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Got Milked? US “Defense” Spending 2017

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The Pentagon, headquarters of the United State...
The Pentagon, headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, taken from an airplane in January 2008 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“The White House said Tuesday [June 7] that President Barack Obama will veto the Senate’s version of the annual defense policy bill,” Richard Lardner of the Associated Press reports. Why? Lardner cites provisions that would prevent Obama from shutting down the prison at Guantanamo Bay and limit the number of “national security” functionaries he can put on the White House payroll.

Deeper in the story, however, we find meatier objections: The $600 billion bill “denies the Defense Department’s request for a new round of military base closings” and Senate Armed Service Committee chairman John McCain (R-AZ) “plans to propose an amendment that would add nearly $18 billion to the defense budget to pay for additional ships, jet fighters, helicopters and more that the Pentagon didn’t request.”

If Obama, who doesn’t face re-election, follows through on his veto threat House and Senate Democrats will likely join Republicans in overriding that veto so long as they get their share of that $18 billion and the bases in their districts remain open. What gives? Nothing. It’s politics as usual.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson asserted that the purpose of government is to secure the rights of the governed to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Jefferson, to put the best face possible on things, was hopelessly naive. The purpose of government is — and always has been — to transfer wealth and power from the ruled to the rulers. Politicians crave unearned power; plutocrats crave unearned profit. The two groups, broadly constituting the “political class,” prop each other up and assist each other in milking the rest of us.

Since World War 2, the premier American political milking operation  of this type has been what President Dwight D. Eisenhower labeled “the military-industrial complex.” Politicians receive campaign contributions and golden parachutes as corporate directors. In return, “defense” contractors knock down billions in arms sales, base maintenance contracts, etc. All at your expense, and none of it related to any reasonable conception of “national defense.”

It’s not just treasure the political class takes from the productive class. It’s blood as well. Justifying insane levels of military spending requires the occasional war. Not to worry. The political class considers your sons’ and daughters’ lives a reasonable price to pay to keep their gravy trains running on time.

Don’t expect anything different from this year’s crop of presidential candidates. Donald Trump believes the bloated US military needs to be “rebuilt.” Hillary Clinton hasn’t met a war she didn’t love since Vietnam. Even “libertarian” vice-presidential candidate William Weld, running on a second Republican ticket, avers that he and running mate Gary Johnson believe “a bedrock responsibility of the US government is to maintain the most powerful military in the world, by a wide margin.” Given that the US is separated from all credible military threats by two oceans, Weld’s line is clearly the usual political class pandering.

If voting won’t fix the problem this November, what next? Well, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (nwtrcc.org) has some ideas for next April.

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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“Basic Income”: Sense or Nonsense?

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Hundreds (RGBStock)

On June 5, Switzerland’s electorate voted 77% to 23% against a “basic income” proposal. The plan would have entitled each adult citizen to about US $2,500 per month from the Swiss government, with an additional payment per child, regardless of employment situation. Other polities, including Finland, the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and the province of Ontario in Canada, have trial runs of basic income schemes in the works.

Does the idea make sense? The identities of some who think it does — at least in principle — might surprise you. They include, among others, self-described libertarians such as Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute, professor Matt Zwolinski of the University of San Diego, and Tim Worstall, Senior Fellow at the UK’s Adam Smith Institute.

These supporters of the idea are, generally speaking, utilitarians or consequentialists. They accept the modern welfare state as a given and want to make it more efficient and humane. That is, they think it should cost less and accomplish more. Guaranteed income seems to fit the bill: Huge administrative cost savings from the elimination of a hodgepodge of welfare programs (for example, food stamps), more freedom for recipients to spend as they see fit (in the same example, the money could be used to purchase shoes rather than food).

Understatement of the Month alert:  Not all libertarians support government income guarantee schemes.  In fact, the vast majority of us vociferously oppose the idea.

In order for the state to redistribute wealth, it must first steal that wealth (the thieves call it “taxation”). And before the state can steal wealth, that wealth must first be created.

Morally speaking, why should the creators of wealth — a category that includes everyone who labors to produce valuable goods and services, from the lowliest fry cook to the CEO of the company that built your car — be forced to subsidize the incomes of those who produce less, perhaps even nothing?

Practically speaking, why WOULD those wealth creators do so? I don’t know about you, but if I can make $20,000 a year cleaning toilets or $19,000 a year sitting on my couch watching Storage Wars … well, if you need me, check the couch. Stretching those numbers in either direction will produce different outcomes, but any income guarantee will to some degree constitute a disincentive to work.

As is always the case, it turns out that the immoral and the impractical coincide. “Basic income” makes no sense.

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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Muhammad Ali: A Profile in Moral Courage

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WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT BOXING CHAMPION MUHAMMAD ALI...
WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT BOXING CHAMPION MUHAMMAD ALI, A BLACK MUSLIM, ATTENDS THE SECT’S SERVICE TO HEAR ELIJAH MUHAMMAD… – NARA – 556247 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong — no Viet Cong ever called me nigger.”

With those pointed words, Muhammad Ali explained his opposition to the US war in Vietnam and justified his refusal to submit himself to the draft. He declared himself a conscientious objector. After declining three times to step forward for induction into the US Armed Forces in April of 1967 in Houston, Texas, the reigning world heavyweight boxing champion was arrested, stripped of his title and state boxing licenses, and thrown into a three-year legal battle ending with his exoneration (on technical grounds) by the US Supreme Court.

No one ever seriously doubted the physical courage of Muhammed Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. in 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky). An Olympic gold medalist and winner of  eight Golden Gloves titles, he became the youngest man ever to unseat a reigning heavyweight boxing champion at 22.

Clay, named after a Kentucky planter who became a crusader for the abolition of slavery, converted to Islam and changed his name shortly after that 1964 technical knockout victory over Sonny Liston. He was fearless in the ring (perhaps forever “the greatest,” as he called himself and came to be called by others). He went on to become professional heavyweight boxing’s only three-time world champion, winning the title in 1964, 1974 and 1978.

But his singular act of MORAL courage — a prominent black American at the pinnacle of youthful fame, standing firm against an immoral war in the face of disapproval from World War 2’s “Greatest Generation,”  head unbowed to forced military service more than a century after his nation put an end to formal chattel slavery — remains by far his greatest legacy.

His stand rang the opening bell on a generation’s resistance to war and conscription and inspired Martin Luther King, Jr., who had hesitated to oppose civil rights supporter Lyndon Baines Johnson on the subject, to come out against the war in Vietnam.

Nor did Ali’s peace activism end with his draft resistance. In 1991, he traveled to Iraq to negotiate with Saddam Hussein for the release of American hostages, and in 2002 he visited Afghanistan as a “UN Messenger of Peace.” The Ali Center established the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards in 2013 to honor those who make “significant contributions toward securing peace, social justice, human rights, and/or social capital in their communities and on a global basis.”

Muhammad Ali died on June 3, 2016, in Scottsdale, Arizona. He was 74.

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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