Politics Plus

Military spending in the United States is out of control, as you probably know. The US spends more on its military – euphemistically called “defense” – than the next fourteen countries combined. In other words, we spend more on our army, air force, navy, etc. than China, or Russia, or Saudi Arabia, or Germany, or India, or the United Kingdom. The US alone accounts for at least 41% of the world’s military expenditure. Even if our military budget was reduced to a third of what it is now, we would still be the #1 spender.

President Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex more than 60 years ago. He said, “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 its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

Our civilization is actually more peaceful today than it has been in the past, despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, we continue to spend more and more and more on “defense,” some of it on dodgy weapons and systems. The Pentagon has never passed an audit.  The F-35 fighter jet has proven to be not only absurdly expensive, but also severely problematic. You may recall the scandal involving $1000 screwdrivers and toilet seats. So, why do we still not hold the Pentagon accountable? And as if that isn’t enough, while the contractors are insanely over-funded, deployed military personnel have to beg for phone cards to stay in touch with their families and friends back home.

During World War II we set up bases around the world for peacekeeping. Decades after they ceased to be needed, those bases are still operating. A common response to cutting defense spending and closing overseas bases is “We need it in case we go to war!” No, we don’t need to spend $750 billion a year to “prepare.” And why do we maintain so many bases far away from home? Many will point to the current Ukraine war as a good reason to have men (and women) and materiel in other parts of the world in case trouble rears its ugly head. Isn’t that what NATO is supposed to be for – squelching such trouble in Europe? Nothing wrong, though, in offering aid and allowing independent soldiers of fortune to join the fun.

One reason we spend insane amounts on “defense” is the power of defense contractor lobbyists. Many big corporations, such as Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon and L3Harris, have lucrative contracts with our military to build planes, missiles, electronics and the like; thus, it is in their interest to keep the military budget nice and fat.

While our defense budget is obscenely bloated, our infrastructure is crumbling, our electrical grid is vulnerable to weather and cyberattacks, our schools are horribly underfunded so teachers have to buy or beg for supplies and work multiple jobs. While defense contractor CEOs wallow in luxury like swine, veterans are sleeping in cardboard boxes, and on average 35 die by their own hands every day. Vets must wait months, even more than a year, to receive the physical and psychological therapy they need.

Just 3% of our defense spending could end hunger worldwide. A mere 10% reduction in the Pentagon’s budget could help millions of struggling Americans with affordable housing, community centers, higher salaries for teachers, more supplies and equipment for schools, clean water, nutritious meals for students, affordable health care, and free or at least affordable college. Yet every year our military budget sets a new record.

Spending more and more on our defense while neglecting our schools, roads, utilities and people will cost us dearly; in fact, it is already costing us dearly. Remember Flint, Michigan? There was another country that overspent on its military, and it collapsed. Know what it was? The Soviet Union. We definitely don’t want to follow the late, unlamented USSR into oblivion.

This may be my last Sound Off! posting for a while. I have other projects that require attention. However, life, the universe and everything provide plenty of inspiration.

You have no doubt heard about “preppers,” people getting prepared for a disaster so devastating that it completely disrupts our society. Many of the rich are preppers too, buying luxury bunkers or houses on distant islands where they hope to ride out The End. We despise the 1% for being so callous towards the rest of us, for owning Congress lock, stock and barrel so they can block laws that will increase the minimum wage, protect workers’ rights, etc. And now they’ll survive Doomsday, and we won’t.

Or will they?

They can boast and brag all they like, but there are some potential roadblocks that could prevent escape. Their getaways are not as secret as they may think. Unless the fat cats assembled those bunkers with their own hands, somebody else built them and knows where they are. What’s to stop the construction workers who know where the bug-out bunkers are from getting to them first? It probably would not be too difficult for others to find the locations of these hideaways.

In the novel Lucifer’s Hammer, an independently wealthy amateur astronomer builds a doomsday bunker for himself and his family, but after the doo-doo hits the fan he discovers that his servants have gotten their first – and they aren’t sharing. That is Problem #1: The Richie-riches have to get to their bunkers before anybody else does. If not, those claiming them will run the age-old line about possession being nine-tenths of the law. But what law will be in force after everything goes kaboomba?

Also, they have to get to their Doomsday dugouts at all. After whatever armageddon effs up civilization, many roads may be impassible, or guarded by brigands and highwaymen (and highwaywomen). Thus, the 1%-ers may not be able to get anywhere near their bunkers, or to ports where they could escape on their super-yachts, or to airports in order to board their Lear Jets. There’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip, as the old saw goes. Even if they get to their yachts, they may encounter well-armed pirates while trying to flee across the ocean blue. And if they hope for escape by air, they’ll need not just loyal pilots but also control towers and guidance. The more complicated you think the plumbing, the easier it is to clog the drain.

Even if Mr. & Ms. Moneybags and their snotty brats and their obnoxious Pomeranian do manage to pile into the family Rolls Royce, and the chauffeur is still loyal enough to drive them to their hideaway, even if they don’t get ambuscaded along the way, and even if they arrive ahead of the 99% hordes, they may be merely delaying the inevitable. OK, you’re in your luxury Hole in the Ground, with a couple year’s worth of supplies – but now your troubles may really begin. How long before cabin fever sets in? People under lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic can tell you a thing or three about when the kids and/or significant other and/or dog really get on your nerves. Unlike the pandemic lockdown, folks cowering in their bunkers won’t have any way out. It’s one thing when you can sneak into the backyard, or even go for a stroll around the townhouse complex; but when you’re sealed in a bunker, you learn the meaning of claustrophobia. No matter how luxurious your surroundings and your chow, no matter how much you love and cherish each other (or think you do), sooner or later you’re going to be at each other’s throats.

Oh, guess what – you forgot to bring your servants with you. They’re not welcome in your bugout bunker, only the Moneybags family. Oh no, now what will you do? You have to cook your own food, make your own beds, clean your own messes. No more ringing the bell for the butler. And before long, those MREs are going to get boring. Soon the kids will be screaming that they’re [bleep]ing sick of games and books – they wanna go outside! How long before you lose it and smack ‘em upside the head?

What’s outside? A gloomy post-apocalyptic landscape and hordes of marauders. What if they find your hideout? They can’t get in, you say – but maybe they hate you for how you screwed up the planet and then retreated to your personal hobbit hole to escape the consequences. If they find the entrance, they can just plug it up with dirt, rocks and whatever so that your bunker will become your tomb. Or they may find the air inlet and decide to pour something really noxious in it – or close it off.

Even if your luxury lair is completely sealed off from the outside, you’ll have to rely on the machinery keeping it livable to work. And you’ll have to rely on a steady power source. Oh, you don’t know how to fix a generator or air circulation unit? Too bad the loyal fixit for your quasi-castle in the Silk Stocking District wasn’t part of your plans.

How long, Mr. Bigbux, do you anticipate staying in your hidey-hole? What kind of world will be awaiting you when you finally have to come out? Because come out you eventually must. And what kind of world will await you?

The power of the 1% comes from their wealth. However, whatever doomsday they dodge by heading for the hills, or their private islands, will destroy the infrastructure on which they rely. Money will have no value, except as kindling or butt-wipe. Numbers in a computer can’t be eaten, or worn, or used to forage or catch prey. How many richie-riches have any real training in how to survive in the wilderness? They’ve been pampered and coddled all their lives; they cannot survive without luxury.

Even if they manage to ride out the End of the World in their hiding places, they may find no place for them in the aprés-armageddon world. Nobody will need – or want – a hedge fund manager when everybody is scratching in the dirt for a living, when dollars and Euros and yen and yuan are trash. Those who were once on top of the societal totem pole will find themselves at the bottom.

In Pat Frank’s post-apocalyptic novel Alas, Babylon, an aquarium becomes a metaphor for society. When the power goes out, the fancy fish all die, but the bottom-feeding catfish survive. Thus, people who have done genuine work all their lives and possess the skills needed to help humanity through the dark times have the best chance of thriving.

Those who believe in looking out for their neighbors will do better than individual-minded right-wingers. I have read about preppers who boasted about going to their neighbors’ houses, stealing their supplies and ravishing their wives and daughters. Meanwhile, in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, people who owned guns protected those who didn’t. People who believe in working together and know how to be resourceful will do far better than selfish jerks with useless skills.

Why Wealth Alone Won’t Save Billionaire Preppers

The Super-Rich will Not Survive Long-Term without Survival Skills

Lately it seems as though the 1%-ers have declared war on the working class. Not only are unions being weakened with “right to work” laws and workers’ rights being eroded, but voter suppression is rampant in blue-collar districts. Lily-white districts that traditionally vote Republican have easy access to the ballot machines, while polling places in largely non-white and/or working class neighborhoods face closure, limited hours, and a dearth of working machines. We are headed straight for another Gilded Age, with an oblivious quasi-nobility living it up while the workers on whom they depend starve. The 1% are slowly strangling the goose that lays their golden eggs.

One of the great weapons that workers and unions have is the walkout, the strike. Employees refuse to work, forcing companies to make concessions, such as better working conditions or higher pay. We have unions to thank for a lot of the working classes’ gains, at least in part – gains that include 40-hour work weeks, overtime pay, OSHA regulations, child labor laws and paid leave. 

In comparison with workers in other parts of the world, US workers are bad off. For example, we are the only developed nation that has no maternity leave requirements. Mothers must return to work soon after giving birth or risk losing their jobs. Child care is very expensive, so many a working mom has to do her duties with a baby on her hip – literally. Not every working mother has the option of working from home.

In numerous states, corporations have used injunctions, which judges pass and police enforce, to trample workers’ Constitutional rights to free speech and peaceful assembly. These injunctions limit the number of people who can attend a picket, where they can demonstrate, or even if they can walk out in the first place. Read the Bill of Rights, especially the First Amendment, and you will see that these judges – who are obviously in the deep pockets of the Fat Cats – are gladly pissing all over the very heart and soul of this nation. The police who intimidate the protesters are violating their oath to protect and serve, degenerating into Gestapo terrorists who give law enforcement a rotten image.

These companies are raking in millions or even billions of dollars in revenue, and instead of using that to pay their workers decent wages, they are greasing the filthy palms of corrupt judges to destroy the rights of the working class, hire cops to harass workers and guard scabs, or create vicious and nasty smear campaigns against those who oppose them. Many right-wing editorial cartoonists and essayists gladly vomit their anti-union hogwash onto computers or drawing tables, and brainwashed MAGA ninnies believe it.

As if that is not bad enough, many companies hire scabs, who ride for free in buses and get police escorts to the factories and businesses. Jack London had plenty to say about scabs, which you can read here.

By weaponizing police and the courts to their advantage, powerful corporations have proven that they care not in the least about their rank-and-file workers. The cigar-puffing CEOs regard the working class as just another resource to exploit for gain. In their ivory towers the 1% are completely insulated from reality. The glasses of champagne they raise contain the blood of the working stiffs who made their obscene wealth possible.

The United States cannot continue like this, or we will become scarcely different from a lot of developing nations that have a tiny rich elite ruling over hordes of starving, rag-clad serfs. The 99% must rise up and fight back. We need to enlighten those who have been hypnotized by right-wing baloney and open their eyes so they can see they have been working and voting against their own interests for years. We need to get out the youth and nonwhite vote, and battle against voter suppression. We need to campaign for workers’ rights and against the unconstitutional, un-American tactics of greedy corporations. We need to expose these tactics wherever and whenever they are being used. Letters to the editor, getting muckraking journalists on the case, peaceful demonstrations – we cannot let such evil schemes go unchallenged.

Unless we of the 99% fight back, we will be crushed.

How the hell long have we been waiting for the Equal Rights Amendment to be ratified? Too damn long.

The ERA was first proposed in 1972. It states simply: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” In other words, your rights do not depend on your DNA.

Fifty years later, we are still waiting for it to become part of the U.S. Constitution. Two years ago Virginia voted to ratify this amendment, becoming the 38th state to do so, which means that now the ERA qualifies for inclusion in the Constitutional amendments. So why hasn’t this been made official?

Listen up, U.S. Congress. We The People – not just women and girls, but the men and boys who stand with us – are sick and tired of waiting. We are sick and tired of getting heartbreakingly close to victory. We are sick and tired of having to fight, and fight, and fight. We are sick and tired of screaming, protesting, marching, signing petitions, sending postcards and tweets and e-mails, writing letters to the editor, and countering male bovine solid bodily waste excreta.

How much longer must women wait? How much longer will male chauvinist nut jobs oppose it with ludicrous propaganda? In 1992, Pat Robertson sent a letter to the Christian Coalition in opposition to Iowa’s state ERA, claiming that the “feminist agenda” is a “socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” Unfortunately, enough people believed this crap to prevent the ERA from passing in Iowa. How sad that evil, hateful cowards like Robertson can bamboozle people into voting against their own interests.

Why is it in everybody’s interest to ratify the ERA? To paraphrase Malcolm X, you can’t keep Woman down without staying down with her. Women have been down in the ditch for far too long. Women had to raise hell all the way past the stratosphere for decades in order to get the right to vote. Women in the US couldn’t have credit cards in their own names until 1974, take legal action against sexual harassment until 1977, or enter military combat until 2013. Spousal rape was not recognized as a crime till 1993. The average woman today earns 82 cents for every dollar the average man earns. I could go on and on and on and on.

We need to let our Congress-critters know that we are through waiting. We are not asking, not requesting, not pleading that they pass the ERA – we are demanding that they do so, and after a half century we are well within our rights to do so.