Tag Archives: racket

Letters for Peace August

Please join us in writing and communicating with the public and our elected officials. Respond to the nonsense whether written in the mainstream media, in your local newspapers or magazines.

 

NATO should be trying to end war in Ukraine — Gil Halsted

Military thrives as needs go unmet – Susan Friess

Better use of Pentagon dollars – Stefania Sani

It’s time to reallocate U.S. military spending — Glenn Hoffarth

Negotiation could end war – Gil Halsted

 


NATO should be trying to end war in Ukraine — Gil Halsted 

“A NATO spokesperson was recently forced to apologize for suggesting a possible diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine.

Stian Jenssen, the chief of staff to the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking at a panel discussion in Norway, said one way to end the war in Ukraine would be for Ukraine to give up some territory in return for being granted NATO membership. But his boss immediately forced him to walk back that suggestion and stick with the current NATO strategy, which is to support Ukraine unconditionally with more weapons that can only prolong the war.

NATO should be working to promote peace, not prolong wars. The word “treaty” is in the organization’s name (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). Treaties are what happens when wars are ended and peace is established. Jenssen’s proposal may not be the best way to end the war, but it deserves discussion instead of an immediate veto.”

Gil Halsted, Madison


Military thrives as needs go unmet – Susan Friess

 

Dear Editor: I was indoors the other day. I paused and replayed a portion of a podcast and interrupted Zoom as I interviewed new teachers in the afternoon.

Why? The F-35s overhead. Where do I live? Near Schenk’s Corners in Madison. When I’m outside I cringe as they fly over the gardens. In the company of dear friends, tears come to my eyes. I wish to acknowledge my sense of despair and paralysis. I wish to push back.

The fires rage as this summer of undeniable climate change draws to a close. Housing and income insecurity in our town increase. Devastating migration is necessary for so many worldwide. Ongoing war flares around the globe, heightening the threat of nuclear detonation.

I start by acknowledging these nuclear-ready jets in our midst are part of our nation’s military complex — the biggest institutional contributor of greenhouse gases in the world and the recipient of over half the country’s budget — all while energy shifts lag, social supports are further frayed and ongoing insecurity and suffering intensify around the world.

I push back with what I have, my heart and mind. I dare to imagine a world in which the military industrial complex’s presence is not woven throughout this nation and beyond. A world where resources address the pressing needs of humans and the earth of which we are a part.

It is not impossible nor wrong to imagine a world beyond war. In fact, it is healthy and the first step to sanity.

Susan Freiss

Madison

 

 

 


Dear Editor: In a recent story on Wisconsin Public Radio, Sen. Tammy Baldwin is credited with having secured $69 million in federal funding to replace some Fort McCoy facilities. She is quoted as saying: “They just weren’t keeping up with the times.” She said there were all sorts of failures.

But is she keeping up with the times on this issue? Federal assistance is needed in many other areas that are showing “failures.”

What else could that $69 million have done for the general population of this state? Just for example:

• Feeding Wisconsin reports that one in seven people experience hunger.

• Those facing hunger report needing an average of $22.12 more per week to meet their food needs (Second Harvest Heartland).

• The rate of poor and low-income people in Wisconsin is calculated at 31% by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.

The funding of the military is directly contributing to all the real perils we face. Perils that need immediate attention and all the funding they can get. Those perils are many, from the overall inequity to global warming to underfunded social services.

Even a micro-funding for military barracks contributes to the system that keeps us perpetually ready for war and that also impoverishes our society.

Wisconsin taxpayers contribute more than $11 billion to the Pentagon and military yearly. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness there are 4,907 homeless individuals in Wisconsin. Half of them are families and 36% are veterans.

Stefania Sani

Madison


In 2022 Congress approved over $113 billion in assistance to support the war in the Ukraine. All the while, our country suffers from climate-related emergencies such as the recent fire in Maui and a variety of social ills related to massive poverty and inequality.

In his famous “Iron Cross Speech,” former President Dwight Eisenhower stated that, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” His goal in the speech was to highlight how money spent on militarism is money not spent on meeting the many needs of citizens.

A recent report noted that homelessness across the country has increased by 11% this year from 2022. Local food banks have seen a dramatic increase in demand for their services. Military spending is nearly half of the federal discretionary budget. This is unsustainable and unethical. The plague of militarism must end. American citizens must demand a shift in our values away from the destruction of war and instead to the construction of a healthy society.”

Glenn Hoffarth, Madison


Negotiation could end war – Gil Halsted

Dear Editor: In a recent letter to constituents U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan said the war in Ukraine ”will only ultimately end with a negotiated settlement.”

He said “it is critical that the U.S. prioritize maintaining communication” between both Moscow and Kiev. I applaud Pocan for insisting that negotiations should be at the top of the priority list for ending the slaughter in Ukraine. But instead the Biden administration, with congressional approval, has armed Ukrainians with cluster bombs that have been banned by most other countries and whatever else the U.S. arms industry can provide to keep the war hot on the battlefield. Negotiations remain somewhere further down the list of strategies.

This approach will lead to more civilian casualties and ongoing profits for the arms industry, and, in my view, will not lead to a lasting peace. The only winners will be the weapons makers. Continuing to spend American taxpayer dollars on weapons for Ukraine instead of putting intense economic and diplomatic pressure on both Kiev and Moscow to settle at the table will insure more death and destruction.

My fervent hope is that others in Congress will join Pocan in calling for making communication between the warring parties a priority instead of sending more weapons. The best and eventually the only way to win the war is to stop fighting it and start serious negotiations.

Gil Halsted

Madison

Open Secrets Tracks the “Racket”

Sheila Krumholz, Executive Director Open Secrets
“You follow OpenSecrets because you want to cut through the noise — pushing past rhetoric to find the money and influential actors aligned on an issue.

We don’t always provide the easiest read, but you’ll always receive unadulterated analysis, steeped in reliable data that has been meticulously maintained for decades. We do this because, as you know, the devil is often in the details.

[ Also check out… POGO.org  ]

A recent example is our Capitalizing on Conflict report series that examines the defense industry’s multi-pronged influence machine. While the defense industry plays an outsized role in Washington — note the $840B 2023 National Defense Authorization Act budget just passed in the House of Representatives — it’s hard to visualize the industry’s influence in its totality.

To start unraveling the influence network, our researchers pulled data on all inputs (read $$$) from defense firms and contractors to elected officials, PACs and lobbyists. So far, we’ve revealed that:

 

 

Our investigation has not gone unnoticed. With OpenSecrets data used as a catalyst, a Public Citizen report in early July shows that defense company investments in Congress have produced a 450,000% return.”

Stop the Destruction of Our VA Medical System – Please Sign/Share

— > Sign On to Stop the Assault on Veterans Healthcare

As of 2022…

  1. Over one-third of all veterans’ medical visits have already been sent outside of the VA system
  2. And more than 25% of VA healthcare dollars have already been diverted to the private, for-profit sector as a result of the VA MISSION Act.
  3. One-third of the union jobs at the VA that the AIR commission would destroy are held by veterans themselves.

This fiasco must be stopped.

Petition to #SaveMyVA from AIR Commission Closures – Action Network

Thank you very much for reading these articles, signing the petition and sharing this information to your veteran and non-veterans friends and asking them to help you by signing on.

Peace

Buzz Davis, Vets for Peace in Tucson

 

 

More information:

Veterans for Peace – Save Our VA Campaign


These 17 Medical Centers Would Close and More Than 30 Built or Replaced Under VA Plan | Military.com

“The Department of Veterans Affairs has unveiled a plan that calls for closing 17 aging or underused medical centers, while shifting services to more than 30 new or rebuilt hospitals. In some cases, it would rely on private care.

Under the nearly $2 trillion proposal released Monday, the department would lose a net of three medical centers and 174 outpatient health clinics but would gain 255 health care facilities, including new clinics, stand-alone rehabilitation centers and nursing homes.

Medical centers in areas with diminishing veteran populations are among those slated to close, while others would be built in growing urban centers, the West and the South — areas where veteran populations are growing…”


Blog | VHPI (veteranspolicy.org)

“The Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute is a national nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy organization that studies the provision of healthcare and other services to the those who served in the US military as well as their families and communities.”


The VA Needs More Funding, Not More Privatization (jacobinmag.com)

Joe Biden touted himself as friend of veterans while on the campaign trail. But now he’s overseeing the continued privatization of the VA and backing nominees that brag about being venture capitalists.” 


Biden’s VA Secretary Proposes Shutting Down Dozens of Facilities

It’s both bad politics and bad policy.

BY SUZANNE GORDON MARCH 21, 2022. Prospect

 

“On March 14th, the Department of Veterans Affairs VA) released some deeply flawed proposals for reorganizing the nation’s largest and only publicly funded, fully integrated health care system.

Rather than building back better at the VA-run Veterans Health Administration (VHA), VA Secretary Denis McDonough’s blueprint embraces, rather than rejects, further outsourcing of care for more than nine million veterans, and proposes VHA downsizing that will dramatically accelerate that trend.

It’s not often that national unions representing around 250,000 VHA workers and right-wing Republicans like South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Staten Island Rep. Nicole Malliotakis issue simultaneous denunciations of privatization. But that’s what happened in the wake of McDonough’s facility-closing recommendations to the VA Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission, a panel just nominated by President Biden.

Adding to the political confusion was the outraged response of Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), who co-sponsored the VA MISSION Act of 2018, which created the AIR Commission. During Joe Biden’s first year in office, the MISSION Act also helped divert $18 billion from the VHA’s direct-care budget to the private health care industry, whose providers now consume 20 percent of the VHA’s budget..”

Stop Using China as an Excuse – CNN’s Fareed Zackaria

It’s not often we can look to corporate mainstream media for facts on Foreign Policy.  This one must have slipped through the CIA filter.

 

Washington Post Opinion : Opinion: The Pentagon is using China as an excuse for huge new budgets

March 18, 2021 at 5:30 p.m. CDT

“On the eve of his visit this week to Asia, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin outlined his key concern. “China is our pacing threat,” he said. He explained that for the past 20 years, the United States had been focused on the Middle East while China had been modernizing its military. “We still maintain the edge,” he noted, “and we’re going to increase the edge going forward.” Welcome to the new age of bloated Pentagon budgets, all to be justified by the great Chinese threat.

What Austin calls America’s “edge” over China is more like a chasm. The United States has about 20 times the number of nuclear warheads as China. It has twice the tonnage of warships at sea, including 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers compared with China’s two carriers (which are much less advanced). Washington has more than 2,000 modern fighter jets compared with Beijing’s roughly 600, according to national security analyst Sebastien Roblin. And the United States deploys this power using a vast network of some 800 overseas bases. China has three. China spends around $250 billion on its military, a third as much as the United States. Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution notes that, “if China were in NATO, we would berate it for inadequate burden-sharing, since its military outlays fall well below NATO’s 2 percent minimum.”

At the height of its imperial might in the late 19th century, when it ruled a quarter of the world’s population, Britain adopted a “two-power standard” — its navy had to be larger than the next two put together. U.S. military spending remains larger than the defense budgets of the next 10 countries put together, most of which are Washington’s close allies. The United States’ intelligence budget alone — around $85 billion — is larger than Russia’s total defense spending.