for cannon fodder.

Live By The AR-15, Die By The AR-15

Unarmed Black victims of police violence (may their families know peace), L-R from the top: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Eric Garner, Rekia Boyd, Michael Brown
Image source: trauma doc Dr. Andre Campbell on Twitter

 

Live By The AR-15, Die By The AR-15

For AR-15 in that sentence, you could substitute drone, missile, or nuclear bomb.

That the U.S. leads the world in mass shootings, especially at schools, is a fact no one disputes. Regular people see a clear connection between a Pentagon budget that gobbles up more than half of annual expenditures by Congress. Regular people also see the pretense of elected officials who take millions in campaign contributions from weapons manufacturers and pro-weapon lobbying groups like the NRA and then tweet "thoughts and prayers" when the inevitable next mass shooting occurs.

Why then is social media is full of people blaming one of the two corporate parties for the massacre?

With the Ukraine war party in power right now controlling the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives why is our federal government still failing to enact gun control? Fund universal mental health care? Rescue from poverty the 20%+ children without housing or food security?

“All we have to do is elect more Democrats and we can stop these mass shootings” pic.twitter.com/QgP2RSp59B

— Revolutionary Blackout Network🥋 (@SocialistMMA) May 25, 2022

Who is falling for using the deaths of children to further the false dichotomy our corporate rulers think will deliver civil war (we're well on our way) rather than the revolution we need?

Though I do support stringent gun control I don't think that alone will reduce mass shootings. Other countries that are overrun with guns do not see 18 year olds cutting their own faces, shooting their own grandma, and then massacring little kids while local cops let them proceed. 

Did you know that in other countries, people with schizophrenia have auditory hallucinations that may be benign or even loving? In the U.S., people with schizophrenia hear voices urging them to violence.

Of course other nations weren't built on genocide of indigenous people (not all nations, anyway) and enslavement of kidnapped laborers.

We are a traumatized nation. And trauma begets trauma. 

The vast majority of mass shooters are men, around 98%. Men and boys have no more access to guns and ammunition than women and girls do, so what’s the explanation?

It could be something most analysts overlook: adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs.

Back in 2019, researchers studied every mass school shooting from 1966-2018.  “The vast majority of mass shooters in our study experienced early childhood trauma and exposure to violence at a young age. The nature of their exposure included parental suicide, physical or sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence, and/or severe bullying,” wrote criminal justice professors Jillian Peterson and James Densley for the Los Angeles Times.

The ACEs questionnaire and scale were developed to quantify and name the cause that creates such devastating effects: high levels of stress are toxic for our nervous system as humans. If experienced in childhood, they can lead to actual changes in the structure and function of the brain. And researchers say the effects of stress on male brains is different.

Additionally, if high levels of stress lead to acting out behavior, this can often trigger additional stress as authority figures respond violently to the behavior. Ask any teacher if they’ve seen this in their school.

Forensic ACEs reveal that the vast majority of violent criminals have a high ACEs score. Poverty results in ACEs e.g. children experiencing eviction, hunger, or lack of medical care for themselves and their caregivers. Being targeted for one’s race or ethnic identity also raises the ACEs score.

Nearly 1 in 6 people in the U.S. reported four or more ACEs  as adults in a study by the CDC with Kaiser Permanente which found, “ACEs can have lasting, negative effects on health, well-being, as well as life opportunities such as education and job potential. These experiences can increase the risks of injury, sexually transmitted infections, maternal and child health problems (including teen pregnancy, pregnancy complications, and fetal death), involvement in sex trafficking, and a wide range of chronic diseases and leading causes of death such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and suicide.”

One a national level, our ACEs are through the roof. Using nuclear bombs on Japan after letting the Holocaust proceed, producing a zillion big budget films glorifying this and other violence, police murdering Black, brown, and indigenous people with impunity, illegal invasions that killed millions and which the pepetrators later laugh about in public...

I could go on but it would fill volumes.

Live by the sword, die by the sword is an old idea found in the New Testament (an account of radical truth-telling in the face of the brutal occupation of Palestine by the Roman Empire). One translation reads "all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."

The U.S. Empire has some very bad karma. And it's breaking our hearts that children pay the price.

But as long as violent patriarchy is the organizing principle of our culture, nothing will change.

Late Stage Capitalism Is A Death Cult -- Change My Mind

Aerial view of candle factory in Kentucky before and after this week's tornado.
Source: MAXAR Technologies via Reuters

I was sleepy the other night when I thought my husband said that there had been a 200 mile wide tornado killing people in Kentucky. Turns out it was a mile wide tornado (bad enough) touching down over a 200 mile area in several states (quite bad) in December (clear sign of a climate in crisis).

What he didn't know at the time is that Amazon warehouse workers routinely deprived of their cell phones were buried under rubble when the roof collapsed.

Source: The Washington Time "OSHA opens probe into deadly Amazon warehouse collapse in Illinois"

Also that workers in Kentucky's Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory who heard warning sirens and tried to leave were threatened with firing if they departed. Some stayed and died, some left anyway, and some stayed and survived to tell the tale.

The economic system producing both galloping climate change and burgeoning military budgets that drive climate change is a death cult.

Usually the claim "capitalism is a death cult" applies these days to the absence of public health policy that protects, you know, public health. 

One cannot serve both commerce and health as the CDC has bent over backward to demonstrate.

In the second winter of a deadly pandemic the U.S. has racked up this dismal track record:

• no universal health care
• no free testing kits such as the rest of the world receives (and derision from the White House press secretary for even suggesting this would be a good idea)

Wow. This tweet took off. And contains some of the most accurate responses wrt our pandemic response here in the US.

Maybe at some point our FDA, CDC and administration will understand finally this is a PUBLIC HEALTH problem, and not a Medical problem to make $$ off of. Maybe. https://t.co/fUCMNTtw91

— Michael Mina (@michaelmina_lab) December 7, 2021

• vaccine mandates rather than empirically proven access + education + incentive methods

• feeble vaccine distribution to low income nations we share the planet's germ pool with

• miniscule economic relief for actual people (vs. corporations)

• huge growth in the numbers of unhoused people nationwide

• schools open despite higher infection levels and maxed out hospital ICUs nationwide

• widespread health care provider burnout

• obscene growth in wealth inequality

Extreme wealth inequality has been a significant force for toppling the social order throughout history. So have pandemics and other disasters.

Meanwhile, the engines of commerce churn on creating profits to buy off governments. Subsidies to fossil fuel corporations were $5.9 trillion in 2020, a whopping $11 million a minute.

That would buy a lot of testing kits. If only the U.S. prioritized life over profits.

Pentagon Cares About Climate Change, For All The Wrong Reasons

There is so much to unpack in this boneheaded article from online rag Defense One that it's hard to know where to begin: "Climate Change Is Already Disrupting the Military. It Will Get Worse, Officials Say."

The good news: the Pentagon has noticed that climate change is a thing

The bad news: the Pentagon is taking minimal responsibility for contributing to it, instead mostly just planning for how to mitigate changes that will be forced upon them. 

The good news: they're planning for changes like providing more help to fight forest fires.

The bad news: they're planning for providing more storm troopers to beat up, tear gas, pepper spray, and LRAD protesters when militarized police forces in U.S. cities want more boots on the ground. 

Pentagon brass quoted in the article also see this as bad news, but for a different reason: soldiers "aren't doing the sort of warfighter training that they need to do."

Police wearing riot gear try to disperse a crowd Monday, Aug. 11, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. You know, a crowd protesting that unarmed teenafer Michael Brown had been gunned down by police and left to die in the street. Source: Business Insider, AP Photo / Jeff Roberson

Really? It seems like urban warfare against people defending their right to life in their own neighborhoods will be one of the few things left for human warfighters to do in the 21st century. It won't take that many of them to press the buttons activating killer robots in the air, on land, or sea.

One of the hallmarks of what is passed off as journalism under late stage capitalism is claiming to ask hard questions while actually producing a puff piece.

(A sampling of the featured articles in this issue can be seen above.) Producing "analysis" that is devoid of context is a specialty, as is presenting as fait accompli various ghastly decisions and programs that are highly profitable to the already wealthy (e.g. missile "defense").

In its publisher's own words: "Defense One is a portfolio brand of GovExec, whose market-leading services help contractors support government leaders and their missions."

For "missions" here read "quest to land a lucrative position following time spent posing as a government leader."

So, absent a rigorous examination of how the Pentagon and its contractors are actually driving climate crisis, we're invited to view the problem from the "defense" perspective.

For example:

In June, the International Military Council on Climate and Security released its second report on the impacts of climate change on issues such as governance and civil unrest across the globe. They surveyed experts from a variety of institutions...asking them how they expect various risk areas like biodiversity, water availability, and instability within nations to evolve over the next decade. The experts held a dim view.  

"Respondents expect a majority of risks will pose high to catastrophic levels of risk to security. [emphasis mine] Ten and 20 years from now, respondents expect very high levels of risk along nearly every type of climate security phenomena,” the report said.  

The experts concluded that the global governance system isn’t prepared for many of the risks. So, in part because of that lack of preparedness, more and more of the international response to climate-change-related issues will fall to men and women in uniform. [emphasis mine]

You can almost hear contractors like Microsoft and their top brass clients salivating over this prospect, can't you? 

But not to worry. Technology will save the day! (Budgets go ka-ching.)

Unless it doesn't.

The article ends on what I considered to be a hopeful note:

"...you’re making a decision based on the probability of occurrence, and that’s what you’re putting in. But what if you get it wrong? And what if you get it wrong with something that’s mission-critical?”

Mission-critical like crashing human life on this planet because you ignored the 100% probability that failing to count military emissions leads directly there? 

link to petition site

To: Participants in COP26 UN Climate Change Conference, Glasgow, Scotland, November 1-12, 2021

As a result of final-hour demands made by the U.S. government during negotiation of the 1997 Kyoto treaty, military greenhouse gas emissions were exempted from climate negotiations. That tradition has continued.

The 2015 Paris Agreement left cutting military greenhouse gas emissions to the discretion of individual nations.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, obliges signatories to publish annual greenhouse gas emissions, but military emissions reporting is voluntary and often not included.

NATO has acknowledged the problem but not created any specific requirements to address it.

There is no reasonable basis for this gaping loophole. War and war preparations are major greenhouse gas emitters. All greenhouse gas emissions need to be included in mandatory greenhouse gas emission reduction standards. There must be no more exception for military pollution.

We ask COP26 to set strict greenhouse gas emissions limits that make no exception for militarism, include transparent reporting requirements and independent verification, and do not rely on schemes to "offset" emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions from a country’s overseas military bases must be fully reported and charged to that country, not the country where the base is located.

Empire In Search Of Graveyard Signals Faux Concern For Afghan Women

Source: "The War In Afghanistan Is Bad Politics And Bad Foreign Policy" Defense One  October 7, 2018

One of the few good things the Trump administration did in office was enter into the Doha pact to end the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. They did so by negotiating with the odious Taliban, insurgents riding on religious extremism in their quest to rid their country of foreign invaders. 

Now the Biden administration is signalling that the May 1 withdrawal date is a non-starter. No surprises there: challenging China is unlikely to include abandoning military outposts right on their border. 

Biden et al. are also signalling their deep concern for the well-being of Afghan women. Because decades of military occupation have made Afghanistan literally the worst place on the planet to be female. Wait...

Source: "Once Upon a Time In Afghanistan" by Mohammad Qayoumi in Foreign Policy 

For those with a historical perspective, memories of Afghan women attending universities and working as professionals under a Soviet-sponsored regime endure. The proxy war between the U.S.-sponsored mujahadeen and the Soviet-Afghan government in the 1990's began to erode quality of life for women and girls who were bombed, forced to flee as refugees, and trafficked for sex. Repression of women's rights under the pretext of Islamic law was the icing on that particular cake.

The CIA has actually been bragging on Twitter lately about supporting the mujahadeen "freedom fighters" against the USSR.

As we know by know, the CIA has spent decades arming militias around the planet in order to topple governments that are resistant to capitalist exploitation by the U.S. and its allies. They used to do this covertly, but in the declining days of empire, chest thumping displays of prowess are in order I guess.

Predictably, the corporate press have chimed in to manufacture consent for continuing the U.S.'s longest war.

Because, really, things have been going so well in Afghanistan under military occupation. Maybe the U.S. should just stay because deciding to withdraw could be "complicated" right?

From an Associated Press article dated April 8:

Afghanistan, a country in turmoil, has been trying to inoculate millions of children against polio but the recent killing of three female vaccinators has put the country's campaign in doubt. However, brave women of the country remain determined to continue efforts in the face of danger and violence.

Unknown gunmen shot vaccination workers at two separate locations in the eastern city of Jalalabad on March 30 killing two volunteers and one supervisor in the polio immunization program, all of them women, as they carried out door-to-door vaccinations.

That's right. Afghanistan is struggling after 20 years of military occupation, preceded by 10 years of civil war, preceded by 10 years of proxy war, to vaccinate for a disease eradicated in my childhood (and I am old). That's how poor they are, and that's how low quality of life has sunk on our watch. Life expectancy for Afghans born in the 21st century is less than 65, retirement age for those of us in the heart of the evil empire. 

Biden won't get out of Afghanistan for the same reason Trump, Obama, and Bush didn't: there's plenty of good money to be made supplying the army with the tools of the trade, to quote Country Joe and the Fish. His gargantuan $715 billion "defense" budget request exceeds that of Trump by an inflation index and will no doubt pass with little debate and bipartisan fealty from the corporate flunkies in Congress.

A nation enduring a pandemic without universal health care, in which 25% of brown and Black children experience hunger each week, with millions literally unhoused, is in a very insecure position. Imperial expansion will not remedy what ails us, but most dying empires continue trying to expand right up to the moment when they hit the wall. Often, in Afghanistan.

Who Dares To Resist Raytheon?

Back in 2019, former USM professor Ken Jones and I were arrested together protesting the christening[sic] of yet another General Dynamics war ship in Bath, Maine. Ken was one of those who chose to be jailed rather than pay a bail bondsman, and I was with his partner Melody Shank when Ken walked out of the private for-profit jail in Wiscasset where he and the others were held for a weekend.

Since returning home to North Carolina, Ken and Melody have been active in the resistance to a new war machine factory in their area. Here's reporting gleaned from their accounts as well as the group's Reject Raytheon website.

From Ken's blog post in February 2021:

The site for the Pratt & Whitney (P&W, a division of Raytheon Technologies) plant being planned for Asheville is now being cleared of trees so that construction on the 1.2 million sq. ft. plant can begin soon. 

It looks like mountaintop removal, a not unfamiliar occurrence here in the Appalachian Mountains.  It breaks my heart to see it.

P&W builds engines for commercial and military jets, most notoriously for the state-of-the-art F-35 Lightning Fighter Jet. Raytheon is the 2nd largest arms manufacturer in the world, a major war profiteer.

...

We did a die-in at Vance Monument in the center of Asheville.

We did a rally as part of the international day of action to celebrate the Entry into Force of the UN Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons - Raytheon has over a billion dollars of contracts in the nuclear weapons industry.

 

My own research turns up that Raytheon spent $4 million lobbying our elected officials in 2019, and made big contributions to both Republican and Democratic campaigns in 2020.

Source: Opensecrets.com Raytheon summary

The continued operation of government at the national, state, and local level by corporate-sponsored officials is degrading the environment, degrading the health and well-being of children who grow up in poverty, rapidly increasing the number of people experiencing homelessness, and depriving millons of health care in the middle of a pandemic. 

Our current Secretary of "Defense" Lloyd Austin served on the board of Raytheon Technologies after retiring from the military. The children in other countries being killed by U.S. airstrikes could not care less whether the current administration has a D or an R after its name, or how racially diverse it is.

Brave and dedicated activists like Ken, Melody, and their friends are not afraid to call out the elephant in our midst: gargantuan Pentagon budgets that enrich contractors like Raytheon at the taxpayers' expense. 

As the corporate press continues to push the notion that US foreign policy under Biden is significantly different than that of his predecessor, independent journalists will keep pushing back on that lie.

Why not join us to share real information rather than manufactured news?

No Rainbow Flag Is Large Enough To Cover The Shame Of Killing Innocent People

Secretary of "Defense" Lloyd Austin speaking to reporters this month.

Bombs killing children are so much more attractive when dropped by Democrats, don't you think?

The Biden Administration started bombing Syria yesterday, and here's what Twitter wanted me to know was going on:

The airstrikes follow weeks of big $$$$$ deals selling weapons to some of the other horrific regimes kept in place by brute force around the world. Gaza's tormenter and Yemen's tormenter both restocked their armories,  enriching the corporations that own and operate the U.S. government. 

Those corporations have already become very, very wealthy off the taxpayers buying armaments -- while rival nations invest in health care and work to eradicate poverty. 

The U.S. instead invests in weapons systems like the F-35 jet bomber that cost more than $1.5 trillion before being declared a failure. (Maybe a failure for the Air Force, but certainly not for profiteer and big Biden campaign contributor Lockheed Martin.)

The revolving door between government and industry is fascism exemplified. The U.S. will continue dealing out deadly airstrikes that kill civilians in the Middle East while literally letting its own population freeze and starve to death during a public health crisis. And whether you put an R or a D after that list of crimes makes very little difference to the victims. 

Judging The Biden Administration Not By Words, But By Deeds

A displaced family in Marib, Yemen, carries a winter aid package back to their shelter. Source: UN

Those keeping an eye on the foreign policy scorecard for the Democratic regime just installed in Washington DC are noticing ominous actions which are only slightly concealed by soothing words.

• An announcement that U.S. support for the Saudi's brutal war on Yemen would end was couched in weasel words. Yemeni professor Shireen Al-Adeimi, who teaches in Michigan, teamed up with crack investigative reporter Sarah Lazare to parse the details of what this could mean for the long suffering civilian population of Yemen.

• One of the first acts of the new administration was sending more U.S. troops into Syria where the long running civil war/proxy war has already caused untold suffering. Bruce Gagnon of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in space explains the context.

• The Pentagon sent troops into Norway for the first time but Norway then canceled the military exercises planned because of a spike in COVID-19 infections. As reported in Military.com: 

• "Last year's iteration of Cold Response, another major NATO exercise, was also significantly scaled back due to the pandemic. Training in and around the Arctic Circle has been a priority for NATO forces to counter Russia in the region." My comment: what could go wrong?

• The new administration announced this week they are keeping the Trump administration's Space Force as a new branch of the military. Of course they are.

Biden's cabinet and his pick for USAID are neoliberal and neocon warhawks so all of the above was entirely predictable.

Meanwhile, although Congress easily passed a $750+ billion Pentagon budget recently, they can't agree on pandemic relief for the millions teetering on the verge of eviction and starvation in the U.S.

And those of us who want the COVID-19 vaccine are still waiting. Ok, that one's not on Biden yet. A family member who works at a leading research hospital told me the general consensus is three months turnaround time for national level health care planning and execution to be guided by science. 

But most of us understand that, without reining in the military budget, we'll never get Medicare for All and, without universal health care, the pandemic is likely to be a very long event. 

As in, retirees like me may not live long enough to see the end of it. Or of the planned endlessness of the "war on terror."