Friday, August 20, 2021

The Road From Afghanistan To Flint: Selfishness, Corruption and American Exceptionalism

SHORT TAKES: CA Gov--Chapter 512 On Bad Progressive Strategy; This Week A Worker's Life Is Worth about $650,000; Title 42 And The Scandal At The Border

Jonathan Tasini

Aug 19

LONG TAKE

The Afghanistan debacle is not simply about what has happened in the past few days, though that short-term mindset is basically eating up the entire time of blabbering by politicians of both parties, media talking heads and so-called “foreign policy experts.” Joe Biden owns the disaster no more than Donald Trump, Barack Obama George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and… well, you can go back at least 7 decades to grasp the utter failure of this country’s global rampage, and the cost to human life and the planet.

A true grasp of Afghanistan, and any desire to preventing the inevitable next debacle, has to see this as part of a bigger epic systemic and moral failure that stretches back many years and spans the entire globe, and name-checks Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iran (more than once), Iraq, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba—the list goes on and on. The body count of people around the world is well into the millions—not just those killed by bombs and bullets but the vast numbers of human beings who perish over many years from the embedded chemicals and physical devastation of their lands that spark disease, hunger and destitution.

It goes to the heart of selfishness, greed and arrogance: Selfishness and greed because there is an astounding amount of money to be made from war on the part of big corporations, principally energy conglomerates and big defense contractors. Arrogance because the selfishness and greed is always overlaid with the public relations sale of American Exceptionalism to generation after generation—the embedded national belief that everything the U.S. does is for a good reason because, and you’ve heard this before, “this is the greatest nation on earth”, a chest-thumping ethos promoted across the political spectrum from conservatives to liberals in both major political parties. Sure, turn your nose up at Sean Hannity and be rightly horrified that a 20th Century war criminal named Henry Kissinger is treated as royalty by the establishment of both parties—but also recognize, in full honesty, that Robert Reich bleating, numerous times in speeches and tiresome books, that this country has the best workers in the world—think deeply about that claim!—is racism delivered in a kinder, gentler fashion.

So, here’s the way to capture the story today: The road from Afghanistan travels , right to lead in the water people are drinking in Flint, Michigan, schools crumbling in every corner of the country, roads falling apart in every town, people going hungry, and millions of homeless people.

When the nation spends $1 trillion over 20 years on a single war—$50 billion per year—then, it’s worth remembering:

The Flint water could be fixed for a mere $1.5 billion (not to mention the up to 45 million other Americans who don’t have clean water)
Schools—54% of which need updating or replacement of heating, ventilation and cooling systems—could be rebuilt for roughly four years of Afghanistan war money (and that’s based on 2014 numbers so it’s likely now another few months worth of war-funding)
And, as is well known by now, the U.S. has a C- grade for its overall infrastructure.
For less than half-a-year of Afghanistan war money, every homeless person could be housed.
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We can do the math for every war, every military intervention (public or secret) going back 70 years and understand what the permanent war economy costs the nation. As Seymour Melman, who wrote “The Permanent War Economy” way back in 1970, opined in 2003:

Meanwhile, government financing is lavished without stint to promote every kind of war industry, and foreign investing by U.S. firms. The war priorities have depleted medical and education staffs. U.S. medical planning now includes programs to recruit large numbers of nurses from India. Shortages of housing have caused a swelling of the homeless population in every major city. State and city governments across the country have become trained to bend to the needs of the military–giving automatic approvals to its spending without limit. The same officials cannot find money for affordable housing.
The Permanent War Economy of the United States has endured since the end of World War II in 1945. Since then the U.S. has been at war–somewhere–every year, in Korea, Nicaragua, Vietnam, the Balkans, Afghanistan–all this to the accompaniment of shorter military forays in Africa, Chile, Grenada, Panama.

And:

There is no doubt about the main effects of a Permanent War Economy on the present and prospective production of consumer and capital goods in the United States. Myths, like a hoped-for inherent superiority for American-made goods, are simply melting away–daily. For the colossal $379 billion military budget now being organized in the United States will include funding new military bases around the world and the manufacture of a host of weapons of astonishing complexity and costliness. All these take up the available “economic space.” Thus the newest major aircraft program–the Joint Strike Fighter–is expected to cost as much as $750 billion, a historically unmatched price. The new nuclear attack submarines, each longer than a football field, are now priced at $2.4 billion each. Look at the maps published in our newspapers of new foreign military bases built for American forces–each of them magnificently equipped for an unstated but long duration.
Anticipated costs of a U.S. war in Iraq reach a level of $682 billion. (12)This exceeds the combined cost for replacing severely damaged housing ($369 billion) and for electrifying the U.S. main line railroads ($250 billion). The next Pentagon budget for 2004 promises to checkmate the most fundamental unmet needs in the United States for medical care, housing, and the education of our children.
In President Bush’s 2004 budget, the $379 billion military cost exceeds the sum of all other “discretionary” (non-mandatory) items in the Federal budget.

Two things are laughable about the above. First, the “puny” nature of the $379 billion budget that year which was only 17 years ago—just recently, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted 25-1 (that would be the committee run by Democrats) to increase the the White House’s recommended Pentagon budget from $715 billion to over $740 billion. That’s a testament to the power of lobbyists for defense contractors who ensure that the Pentagon always has a blank check.

And, second, as Melmen wrote, the notion that the Iraq War, in 2003, was estimated to cost $682 billion.

Pfft!

Every hour taxpayers pay $32.08 million for the total cost of wars just since 2001.

I posted this recently and I’m reupping: The cost of the post 9/11 “war on terror” is in the trillions and the below is just through 2019:

Since late 2001, the United States has appropriated and is obligated to spend an estimated $6.4 Trillion through Fiscal Year 2020 in budgetary costs related to and caused by the post-9/11 wars—an estimated $5.4 Trillion in appropriations in current dollars and an additional minimum of $1 Trillion for US obligations to care for the veterans of these wars through the next several decades.
The mission of the post-9/11 wars, as originally defined, was to defend the United States against future terrorist threats from al Qaeda and affiliated organizations. Since 2001, the wars have expanded from the fighting in Afghanistan, to wars and smaller operations elsewhere, in more than 80 countries —becoming a truly“global war on terror.” Further, the Department of Homeland Security was created in part to coordinate the defense of the homeland against terrorist attacks.
These wars, and the domestic counterterror mobilization, have entailed significant expenses, paid for by deficit spending. Thus, even if the United States withdraws completely from the major war zones by the end of FY2020 and halts its other Global War on Terror operations, in the Philippines and Africa for example, the total budgetary burden of the post-9/11 wars will continue to rise as the US pays the on-going costs of veterans’ care and for interest on borrowing to pay for the wars. Moreover, the increases in the Pentagon base budget associated with the wars are likely to remain, inflating the military budget over the long run.

Here is why we have to interject, at this moment, the longer, historical view of war. When you hear and read about people like Joe Manchin whinging to the Federal Reserve Board about debt and deficits as a reason to not invest deeply in people, it is always revealing that those same people seem to forget, in rhetoric and in the votes they cast, the math of debt and deficits—which are not a crisis by any honest economic measure—when it comes to totaling up the amount of money thrown at the business of war.

That is both a testament to the legal corruption in politics—campaign donors from the defense industry and related industries that profit from the projection of American lethal force—and moral corruption that is dressed up, always, in American Exceptionalism.

If the blood spilled in Afghanistan over twenty years is to have any meaning, it would be to end the system that has never put a limit on the check-writing for war. And, to boot, save a lot of lives.

SHORT TAKES

Speaking of bad takes and superficial analysis, I give you this piece entitled “Progressives eye shift in strategy after high-profile losses”. The theme is found partly in this paragraph:
Other progressives view a late start among their liberal cohort as a critical misstep in a lot of lost races. Many Democrats on the left believe that problem did not start with one particular election, but rather is part of a decades-long decision not to invest in the type of campaign infrastructure that would help aid lasting victories.
No. It’s not *principally* about making more phone calls, or texts, or some other infrastructure issue—though certainly looking at those failures is worth some attention. You can’t blame the reporter here for that flawed analysis because it’s a position repeated by “leading” progressive activists.
The problem is about bad choices that come from acting too often like a cult. Here is example #1. One can debate how progressive or not Gavin Newsom is but I will make the argument that all the wasted money and time trained on one single Congressional primary race—Ohio District 11—would have been better spent on mobilizing and organizing to soundly defeat Newsom’s recall *especially* because it appears to be a tight race.
Heresy! Really.
Well, my view is simple: the state of California is far more important to progressives than one district in Ohio. If progressives had been fully mobilized on the California recall and Newsom ends up beating the recall effort back, I think progressive would get far more leverage long-term, within the state and with Newsom and at every electoral level than electing one single member of Congress from Ohio. Leverage not with party officials but actual voters and local community activists who operate far away from the relatively better-funded national organizations who are more apt to be driven by the internal echo chamber of a cult.
As regular leaders know, I keep my eye very attuned to the carnage in the workplace with the same theme: people should be able to go to work every day and come home safely and in one piece—but, to CEOs, the cost of killing a worker or making them sick is just a cost of doing business. I never want us to become so used to this that we let it go by without notice or comment.
Another example this week via the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration:
On Feb. 24, 2021, at a sewer repair worksite on High Street in downtown Boston, Jordy Alexander Castaneda Romero, 27, and Juan Carlos Figueroa Gutierrez, 33, died after a dump truck struck and pushed them into a nine-foot deep trench. For their employer, Atlantic Coast Utilities LLC/Advanced Utilities Inc., its predecessor company Shannon Construction Corp., their owner Laurence Moloney and successor company, Sterling Excavation LLC the incident is the latest in a long history of ignoring the safety and health of its employees.
After an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the agency cited the Wayland, Massachusetts, trenching, excavation and underground construction contractor for 28 willful, repeat, serious and other-than-serious violations. View the safety and health citations.
Given the severity and nature of the recent hazards, and Atlantic Coast Utilities LLC/Advanced Utilities Inc. and its predecessor company’s history of violations, OSHA used its egregious citation policy, which allows the agency to propose a separate penalty for each instance of a violation. OSHA has proposed a total of $1,350,884 in penalties. [emphasis added]
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I am not criticizing the good folks at OSHA here—they are doing the best they can within the very limited confines of what the damn law allows. But, note this CEO cretin has a long history of abusing workers. And all he gets is what amounts to a somewhat pricey slap on the wrist. Again, not the fault of the people at OSHA who are handcuffed by the law, by what they can impose as a penalty.
In real life, when you intentionally act in a way that causes someone’s death, that’s a felony—and you end up behind bars for, perhaps, a very long time.
But, not in the free market where CEOs can kill workers and never lose their freedom to make more money.
I’ll say it again and every time: until jail time—long jail time—is part of the price CEOs pay when workers die or get sick at work, the body count of preventable deaths and injuries will continue unabated.
Bureaucracies hum along thanks to mountains of rules and regulations, the vast majority of them unknown to the average person. Especially the really bad ones.
Take Title 42. Huh? Who dat?
Deep inside the Public Health Service Act, Title 42 was used by the Trump Administration to unlawfully expel almost one million people who were seeking asylum at the southern border. The claim: expelling people was being done to prevent COVID-19 from entering into the U.S.—thus, a “public health” issue.
Rubbish, of course—not the least of which the obvious point that if COVID-19-infected traveling people were a threat to the country, millions of white people from other countries should be a threat. By now, of course, we know that the COVID-19 threat—like so many threats to “national security”—was almost entirely internal, from the botching of the response by national and state politicians who declined to lock down the country (like Jacinda Ardern wisely did in New Zealand) to the “freedom-demanding” morons who refused to wear masks or get vaccincated.
But, the expulsion of people using Title 42 is continuing under the Biden Administration, per Oxfam:
The order has already exposed hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and unaccompanied children to risk of serious harm including kidnapping, rape, and murder as they are made to wait in Mexico or deported to their home countries. And not only that, but the Biden Administration has been known to send flights of detainees to distant parts of the border to expel them farther from where they crossed, putting them in more vulnerable situations.
End this atrocity.