Tom Hall: Wouldn’t it be great if this latest Pentagon boondoggle to shovel more taxpayer dollars out the door for worthless crap brought together progressives and tea baggers in opposition to real government waste?
The Military Industrial Complex
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Excessive Military Spending Crushes the American Dream
By
Randy Shaw: Tax Day has passed with little attention to the chief reason U.S. students are overwhelmed by debt, millions are homeless, children go to bed hungry and our public transit infrastructure is being destroyed — the allocation of half of every discretionary dollar to the military.
That’s Where the Money Goes
By
Lawrence Wittner: Although studies have found that the United States ranks 17th among nations in education, 26th in infant mortality, and 37th in life expectancy and overall health, there is no doubt that it ranks first when it comes to war.
King: I Have a Dream. Obama: I Have a Drone.
By
Norman Solomon: After his Inaugural speech in January 2009, Obama has pursued policies that epitomize King’s grim warning in 1967: “When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men.”
How Is Gun Control Like Arms Control?
By
Lawrence Wittner: Even if one leaves aside the difficulty of distinguishing between “good” and “bad” people, there is copious evidence indicating that, all other things being equal, the more access people have to weapons, the more likely they are to use them.
The Other NRA
By
JP Sottile: Unlike the NRA, the Military-Idustrial Complex isn’t limited to just spending money on lobbyists and advertisements and voting guides.
The Small Government Fallacy
By
Charles Hayes: American history shows beyond a doubt that our health as a nation is dependent in large part on a vibrant middle class. Extreme inequality severely weakens our economic foundation.
Beware the Education–Industrial Complex
By
Alan Singer: The Gates-Broad-Walton triumvirate support a range of what they champion as educational “reform,” but their primary interest in each case is to undermine the system of public education by promoting market-based initiatives based on competition, privatization, high-stakes testing, and anti-union activities such as campaigns for “merit pay.”
War Nation: Military Keynesianism’s Iron Grip on Washington
By
John R. Moffett: Our world-spanning military, paid for by American taxpayers, serves the interests of defense contractors and the government officials that funnel the money to them but it does not serve the American taxpayer.
Kansas City, Here It Comes: A New Nuclear Weapons Plant!
By
Should the U.S. government be building more nuclear weapons? Residents of Kansas City, Missouri, don’t appear to think so, for they are engaged in a bitter fight against the construction of a new nuclear weapons plant in their community. The massive plant, 1.5 million square feet in size, is designed to replace an earlier version, [...]
Agent Orange, Gas Attacks: The Iran-Vietnam Connection
By
James Rhodes: During America’s support of Saddam Hussein, over 3,000 tons of chemical agents were used against Iranian military and civilian forces, exposing over one million people, killing over 7,000 outright, and creating over 100,000 severe disabilities.
More Peace Corps, Less Pentagon
By
Sherwood Ross: If the White House took an altruistic approach in foreign affairs — that is, if it rejected greed, exploitation, and war in favor of fair play, charity, and humanitarian assistance — It would find there is strength and dignity in serving others—in building infrastructure, in opening schools and educating, in ministering to the afflicted. That’s the way to win friends and influence people.
How the Military and the Civilian Are Blurring in Washington
By
William Astore: Until Americans turn away from militarism and learn again how to “support our Constitution” more than our troops, until we return to a broader vision of national security that deemphasizes a garrison mentality, we will continue to wound, perhaps mortally, a once great republic.
Militarist Madness
By
Lawrence Wittner: Despite the vast rivers of blood and treasure poured into wars over the centuries, the nations of the world continue to enhance their military might.
America’s “Shoot ‘Em Up, Lock ‘Em Up” Mentality Is Its Undoing
By
David Love: The land of the free is home to only 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. And we spend more than all nations combined on “defense”. We are addicted to shooting em up or locking em up. But we can’t provide healthcare to all.
Confessions of a Minion of the Military-Industrial Complex
By
Jonathan David Farley: How I learned to stop worrying about where my academic research funding came from and love Raytheon
War and Workers
By
Lydia Howell: Whether it’s debt-ridden college graduates working as baristas or small town youth with only fast-food and Wal-Mart as post-high school career options, high unemployment keeps a volunteer military ranks full.
Conflict with the Conflict of Interest
By
Jerry Drucker: There’s nothing coy about the GOP’s chortling copious concepts concerning constant corrupt collaboration created by cunning, conniving, crooked cronies and calculating cohorts, conveniently ignoring the conflict of interest law.
Lies to Power
By
Jerry Drucker: One score and ten years ago the Republican Party brought forth to this nation, a concept conceived in the privatization of government for profit, dedicated to the proposition that large corporations (now persons), special interest groups and lobbyists, can expand the United States wealth for those several entities and the vast eternal warring military-industrial complex.
Watch “Deficit Hawks” Rush to Defend Pentagon Bloat
By
Randy Shaw: The Republican Party and Democratic so-called “deficit hawks” attack any proposed defense cuts as “job killers.” Yet this alliance refused to save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, and have backed tax and spending policies that have cost the nation millions of jobs in recent years.
Defense Secretary Wants Defense Spending Cuts–Really
By
Tina Dupuy: Going largely underreported, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke at the Eisenhower Library (name for the president who coined the term “military-industrial complex”), last week calling for cuts in the Pentagon’s budget. Gates asked, “Does the number of warships we have and are building really put America at risk when the U.S. battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which belong to allies and partners? “
American Empire: How the Military-Industrial Complex Is Warping America’s Values
By
Tim Gatto: Now that corporate control of our elections is out in the open thanks to our Supreme Court, we might as well realize that what we see on our televisions and read in our newspapers is also corporate-controlled. We can still tune into the internet to see world news and different opinions, but I can see that soon even the internet will swallowed up by corporate money.
American Empire: How the Military-Industrial Complex Is Warping America’s Values
By
Tim Gatto: When I watch television news I wonder where the critics were when news content began to become so hollow. When the Supreme Court decided recently that corporations, unions, and special interest groups could give as much as they wished to political campaigns; where were the watchdogs? The reason I ask is because this decision will change the face of government while it effectively removes the people from our political system.
American Empire: How the Military-Industrial Complex Is Warping America’s Values
By
Tim Gatto: The U.S. has brought back the 5th Fleet that will patrol Latin America and the Caribbean. The U.S. has also leased seven military bases in Colombia (Venezuela’s next door neighbor) for a 10-year period. These bases are being promoted as a way of interdicting the supply of cocaine that reaches America. According to the L.A. Times, back in 2003 the U.S. and Columbian governments were successfully eradicating coca plants. We can all see how well that has worked out. Personally, I am very skeptical about America’s resolve in wiping out the coca crop. I am also skeptical about Columbia’s commitment to stopping the flow of cocaine into the United States.
A State of Perpetual War
By
David Love: If we are to have a perpetual war, it must be a war against injustice and deprivation at home and abroad. We need to get our own house in order, rather than demolish and rebuild other nations that did not invite us there. And as far as the so-called terrorism problem is concerned, maybe we should stay out of other folks’ backyards and it will go away.
How to Create Elections That Money Can’t Buy
By
Wayne Williams: Voters are ready for Fair Elections — the elections that money can’t buy. In an October 2009 survey, likely June 2010 voters supported the California Fair Elections Act by a nearly 3-1 margin.
The Oligarchy Wins Again!
By
Something, anything, has to be done at some point to show that the Obama Administration is not just the latest group of good people with good ideas that are absorbed into a system that makes Hamid Karzai look like a clean government activist. The corporate money so clogs the arteries of our body political the whole damn thing is sclerotic, choked off from the life-giving oxygen of democracy.
My Lunch With Drew: K Street Makes Hay Either Way
By
Now that Obama has been in the White House awhile, I asked my friend Drew, a lifelong GOP contributor, to lunch at a seafood restaurant near his K Street office to see how he was managing to get along. “So is your public relations business suffering since the Democrats are in power?” I began, to [...]
PCL offers monthly Open House Events on the 2nd Saturday at 2pm and 3rd Thursday at 6pm. Click here to learn more.
Recent Comments