Cost of Access: Why Congress Doesn’t Care about You
Read about the Unwinnable War
How many of you can bundle together $100,000 to donate to a candidate for Senate let alone give $1000 dollars to the candidate of your choice? Do any of you have a lobbyist in Washington working on your behalf or bundling together funds for your candidate?
Bundlers do just that. They “bundle” together thousand dollar contributions (the current federal individual limit on contributions is $2400) from contacts, workers, colleagues, and others to create a fund underneath an umbrella entity that represents a cause, usually a candidate. Many of Washington’s most successful bundlers are also lobbyists. http://fec.gov/data/LobbyistBundle.do?format=html The follow up question is, how many of you would give personal consideration to someone who gave you $1000 dollars for your help over someone who gave you $50 for help? Most of us would; it’s only common sense. Bundlers have influence for that same reason, money.
A very successful bundling campaign was run for Bush’s candidacy in 2004. Mother Jones wrote in 2004 about Bush’s bundlers. The most success bundler was Merrill Lynch. “By March of this year, Merrill Lynch employees and their families had contributed more than $458,000, making the company Bush's No. 1 source of campaign money.”
Yes, companies get employees and their families to donate to the employers’ favorite politicians. Corporations apparently aren’t satisfied with just making money off the labor of employees; they have to get the employees to help them buy politicians with the money they pay them as well.
Why don’t these employees donate to politicians that want to raise the minimum wage or pass health care legislation instead of politicians that want to deregulate the banking industry to make their bosses more money? Perhaps the employer holds the cards in this relationship. Perhaps.
In a turnaround for Democrats that highlights Obama as a successful politician if not a successful president, Goldman Sachs employees donated large amounts of cash to Obama’s campaign and other Democrats in 2008.
Goldman Sachs and its employees and family members gave $5.9 million to candidates in the 2007-2008 election cycle, the Washington-based center’s data shows. Three-quarters of that went to Democrats, the non-partisan group said. (link)
In more recent news, from Public Citizen, President-elect Barack Obama has banned corporate and lobbyist funding for his historic inauguration, but that has not kept special interests from picking up the tab, according to a Public Citizen analysis. Nearly 80 percent of the $35.3 million raised to date by the Presidential Inaugural Committee has come from just 211 individual "bundlers." (link)
More than ever, large donators have taken over campaigns. Do you think I will get any legislative consideration for my $50 donation?
Politicians tell us that these large donations have no influence on their policies, but how many of you believe that?
... the Rangers and Pioneers are working to re-elect an administration that has proved sympathetic to their agenda. Among them are executives from major energy companies that have successfully pushed for looser pollution standards, from pharmaceutical manufacturers that have counted on the administration to block efforts to lower drug prices, and from Wall Street firms that expect Bush to continue cutting taxes on the wealthy and to move toward privatizing Social Security...
Those with access are a select few.
... "You're dealing with a small circle of people who can give this kind of money or raise this kind of money," notes Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics and a former general counsel to the Federal Election Commission. "They see this basically as a business investment." (ibid)
A business investment? Really.
Henry McKinnell, the CEO of the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, Inc, has successfully lobbied against Japanese efforts to reduce prices on drugs two years after they are introduced onto the market, against imports of drugs from Canada, and against drug price controls for Medicare recipients.
At least a dozen other health-industry executives have made it onto Bush's elite fundraiser list, including Munr Kazmir, CEO of direct-mail pharmacy Direct-Meds Inc., and William McGuire, CEO of UnitedHealth Group, whose company expects its revenue to grow by as much as $445 million as a result of the Medicare legislation. (link)
So what the Pfizer CEO was able to do was keep the prices that we all pay for drugs higher by keeping out foreign competition. That doesn’t sound like the free market to me, but as we know, they don’t really want the competition of the free market. So U.S. citizens have to pay higher drug prices because a billionaire chief executive has the ear of the White House. What ever happened to “government by the people”? Oh yea, I forgot, corporations are people too.
Not to be outdone, Democrats currently run four of the top five bundlers for their campaigns. But as we all know, Democrats would never have their policies influenced by large sums of money. (ibid)
When the captains of industry have a seat at the Congressional or White House table, how can we get our voice heard? (link)
Just take look at the success MoveOn.org had in getting contributions for Obama and Democrats in general. What legislation have they received for their trouble? Progressives at MoveOn got a watered down health care bill, no end to the Afghan war, no Employee Free Choice Act, no jobs bill (yet), weak Wall Street reform, and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as well as No Child Left Behind are still running strong. So much for you individual donations and progressive PACs, suckers.
Money and Oil Spills
The energy companies have donated millions of dollars, mostly to Republicans, to avoid regulation.
Big Oil spent millions of dollars to sweep—and keep—George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the White House.
And it got its money’s worth. (link)
Bush and Cheney received $2,596,725 dollars from oil and gas companies for their 2004 campaign. (link)
Then after getting reelected, the Bush/Cheney White House promptly pushed through the 2005 Energy Bill with bipartisan efforts in the Senate, passing comfortably.
On August 8, 2005, President Bush signed into the law the energy bill; on July 28,the U.S. House of Representatives voted 275 to 156 to approve the energy bill; and on July 29, the U.S. Senate voted 74 to 26 to approve the energy bill. (link)
Section 390 of the energy bill created a series of exceptions that expedited the permit process and simplified the inspection process.
"One of the 2005 Energy Policy Act provisions that is most directly related to the BP oil catastrophe is Section 390, which dramatically expanded the circumstances under which new drilling permits could be approved without further environmental reviews or assessments under the National Environmental Policy Act. Many appear to have been approved based almost completely on responses to yes or no questions on pro forma checklists. (link)
Donations to Bush and Cheney from the oil and gas industries lead directly to deregulation that can be linked to the BP oil spill.
Even with the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, BP retains favor with many GOP politicians, even those in states affected by the spill.
The GOP has now become BP’s champion. Simply put, Republicans would rather defend BP and its interests than the interests of the American people. Their efforts to destroy Obama have put them solidly on the wrong side of the argument. Basically, the Republican Party has gone far beyond noses – they are now cutting off their heads to spite their necks. (link)
BP’s sheen of influence is being tarnished with each gallon of oil spilled from their well and politicians defending the corporations may face the consequences in the fall. (link)
There are Democrats who want put the blame for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Bush White House, but the fact is that Democrats didn’t block the 2005 Energy bill and many voted for it.
It’s the system stupid
Eric Alterman has a comprehensive analysis on the problem in American politics.
...The average age of a US senator is 69, while the median age of Americans, according to the most recent census figures, is just over 35. Women are a majority of the US population but only 17 percent of the Senate. Only four senators are African-American, Hispanic or Native American, while these minorities represent a third of the population. Most senators are also millionaires; most Americans, needless to say, are not. Elderly white male millionaires therefore come to do quite well when it comes to legislation. Underrepresented groups, not so much…
Point is, Congress does not represent the American people and thus they are less likely to pass legislation that benefits the people. Only 17 of the 100 Senators are women who are a majority of the population. The average age of a U.S. Senator is 69 while the median U.S. age is 35. Four Senators are African American, Hispanic or Native American while they represent a third of the population. Congress is 44% millionaire when only 4.1% of all Americans is a millionaire. (link) And none of the people in Congress are poor. They make $174,000 a year for working in Congress, more than three times the median income of $52,029 in the United States. Somehow I feel that if we had some educated homeless in Congress, there wouldn’t have been a holdup in the unemployment extension. There is something to be said for having empathy for your own class. So while millions of people are unemployed in America, Congress is worried about deficits and how it will affect investments of their own class.
Congress is not representative of the American people unless you are a White Male with an income well over $150,000. (link)
And Congress doesn’t follow the will of the people; they follow the will of the large donators.
... Of course when attempting to determine why the people's will is so frequently frustrated in our system, any author would be remiss if he did not turn first and foremost to the power of money. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics calculated that approximately $3.47 billion was spent lobbying the federal government in 2009, up from $3.3 billion the previous year. By the final quarter of the year, lobbies were handing out $20 million a day.
How much did you spend on lobbying last year?
...The most generous spreaders of wealth were in the pharmaceutical and health products industries, whose $266.8 million set a record for "the greatest amount ever spent on lobbying efforts by a single industry for one year" according to CRP. At one point, PhRMA employed forty-eight lobbying firms, in addition to in-house lobbyists, with a total of 165 people overall, according to the Sunlight Foundation's Paul Blumenthal.
Why would the health industry and big pharma be donating so much in the last year? They wanted to make sure their profits weren’t threatened by the health care bill, and they got what they paid for.
And this gets you not only votes, it limits the debate and what bills get considered. Thus, the public option in health care was thrown of the table and single payer wasn’t even considered.
According to Alterman, lobbying “can define potential alternatives, invent arguments, inundate with propaganda and threaten with merely hypothetical opposition...They can bury bills; they can rewrite the language of bills that are presented; they can convince certain Congressmen to be absent on the days certain legislation is discussed; they can confuse debate; they can bankroll primary opposition...”
And politicians oblige their base of donators by getting special regulatory exemptions for their clients (large donors, of which you are NOT!).
The Peterson Amendment, for instance, named after the chair of the House Agriculture Committee, Collin Peterson (D, Minnesota), exempts big agriculture from many of the emissions standards set by the bill. You should not be shocked to learn that the top three donors to Peterson's 2008 campaign were the American Farm Bureau, American Crystal Sugar and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Overall, crop production, agricultural services/products, dairy and food processing donated $628,687 to Peterson's campaign and PAC, more than 41 percent of all the money he raised for the 2008 election. (Agriculture Committee members took in nearly $23 million in that election cycle alone from people and organizations with financial, insurance and real estate affiliations, more than double what they've gotten from anybody affiliated with actual agriculture.) (ibid)
No one is as successful as the banks. Our elections, lobbying, advertising and donation system of politics is legalized bribery that none but the wealthiest in our society can afford. Thus, “we the people” are not considered when legislation is traveling through Congress. And while Congress is working for a current benefactor, they are looking for their million dollar payoffs when they leave Congress.
According to Public Citizen [11], over seventy ex-members of Congress could be found lobbying for Wall Street and the financial services sector in 2009, including two former Senate majority leaders (Trent Lott [12] and Bob Dole [13]), two former House majority leaders (Richard Gephardt [14] and Dick Armey [15]) and a former House speaker (Dennis Hastert [16]). At the staff level, the numbers are even more impressive. When Representative Barney Frank [17] publicly rebuked his former aide, Peter S. Roberson, in April 2010 for switching sides to Goldman Sachs immediately after helping to draft the derivative regulations likely to affect his new employer, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee treated the occurrence as a relatively rare one...it happens almost every day. Two hundred forty-three people have worked on the House banking committee staff since 2000, and 126 of them have left the committee. Of these, 62 have registered as lobbyists, largely in the financial industry, while others lobby at law firms and such without being required to fill out forms. (link)
And what became of Obama’s bundler lobbyists? They got ambassadorships at a price of $500,000 each.
...Obama has not only embraced the sordid money-driven culture of DC, but actually outdone his predecessors. An analysis by the American Foreign Service Association, for example, found that Obama has stuffed the diplomatic corps with more political appointees (i.e., cronies) than any president in the past 40 years. Only a year into the administration, close of half of the president’s biggest donors already have federal jobs.
Below is a list of Obama campaign bundlers and the taxpayer-funded positions they’ve received:
The Big Changers’ Club ($500,000+)
Avant, Nicole (Los Angeles, CA)
Position: Ambassador to the Bahamas
Barzun, Matthew (Louisville, KY)
Position: Ambassador to Sweden
Beyer, Don (Alexandria, VA)
Position: Nominated to Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein
Bleich, Jeff (Piedmont, CA)
Position: Ambassador to Australia
Danzig, Richard (Washington, DC)
Position: Member, Defense Policy Board
Donahoe, Eileen Chamberlain (Washington, DC)
Position: Nominated to Ambassador to UN Human Rights Council
Eacho, William (Bethesda, MD)
Position: Ambassador to Austria
Forester, Christine (San Diego, CA)
Position: Member, Presidential Committee on the Arts and Humanities
Genachowski, Julius (Washington, DC)
Position: FCC Chairman
Gips, Don (Boulder, CO)
Position: Ambassador to South Africa
Gutman, Howard (Washington, DC)
Position: Ambassador to Belgium
Harris, Scott (Washington, DC)
Position: General Counsel, Department of Energy
Katz, Allan (Tallahassee, FL)
Position: Nominated to Ambassador to Portugal
Kennard, William (Washington, DC)
Position: Ambassador to the European Union
Oreck, Bruce (Boulder, CO)
Position: Nominated to Ambassador to Finland
Overton, Spencer (Chevy Chase, MD)
Position: Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy
Perrelli, Tom (Arlington, VA)
Position: Assistant Attorney General
Rivkin, Charlie (Los Angeles, CA)
Position: Ambassador to France and Monaco
Roos, John (Hillsborough, CA)
Position: Ambassador to Japan
Sanchez, Frank (Tampa, FL)
Position: Undersecretary of International Trade
Solomont, Alan (Boston, MA)
Position: Ambassador to Spain
Spinner, Steve (Menlo Park, CA)
Position: Loan Programs Advisor, Department of Energy
Stroum, Cynthia (Seattle, WA)
Position: Ambassador to Luxembourg
West, Tony (Oakland, CA)
Position: Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division
(link)
Money Wins Elections
There is no such thing as too much money to run a campaign, and your money is never enough.
More and more news outlets are focusing on how much money each party has and less on issues. Campaign finances and donations have become an increasing part of the election news coverage and it drowns out the issues. And none of the news outlets dare comment on how the sacred cow of money is making elections into a bidding war. To the highest bidder goes the election. Covering the money is one thing, but questioning the money is not part of the news agenda.
An analysis of the historic 2008 election by the Center for Responsive Politics has found that most national races were won by the candidate who spent the most. Following the pattern of previous U.S. elections, the bigger spenders won the presidency, 397 of 426 decided House races, and 30 of 32 settled Senate races. (link)
But talking about leveling off the money for candidates is seen as unpatriotic my many, because money is free speech, and money talks. The imbalance in our system of fundraising is also representative of how we think about money and status in our society. From our first day of school to the day we die we are taught that those with more money are more fit. This belief justifies the selling of elections in the United States.
The role of incumbency in elections
Overall, 95 percent of House incumbents and 93 percent of senators won re-election on Tuesday. (This includes incumbents who lost their primaries but does not account for several other races featuring incumbents, such as the Minnesota Senate race, where a recount is pending in the contest between incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken.) In the prior 10 years and five election cycles, an average of 97 percent of House members and 86 percent of senators won re-election. (link)
For more on incumbent advantage, go here
http://www.cusdi.org/reelection.htm
Let me take it home, y’all. Congress doesn’t need you to get elected. In most cases, incumbent’s seats are safe and your vote doesn’t matter. They won’t even miss your money since they can get millions from corporations and bundlers. Your pittance doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.
It is so costly to run a campaign that Congress members have to spend hours each week fundraising when their job is to legislate.
The average cost of winning a House race in 2008 was nearly $1.1 million, based on pre-election finance reports, and almost $6.5 million for a Senate seat. Marcia Fudge, a Democrat running in Ohio's 11th District to succeed the late Stephanie Tubbs Jones, spent the least to win a House seat--just over $46,000 at last report. For the Senate, Wyoming Republhican John Barrasso was the bargain-buyer, spending $1.4 million on his re-election.
...The national party committees reported spending more than $865 million--$440 million by Republicans through Oct. 15 and $424 million by Democrats. Issue advocacy groups--commonly called 527 committees--spent nearly $200 million to influence federal elections and issues, with liberal interests accounting for about 60 percent of that. (link)
It takes money to give money, so large donors are sought after to win elections. The money need is too large for many and thus some qualified people don’t run.
1 in 4 House Seats Weren't Competitive
Despite the record expense to elect Congress, a quarter of House races--112 in all--involved a candidate with zero financial opposition, and two senators were similarly unchallenged.
"The cost of winning a seat in Congress--more than $1 million in the House and millions more in the Senate--is prohibitive for most people. Many politicians get elected and re-elected to Congress simply because no one can afford to take them on," Krumholz said. (link)
Fewer choices means less Democracy, but those in office have made little effort to change a system they live off of.
This Did Not Change During Obama’s Elections
What of Obama’s “small donations” presidency? The statement that he got more small donations than large donations is misleading at best.(link)
If you define “small donations” as donations of $200 or less, Bush had almost as many small donors 2004 as Obama did in 2008.
In fact, Obama's base of small donors was almost exactly the same percentage as George W. Bush's in 2004 -- Obama had 26% and the soon-to-be-former president 25%. (link)
President Obama did receive more donations of $200-$2000 than Bush or McCain, and if you define those as small, then he did get more “small” donations. (link)
He still relies on bundlers and got more money from bundlers than McCain as well.
So even the “socialist presidency” of Barack Obama is relying on big business donations just like Bush and Clinton did. I guess that make them socialist too.
Defenders of our big money elections will argue that this system is the best we can do. That is disingenuous. It’s only the “best we can do” because those who are in office refuse to pass rules that would make their elections more competitive and take away their cash cows and influence.
Here are some simple solutions to the number one threat to our democracy:
1. $10 maximum donations for individuals per election. No exceptions.
2. No bundling, ever. There will be serious jail time for those that break this law.
3. Free and equal airtime for every candidate. The airwaves are public, and Congress can mandate different types of use. So, for a Congressional election, networks and stations would have to give 2 minutes of time to each candidate on the ballot for advertising. No outlet could be abused and be forced to give more than xxx amount of time to be determined later. And, if a station doesn’t give the airtime, the government can pull their license. This would include radio and television exposure with other provisions for print and internet media.
4. No sneaky “issue ads”. That would mean PACs couldn’t put on ads that would be say, “Citizens against Health Care Reform” as a way to really be an attack ad on Obama.
5. No committee decisions on debates. If you are on the ballot in a state, you get in the debate in the state. This would prevent the DNC from blocking candidates, Dennis Kucinich for example, from a debate in Las Vegas because the candidate was making the other Democratic candidates look bad.
6. Publically funded carpooling in a “candidates van”. All the candidates would travel together and make stops together to states before primaries. This would get all the candidates exposure and not just the ones with money.
An extra point here. I am NOT promoting publically financed campaigns except for a few infrastructure pieces, like the campaign van. Free airtime, more debates, and small donations will cover travel expenses and give each candidate a chance to win. I would also bring the equal time law back in full force without the news interview exceptions for incumbents.
And if you think these rules are undemocratic, just look at the current elections process where money rules and elections are bought and tell me, how democratic are they now?
Until we address these issues, real democracy is dead in the United States. Meanwhile, the rest of us, our concerns and families, will continue to be mostly ignored.
Links
How and why the media lies: the structure of the corporate media
http://www.prwatch.org/node/8882
Money first
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/political_reform/money_notspeech.html
Money money
http://dailyuw.com/2006/1/5/uw-study-money-wins-elections/
Revoke corporate personhood
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/political_reform/proposed_constitutional_amendments.html
The 606 bundlers for Obama gave over $70,000,000.
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/4/11/0106/61026
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00009638
Yours,
Tex Shelters
The Afghan War—In Lockheed Martin’s International Interests
Back to the top
How is the United States benefiting from the continued war in Afghanistan? If you support the ideology expressed in the famous quote from President Calvin Coolidge that states, “After all, the chief business of the American people is business”, then you know how important it is to continue to spend billions. And the best way to do that is to spend it on weapons and weapons systems.
If our money goes to corporations for military procurement, than it’s all good. People can grovel at Lockheed Martin’s door if they want to eat or have shelter. Lazy Americans, the unemployed, shouldn’t rely on the government “by the people” to help them. It they want money, these loafers should build weapons.
Let’s ignore the follow up part of Coolidge’s statement on business, “Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence.” (link) What? Accumulation is the end all and be all for capitalist just like 72 virgins is for jihadists. That part of his statement is just socialist and hateful and ignores the real point of what Coolidge meant: if we promote business first, the rest will fall into place. We all know the chief end of business is to accumulate wealth for the wealthy because they are the ones who need the wealth most.
Business is a good onto itself. If you create a product and people buy it, who are we to say that’s a bad thing? We don’t complain about Microsoft computers systems that are used by the government because Bill Gates did the best job selling their systems. And we don’t complain about purchases of Envision bathroom tissue that gets used in the government toilets. So why do liberals go on and on about weapons that are purchased?
First, liberals hate free enterprise and capitalism and love socialism. And, liberals don’t want to hurt poor third world people even if they deserve it. Liberals want to bend over and suck the jihadists more than they want to defend America. They would rather see 3000 Americans die than one Afghan child lose her father. Well boo hoo! Americans died for this war, and we have earned the right to continue dying in Afghanistan even if the Afghan people didn’t attack us on 9/11.
If we build more military aircraft and rockets ala Lockheed Martin, we could feed the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfHg-Dm4YcE
I don’t want to only give credit to Lockheed Martin. There are other great companies that build drones, missiles, automatic weapons and other necessities of life. We are so lucky that in the United States we have companies that are willing to take billions of dollars from citizens to build weapons that make the world a safer place to live.
Most of you have heard of the number two and three weapons manufacturer in the United States, Boeing and Northrop Grumman (based on 2010 data). Here’s the 2008 top ten to salute. Please send your congratulations and donations directly to their offices.
Top 10 Military Contractors 2008
LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP $29,363,894,334
NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORP. $23,436,442,251
BOEING CO. $21,838,400,709
BAE SYSTEMS $16,227,370,773
EMERSON CONSTRUCTION CO INC $13,931,307,017
RAYTHEON CO. $13,593,610,345
GENERAL DYNAMICS CORP. $13,490,652,077
UNITED TECHNOLOGIES CORP. $8,283,275,612
L-3 COMMUNICATIONS HOLDINGS $6,675,712,135
KBR INC. $5,997,147,425
(link)
Also, there are the up and coming drone manufacturers, Insitu and General Atomics.
One of the great things that generous military contractors do is fund our elections. Another great thing that these same contractors do is consult with Congress people about how they should increase funding to the military through their industry experts, experts that filthy liberals slander as “lobbyists”.
Lockheed Martin is the worlds largest defense contractor, and they are one of Americas largest campaign contributors. This year they have donated over $2,236,124 to 313 of 435 House races and 50 of 100 Senate races. The amount are from $500 (Chris Dodd) to $10,000. (link)
In the election cycle thus far, defense contractors have donated $14,153,192, 55% to Democrats and 45% to Republicans. (link 1) (link 2)
Since 1989 Lockheed Martin has donated $19,048,196 to Democrats and Republicans.
It might not seem a lot compared to the financial sector donating, but as opensecrets.org points out,
Although the defense sector contributes far less money to politicians than many other sectors, it is one of the most powerful in politics.The sector includes defense aerospace, defense electronics and other miscellaneous defense companies.
Individuals and political action committees associated with the defense sector contributed nearly $24 million to political candidates and committees during the 2008 campaign cycle, split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.
(link)
Military contractors, along with patriotic banks, not only fund our elections, but they help Congress write laws and how to vote on increasing the military budget.
June 23rd, 2010 By AP
Lockheed Martin spent $3.46 million lobbying in 1Q
WASHINGTON — Defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. spent $3.46 million lobbying the government on a wide range of issues in the first quarter, from Pentagon spending to Wall Street reform proposals.
The nation’s largest contractor spent less than the $3.53 million it devoted to lobbying in Washington during the 2009 first quarter, but more than the $3.2 million in spent in the 2009 fourth quarter.
Lockheed lobbied Congress and the Defense Department on issues including the overall budget and weapons programs for helicopters, fighter jets and ships, according to its disclosure form filed with the House clerk’s office on April 20.
The company also does a large amount of information technology work for the government, and it lobbied on matters such as the 2010 Census, FBI biometric programs and modernization of the FAA’s radar systems. (link)
So while traitors were trying to cut Lockheed Martin’s military contracts from the outside with megaphones, the defense giant had their tongues inside the White House cavities and Congressional leaders’ channels.
In the fall of 2002, the man who would become the John McCain campaign's top foreign policy adviser was tasked with a sensitive project at the behest of the White House. It began when President Bush's then deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley asked neoconservative activist and Lockheed Martin lobbyist Bruce Jackson to set up a committee that could mobilize public opinion for war with Iraq. (link)
It’s nice to see that President Bush and Senator McCain were enlisting the companies set to make billions on the Iraq War to help lobby for that war. Now that’s how to use an asset, or get used by one.
In the last quarter of 2009, the top ten defense contractors spent more than $27 million ($7 million more than in the previous three months) on lobbying in Washington. (link) In that same quarter, President Obama announced he was going to send more troops into Afghanistan. It’s nice to see millions can get you billions in government contracts if you have good timing.
What’s better yet is that government has embedded in its entrails “experts” from private contractors to help them spend more money!
By some estimates, as many as half the staff members at US government civilian agencies are temporary and even long-term specialists from the private sector, a trend that accelerated in the past decade...Today, every US soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq is matched by at least one civilian working for a private company. All told, about 239,451 contractors work for the Pentagon in battle zones around the world...(link)
I am sure all you patriots see how good we have it when companies step up and volunteer to make money in the war. Not all Americans are as patriotic as you. Take, for example, Danielle Brian, Executive Director of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).
Testimony of Danielle Brian before the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan Regarding Private Security Contractors
June 18, 2010 (excerpt)
...A number of jobs that are not necessarily inherently governmental in general become so when they are conducted in a combat zone. Any operations that are critical to the success of the U.S. government’s mission in a combat zone must be controlled by government personnel. In addition, in those areas that have not been brought under the rule of law, it is an inherently governmental function to provide security so that the government’s missions can be successful.
Okay, why should it just be the government having fun telling the Afghans what to do?
Why does this matter? The use of private contractors for security in a combat zone poses unique risks. One is the inherent tension between the effective performance of a mission and the financial interests of the contractor. As the Center for a New American Security put it, “The very existence of private contractors inserts a profit motive onto the battlefield; their primary responsibility is not the national interest but rather fulfilling the terms of their contracts.”[2] In fact, making a profit and serving the national interest are sometimes in direct conflict...
See how they hate America? These “security experts” don’t understand that profit should come first, security second, the wealthy third, Congress fourth, America fifth, and the plebes...whatever.
...while cutting costs is good for the bottom line, it can undermine security.[3] We saw evidence of this phenomenon in the ArmorGroup North America contract where, for example, in order to save money the company hired Gurkhas who did not meet language proficiency contract requirements—and therefore could not adequately communicate with the English-speaking guards.[4]
Using facts is the last resorts of liberals who point out how it’s not always good to cut costs.
Another problem is that the laws in place do not adequately hold accountable all contractors that violate rules and endanger security in combat zones, particularly contractors for the State Department and CIA.
Upholding the rule of law was never a concern for us in Gitmo or Bagram Air Base, and it shouldn’t be on the battlefield.
Why Danielle Brian hates America so much is beyond me.
http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/testimony/contract-oversight/co-gp-20100618.html
Let’s say we cut the military budget and open the borders and let the Islamofascists take over. What’s going to happen to all those good paying jobs in the defense industry?
Well, if you look at an input/output model of spending, the military looks very impressive. I mean, teachers never built rocket launched bombs that could hit a shed at 40 miles, have they?
One report by a group of educated academics in economics (liberals) uses just such an input/output model and comes up with the bewildering conclusion that creates cognitive dissonance in my malfunctioning conservative mind: education gives you a better return for your government dollar. (Read the report here)
First, defense industry workers return fewer dollars back into the economy that other sectors at 43% to 78% (for non-defense industry workers).
One cited study in the reports says that cutting defense spending will create more jobs through great spending and better resource allocation.
“Professor James Medoff, entitled “Smart Stimulus: More Good Jobs.” The other was a 1990 study by Marion Anderson, Greg Bischak and Michael Oden entitled “Converting the American Economy.”
Medoff found that personal consumption expenditures had the lowest positive impact on his index that combined both the number of jobs created and the wages and benefits of jobs. Defense spending was the next to last by this combined job quality/quantity index. Medoff found that spending for education, health care, transportation infrastructure and construction all performed substantially better than military spending by this combined job quantity/quality index.”
But then people wouldn’t be able to serve America in the defense by creating explosives if we cut defense spending.
Another research team, Anderson et al (what kind of name is et al?) found that,
“...the impact of a gradual reduction in military spending, starting with $35 billion in 1990 and reaching $105 billion in 1994, would produce a net gain of 477,000 jobs within the U.S. economy.”
The report also shows that the total wage compensation is the lowest in the defense sector even if the defense sector paid relatively high wages. That’s because far fewer jobs can be created with money in the defense industry. They studied five different economic sectors, defense, education, health care, mass transit, and construction/infrastructure. They compared the impact on job creation of spending $1 billion in each sector.
In the report, they found that wages were lower compared to defense in health care, mass transit, and construction/infrastructure. However, wages were higher in education and education, for every $1 billion, would create more jobs. Also, if you factor the total amount of the wages created for $1 billion, defense ranks last. For example, defense creates 8,555 jobs per billion dollars at a wage of $65,986 for a total wages of $564,510,230. The same amount invested in construction/infrastructure would create more jobs (12,804 at an average salary of $51,812) for a total of $663,400,848 in wages, almost exactly $100 million dollars more than total defense wages created.
More income creates more economic stimulus, especially considering defense workers spend less of their wages than other workers. But the salaries are higher for defense workers and education just makes people uppity. Thus, we need to spend more on the military.
In addition the report says that education is more labor intensive and is less equipment dependent than defense as well as construction and transportation and thus you get more job creation at higher wages (due to higher training standards) in education than in other sectors of public spending of our $1 billion dollars.
How can spending on education generate both higher average wages as well as more new jobs per $1 billion in spending? The answer is straightforward. For one thing, the high average wage reflects the fact that a large proportion of people in the sector operate with relatively high credentials and skills, and their incomes reflect this. In addition, education is a relatively labor-intensive industry. This means that, compared with the other industries we are examining, for every $1 billion in new spending in education, proportionally more money is spent on hiring new people into the industry and relatively less is spent on supplies, equipment, buildings.
Let me add that education increases job opportunities and skills, transportation helps move people and materials for work and industry and construction/infrastructure work keeps Americans housed with electricity, sewages, and moving on roads, rails and bridges.
The defense industry protects us, perhaps, but it is money spent with little benefit to the American people. Even without the lower wage and job creation, military spending is excessive and has little utility.
Links for your information. Enjoy.
Build-up of Afghan security forces ill advised
http://www.peacebuilding.no/eng/Publications/Noref-Policy-Briefs/Build-up-of-Afghan-security-forces-ill-advised
Afghan War is Big Business for Private Contractors, not so much for Taxpayers
http://www.menwithfoilhats.com/2010/06/afghan-war-is-big-business-for-private-contractors-not-so-much-for-taxpayers/
Rethink Afghanistan
http://rethinkafghanistan.com/
Petition
http://rethinkafghanistan.com/peace.php
U.S. indirectly paying Afghan warlords as part of security contract
.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/21/AR2010062104628.html
Private Contrators
http://www.menwithfoilhats.com/2010/06/afghan-war-is-big-business-for-private-contractors-not-so-much-for-taxpayers/
U.S. Said to Fund Afghan Warlords to Protect Convoys
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/world/asia/22contractors.html
Another on warlords
http://www.alan.com/2010/06/22/us-pays-tens-of-millions-to-warlords-insurgents-and-the-taliban/
Defund Blackwater act
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0l1CsvvUi8&feature=player_embedded
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703
SAIC is number 5 contractor 2010
http://washingtontechnology.com/toplists/top-100-lists/2010.aspx
Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) a "body shops"
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=science_applications_international_corporation_%28saic%29
Top military contractors
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/industry/top100.htm 2004
Recent top contractors over all, the top eight are military contractors and the others large parts of their contracts are military.
http://washingtontechnology.com/toplists/top-100-lists/2010.aspx
Military Contractors offshore profits
http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2008/03/cayman_islands_shell_companies.html
Misconduct database for contractors
http://www.contractormisconduct.org/
Military contracts by Congressional district
http://www.fedspending.org/fpds/tables.php?tabtype=t2&year=2008
Military contractors sell the war with government war propaganda
http://www.prwatch.org/node/7282
Military Religious Freedom Foundation—an interesting first Amendment for the military group
http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/
Yours,
Tex Shelters
Surge to Nowhere in Afghanistan
Surge to Nowhere in Afghanistan
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Like the stairs to nowhere in a haunted house, the Obama administration has sent more troops on a dead end journey into Afghanistan. 
During a recession that teeters on the brink of becoming a full-blown depression, Obama’s White House continues to ask for billions to fight in Afghanistan when there is no clear path to victory.
Is the cost worth it? Estimates put cost to date of the war at over $1 trillion. (link) In the end of May, the Senate passed another funding package worth billions for the war in Iraq. “The Senate spending measure provides $33.5 billion for the Pentagon and fully pays for the additional 30,000 troops in the administration’s buildup in Afghanistan.” (link)
Michael Moore writes: According to Congressman John Tierney, we now have 88,000 troops and 110,000 contractors in Afghanistan. The $33.5 billion in war funding is to send 30,000 more troops, plus more contractors, to Afghanistan (some of whom are already there pre-funding). This was the vote to fund the escalation that was debated in the U.S. media a half year ago. That passage of time allowed this vote to come in the context of a debate in which almost no one mentioned the word "escalation", no one at all objected to the President having gone ahead with an unfunded escalation, and -- on the contrary -- various congress members from both parties swore they had to "support the troops" and others, such as Republican Congressmen Buck McKeon and Jerry Lewis, asserted their responsibility to obey "our Commander in Chief" as if the first branch of our government is now a branch of the military. (link)
Again, why are we there?
The President has repeatedly talked about how staying on in Afghanistan is in our “vital national interests”. However, President Obama has yet to give us a reason to remain engaged in the Eastern nation slightly smaller than Texas and with five million more people. One big difference is that the secessionists of Texas love the United States more than the people of Afghanistan.
Are we seriously worried that Afghanistan is a threat to the United States? Al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization responsible for the 9/11 attack on the United States, has mostly been pushed out of Afghanistan according to General Petraeus and others: “The head of U.S. Central Command said Sunday that Al Qaeda is no longer operating in Afghanistan, with its senior leadership having moved to the western region of Pakistan.” (link)
So, we’re not going after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan because they have left. How about the claim that we want to install a democratic government in Afghanistan?
By most accounts, the chosen President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai is corrupt. A Nov, 2009 report by Transparency International states, “Afghanistan has slipped three places to become the world's second-most-corrupt country despite billions in aid meant to bolster the government against a rising insurgency, according to an annual survey of perceived levels of corruption.
Only lawless Somalia, whose weak U.N.-backed government controls just a few blocks of the capital, was perceived as more corrupt than Afghanistan in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.” (link)
Der Spiegel points out that the Karzai election illegitimate:
With the withdrawal of his sole challenger, Hamid Karzai has now won a second term as president of Afghanistan. But for the West, working together with the Afghan government will only get harder. US President Barack Obama will have to explain why he wants to support an undemocratically elected leader by sending more troops. The debate in Germany is also likely to heat up. (link)
According to Former U.N. official Peter Galbraith writes in the Daily Beast, “President Hamid Karzai heads a government ranked the second-most corrupt in the world, where power rests with thousands of warlords, power brokers, and militiamen.”
As Washington and London struggle to prop up a puppet government over which Hamid Karzai has no control, they risk repeating the blood-soaked 19th-century history of Britain’s imperial defeat. (link)
We have been supporting corrupt governments all over the world for over a century in China, Vietnam, Panama, and currently in Colombia and Afghanistan among other places. Taxpayers in the United States might wonder why we are spending money on these corrupt regimes without question. What national interests do we have in protecting drug dealing nations and regimes that murder with impunity?
Some say we must stay in Afghanistan because “we must never forget” 9/11. What’s the saying, throwing good money after bad?
- 1. Neither the nation of Afghanistan nor Afghanis attacked us on 9/11. Al-Qaeda was responsible, and they are now camped in Pakistan. So why are we punishing Afghanistan?
- 2. There are many causes for 9/11, and spending trillions on war will not fix the problems caused by the terrorist attack. In fact, the more we futilely drain our resources on this war, the more the terrorists have won.
- 3. There is no logic fighting insurgents in Afghanistan that have no capacity to threaten the United States. Invading Afghanistan will NOT prevent further terrorism. Remembering 9/11 should be about honoring the dead not spending billions and running the politics of far away nations.
What about eliminating Afghanistan as a safe haven as a reason to stay in Afghanistan? There are at least a dozen other nations that would harbor al-Qaeda, from Indonesia to Syria, to Algeria. Are we going to invade all of those nations too?
Other excuses to stay in Afghanistan don’t hold up to scrutiny.
Are we in Afghanistan to reduce the production of opium shipped to the world? The fact is, opium production has remained level since the war started.
And, source eradication (military intervention) is the least cost effective way to reduce drug use according to the landmark Rand study.
A landmark study of cocaine markets by the RAND Corporation for the U.S. Army and the Drug Czar's office found that, dollar for dollar, providing treatment to cocaine users is 10 times more effective at reducing drug abuse than drug interdiction schemes and 23 times more effective than trying to eradicate coca at its source. To achieve a one percent reduction in U.S. cocaine consumption, the United States could spend an additional $34 million on drug treatment programs, or 20 times more, $783 million, on efforts to eradicate the supply at the source. (link)
The good news is that we won’t win this war because first, we aren’t willing to commit “a force requirement of 640,000 troops – more than the total number of U.S. Army active-duty soldiers”, and we aren’t up to “having to kill a lot of people, with inevitable collateral civilian casualties.” (link)
On the first point, Americans are only willing to go to war as long as it is other people’s children. A troop force of 640,000 is more than five times the current projected number of forces for Afghanistan. That troop strength would cost several hundred billion dollars more than we have already spent. There would also be more American and Afghan casualties and more politically damaging, a draft would be required. Would the middle and more well off classes want their children being drafted off to war? I think not.
As for the second point, there is the rise in collateral damage needed to win the war. Not even blood thirsty Americans would like to see that. Without these changes, we can’t win in Afghanistan. It’s time to leave.
9/11 didn’t occur because we had no troops in Afghanistan. It occurred because George W. Bush didn’t listen to his intelligence warnings coming from his own security advisors. We cannot cover every part of the world that might be a sanctuary for al-Qaeda in order to prevent another attack.
However, that is exactly what Peter Bergen, television and print journalist. Bergen is a proponant of “Just War Theory” which states that there are moral wars and immoral wars. It is an attempt to create and ethical framework in that can be used to justify war. Of course, the Second World War is used as the ultimate example of a just war, and who can argue. But the suppositions Bergen makes about the Afghan/Iraq conflicts is based on conjecture of a horrific future if we don’t stay in Afghanistan. http://www.justwartheory.com/
One item Mr. Bergen likes to point out is that there “Afghanistan will not be Obama’s Vietnam, nor will it be his Iraq. Rather, the renewed and better resourced American effort in Afghanistan will, in time, produce a relatively stable and prosperous Central Asian state.” (link)
What proof does Bergen give for this assertion? Well, Afghanistan is not Vietnam and we are not the Soviets (who failed in it’s 1979-89 war in Afghanistan) is his major contention. While those statements are true, the Vietcong was a large and organized force compared to the insurgency in Afghanistan and the United States is not yet crumbling under it’s bloated state, it does not in turn mean that we can bring a lasting peace to Afghanistan or help them build a lasting democracy.
In the same Washington Monthly article, Bergen compares the numerous and diverse states in Afghanistan to the early nation states of Germany and Italy that unified in the 19th Century. It’s hard to believe Bergen can’t see the differences between Afghanistan’s geography, ethnicities, religion, history, people, society and so forth and two European nations a century and a half earlier. Bergen is either ignoring inconvenient facts to sell his “just war” in Afghanistan, or he is not as smart as he is given credit for.
Bergen likes to use history to make his arguments, but he disregards the history of failures in Afghanistan and the ethnic divisions. It is hubris to think we can somehow succeed where others failed, and there is little to no evidence that we will succeed in Afghanistan.
And what if we do succeed? What will it cost us in the long run? If Afghanistan become a state with zero terrorist cells and democracy that we want? Are there no other places where al-Qaeda can operate? Are there not other terrorist threats? Will we invade every nation with terrorist cells to prevent another 9/11 when intelligence, international alliances and other anti-terrorist measures will work at a much lower economic and human costs?
A trillion plus has been spent on these wars and there is no certainty that we will succeed. What’s more, many terrorism experts assert that our wars are creating more terrorists, not less. Iraq/ Afghanistan/ War on Terrorism
Unify This!
We are not safer by staying in Afghanistan, it’s not cost effective, it doesn’t end all terrorism, and it doesn’t rid the world of terrorist havens. So, why are we there?
Other links:
http://afghanistan.saarctourism.org/ethnic-groups.html
http://infidelsarecool.com/2009/04/23/how-bad-is-it-in-pakistan-this-bad-pic/
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LF25Df02.html
Diversity
http://www.greenchange.org/article.php?id=5855
We Can’t build the roads we planned in Afghanistan
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34082002/
Yours,
Tex Shelters
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