You want to know why the Dems won't end the war?
Abookamongstthemany
Posts: 8,209
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
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Sidenote - is this also why Ralph Nader has been unable to affect any real change with major corporations, since he has a large stock portfolio in companies like Exxon-Mobil, Haliburton, etc?
A fidelity stock portfolio(in which money is put into these stocks without you actually choosing them often) with nowhere near these kind of investment numbers isn't the same as directing policy to make you richer...now is it? I think Ralph should have been more careful but he has held so many corporations accountable for the good of the people, this minor glitch doesn't bother nearly as bad as the Dems who claim to be something they are not and have no list accomplishments pointing to anything other than pandering.
He's been having to raise small amounts of money just to get on the ballot in many states, if he was so 'rolling in his returns' from the war stocks I don't think he's be having the problems he is right now.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Cindy McCain is worth a bundle as she is the heiress to her father's stake in Hensley & Co, and subsequently, John McCain has avoided voting on any measures involving the alcohol industry.
The Dems/Repubs should not invest in Defense Contractors during wartime. Shouldn't there be regulations against this type of thing?
There should be but who rights the regulations, the very same people profiting from the lack of regulations. The media is supposed to be the government watch dog for the people but when the "independent media" is now pretty much the 4th branch of the government what chance do we have of stopping these type of abuses of power.
Exactly! How can you say you're for changing things when you're part of propping up the system that is causing the problems in the first place?!!!
You can't fix a broken system by buying more faulty parts to replace the old faulty parts.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Just as Ruinous as Republicans
Democrats and the Defense Budgets
By WINSLOW T. WHEELER
All the conditions are ripe for a major debate on America's defense budget. A Republican White House and Congress have produced, at increased cost, a military establishment that is shrinking, aging and less ready to fight. The ruinous effects have shown up again and again, in the form of over-stretched, poorly supported forces in Iraq.
There is, however, no debate. The Democratic Party, while happy to take easy potshots, is advocating more of the same.
On track to exceed $530 billion this year, Pentagon spending is now higher than at any time since World War II, even though our military is smaller today than at anytime since 1946. America's huge defense budget now exceeds the rest of the world combined.
Our largest potential adversary, China, spends barely more than a 10th of what we do, and North Korea and Iran each spend roughly 1 percent. Nonetheless, we are asked to support still larger budgets in future years, the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan notwithstanding.
The Democratic Party complains that Americans want and deserve change, but their criticisms studiously avoid the fundamental issues. Consider some examples--examples, not so incidentally, that the Democrats seek to perpetuate.
The Air Force's F-22 fighter was started in 1983; it quickly gained weight and cost, thus diminishing its performance as a fighter and the number we can afford. As the price grew from less than $130 million to more than $360 million per aircraft, the proposed inventory shrank from 750 to a puny 181. A recent evaluation by one of the designers of the highly successful F-16 illustrates that the F-22's design ignores the realities of air combat and is a war loser, not a winner.
Nonetheless, the "modernization" plan of adding F-22s as we retire F-15s, which has broad bipartisan support, proceeds. The F-15 inventory, initially more than 700 aircraft, is now aging faster than the F-22 will ever "replace" them. The modernization plan literally shrinks the fighter force as it ages, and does so at increasing cost.
Isolated example? Ask the Navy what has been happening to its overweight and over-cost DD/X destroyer. Ask the Army what is occurring with its galaxy of sensors and under-armored vehicles, dubbed optimistically the "Future Combat System." There are many more examples--all supported by both parties in Congress.
As these money-hungry procurement programs scrounge for dollars inside the defense budget, Pentagon managers squeeze spending for manpower, thereby reinforcing the shrunken weapons inventory with fewer people. Also looted is the operating budget, thereby shorting money for training, maintenance and spare parts.
Following this lead, Congress, with the Democrats as full partners, raids the manpower and "readiness" accounts to pay for what it loves most to add to defense budgets: pork costing billions and billions. The result is that as the shrinking and aging proceeds, the force is becoming less and less ready to fight.
These trends flourish under the Pentagon's managerial incompetence, which is exposed for all to see by the Office of Management and Budget's quarterly rating of all major federal agencies on five measures of governance. The most recent "Executive Branch Management Scorecard" ranked the Defense Department "unsatisfactory," the worst designation, in three of the five measures; in the other two, the best it could do was "mixed results." Of the 25 agencies rated by the OMB, only Veterans Affairs ranked worse. Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office has identified more areas of concern in the Defense Department than in any other Cabinet-level department in its important "High Risk" reports about poor management.
Two problems illustrate the incompetence further. Year after year, the Government Accountability Office and the Defense Department's own inspector general have reported that the Pentagon's financial transactions, supply system and payments to contractors are so chaotic that they cannot be audited. Note the wording: The Pentagon does not fail audits--it's simply unauditable. It would literally be an improvement for it to be able to flunk an audit.
The Defense Department's managers have also produced a system that each year plots its programs out into the future, but then fails to plan the budget needed to pay for them. The process is known as "underfunding," and both the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office have reported on it for years. Unaddressed, it grows worse; the Congressional Budget Office now estimates the gap between projected and actual program costs to have grown from $50 billion to as much as $100 billion--per year.
Perhaps worst of all is how we pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Protesting it can't predict what the wars are costing, the Pentagon submits to Congress late "emergency supplementals" to finance combat operations--along with several other things it can't wedge into its gigantic "baseline" budget. Congress, again with the Democrats as willful conspirators, proceeds to use the supplementals as a budget gimmick to enable still more pork while also failing to redress the inadequacies in the war funding accounts, such as insufficient payments for equipment repair and replacement.
The temptation is to blame Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for all of it; his boastful pronouncements make that all the easier. However, while he deservedly reaps today what he has sown on the war, he didn't create the problems in our over-priced, shrinking military forces and incompetent Pentagon management. As decades of reports from the Government Accountability Office, Congressional Budget Office and Defense Department inspector general make abundantly clear, he inherited the problems from his predecessors, several of them Democrats.
With the nation fighting a war that both suffers from and exacerbates all the negative trends, and with Rumsfeld and the Republicans in Congress doing nothing about any of it, you might hope the Democrats would go after the problems as aggressively as they exploit the rhetorical opportunities.
Indeed, the Democrats have made their bid. They recently released a document titled "Real Security." It accurately notes "inadequate planning and incompetent policies have failed to make Americans as safe as we should be."
"Real Security" pledges to "rebuild a state-of-the-art military by making the needed investments in equipment and manpower." The fine print in the 123-page white paper making the case for "Real Security" goes on to implicitly endorse the entire Bush defense acquisition plan, except for promising to accelerate and expand some programs.
To pay for it all, not even the usual Democratic piñata, national missile defense, is suggested as an offset. Instead, the Democrats suggest the supplemental funding that now pays upwards of $100 billion per year for the wars should continue when the wars are finished.
The term "financial management" appears nowhere in "Real Security" or its white paper. No hint exists that the Pentagon's undisciplined buying plan should be brought into alignment with its unrealistic budget. No weapon system--no matter how irrelevant to 21st century warfare, is suggested for termination, reduction or delay.
To be fair, a minority faction of Democrats is dissenting. Called the Congressional Progressive Caucus, they advocate cutting the defense budget by $60 billion and transferring it to social programs that the progressives' constituency favors. This plan, which the Republicans slander as "anti-defense," has the virtue of recognizing there are some problems, and contrary to the calumny, would do no more harm to our defenses than ongoing business as usual.
However, both "Real Security" and the Congressional Progressive Caucus miss the point. Readjusting defense dollars, whether up or down, will do nothing to address the problems, which are fundamentally questions of competence and ethics.
More or less money will do nothing to make Defense Department programs and mangers accountable through rudimentary financial management. Managers in the private sector who fail on this measure are fired; some go to jail. In the Defense Department, none are held accountable; many are promoted. When that changes, competent program and financial management can begin.
In today's political environment, it requires real moral spine on the part of civilians in the Pentagon or Congress to stand up to the military services' procurement bureaucracies. But with weapon systems being served up that have little to do with real world combat and a lot more to do with technological and careerist agendas, that is exactly what the situation calls for.
Real political courage is needed, not dollar transfers to favored constituencies, to force Congress to stop junking up defense bills with pork and raiding the Defense Department's personnel and operating budgets to pay for it.
The keys to reforming America's defenses are not in vacuous policy brochures or arguments about dollar amounts mostly directed at political pets. It lies in people understanding the nature of the problems and having the guts to apply real solutions.
The Democrats want us to ignore how they helped to create the mess and their current intention to do nothing about it. In fact, they are not even thinking about solutions--and the Republicans appreciate that.
Winslow T. Wheeler is the Director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information and author of The Wastrels of Defense. Over 31 years, he worked for US Senators from both political parties and the Government Accountability Office on national security issues. He can be contacted at: winslowwheeler@comcast.net.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Doing the Markey Two Step
How Democrats are Buying the Iraq War
By JEFF LEYS
Last week, members of the Smedley Butler Brigade of Veterans for Peace organized an office occupation of Representative Ed Markey's office in Massachusetts. Their demand was simple: refuse to continue funding the Iraq war and vote against the $93 billion supplemental spending request submitted to Congress by President Bush on February 5. Their action was one of a growing number of office occupations taking place during the Occupation Project campaign of civil disobedience to end Iraq war funding.
Markey adroitly launched into song and dance, agreeing to meet and promising, in writing, to vote against President Bush's request. The next day, he pivoted and swirled, doing the finest two step you'll ever see. He pronounced that he will most definitely vote against President Bush's request. He also pronounced that he will wait to decide whether to vote for or against the final supplemental spending bill being crafted by Representatives John Murtha and David Obey in the House Appropriations Committee. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.
Let there be no mistake. The Democrats are buying the Iraq war lock, stock and barrel. Indeed, fewer votes may be cast against continuing Iraq war funding this year than last year (or the year before) if so-called, erstwhile antiwar Democrats follow the logic of Markey.
The Democrats, led by Murtha and Obey, must be told in no uncertain terms that they cannot simultaneously be against the Iraq war and continue to fund the war. Murtha's proscription is aptly dubbed a "slow bleed" strategy, as reprehensible as the "slow bleed" strategy of the Bush administration. The Bush administration made a clear and coldly calculated decision that, so long as deaths of U.S. soldiers were kept to a "minimum" and spread out amongst communities across the U.S., his administration could continue to wage this war without arousing active opposition to this war from middle America. Similarly, Murtha seems to be calculating that he and the Democrats will survive a "slow bleed" of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi citizens while he nibbles at the edges of ending the war in and occupation of Iraq.
Murtha's proposals to end stop loss and stop move orders should be supported. A grave injustice is done to members of the U.S. military when they are forced to serve beyond the end of their enlistment contract or forced to extend their tour of duty in Iraq. His proposal to require that U.S. service members should also be at home for a minimum of one year before being deployed back to Iraq is also worthy of support. Indeed, I and three others were arrested at the U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command here in Illinois last July pressing those demands.
Murtha fiddles on the edges of using the power of the purse to end the Iraq war while Rome-Baghdad-is burning to the ground.
The situation is not all that much brighter on the Senate side of the Congress. Senators are posturing to be the most antiwar Senator, especially those who are running for President. None is yet showing the political courage of their predecessors in the Senate-to actually vote against any additional funding for the Iraq war. The end of the U.S. war in Vietnam began in 1965 when three Senators voted against funding the war.
Senator Feingold introduced S. 448, "The Iraq Redeployment Act of 2007", which calls for the cessation of most funding for U.S. military operations in Iraq 180 days following passage of the act. Senator Obama introduced S. 433, "The Iraq De-Escalation Act of 2007", which, in excessively convoluted language, moves towards calling for the withdrawal of U.S. combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008. However, if you read S. 433, enough loopholes exist to drive a Mack truck through, which ensure continuation of the Iraq war, most notably the provision that the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq can be suspended with the simple certification by Bush to Congress that Iraq is achieving the benchmarks spelled out in the legislation. Neither S. 448 nor S. 433 contain any kind of enforcement language if the President decides to ignore the resolutions.
Senator Feingold and Senator Obama, will you dare take the requisite steps to end the war by cutting war funding? Senator Bernie Sanders, I'm calling you out on this one too. And you too, Senator Sherrod Brown. Each of you voted against funding the Iraq war while in the House. But you both conveniently lost your principles and your conscience when you voted for Iraq war funding last year when you were running for the Senate.
If you can't bring yourself to vote against this supplemental spending bill on its face, will you at least commit to the intermediate step? Will you commit to introducing an amendment to the supplemental spending bill, as well as to the regular Department of Defense Appropriations bill (which contains another $142 billion for the war next year), which will specify that any and all funding for the war will be ended by a specific date and that all U.S. service members will be withdrawn from Iraq by that date? Will you further commit to voting against any supplemental spending bill and / or regular appropriations bill which does not contain such a provision?
If not, Senators Feingold, Obama, Sanders and Brown and Representatives Obey and Murtha-and all other erstwhile antiwar Senators and Representatives-allow me to introduce you to Representative Markey. I'm sure we can arrange ball room dance lessons so you can refine the Markey Two Step as you sway to the Chattanooga Choo Choo train of war funding.
Jeff Leys is Coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and a national organizer for the Occupation Project campaign of sustained nonviolent civil disobedience to end Iraq war funding. He can be reached via email at jeffleys@vcnv.org.
Information on the Occupation Project campaign can be found at http://www.vcnv.org.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about!
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
in 'pigs at the trough' it says at that time all the senate and congressional ppl in higher positions of power like whips, majority and minority leaders....all had spouses or children who were lobbyists.... and now you have the corporate media approved candidates even having lobbyists on their election campaigns!
you'd think there'd be some kind of conflict of interest or something, but then look at the reality of our corporate controlled government and it's obvious nothing will be done about it
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
What's your point?
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Ah, okay. I think Nader and Zinn disagree on some things. I actually think Zinn is a bit nicer on the Dems than Ralph. Zinn is such a nice guy and more optimistic...Nader tells it like it is.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Oh yeah, Zinn does speak out about them and is quite detailed in his critique. But Nader can't stand them. I think it's more because Nader gets in there and knows how hard it is to fight big business for the sake of the public. It would aggravate me, too, knowing that your work matches your rhetoric and how important you view the things you've stood for...and the Dems just say they are for all this and that but their records, more often than not, show the exact opposite yet they get all the votes and support.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
agreed with others that stated this is a conflict of interest, but it's been there through the 90's and before also. This isn't a reason that keeps Dem's from stopping the war. It's a symptom of what's wrong with our political system. Corporations have the power, and the rights, not the people.
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