Have things really gotten that bad? → U.S. government is cruel, despotic, a threat to people → robbing the public and spending irresponsibly → bloated military budget → hiding pork in the military budget

Another collection of links and such:

• “The gloves are coming off gentlemen regarding these detainees” — “Col. Boltz has made it clear that we want these individuals broken.” These quotes from a 17 August 2003 memo “sent by the intelligence staff of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was then commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, to all concerned military intelligence personnel in Iraq.”
• “A pork-hungry Congress has long been with us, of course, but this year, with our armed forces engaged on two major fronts, Congress has pushed the pork in the defense budget to an all-time high, totaling $8.9 billion.”
• Rusting museum of our attempted suicide survives in the desert — Jon Else revisits the nuclear weapons test site at Frenchman Flat: “An enormous Mosler bank vault sits abandoned and forgotten on the dry lake bed of Frenchman Flat, Nev. It is ugly and rusting, a big cookie jar from hell — yet it now exists as one of America’s greatest monuments to clear thinking. ¶ That giant safe is a relic of an Atomic Energy Commission experiment in 1957 (“Response of Protective Vaults to Blast Loading”). Filled with stocks and bonds, cash and insurance policies, it confirmed that our official valuables, contracts and financial instruments could survive nuclear war.… ¶ Today, as we sweat over whether North Korea has four bombs or six, or whether Iran has any at all, remember that in 1957, only 12 years after the Trinity test — the first nuclear explosion in history took place at Alamogordo, N.M., on July 16, 1945 — the United States was manufacturing 10 nuclear bombs per day, 3,000 fission and fusion bombs every year. The largest deployable weapon in our ’57 arsenal was the 5-megaton Mark 21, powerful enough to flatten 400 Hiroshimas (or Fallujahs or Oaklands) at a pop. ¶ Filling that Mosler vault with stocks and bonds in 1957 now seems a surreal gesture of hope. Imagine the bomb’s survivors — a hairless, sterilized post-nuclear Adam and Eve, dry heaving (like the radioactive feral dogs that roamed the deserted streets of Chernobyl) — crawling toward the bank vault in their bloody rags, trying to remember the combination, praying for their Chrysler stock, or Grandpa’s gold watch, or their Prudential personal liability policies.”
• Perhaps you’ve heard that some libertarian-minded sorts are hoping to gather the faithful and make their Gulch in New Hampshire. They may be joined by the town of Killington, which wants to secede from their current state and become a little island of New Hampshire deep inside Vermont. What’s triggering the revolt? Taxes, of course.
• The Christian Science Monitor profiles four Americans who dug themselves huge pits with their credit cards and then dug themselves back out. A companion article gives some advice on how to get out of debt. If you need to get out of the red before you can get below the tax line, you might want to give these articles a look.

In one district after another the weapons industry has bought the incumbent and the voters are unable to dislodge him or her. On really big projects like the B-2 stealth bomber, contracts are placed for pieces of the airplane in all of the 48 continental states to insure that individual members of Congress can be threatened with the loss of jobs in their districts should they ever get the idea that we do not need another weapon of massive destruction. The result is defense budgets of $425 billion per year (plus that extra $75 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, another $20 billion for nuclear weapons, and $200 billion more for veterans and the wounded), leading to the highest governmental deficits in postwar history. It seems likely that only bankruptcy will stop the American imperial juggernaut.

from The Military-Industrial Man
by Chalmers Johnson

Remember that budget that came out a few days ago? You know, the one that was the largest one ever, with a gigantic deficit, that the press kept trying to describe as “spare” and “full of deep cuts” to “rein in spending”?

Well, you probably heard that it included a record-breaking military warchest (and “In another sign of the times, financing for the apprehension of Army deserters would double”). And maybe you heard that a lot of things you might think of as belonging to the military — like, say, nuclear weapons development — aren’t even part of the Defense Department allotment but are snuck into other parts of the budget (the Department of Energy gets the A-bomb funding, for instance).

But even that wasn’t good enough. This week, the Dubya Squad asked Congress for an additional $82 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for the greater glory of American foreign policy (you know, like payoffs for foreign governments that backed the Iraq War fiasco).

It is one of the largest emergency requests in recent U.S. history, coming on top of $25 billion already allocated for the war in 2005. The sum exceeds the president’s combined 2006 funding request for the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and Housing and Urban Development, and it is nearly five times the savings Bush is seeking next year in cuts to discretionary spending.

Why didn’t they include this money in the budget they just released? Well, you know, these wars are big, unpredictable, exceptional things. Huge asterices that get in the way of reasonable budgeting. Besides, the rules on these supplemental warbucks packages are faster and looser and the bills get much less Congressional scrutiny… which means, of course, that they’ll try to sneak in as much as they can.

There’s not much in the way of specifics in any part of this document — no breakdown, beyond a billion or so, of that $17.3 billion for Army operations and maintenance, or of $5.6 billion for Air Force operations and maintenance, or of $990 million for Army military construction in Iraq. The list could go on and on.

This is one reason the administration is loading so much military spending in a supplemental instead of the regular budget. The budget is scrutinized; supplementals aren’t.… ¶ [T]his supplemental includes quite a lot of money for items that have nothing to do with the costs of war in Iraq.…

Finally, there is the slush fund for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. When that $87 billion supplemental came out in the fall of 2003, I noted provisions giving Rumsfeld the authority to move around $9.3 billion — 11 percent of the total amount — from one account to another at his discretion. This time, I’ve spotted between $7.5 billion and $11 billion (10 percent to 14 percent), depending on how it’s counted.

I wonder what would have happened if John Kerry had won in November — would he stop this military gluttony?

Sen. John Kerry called for tens of thousands of new U.S. troops on Monday and said the country should adopt a series of initiatives to support military families.

Kerry said he plans to file legislation to increase the size of the military by 40,000 — 30,000 in the Army and 10,000 in the Marines — to help support the country’s efforts in Iraq and the larger war on terrorism.…

“The war in Iraq proved that a lightning-fast, high-tech force can smash an opposing army and drive to Baghdad in three weeks. But there is no substitute for a well-trained and equipped infantry to win the peace,” Kerry said in remarks delivered Monday at an annual ceremony sponsored by the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester.

At Counterpunch, Winslow Wheeler notes that lots of things are being snuck in to the latest, $92.2 billion supplemental funding request for the wars.

Wheeler has done his homework, and in recent months he has written up an informative series of articles on Pentagon pork (and a little Googling will get you even more):

• Inside the Pork Shop: The Defense Budget and Congressional Earmarks (30 January 2006)
• Pentagon Pork: What is It? Who Cooks It Up? (31 January 2006)
• Pentagon Pork: How to Eliminate It (2 February 2006)

Ah, pork. Congress has to spend that money you worked so hard for somehow. Might as well be so a big concrete bull can get its ass spackled.

Some links you might find interesting:

• Per Bylund promotes counter-economics in his essay Creating a Calculated Revolution — In Your Neighborhood.
• War tax resister and Gandhian Jeff Knaebel writes that We Must Build Our Own Dawn.
• Here’s a little peek at how America’s war profiteers crow to their stockholders about their recent fortunes.
• And The New Yorker notes that much of these fortunes are made by shovelling tax dollars at useless pork projects: “Not only are we buying stuff we don’t need; we’re buying it badly. Astonishing budget overruns are routine.”
• Huck Gutman notices that the government is Lying about the Ruinous Cost of the War in Iraq: “In 1951, at the start of the Korean War, supplemental appropriations comprised almost three quarters of all appropriations. By the next year, supplementals were under 3 percent. By the third year of the Korean War, supplementals were down to zero. ¶ In 1966, the first year of the escalation in Vietnam, supplemental appropriations were seven times as high as regular appropriations. The next year, they were roughly equal. In 1968 supplementals were less than a fifth of regular appropriations, and by 1970 they were down to zero.” In contrast, 90% of the cost of today’s wars are being paid for off-budget.
• Ned Netterville, an “unlicensed disciple of Jesus,” thinks he’s figured out that Jesus’s foes were right when they accused him of promoting tax resistance.
• Aaron Russo’s constitutionalist tax protester propaganda film “America: Freedom to Fascism” has picked up a couple of critical reviews from news.com and The New York Times.
• You can listen to audio versions of Thoreau’s Walden, Cecile Andrews’s The Circle of Simplicity, and other works from the voluntary simplicity movement at SimpleRadio on simpleliving.net.

Some news-in-brief:

• The New York Times today notes that there seems to be an uptick in the number of expatriate Americans who are renouncing their citizenship in order to stop being on the hook for taxes to the U.S. — “the only developed country that taxes its citizens while they live overseas.”
• Foreign Policy In Focus looks at how the U.S. defense budget could be cut by $62 billion in waste and pork without putting a dent in the ability of our nation to slaughter as many foreigners as is our wont.
• The Alameda Times-Star reports on upscale Berkeley dumpster-diving: “I’m not hungry,” Cynthia Powell said. “I do it because it’s good food, it’s free and it’s conservation.”

A garden of miscellany:

• Christina Cowger of “North Carolina Stop Torture Now” talks about the various ways her group is fighting at the grass-roots level to expose and fight the domestic enablers of the “extraordinary rendition” program — from Air America-like front companies like “Aero Contractors” to subsidiaries of Boeing.
• Reuters reports that the Democrats in the House of Representatives plan to see Dubya’s $93 billion supplemental request for war funding, and then raise him $5 billion in additional military spending. And then, they’ll get to put frosting on top.
• Speaking of pork… where do you think all that “Homeland Security” spending has been going?
• Thanks to MetaFilter: Some links on “Possum Living”: “How To Live Well Without a Job… building a $100 Log Cabin… a geodesic dome out of cardboard… handbook for cob building… cheap solar power system… stocking up on food…” and more.
• A “white powdery substance” in an envelope shut down the IRS mail room in Fresno last month. And a Connecticut tax collector was run over by a vehicle he was trying to impound.
• The Coalition to Get the Stop Funding the War Coalition to Stop Funding the War put out a press release: “We have had enough of waiting around for politicians to take action. If those of us in the peace movement use our own power instead of begging officials to use theirs, we might actually stop this war and prevent the next one too. It’s way past time for those of us who say we stand for peace to put our money where our mouths are. Don’t pretend you can oppose the war with your rhetoric while you’re paying for it with every paycheck. The power of the purse begins with us — let’s cut the war funding at the source.”
• And, surprise, surprise, many of the people who don’t pay their taxes in the United States are the same people who get their paychecks from the federal government. “Nearly half a million current and former U.S. federal employees have not filed tax returns. Collectively, they owe almost $3 billion.”
• The New York Times has seen the new BBC America series Robin Hood and declares it Tax Policy Decreed by Merry Men in Tights.

Link dump time:

• Ron Jacobs reports on The Showdown at Port Tacoma where anti-war activists are using direct action techniques to try to impede the shipment of war materiel to U.S. forces in the Middle East.
• WhatDoIDoWithThis.com looks like it’s trying to be an industrial-grade recycled goods swap meet with an emphasis on construction supplies — might be worth checking out if you’re building or refurbishing.
• The Tax Foundation points out a study that seems to support the hypothesis that as a tax system becomes more efficient, the savings don’t get passed on to the taxpayer, but to the government. In other words, if the government can reduce the difficulty and annoyance involved in taxpaying, it can compensate by raising the tax rate!
• The Senate Budget Committee has approved a federal budget that increases the IRS enforcement budget to $7.2 billion, well above the already-increased $4.93 billion Dubya requested. The budget would also change the rules about how that enforcement budget is accounted. The IRS has complained that increases to its enforcement budget are unfairly categorized as government expenditures even though they result in a positive “return on investment” to the government. Under the newly-proposed rules, the government could break its discretionary spending limit to provide more money for enforcement.
• There’s a new war tax resistance blogger on-line. Welcome to the web, Paul Sheldon of Peaceful Ways.
• Unless the “Stop Funding the War in Iraq” rally on Monday managed to change Pelosi’s mind, the Iraq War Supplemental Funding, Peanut Storage, Spinach Surplus, Citrus Farmer Bonanza, Food and Drug Administration Building Conversion, Shrimp and Menhaden Industry Booster, Let’s Have Another Moon Shot, Increase the House of Representatives Payroll, and Bailout State Health Insurance Boondoggles for the Children Act should come to a vote any time now.
• Steven Landsburg, in Slate reports on the increase in leisure time among Americans over the last 40 years — particularly among people at the poorer end of the economic scale.

Indefatigable military budget watchdog Winslow T. Wheeler takes a look at the latest Iraq War “emergency supplemental” and wonders what ever happened to the new Democratic Congress’s pledge to eliminate porkful earmarks?

I was alerted by a former colleague from the Senate staff that page 238 of the committee report… contains the following statement:

“EARMARKS: Pursuant to clause 9 of rule ⅩⅪ of the Rules of the House of Representatives, this bill, as reported, contains no congressional earmarks, limited tax benefits, or limited tariff benefits as defined in clause 9(d), 9(e), or 9(f) of rule ⅩⅪ.” (Emphasis added.)

Wow! $21.3 billion in add-ons and not a single earmark! Now, that’s reform! Right?

Not exactly, check out page 291 for the $25 million added for spinach producers. And, page 216 for $60 million for salmon fisheries. And, page 214 for $5 million for aquaculture. Other tables in the report appear to contain many more. (I’ll get back to you on that. It looks like a “target rich environment.”)

Not earmarks? You could have fooled me. Having worked the congressional pork system for most of the 31 years I was on Capitol Hill, they sure smell, wallow, and oink like earmarks to me.

Friday link dump:

• Ben Patrick Johnson covers war tax resistance by way of his own tax resisting parents at the BPJ Video Blog. He interviews his dad, Charles Johnson, about his resistance: the hows and whys and what-happened-nexts. I had no idea video blogs were this polished. It looks like some sort of cable news segment.
• Ismael Hossein-Zadeh at Counterpunch looks at U.S. military spending and sees a ginormous corporate welfare program.
• Tony Campolo at beliefnet also has a take on the “Render Unto Caesar” koan.
• Prisoner Evangelos Dimitros Soukas testified before Congress a while back about how he stole thousands of dollars from the IRS that the IRS had stolen from taxpayers. So much for honor among thieves.
• Muslim cleric Ahmed Salam is under fire in The Netherlands for telling his followers: “Do harm to the Dutch state: don’t pay taxes.”

A few miscellaneous things that caught my eye recently:

• Ask the Advisor has a good run-down of retirement plan options for the self-employed. It gives the rundown of Simplified Employee Pensions, Keough Plans, Roth and Spousal IRAs, and another variety of account I only learned about recently: the “solo 401(k)” — here’s where I first learned about those.
• Those of you who enjoyed the flashback to the Yugoslav genocide of the 1990s that I treated you to during my recent review of Evil and Human Agency may be interested to know that Serbian vampire hunters drove a three-foot-long wooden stake through the heart of the corpse of Slobodan Milosevic in order to prevent him from returning to life and haunting the country.
• Among the IRS’s many tangential tasks is terrorist-hunting. That is, they use “a manual process and a limited terrorist watch list to identify instances in which charitable and other nonprofit organizations may be linked to individuals and/or entities whose assets have been frozen because they have committed or pose a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism.” The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration checked in to see how well this was going. Not too well, as it turns out. They haven’t spotted a terrorist yet, though their methods seem sound: Max Baucus, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, notes that “IRS personnel told TIGTA that they primarily look for ‘Middle Eastern sounding names’ when considering which tax filings to flag for further review.”
• Speaking of names worthy of further review, a few more details have leaked about the revoltingly cozy relationship between the Blairs & Bushes of the world and their counterparts in the Saudi monarchy. In short: “$100 billion a year flows into Saudi Arabia’s coffers to pay for their oil. The US and UK make sure that, rather than the money staying there and being spent for the people of Saudi Arabia, it returns to us to pay for weapons Saudi Arabia doesn’t need. To make this happen, arms dealers bribe the Saudi royal family with hundreds of millions of dollars, all with the knowledge and approval of the British government.”
• “In the first 4½ months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to U.S. Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press.”
• Meanwhile… “[P]residential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are, at present, competing with each other in their calls for the expansion of the Armed Forces. Both are supporting manpower increases in the range of 80,000 to 100,000 troops, mostly for the Army and the Marines.… This atop a military that has already grown to gargantuan levels, and is spending like there’s no tomorrow (which strikes me as one of those self-fulfilling prophecies):

  How astonishing are the budgetary numbers? Consider the trajectory of U.S. defense spending over the last nearly two decades. From the end of the Cold War into the mid-1990s, defense spending actually fell significantly. In constant 1996 dollars, the Pentagon’s budget dropped from a peacetime high of $376 billion, at the end of President Ronald Reagan’s military buildup in 1989, to a low of $265 billion in 1996. (That compares to post-World War Ⅱ wartime highs of $437 billion in 1953, during the Korean War, and $388 billion in 1968, at the peak of the War in Vietnam.) After the Soviet empire peacefully disintegrated, the 1990s decline wasn’t exactly the hoped-for “peace dividend,” but it wasn’t peanuts either.

  However, since September 12^th, 2001, defense spending has simply exploded. For 2008, the Bush administration is requesting a staggering $650 billion, compared to the already staggering $400 billion the Pentagon collected in 2001. Even subtracting the costs of the ongoing “Global War on Terrorism” — which is what the White House likes to call its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — for FY 2008, the Pentagon will still spend $510 billion. In other words, even without the President’s two wars, defense spending will have nearly doubled since the mid-1990s.

In other news:

• David Weigel, at Reason, notes that while Congress is quibbling about earmarks, the defense and war appropriations bills have become pork troughs like no others. And the newly-Democratic Congress is keeping the troughs good and full: Hawks and Hogs: Why no one dares attack the waste in defense spending.
• And the New York Times features freegans: Not Buying It.