On January 17, 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower ends his presidential term by warning the nation about the increasing power of the military-industrial complex.
Looks like he had a point:
The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.
No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.
Those things are “socialism, Communism”, hence unacceptable to about half of USians on principle. I haven’t heard so much posturing and huffing and puffing about “Communism” in the US since the early 60s.
Meanwhile, in Detroit
May 16, 2022
Man falls 10 feet from Lodge pedestrian bridge after it crumbles under him
Fuel taxes, which fund road repairs, were raised in Michigan a few years ago, but an equal amount of road maintenance money, that came from general revenue, was withdrawn, to help pay for two rounds of tax cuts for the “JCs”.
It is no longer the Military-Industrial Complex. Now it is Military-Industrial-Congressional-Media Complex.
Corporate special interests have taken over the congress via political contributions. And the mainstream stream media is owned by corporate special interests & is utilized as propaganda arms by them in selling perpetual war agenda.
at the end of medical school in New York City in 1991, I took a week trip to Denmark and stayed with family friends outside of Copenhagen.
No poverty. No illiteracy. No homelessness. Small cars. Expensive gasoline. Incredible cheap public transportation. Gorgeous parks. No crime. Drinking in public ok. No graffiti. The Danes, all employed, all multilingual (Danish, Norwegian, English at a minimum, all savvy about US politics), complained about their taxes. At mid nite, with no traffic, the Danes wait at a red light to cross a street.
I tried to explain how one pays for medical care in the US to my friend, who was studying for her nursing school finals, and gave up. She couldn’t understand the concept of paying for going to the emergency room. BTW, her nursing degree, of course, was paid for by the Danish government (yes, her parents paid taxes).
Denmark is what we could do. Texas, not so much (I’ve been stationed in Texas for the military and…)
Love the two badass Finn and Swede PM’s telling Putin to F-off. Hillary would have bombed Moscow by now. Trump would be unzipping Putin’s… well, zipper…
I also love the badass Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish PM’s telling Putin to F-off.
I do not like the Hungarian PM who wants to go to bed with Putin.
Jaak
P.S. - You might love Estonia if you ever have the chance to visit. Very similar to the other Nordic countries. You would see how they have lived next to the big bad bear for a thousand years. Tallinn is 500 years older than St. Petersburg.
Tallinn, Russian Tallin, German Reval, formerly (until 1918) Revel, city, capital of Estonia, on Tallinn Bay of the Gulf of Finland. A fortified settlement existed there from the late 1st millennium BC until the 10th–11th century AD, and there was a town on the site in the 12th century. In 1219 it was captured by the Danes, who built a new fortress on Toompea hill. Trade flourished, especially after Tallinn joined the Hanseatic League in 1285.
Years ago I had a young fellow from Belgium as crew on a sail to Grenada. He spent a lot of time explaining to me how the Belgian system was so much better than the American where people can be fired without warning, cause, or compensation. He explained how workers were protected in Belgium. To make sure everyone had a job you were not allowed to hold two jobs at the same time and the working hours were limited. Sounds good, no?
At a later date he talked about his job. He worked for an uncle but the pay was too low to meet his needs so he moonlighted a second job to make ends meet.
Obviously a country that forces you to become a criminal to make ends meet has the better system.
A group of US arms makers and aerospace firms is urging Congress for a 2023 military budget that exceeds inflation by 3-5% and to pass the bill before September 30.
The group said this was necessary to signal “resolve in the face of Russian and Chinese aggression.”
I suppose if that argument doesn’t play; they will use the “weak on defense” ploy.