For many of the roughly 600,000 Americans to be released from prison this year, the best predictor of whether they become law-abiding citizens is their ability to land a job. Unfortunately, state licensing laws often shut the formerly incarcerated out of work. While there is wide variance in licensing requirements across the states, more than 10,000 individual regulations prohibit people with criminal records from working in dozens of professions.
Some of the restrictions make sense. A lot don’t, writes Reason‘s Eric Boehm.
Since Donald Trump took office as US president, a new cottage industry in rational theories of his seemingly irrational behavior has developed. On one issue, however, no amount of theorizing has made sense of Trump: his treatment of America’s oldest and most reliable ally.
Since Donald Trump became US president in January 2017, his conduct has been astonishingly erratic, but his policies have been more consistent than foreseen by most observers. Trump’s volatility has been disconcerting, but on the whole he has acted in accordance with promises made on the campaign trail and with views held long before anyone considered his election possible. Accordingly, a new cottage industry in rational theories of Trump’s seemingly irrational behavior has developed.
The latest challenge is to make sense of his stance towards Europe. At a rally on June 28, he said: “We love the countries of the European Union. But the European Union, of course, was set up to take advantage of the United States. And you know what, we can’t let that happen.” During his recent trip to the continent, he called the EU “a foe” and said it was “possibly as bad as China.” Regarding Brexit, he declared that British Prime Minister Theresa May should have “sued” the EU. Then came the truce, on July 25: Trump and Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, agreed to work jointly on an agenda of free trade and World Trade Organization reform.
So it seems we are friends again – or perhaps just resting before the dispute resumes. But the deeper question remains: Why has Trump repeatedly attacked America’s oldest and most reliable ally? Why does he seem to despise the EU so deeply? Why should the US try to undermine Europe, rather than seeking closer cooperation to protect its economic and geopolitical interests?
Trump’s approach is particularly striking given that China’s rapid emergence as a strategic rival is America’s main national security issue. Contrary to earlier hopes, China is converging with the West neither politically nor economically, because the role of the state and the ruling party in coordinating activities remains far greater. Geopolitically, China has been actively building clienteles, most visibly through its Belt and Road Initiative, and it intends to “foster a new type of international relations” that departs from the model promoted by the US in the twentieth century. Militarily, it has embarked on a significant build-up. Obviously, China, not Europe, is the number one challenge to US world supremacy.
Former President Barack Obama’s China strategy combined dialogue and pressure. He started building two mega-economic alliances that excluded China and Russia: the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 11 other Pacific Rim countries, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union. But Trump withdrew the US from the TPP and killed the TTIP before it was born. Then he opened a trade rift with the EU. And he has attacked both the EU and its member states, especially Germany.
There are three possible explanations.
One is Trump’s peculiar obsession with bilateral trade balances. According to this view, Trump regards Germany, the rest of Europe, and China as equally threatening competitors. Nobody else thinks this makes economic sense. And the only result he can expect from this strategy is to hurt and weaken the long-standing Atlantic partnership. But he has been complaining about Mercedes cars in the streets of New York City at least since the 1990s.
A second explanation is that Trump wants to prevent the EU from positioning itself as the third player in a trilateral game. If the US intends to turn the relationship with China into a bilateral power struggle, there are good reasons for it to regard the EU as an obstacle. Because it is itself governed by law, the EU is bound to oppose a purely transactional approach to international relations. And a united Europe that commands access to the world’s largest market is not a trivial player. But after the EU has been undermined, if not disbanded, weak and divided European countries would have no choice but to rally behind the US.
Finally, a more political reading of Trump’s behavior is that he is seeking regime change in Europe. In fact, he has not disguised his belief that Europe is “losing its culture” because it has let immigration “change its fabric.” And Stephen Bannon, his former chief strategist, has announced that he will spend half of his time in Europe to help build an alliance of nationalist parties and win a majority in next May’s European Parliament elections.
A few weeks ago, only the first reading looked plausible. The other two could be dismissed as fantasies inspired by conspiracy theories. No US president had ever presented the EU as a plot to weaken the US. Indeed, all of Trump’s postwar predecessors would have recoiled in horror at the idea of the EU’s dissolution. But the US president has gone too far for Europe to dismiss the more dismal scenarios.
For the EU, this is a pivotal moment. In the 1950s, it was launched beneath the US security umbrella and with America’s blessing. Since then, it has been built as a geopolitical experiment conducted under US protection and in the context of a US-led international system. For this reason, its external dimensions – economically, diplomatically, or regarding security – have always come second to its internal development.
What the recent crisis signifies is that this is no longer true. Europe must now define its strategic stance vis-à-vis a more distant and possibly hostile US, and vis-à-vis rising powers that have no reason to be kind to it. It must stand for its values. And it must urgently decide what it intends to do regarding its security and defense, its neighborhood policy, and its border protection. This is an acid test.
Economically, the EU still has the potential to be a global player. The size of its market, the strength of its major companies, a unified trade policy, a common regulatory policy, a single competition authority, and a currency that is second only to the dollar are major assets. It could – and should – use them to push for a revamping of international relations that addresses legitimate US grievances vis-à-vis China and legitimate Chinese concerns over its international role. Europe has played a leading role in fighting climate change; it could do the same for trade, investment, or finance.
Europe’s main problem is political, not economic. The challenge it is facing comes at a moment when it is divided between island and continent, North and South, and East and West. And the questions posed are fundamental: What defines a nation? Who is in charge of borders? Who guarantees security? Is the EU based on shared values or on the pure calculus of national interests?
If the EU fails to define itself for a world that is fundamentally different from that of ten years ago, it probably will not survive as a meaningful institution. If it does, however, it may regain the sense of purpose and legitimacy in the eyes of citizens that years of economic and political setbacks have eroded.
Recently I began to search for a used GMC Yukon SUV. My goal was to bolt on an aftermarket supercharger. It wasn’t necessarily a sensible plan, but it did seem like a pretty cool idea. Thanks to a whopping 6.2-liter V8 engine, a Whipple supercharger would make that vehicle churn out nearly 600 horsepower of good ol’ American tire-shredding glory.
I already knew about California’s draconian emissions regulations, which view the prospect of modifying an internal combustion engine with such hostility that they must have been drafted by electric car impressario Elon Musk himself. And I was prepared to dodge and weave around those requirements. But first I needed to figure out whether that much aftermarket fury would violate General Motors’ factory warranty, writes Declan McCullagh.
Gary Johnson was a very popular two-term governor of New Mexico as a Republican from 1995-2003, and got a startlingly good, for a Libertarian, 9.3 percent of its presidential vote in 2016.
While he said in 2016 his politician days are over, the Associated Press reported Friday on rumors that had been swirling in Libertarian circles for weeks, though not yet fully confirmed from Johnson, that he plans to step into the Libertarian Party’s nomination for Senate this year from New Mexico.
That could happen if, as speculated, current holder of the slot Aubrey Dunn (a former Republican who is currently commissioner of public lands in the state) steps down.
Ron Nielson, Johnson’s longtime campaign manager, described Johnson to A.P. as “strongly considering” running if Dunn indeed drops out, but that Johnson “doesn’t want to get into a race he can’t win.”
Democratic incumbent Sen. Martin Heinrich is currently considered an easy front-runner over Republican Mick Rich for the Senate seat. Hillary Clinton won the state in 2016.
Here is a video from earlier this month with Nielson and Johnson teasing the idea of a return to politics for Gary, in which Johnson says that what Libertarians need is actual success at the ballot box, that there’s a “need to get someone elected.” Johnson believes “if you had a true independent Libertarian in office that was successful, that would become the template” for further L.P. success.
He admits he’s said no to future runs, but now he’s “not ruling anything out because we need a success story. Maybe in that context I might play a role.”
Further news and analysis on this developing story to come.
As reported earlier this month, the Justice Department wanted to settle a lawsuit with Defense Distributed and the Second Amendment Foundation over the government’s many years of legally barring the former from hosting and distributing certain computer files that can help instruct devices to manufacture weapons at home. Defense Distributed believed, among other things, that their First Amendment rights were implicated by being legally prohibited from spreading the speech within those files. The government’s official announcement that it was lifting its prohibition of the distribution of such files (the government originally argued spreading the files constituted illegal munitions export, essentially) was supposed to happen today.
Panicked, a trio of gun-control interests (Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety, and GiffordsPAC) tried to muscle in on the lawsuit at the very last minute and prevent the settlement from going into effect. Friday, after a hearing before Judge Robert Pitman in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, their attempt failed, the settlement went into effect, the lawsuit is over, and the files are being freely distributed.
Cody Wilson, the founder of Defense Distributed and maker of the first usable 3D printed plastic gun, explained in a phone interview Friday evening how his opponents tried their legal maneuver in the middle of the night while everyone’s asleep on Wednesday, a clearly “vexatious” attempt to interfere between the two relevant parties that had no legal basis. Given the meaning of his victory for their gun control cause (Wilson thinks the technologies of home gun making via computer instruction will be the death knell of meaningful gun control), “I don’t even blame them.”
The Brady Center and their partners, Wilson thinks, were just hoping to stall resolution of the settlement and “kill us with paperwork and keep us in court” for possibly years longer. “The Judge saw through everything, is the long and short of it” Wilson says. The executive branch, Wilson says, “gets to decide on national security prerogatives” and in a sense Wilson says his side was being forced to defend the arguments of his ostensible legal opponents in the federal government, “which is that the courts can’t review” the decision to let the files be distributed.
“The files are being published,” Wilson says.
While the years of legal fights between him and the federal government are over, Wilson says the state of New Jersey threatened him this week with a lawsuit over his distribution of gun-making files. New Jersey’s Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal sent Wilson a letter which read in part that “Defense Distributed’s plans to allow anyone with a 3D printer to download a code and create a fully operational gun directly threatens the public safety of New Jersey’s residents.”
Then, making one of Defense Distributed’s core legal points in this whole lawsuit for them, Grewal complained that “Posting this material online is no different than driving to New Jersey and handing out hard-copy files on any street corner.” Indeed, as Wilson has long argued, the information he wanted to distribute should be protected under the First Amendment, just as if he were printing it, as indeed books or instructional pamphlets about gunsmithing already are.
Josh Blackman, a lawyer on Defense Distributed’s side who helped argue this case before Judge Pitman on Friday, says that the attempted intervenors very last minute attempt to throw a spanner in the works required the Defense Distributed team to write over 60 pages of briefs in less than 24 hours. The motions from the three gun control groups were filed very late in the evening on Wednesday, seeking a temporary restraining order on the government to stop them from settling with Defense Distributed.
A hearing was swiftly set up in Austin, Texas, Friday and “after an hour the judge announced from the bench that he’d denied the motion to intervene.” Thus, the settlement went into effect “and the case is closed.” The gun control groups did not bother trying to appeal the judge’s decision and “now there is nothing left to intervene in. They were intervening to prevent the settlement” but the settlement has now gone into effect.
“The important thing to understand is that Brady has no interest here,” Blackman says. “If the government wants to issue a license and thinks its consistent with national security, they can do that.” The gun control groups “suggested Trump is abdicating his role and capitulating on an important issue of national security, and it’s rubbish.” In general when it comes to the Second Amendment, Blackman says, “Trump is taking the same position Obama took.” The change here has nothing to do with the Second Amendment, and is just a matter of shifting policies and responsibilities over ITAR, as explained further below.
As explained in the memorandums of opposition Blackman and his team were forced to produce at such great speed, under existing precedent Brady and the other groups would have to prove the government’s choice to settle “significantly and ‘perceptibly impaired’ the organization’s ability to provide its ‘activities.'” which they failed to do. (Their claim, roughly, was that if the gun-making files were more readily legally available, they’d have to spend more money on their gun control activities.) The suing gun control groups “cannot state a…claim as a means to enjoin an action that hasn’t even happened yet, and in which…they have not yet diverted any resources. There is no injury in fact.”
Further, Blackman and his team (which also included Matt Goldstein and Second Amendment superlawyer Alan Gura) explain in their briefs, the alleged injury Brady and the others imagined from legal ability to distribute those files cannot reasonably be placed on any action of Defense Distributed; their “parade of horribles is premised on a false perception of reality: so long as the government builds a virtual wall around the Plaintiffs [Defense Distributed], criminals and terrorists will be unable to 3D-print firearms. Nonsense.” It points out that such files were, despite the government’s threats to Wilson and his team, as available as could be.
Further, the specifics of the export control laws under which Wilson was being restrained are such that “there is no judicial review of the decision to grant, or not grant a license. The Groups injury cannot be remedied in this Court…The Groups have failed to explain, or perhaps failed to recognize, that the decision to grant the Plaintiffs a license is immune from judicial review. Their purported injury cannot be redressed by an injunction.”
One of the points Brady and the other groups try to make would, if taken seriously, have breathtaking implications, the brief points out:
they state, without equivocation, that the settlement will result in a “direct[] threat.” The claim is breathtaking. Federal courts cannot allow individuals to challenge the Executive’s diplomatic and foreign policy decisions on grounds that such decisions harm their personal security. One can predict an avalanche of citizen lawsuits targeting every foreign arms sale, the “nuclear deals” with Iran and North Korea, decisions to impose or lift embargos, decisions to meet or not meet with foreign leaders or participate or abstain from international organizations, and so on. These concerns may all be legitimate, but they are not a ticket to federal court.
The briefs also touch on the problems associated with Brady et al’s last minute attempt to intervene:
The Plaintiffs have been silenced for nearly six years. Litigation-by-ambush will not force us to consent to an additional moment of silence. Instead, counsel for Plaintiffs stayed up all night preparing these urgent pleadings, and traveled on short notice to attend the hearing…nothing bars them from filing their (meritless) lawsuit against the Government. Indeed, the Plaintiffs are not even named as parties in the groups’ proposed complaint…. to the extent the groups claim that only their intervention could stop the files’ publication, that proverbial ship has long ago sailed out the previously open barn doors with the published files, which just about everyone on the Internet continues to be free to publish without any governmental interference—everyone, that is, except the Plaintiffs.
The brief concludes addressing theories that this settlement was reached because of some sort of sinister pro-gun agenda on the part of the Trump administration while explaining the legal changes overtaking export control law enforcement that were in play:
While this case was being litigated, the Obama and Trump Administrations have engaged in a sophisticated and detailed plan to transition the regulation of certain technical data from the jurisdiction of the State Department to the jurisdiction of the Commerce Department. And, in May 2018, the State Department announced its plan to amend ITAR to that effect. That shift placed the Department of Justice in an odd position: the Plaintiffs, and the Plaintiffs alone, would still be litigating against a soon-to-be-repealed State Department regime….Reasonably, the Plaintiffs and Defendants reached a settlement agreement. It’s that simple. In today’s rancorous culture, it is unfortunate that friends of the court have charged the federal government with bad faith, based on wild speculation.
As a separate filing regarding Friday’s hearing elaborated, the above jurisdictional move regarding ITAR means “Department of Commerce Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”)….will require licenses for exports of firearms, [but] the EAR does not impose a prior restraint on so-called “technical data”—that is, public speech.”
That the files Wilson wanted to distribute, and was uniquely prohibited from doing, constitute speech and not munitions export was the core of his long legal fight, a fight that’s now over.
The article is long but very important and is worth a careful read. It shows that the military/security complex has woven itself so tightly into the American social, economic, and political fabric as to be untouchable. President Trump is an extremely brave or foolhardy person to take on this most powerful and pervasive of all US institutions by trying to normalize US relations with Russia, chosen by the military/security complex as the “enemy” that justifies its enormous budget and power.
In 1961 President Eisenhower in his last public address to the American people warned us about the danger to democracy and accountable government presented by the military/industrial complex.
You can imagine how much stronger the complex is 57 years later after decades of Cold War with the Soviet Union.
The Russian government, Russian media, and Russian people desperately need to comprehend how powerful the US military/security complex is and how it is woven into the fabric of America. No amount of diplomacy by Lavrov and masterful chess playing by Putin can possibly shake the control over the United States exercised by the military/security complex.
Professor Roelofs has done a good deed for the American people and for the world in assembling such extensive information documenting the penetration into every aspect of American life of the military/security complex. It is a delusion that a mere President of the United States can bring such a powerful, all-pervasive institution to heel and deprive it of its necessary enemy.
For many people the “military-industrial-complex (MIC)” brings to mind the top twenty weapons manufacturers. President Dwight Eisenhower, who warned about it in 1961, wanted to call it the military- industrial-congressional-complex, but decided it was not prudent to do so. Today it might well be called the military-industrial-congressional-almost-everything-complex. Most departments and levels of government, businesses, and also many charities, social service, environmental, and cultural organizations, are deeply embedded with the military.
The weapons industry may be spearheading the military budget and military operations; it is aided immensely by the cheering or silence of citizens and their representatives. Here we will provide some likely reasons for that assent. We will use the common typology of three national sectors: government, business, and nonprofit, with varying amounts of interaction among them. This does not preclude, though it masks somewhat, the proposition that government is the executive of the ruling class.
Every kind of business figures in the Department of Defense (DoD) budget. Lockheed is currently the largest contractor in the weapons business. It connects with the worldwide MIC by sourcing parts, for example, for the F-35 fighter plane, from many countries. This helps a lot to market the weapon, despite its low opinion among military experts as well as anti-military critics. Lockheed also does civilian work, which enhances its aura while it spreads its values.
Other types of businesses have enormous multi-year contracts—in the billions. This despite the constitutional proviso that Congress not appropriate military funds for more than a two year term. Notable are the construction companies, such as Fluor, KBR, Bechtel, and Hensel Phelps. These build huge bases, often with high tech surveillance or operational capacity, in the US and abroad, where they hire locals or commonly, third country nationals to carry out the work. There are also billion-funded contractors in communications technology, intelligence analysis, transportation, logistics, food, and clothing. “Contracting out” is our modern military way; this also spreads its influence far and wide.
Medium, small, and tiny businesses dangle from the “Christmas tree” of the Pentagon, promoting popular cheering or silence on the military budget. These include special set-asides for minority-owned and small businesses. A Black-owned small business, KEPA-TCI (construction), received contracts for $356 million. [Data comes from several sources, available free on the internet: websites, tax forms, and annual reports of organizations; usaspending.gov (USA) and governmentcontractswon.com (GCW).] Major corporations of all types serving our services have been excellently described in Nick Turse’s The Complex. Really small and tiny businesses are drawn into the system: landscapers, dry cleaners, child care centers, and Come- Bye Goose Control of Maryland.
Among the businesses with large DoD contracts are book publishers: McGraw-Hill, Greenwood, Scholastic, Pearson, Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt, Elsevier, and others. Rarely have the biases in this industry, in fiction, nonfiction, and textbook offerings, been examined. Yet the influences on this small but significant population, the reading public, and the larger schooled contingent, may help explain the silence of the literate crowd and college graduates.
Much of what is left of organized industrial labor is in weapons manufacture. Its PACs fund the few “progressive” candidates in our political system, who tend to be silent about war and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Unlike other factories, the armaments makers do not suddenly move overseas, although they do use subcontractors worldwide.
Military spending may be only about 6% of the GDP, yet it has great impact because:
1. it is a growing sector;
2. it is recession-proof;
3. it does not rely on consumer whims;
4. it is the only thing prospering in many areas; and
5. the “multiplier” effect: subcontracting, corporate purchasing, and employee spending perk up the regional economy.
It is ideally suited to Keynesian remedies, because of its ready destruction and obsolescence: what isn’t consumed in warfare, rusted out, or donated to our friends still needs to be replaced by the slightly more lethal thing. Many of our science graduates work for the military directly or its contractee labs concocting these.
The military’s unbeatable weapon is jobs, and all members of Congress, and state and local officials, are aware of this. It is where well-paying jobs are found for mechanics, scientists, and engineers; even janitorial workers do well in these taxpayer-rich firms. Weaponry is also important in our manufactured goods exports as our allies are required to have equipment that meets our specifications. Governments, rebels, terrorists, pirates, and gangsters all fancy our high tech and low tech lethal devices.
Our military economy also yields a high return on investments. These benefit not only corporate executives and other rich, but many middle and working class folk, as well as churches, benevolent, and cultural organizations. The lucrative mutual funds offered by Vanguard, Fidelity, and others are heavily invested in the weapons manufacturers.
Individual investors may not know what is in their fund’s portfolios; the institutions usually know. A current project of World Beyond War (https://worldbeyondwar.org/divest) advocates divestment of military stocks in the pension funds of state and local government workers: police, firepersons, teachers, and other civil servants. Researchers are making a state-by-state analysis of these funds. Among the findings are the extensive military stock holdings of CALpers, the California Public Employees Retirement System (the sixth largest pension fund on earth), the California State Teachers Retirement System, the New York State Teachers Retirement System, the New York City Employees Retirement System, and the New York State Common Retirement Fund (state and local employees). Amazing! the New York City teachers were once the proud parents of red diaper babies.
The governmental side of the MIC complex goes far beyond the DoD. In the executive branch, Departments of State, Homeland Security, Energy, Veterans Affairs, Interior; and CIA, AID, FBI, NASA, and other agencies; are permeated with military projects and goals. Even the Department of Agriculture has a joint program with the DoD to “restore” Afghanistan by creating a dairy cattle industry. No matter that the cattle and their feed must be imported, cattle cannot graze in the terrain as the native sheep and goats can, there is no adequate transportation or refrigeration, and the Afghans don’t normally drink milk. The native animals provide yogurt, butter, and wool, and graze on the rugged slopes, but that is all so un-American.
Congress is a firm ally of the military. Campaign contributions from contractor PACs are generous, and lobbying is extensive. So also are the outlays of financial institutions, which are heavily invested in the MIC. Congresspeople have significant shares of weapons industry stocks. To clinch the deal, members of Congress (and also state and local lawmakers) are well aware of the economic importance of military con- tracts in their states and districts.
Military bases, inside the US as well as worldwide, are an economic hub for communities. The DoD Base Structure Report for Fy2015 lists more than 4,000 domestic properties. Some are bombing ranges or re- cruiting stations; perhaps 400 are bases with a major impact on their localities. The largest of these, Fort Bragg, NC, is a city unto itself, and a cultural influence as well as economic asset to its region, as so well described by Catherine Lutz in Homefront. California has about 40 bases (https://militarybases.com/by– state/), and is home to major weapons makers as well. Officers generally live off-base, so the real estate, restaurant, retail, auto repair, hotel and other businesses are prospering. Local civilians find employment on bases. Closed, unconvertible installations are sometimes tourist attractions, such as the unlikeliest of all vacation spots, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
DoD has direct contracts and grants with state and local governments. These are for various projects and services, including large amounts to fund the National Guard. The Army Engineers maintain swimming holes and parks, and police forces get a deal on Bearcats. JROTC programs nationwide provide funding for public schools, and even more for those that are public school military academies; six are in Chicago.
National, state and local governments are well covered by the “insecurity blanket;” the nonprofit sector is not neglected. Nevertheless, it does harbor the very small group of anti-war organizations, such as Iraq Veterans Against War, Veterans for Peace, World Beyond War, Peace Action, Union of Concerned Scientists, Center for International Policy, Catholic Worker, Answer Coalition, and others. Yet unlike the Vietnam War period there is no vocal group of religious leaders protesting war, and the few students who are politically active are more concerned with other issues.
Nonprofit organizations and institutions are involved several ways. Some are obviously partners of the MIC: Boy and Girl Scouts, Red Cross, veterans’ charities, military think-tanks such as RAND and Institute for Defense Analysis, establishment think-tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, Atlantic Council, and the flagship of US world projection, the Council on Foreign Relations. There are also many international nongovernmental organizations that assist the US government in delivering “humanitarian” assistance, sing the praises of the market economy, or attempt to repair the “collateral” damage inflicted on lands and people, for example, Mercy Corps, Open Society Institutes, and CARE.
Educational institutions in all sectors are embedded with the military. The military schools include the service academies, National Defense University, Army War College, Naval War College, Air Force Institute of Technology, Air University, Defense Acquisition University, Defense Language Institute, Naval Postgraduate School, Defense Information School, the medical school, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and the notorious School of the Americas in Fort Benning, GA, now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. “In addition, Senior Military Colleges offer a combination of higher education with military instruction. SMCs include Texas A&M University, Norwich University, The Virginia Military Institute, The Citadel, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), University of North Georgia and the Mary Baldwin Women’s Institute for Leadership” (https://www.usa.gov/military-colleges).
A university doesn’t have to be special to be part of the MIC. Most are awash with contracts, ROTC programs, and/or military officers and contractors on their boards of trustees. A study of the 100 most militarized universities includes prestigious institutions, as well as diploma mills that produce employees for military intelligence agencies and contractors (https://news.vice.com/article/these-are-the-100– most-militarized-universities-in-america).
Major liberal foundations have long engaged in covert and overt operations to support imperial projection, described by David Horowitz as the “Sinews of Empire” in his important 1969 Ramparts article. They have been close associates of the Central Intelligence Agency, and were active in its instigation. The foundation created and supported Council on Foreign Relations has long been a link among Wall Street, large corporations, academia, the media, and our foreign and military policymakers.
Less obvious are the military connections of philanthropic, cultural, social service, environmental, and professional organizations. They are linked through donations; joint programs; sponsorship of events, exhibits, and concerts; awards (both ways); investments; boards of directors; top executives; and contracts. The data here covers approximately the last twenty years, and rounds out the reasons for the astounding support (according to the polls) that US citizens have conferred on our military, its budget, and its operations.
Military contractor philanthropy was the subject of my previous CP reports, in 2006 and 2016. Every type of nonprofit (as well as public schools and universities) received support from the major weapons manufacturers; some findings were outstanding. Minority organizations were extremely well endowed. For many years there was crucial support for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from Lockheed; Boeing also funded the Congressional Black Caucus. The former president and CEO of the NAACP, Bruce Gordon, is now on the Board of Trustees of Northrop Grumman.
General Electric is the most generous military contractor philanthropist, with direct grants to organizations and educational institutions, partnerships with both, and matching contributions made by its thousands of employees. The latter reaches many of the nongovernmental and educational entities throughout the country.
Major donors to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (listed in its 2016 Annual Report) include the Defense Intelligence Agency, Cisco Systems, Open Society Foundations, US Department of Defense, General Electric, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Lockheed Martin. This is an echo of the CEIP’s military connections reported in Horace Coon’s book of the 1930s, Money to Burn.
The DoD itself donates surplus property to organizations; among those eligible are Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Boys and Girls Clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Little League Baseball, and United Service Organizations. The Denton Program allows non-governmental organizations to use extra space on U.S. military cargo aircraft to transport humanitarian assistance materials.
There is a multitude of joint programs and sponsorships. Here is a small sample…
The American Association of University Women’s National Tech Savvy Program encourages girls to enter STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) careers, with sponsorship from Lockheed, BAE Systems, and Boeing.
Junior Achievement, sponsored by Bechtel, United Technologies, and others, aims to train children in market-based economics and entrepreneurship.
Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts is partnered with Northrop Grumman for an “early childhood STEM ‘Learning through the Arts’ initiative for pre-K and kindergarten students.”
The Bechtel Foundation has two programs for a “sustainable California”— an education program to help “young people develop the knowledge, skills, and character to explore and understand the world,” and an environmental program to promote the “management, stewardship and conservation for the state’s natural resources.”
The NAACP ACT-SO is a “yearlong enrichment program designed to recruit, stimulate, and encourage high academic and cultural achievement among African-American high school students,” with sponsorship from Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman et al. The national winners receive financial awards from major corporations, college scholarships, internships, and apprenticeships—in the military industries.
In recent years the weapons makers have become enthusiastic environmentalists. Lockheed was a sponsor of the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation Sustainability Forum in 2013. Northrop Grumman supports Keep America Beautiful, National Public Lands Day, and a partnership with Conservation International and the Arbor Day Foundation (for forest restoration). United Technologies is the founding sponsor of the U.S. Green Building Council Center for Green Schools, and co-creator of the Sustainable Cities Design Academy. Tree Musketeers is a national youth environmental organization partnered by Northrop Grumman and Boeing.
Awards go both ways: industries give awards to nonprofits, and nonprofits awards to military industries and people. United Technologies, for its efforts in response to climate change, was on Climate A list of the Climate Disclosure Project. The Corporate Responsibility Association gave Lockheed position 8 in 2016 in its 100 Best Corporate Citizens List. Points of Light included General Electric and Raytheon in its 2014 list of the 50 Most Community-Minded Companies in America. Harold Koh, the lawyer who as Obama’s advisor defended drone strikes and intervention in Libya, was recently given distinguished visiting professor status by Phi Beta Kappa. In 2017, the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility recognized 34 Young Hispanic Corporate Achievers; 3 were executives in the weapons industry. Elizabeth Amato, an executive at United Technologies, received the YWCA Women Achievers Award.
Despite laborious searching through tax form 990s, it is difficult to discover the specifics of organizations’ investments. Many have substantial ones; in 2006, the American Friends Service Committee had $3.5 million in revenue from investments. Human Rights Watch reported $3.5 million investment income on its 2015 tax form 990, and more than $107 million in endowment funds.
One of the few surveys of nonprofit policies (by Commonfund in 2012) found that only 17% of foundations used environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria in their investments. ESG seems to have replaced “socially responsible investing (SRI)” in investment terminology, and it has a somewhat different slant. The most common restriction is the avoidance of companies doing business in regions with conflict risk; the next relates to climate change and carbon emissions; employee diversity is also an important consideration. Commonfund’s study of charities, social service and cultural organizations reported that 70% of their sample did not consider ESG in their investment policies. Although 61% of religious organizations did employ ESG criteria, only 16% of social service organizations and 3% of cultural organizations did.
Weapon industries are hardly ever mentioned in these reports. Religious organizations sometimes still used the SRI investment screens, but the most common were alcohol, gambling, pornography, and tobacco. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a resource for churches, lists almost 30 issues for investment consideration, including executive compensation, climate change, and opioid crisis, but none concerning weapons or war. The United Church (UCC) advisory, a pioneer in SRI investment policies, does include a screen: only companies should be chosen which have less than 10% revenue from alcohol or gambling, 1% from tobacco, 10% from conventional weapons and 5% from nuclear weapons.
The Art Institute of Chicago states on their website that “[W]ith the fiduciary responsibility to maximize returns on investment consistent with appropriate levels of risk, the Art Institute maintains a strong presumption against divesting for social, moral, or political reasons.” Listed as an associate is Honeywell International, and a major benefactor is the Crown Family (General Dynamics), which recently donated a $2 million endowment for a Professorship in Painting and Drawing.
Nonprofit institutions (as well as individuals and pension funds of all sectors) have heavy investments in the funds of financial companies such as State Street, Vanguard, BlackRock, Fidelity, CREF, and others, which have portfolios rich in military industries (https://worldbeyondwar.org/wp– content/uploads/2016/11/indirect.pdf). These include information technology firms, which, although often regarded as “socially responsible,” are among the major DoD contractors.
In recent years foundations and other large nonprofits, such as universities, have favored investments in hedge funds, real estate, derivatives, and private equity. The Carnegie Endowment, more “transparent” than most, lists such funds on its 2015 tax form 990 (Schedule D Part VII). It is unlikely that Lockheed, Boeing, et al, are among the distressed debt bonanzas, so these institutions may be low on weapons stock. Nevertheless, most of them have firm connections to the MIC through donations, leadership, and/or contracts.
Close association with the military among nonprofit board members and executives works to keep the lid on anti-war activities and expression. The Aspen Institute is a think-tank that has resident experts, and also a policy of convening with activists, such as anti-poverty community leaders. Its Board of Trustees is chaired by James Crown, who is also a director of General Dynamics. Among other board members are Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Javier Solana (former Secretary-General of NATO), and former Congresswoman Jane Harman. Harman “received the Defense Department Medal for Distinguished Service in 1998, the CIA Seal Medal in 2007, and the CIA Director’s Award and the National Intelligence Distinguished Public Service Medal in 2011. She is currently a member of the Director of National Intelligence’s Senior Advisory Group, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.” Lifetime Aspen Trustees include Lester Crown and Henry Kissinger.
In recent years, the Carnegie Corporation board of trustees included Condoleezza Rice and General Lloyd Austin III (Ret.), Commander of CENTCOM, a leader in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and also a board member of United Technologies. A former president of Physicians for Peace (not the similarly named well-known group) is Rear Admiral Harold Bernsen, formerly Commander of the US Middle East Force and not a physician.
TIAA, the college teachers’ retirement fund, had a CEO from 1993-2002, John H. Biggs, who was at the same time a director of Boeing. TIAA’s current board of directors includes an associate of a major military research firm, MITRE Corporations, and several members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Its senior executive Vice President, Rahul Merchant, is currently also a director at two information technology firms that have large military contracts: Juniper Networks and AASKI.
The American Association of Retired Persons’ chief lobbyist from 2002-2007, Chris Hansen, had previously served in that capacity at Boeing. The current VP of communications at Northrop Grumman, Lisa Davis, held that position at AARP from 1996-2005.
Board members and CEOs of the major weapons corporations serve on the boards of many nonprofits. Just to indicate the scope, these include the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Newman’s Own Foundation, New York Public Library, Carnegie Hall Society, Conservation International, Wolf Trap Foundation, WGBH, Boy Scouts, Newport Festival Foundation, Toys for Tots, STEM organizations, Catalyst, the National Science Center, the US Institute of Peace, and many foundations and universities.
The DoD promotes the employment of retired military officers as board members or CEOs of nonprofits, and several organizations and degree programs further this transition. U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Eden Murrie (Ret.) is now Director of Government Transformation and Agency Partnerships at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. She maintains that “[F]ormer military leaders have direct leadership experience and bring talent and integrity that could be applied in a nonprofit organization. . .” (seniormilitaryintransition.com/tag/eden-murrie/). Given the early retirement age, former military personnel (and reservists) are a natural fit for positions of influence in federal, state, and local governments, school boards, nonprofits, and volunteer work; many are in those places.
Perhaps the coziest relationships under the insecurity blanket are the multitudes of contracts and grants the Department of Defense tenders to the nonprofit world. DoD fiscal reporting is notoriously inaccurate, and there were conflicting accounts between and within the online databases. Nevertheless, even a fuzzy picture gives a good idea of the depth and scope of the coverage.
From the TNC 2016 Annual Report: “The Nature Conservancy is an organization that takes care of people and land, and they look for opportunities to partner. They’re nonpolitical. We need nongovernment organizations like TNC to help mobilize our citizens. They are on the ground. They understand the people, the politics, the partnerships. We need groups like TNC to subsidize what government organizations can’t do” (Mamie Parker, Former Assistant Director, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Arkansas Trustee, The Nature Conservancy).
Among the subsidies going the other way are 44 DoD contracts with TNC totaling several million for the years 2008-2018 (USA). These are for such services as Prairie Habitat Reforestation, $100,000, and Runway and Biosecurity upkeep at Palmyra Atoll, HI, $82,000 (USA). For the years 2000-2016, GCW lists a total of $5,500,000 in TNC’s DoD contracts.
Grants to TNC for specific projects, not clearly different from contracts, were much larger. Each is listed separately (USA); a rough count of the total was more than $150 million. One $55 million grant was for “Army compatible use buffer (acubs) in vicinity of Fort Benning military installation.” Similar grants, the largest, $14 million, were for this service at other bases. Another was for the implementation of Fort Benning army installation’s ecological monitoring plan. Included in the description of these grants was the notice: “Assist State and local governments to mitigate or prevent incompatible civilian land use/activity that is likely to impair the continued operational utility of a Department of Defense (DoD) military installation. Grantees and participating governments are expected to adopt and implement the study recommendations.”
TNC’s Form 990 for 2017 states its investment income as $21 million. It reported government grants of $108.5 million, and government contracts of $9 million. These may include funds from state and local as well as all departments of the federal government. The Department of the Interior, which manages the vast lands used for bombing ranges and live ammunition war games, is another TNC grantor.
Other environmental organizations sustained by DoD contracts are the National Audubon Society ($945,000 for 6 years, GCW), and Point Reyes Bird Observatory ($145,000, 6 years, GCW). USA reports contracts with Stichting Deltares, a Dutch coastal research institute, for $550,000 in 2016, grants to the San Diego Zoo of $367,000, and to the Institute for Wildlife Studies, $1.3 million for shrike monitoring.
Goodwill Industries (training and employing the disabled, ex-offenders, veterans, and homeless people) is an enormous military contractor. Each entity is a separate corporation, based on state or region, and the total receipt is in the billions. For example, for 2000-2016 (GCW), Goodwill of South Florida had $434 million and Southeastern Wisconsin $906 million in contracts. Goods and services provided include food and logistics support, records processing, army combat pants, custodial, security, mowing, and recycling. Similar organizations working for the DoD include the Jewish Vocational Service and Community Workshop, janitorial services, $12 million over 5 years; Lighthouse for the Blind, $4.5 million, water purification equipment; Ability One; National Institute for the Blind; Pride Industries; and Melwood Horticultural Training Center.
The DoD does not shun the work of Federal Prison Industries, which sells furniture and other products. A government corporation (and thus not a nonprofit), it had half a billion in sales to all federal departments in 2016. Prison labor, Goodwill Industries, and other sheltered-workshop enterprises, along with for- profits employing immigrant workers, teenagers, retirees, and migrant workers (who grow food for the military and the rest of us), reveal the evolving nature of the US working class, and some explanation for its lack of revolutionary fervor, or even mild dissent from the capitalist system.
The well-paid, and truly diverse employees (including executives) of major weapons makers are also not about to construct wooden barricades. Boards of directors in these industries are welcoming to minorities and women. The CEOs of Lockheed and General Dynamics are women, as is the Chief Operating Officer of Northrop Grumman. These success stories reinforce personal aspirations among the have-nots, rather than questioning the system.
Contracts with universities, hospitals, and medical facilities are too numerous to detail here; one that illustrates how far the blanket stretches is with Oxford University, $800,000 for medical research. Professional associations with significant contracts include the Institute of International Education, American Council on Education, American Association of State Colleges and Universities, National Academy of Sciences, Society of Women Engineers, American Indian Science and Engineering Society, American Association of Nurse Anesthetists, Society of Mexican-American Engineers, and U.S. Green Building Council. The Council of State Governments (a nonprofit policy association of officials) received a $193,000 contract for “preparedness” work. Let us hope we are well prepared.
The leaders, staff, members, donors, and volunteers of nonprofit organizations are the kind of people who might have been peace activists, yet so many are smothered into silence under the vast insecurity blanket. In addition to all the direct and indirect beneficiaries of the military establishment, many people with no connection still cheer it on. They have been subject to relentless propaganda forthe military and its wars from the government, the print and digital press, TV, movies, sports shows, parades, and computer games—the latter teach children that killing is fun.
The indoctrination goes down easily. It has had a head start in the educational system that glorifies the violent history of the nation. Our schools are full of in-house tutoring, STEM programs, and fun robotics teams personally conducted by employees of the weapons makers. Young children may not understand all the connections, but they tend to remember the logos. The JROTC programs, imparting militaristic values, enroll far more children than the ones who will become future officers. The extremely well-funded recruitment efforts in schools include “fun” simulations of warfare.
There is a worldwide supporting cast for the complex that includes NATO, other alliances, defense ministries, foreign military industries, and bases, but that is a story for another day.
The millions sheltered under our thick and broad blanket, including the enlistees under the prickly part of it, are not to blame. Some people may be thrilled by the idea of death and destruction. However, most are just trying to earn a living, keep their organization or rust belt afloat, or be accepted into polite company. They would prefer constructive work or income from healthy sources. Yet many have been indoctrinated to believe that militarism is normal and necessary. For those who consider change to be essential if life on this planet has a chance at survival, it is important to see all the ways that the military- industrial-congressional-almost everything-complex is being sustained.
“Free market economy” is a myth. In addition to the huge nonprofit (non-market) sector, government intervention is substantial, not only in the gigantic military, but in agriculture, education, health care, infrastructure, economic development (!), et al. For the same trillions we could have a national economy that repairs the environment, provides a fine standard of living and cultural opportunities for all, and works for peace on earth.
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Joan Roelofs is Professor Emerita of Political Science, Keene State College, New Hampshire. She is the author of Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (SUNY Press, 2003) and Greening Cities (Rowman and Littlefield, 1996). She is the translator of Victor Considerant’s Principles of Socialism (Maisonneuve Press, 2006), and with Shawn P. Wilbur, of Charles Fourier’s anti-war fantasy, The World War of Small Pastries (Autonomedia, 2015). A community education short course on the military industrial complex is on her website, and may be used for similar purposes.
Mexico’s next president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor and outspoken critic of the political establishment – has a significant uphill battle once he is inaugurated as President on December 01: deadly violence in the country is intensifying and has hit an all-time high.
Mexico posted its highest homicides on record, with a new government report Sunday showing murders in the country rose by 16 percent in the first half of 2018.
The Interior Department said there were 15,973 homicides in the first half of the year, compared to 13,751 killings in the same period of 2017.
According to the AP, the record-breaking homicides have surpassed the violence seen during the dark years of Mexico’s drug war in 2011, along with exceeding all government data since records began in 1997.
At these crisis levels, the department’s homicide rate for the country stands around 22 per 100,000 population for year-end estimates — near the level of Columbia 24.2 and Guatemala 26.0.
Security analyst Alejandro Hope told the AP, “the figures are horrible, but there are some signs that are halfway encouraging.”
For example, the growth in homicides could be slowing; murders were up only about 4 percent compared to the second half of 2017. “The curve may be flattening out,” Hope noted, though he warned his forecast could be incorrect.
Hope noted that the northern border state of Baja California exhibited the largest surge in homicide rates, while other states saw declines.
“Baja California, home to the border city of Tijuana, saw 1,463 homicides in the first half of the year, a 44 percent increase over the same period of 2017. Authorities have attributed the spate of killings to battles between the Jalisco and Sinaloa drug cartels for control of trafficking routes in Baja California. The state is now Mexico’s second most violent, with a homicide rate for the first six months of the year equivalent to 71 murders per 100,000 inhabitants,” said AP.
By comparison, El Salvador and Venezuela are among the deadliest countries in the world — have homicide rates of around 54 to 60 per 100,000.
Thanks to the Jalisco drug cartel, Mexico’s most dangerous state is Colima, on the central Pacific coast, which experienced a 27-percent increase in killings and now has a shocking homicide rate of about 80 per 100,000
Guanajuato, a central Mexican state, saw a 122 percent increase in homicides, which now has a rate of about 40 per 100,000. Government officials have reported that much of violent crime is linked to gangs of fuel thieves who drill taps into government pipelines.
Here are Mexico’s eight most violent states by annual homicide rate, based on federal data. Over the past few years, killings rebounded in Baja California and Chihuahua states:
Mexico is on pace to top the record-setting violence of 2017. The 15,973 murders over the first six months of 2018 exceed the 13,503 reported over the same period last year.
Drug trafficking routes overlaid with homicide rates (2015) — notice a pattern?
Earlier this year, the US State Department published a new multi-tiered travel advisory system to warn U.S. citizens of traveling to Mexico. Travel advisories range from Level 1 (“exercise normal precautions”) to Level 4 (“do not travel”).
According to the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian-based think tank that focuses on emerging security and development issues, the murder epidemic is not just limited to Mexico, but across all of Latin America.
The Institute stated the current situation is incredibly complex and results from decades of corruption, drug trafficking, organized crime, contraband, illegal mining, land rights, and in some cases, violence by state military forces.
These embedded processes strip away autonomy, equating compliance with effectiveness even as the processes become increasingly counter-productive and wasteful.
Would any sane person choose America’s broken healthcare system over a cheaper, more effective alternative? Let’s see: the current system costs twice as much per person as the healthcare systems of our developed-world competitors, a medication to treat infantile spasms costs $8 per vial in Europe and $38,892 in the U.S., and by any broad measure, the health of the U.S. populace is declining.
This is how systems and nations fail: nobody chose the current broken system, but now it can’t be changed because the incentive structure locks in embedded processes that enrich self-serving insiders at the expense of the system, nation and its populace.
Nobody chose America’s insane healthcare system–it arose from a set of initial conditions that generated perverse incentives to do more of what’s failing and protect the processes that benefit insiders at the expense of everyone else.
In other words, the system that was intended to benefit all ends up benefitting the few at the expense of the many.
The same question can be asked of America’s broken higher education system:would any sane person choose a system that enriches insiders by indenturing students via massive student loans (i.e. forcing them to become debt serfs)?
Students and their parents certainly wouldn’t choose the current broken system, but the lenders reaping billions of dollars in profits would choose to keep it, and so would the under-assistant deans earning a cool $200K+ for “administering” some embedded process that has effectively nothing to do with actual learning.
The academic ronin a.k.a. adjuncts earning $35,000 a year (with little in the way of benefits or security) for doing much of the actual teaching wouldn’t choose the current broken system, either.
Now that the embedded processes are generating profits and wages, everyone benefitting from these processes will fight to the death to retain and expand them, even if they threaten the system with financial collapse and harm the people who the system was intended to serve.
How many student loan lenders and assistant deans resign in disgust at the parasitic system that higher education has become? The number of insiders who refuse to participate any longer is signal noise, while the number who plod along, either denying their complicity in a parasitic system of debt servitude and largely worthless diplomas (i.e. the system is failing the students it is supposedly educating at enormous expense) or rationalizing it is legion.
If I was raking in $200,000 annually from a system I knew was parasitic and counter-productive, I would find reasons to keep my head down and just “do my job,” too.
At some point, the embedded processes become so odious and burdensome that those actually providing the services start bailing out of the broken system. We’re seeing this in the number of doctors and nurses who retire early or simply quit to do something less stressful and more rewarding.
These embedded processes strip away autonomy, equating compliance with effectiveness even as the processes become increasingly counter-productive and wasteful. The typical mortgage documents package is now a half-inch thick, a stack of legal disclaimers and stipulations that no home buyer actually understands (unless they happen to be a real estate attorney).
How much value is actually added by these ever-expanding embedded processes?
By the time the teacher, professor or doctor complies with the curriculum / “standards of care”, there’s little room left for actually doing their job. But behind the scenes, armies of well-paid administrators will fight to the death to keep the processes as they are, no matter how destructive to the system as a whole.
This is how systems and the nations that depend on them fail.
Meds skyrocket in price…
…student loans top $1 trillion…
F-35 fighter aircraft are double the initial cost estimates and so on, and the insider solutions are always the same: just borrow another trillion to keep the broken system afloat for another year.
* * * Summer Book Sale: 30% off Kindle editions, 25% off print editions. If you’re interested in real solutions, check these out:
Americans are opposed to going to war against Iran by a more than two-to-one margin according to a new poll.
This week relations between Iran and Washington entered a heightened intensity and new war of words, with the dangerous potential for an actual war seeming to rise daily, especially after President Trump’s latest twitter warning to Iran of “consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before…” should Iran’s leaders threaten the United States.
The US has repeatedly threatened to throttle Iran’s international oil trade as it’s moved closer to imposing sanctions on countries including key allies that don’t eliminate or significantly cut imports of Iranian oil by Nov. 4. It’s but the latest crisis to emerge after the White House pulled the US out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in May. This is why gauging public opinion on the prospect for war with Iran is particularly important at the end of this week.
The new HuffPost/YouGov survey finds the prospect of war with Iran out of step with the American public on a bipartisan basis:
Just 23 percent of the public say they’d support the U.S. deciding to declare war on Iran, while the majority, 53 percent, oppose the idea. Just 9 percent would strongly support declaring war, while 37 percent are strongly opposed.
The survey further finds: “Voters who backed Hillary Clinton in the last election are the most vehemently against the idea, with 82 percent opposed and just 6 percent in favor; non-voters are also opposed, 48 percent to 20 percent.”
And concerning Trump supporters: “Voters who backed President Donald Trump’s campaign are more likely to support a war against Iran, but even among that group, backing remains below the majority level, with 47 percent saying they’d support declaring war, and 29 percent that they’d oppose it.”
Numbers among Trump supporters:
The poll was taken early this week, soon after Trump blasted Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on twitter, eliciting multiple belligerent statements from Iranian military generals which followed.
To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!
The poll also found that 60% of Americans surveyed were aware of the Trump tweet through news reports, with 12% saying they’d seen in directly on twitter.
Numbers among Clinton voters:
About 60 percent of Americans polled say they’d heard about Trump’s tweet, although just 12 percent had seen it directly on Twitter, with the rest learning about it from the news.
The poll concludes of Trump’s general handling of Iran-related issues: “Overall, 36 percent of Americans say they approve of Trump’s handling of issues related to Iran, while 42 percent disapprove, and the rest is uncertain. That net -6 is slightly more positive than overall views of Trump’s job performance.”
There are a number of hawks in the Trump administration who would like to see a preemptive strike happen based on the claim of an alleged continuing nuclear weapons program, most notably among them national security adviser John Bolton and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. Though notorious uber-hawk Bolton may have had his wings clipped by President Trump, he’s on record as wanting“regime change in Tehran” before 2019.
Tumbling house prices in Sydney and Melbourne are the main drivers behind the first annual drop in national property prices in six years, a new report shows. The national median house price fell 1.0 per cent over the June quarter and year, according to a report by property classifieds group Domain released on Thursday.
It is the first time values have fallen on an annual basis since June 2012.
The negative national growth rate reflects weakening house prices in Sydney and Melbourne, which together represent about two thirds of Australia’s housing market by value.
Sydney house prices fell by 4.5 per cent in the 12 months to the end of June for their largest annual drop since 2008. Sydney units also fell by 3.5 per cent over the same period.
The figures chime with those released this week by property data firm CoreLogic, which said overall Sydney prices fell 5.0 per cent in the 12 months to July 22.
“House and unit prices in Sydney are now back to values seen at the end of 2016,” Domain property analyst Nicola Powell told AAP. Tighter credit availability and a high number of units being built are key factors behind the dive, Dr Powell said.
Australia’s building commencements, fueled by investor apartment construction, look like heading from boom to bust, according to forecaster BIS Oxford Economics.
In a reality check for investors who bought at the top of the apartment boom, BIS is predicting the biggest correction since the global financial crisis hit in 2008, with housing starts set to fall by almost 23 per cent by 2020.
Associate director Adrian Hart told the ABC’s AM program that the slump would be led by high-density dwelling construction, which is set to halve over the next two years
A key factor in the residential slowdown has been tougher regulation by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) to curb investor lending, while the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) and tax office has been clamping down on overseas buyers.
Australian homeowners are trapped in “mortgage prison” because of a rule change. And there is no easy way out.
Changes in bank rules around living expenses calculations have effectively wiped huge amounts off the maximum a bank will allow you to borrow.
Many people are now finding they originally borrowed more than a bank would lend them under current conditions, meaning they haven’t got the option of shopping around to get a better interest rate — no bank will lend them the amount they need.
Precise numbers of Australia’s mortgage prisoners are hard to come by, but Mozo investment and lending expert Steve Jovcevski told news.com.au that he expected most of them are those who have borrowed and bought in the last five years.
Oops!
Jovcevski gave an example in which a couple was able to borrow $800,000 a year ago can now only borrow $680,000 under the same rules.
They are now trapped in a mortgage with no way to refinance and no buyers because of declining prices.
Mortgage Slaves for Life
This is precisely what some us foresaw years ago. It’s finally come home to roost, and at a time China is highly unlikely to bail out these buyers.
For many of the roughly 600,000 Americans to be released from prison this year, the best predictor of whether they become law-abiding citizens is their ability to land a job. Unfortunately, state licensing laws often shut the formerly incarcerated out of work. While there is wide variance in licensing requirements across the states, more than 10,000 individual regulations prohibit people with criminal records from working in dozens of professions.
Recently I began to search for a used GMC Yukon SUV. My goal was to bolt on an aftermarket supercharger. It wasn’t necessarily a sensible plan, but it did seem like a pretty cool idea. Thanks to a whopping 6.2-liter V8 engine, a Whipple supercharger would make that vehicle churn out nearly 600 horsepower of good ol’ American tire-shredding glory.
