“Genocide.” That’s the announced verdict of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy as images of hundreds of civilian dead — some with their hands bound, apparently executed — emerged from the city of Bucha following a withdrawal of Russian troops.

“You may remember I got criticized for calling Putin a war criminal,” says US president Joe Biden. “Well, the truth of the matter — we saw it happen in Bucha — he is a war criminal.”

What actually happened in Bucha is uncertain  and may remain so forever. The Ukrainians claim that Russian soldiers murdered the civilians. The Russians seem to alternately claim the entire scene was staged, or else that the victims were suspected Russian sympathizers/collaborators killed by fellow Ukrainians.  Probably mass murder, but who did it?

Unfortunately, absent total defeat a la Germany and Japan in World War Two — an unlikely outcome for either side in Ukraine  — such crimes will almost certainly go unpunished.  Neither the actual perpetrators (whoever they are), nor their commander in chief (whoever he is), will suffer significant consequences for their actions.

Biden’s call for Vladimir Putin to face trial –presumably in the International Criminal Court — is a combination of political grandstanding and gross hypocrisy. His own government refuses to recognize that court and threatens to sanction its judges and prosecutors if they investigate US war crimes.

But he does have a point.

“To initiate a war of aggression,” reads the Judgment of the International Military Tribunal, convened to prosecute accused Nazi war criminals at the end of World War Two,  “is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

By that standard, Vladimir Putin is a war criminal for his order to invade Ukraine. The Bucha massacre, if perpetrated by Russian troops, is just a subsidiary crime.

So is Petro Poroshenko, Zelenskyy’s predecessor, who oversaw Ukraine’s war of aggression against two seceded republics in the Donbas region along the Ukraine-Russia border.

Zelenskyy himself, as well as Biden, are guilty of continuing wars of aggression initiated by their predecessors — Zelenskyy in the Donbas; Biden in, among other places, Syria.

Harry Truman never faced trial for two of the largest terror attacks in history (the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima). George W. Bush and Barack Obama will probably never pay for their war crimes. Ditto Putin and Zelenskyy.

Occasionally, if the heat’s really on, the world’s political class will toss a few small fry under the bus. Absent total state collapse, the ringleaders usually skate.

Which is a very good reason to support total — and universal — state collapse. War itself is the crime, and the state is the perpetrator.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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On March 28, US president Joe Biden unveiled his 2023 budget proposal. It totals $5.8 trillion, which would bring federal spending and deficits back below their pandemic-era heights (although not back to 2019 levels). Biden’s ask comes to nearly $18,000 for every man, woman, and child in America.

Oddly, The Hill reports, the White House’s big brag on the proposal is that it would  reduce the deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next ten years.

Usually when a politician pitches a plan to do something over the  course of a decade, I expect a bunch of rosy projections that won’t ever come to pass. It’s easy to make promises now and leave them to another president and other Congresses to keep.

This proposal doesn’t even bother with the rosy projections, though. Its  tables, which run through 2032, project higher, not lower, deficits. The 2023 deficit would come to $1.154 trillion, the 2032 deficit to $1.784 trillion. The cumulative projected deficit for the period 2023-2032 would increase the national debt to nearly half again its current total of $30 trillion.

Then again, perhaps those projections ARE rosy.  They assume ever-increasing federal revenues and spending, with no obstacles to the US government’s ability to borrow as much as it feels like borrowing. None of those are safe assumptions.

Of course, presidential budget proposals are just that — proposals. Since the 1920s, the president has been legally required to submit one to Congress each year. But Congress isn’t required to pass it. It’s always modified, and the modifications are almost always upward.

The problem is exacerbated by the US government’s “baseline budgeting” accounting method, under which the starting point for all spending is the current level and it’s assumed spending will increase from that level to account for inflation and population growth.

In other words, spending increases are automatic, while spending cuts (even cuts to the projected increases!) require explicit congressional action. And cuts to projected increases are always portrayed by their opponents as actual cuts in the fights over such action.

American politicians don’t fight to cut spending, borrowing, debt, or deficits. They just fight over how much to increase all four. They’re building a house of cards, and one day a stiff breeze will come along and blow that house — and them — over.

Could this be fixed? Well, maybe. A good start would entail two elements.

The first would be actually ending, not just promising to someday reduce, deficit spending. That is, plausibly estimate revenues and budget to spend less than those revenues.

The second would be to eliminate “baseline budgeting” and require every department to justify every dime it asks for every year.

Will that happen? Almost certainly not. The American political establishment’s deficit disorder is chronic, probably incurable, and eventually fatal.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

On March 28, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed HB 1557 — the “Parental Rights in Education Bill” — into law.

Supporters say it is indeed about parental rights:  The right to know what their kids are being taught, and the right to be informed about matters pertaining to their kids’ “mental, emotional, or physical well-being.”

Opponents call it the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” and assert that its purpose is to terrorize members of the LGBTQ community working in public education by forbidding mention of their sexual orientations/gender identities, and to isolate LGBTQ students who may be afraid to come out to their parents and, under this law, to seek support and affirmation at school, lest they be outed.

Both sides are right. The  law does require parental access to student records, and notification of parents when school personnel address, or know of, issues related to a student’s “mental, emotional, or physical well-being.”

But it actual purpose is political.

Supporters use one snippet of the bill — “[c]lassroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 …” — to claim that it’s just about sex education in the lower grades.

They leave out the following clause: “… or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

Teachers rightfully fear that, say, casually mentioning their same-sex spouses might be deemed “age-inappropriate classroom instruction.” And LGBTQ students rightfully fear that teachers  will consider themselves legally required to out them.

What gives the bill  teeth is its enforcement mechanism: A parent may “[b]ring an action against the school district …. A court may award damages …”

It’s designed to encourage little Sally’s parents to sue the school district if Sally mentions that her teacher said he and his husband went to Italy over summer vacation. Or if Sally asks to be called Sam and wear “boy’s clothes,” and they suspect that she mentioned this in school and it wasn’t reported to them.

It’s designed, above all, to energize Republican voters and get them to the polls for Republican candidates.

During the pandemic, many schools shut down and went to “remote learning.” Parents looking on during Zoom classes noticed what and how their kids were being taught. Some of them didn’t like it.

The public education establishment reacted patronizingly, telling parents they were unqualified to have an opinion and should leave education to the “experts” (them). That dismissive attitude produced anger — as it should have.

Now Republicans are weaponizing that anger with bills like the “Parental Rights in Education Bill,”  tailored not just to the anger itself, but also to specific fears that they know will mobilize and energize their electoral base.

The “Don’t Say Gay Bill” is what we get when politics and education combine to produce a “wedge issue.” So long as education is politically funded and politically regulated, we’ll never lack for such issues.

The only way to get the culture wars out of education is to separate school and state.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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