community-based, non-corporate, participatory media
community-based, non-corporate, participatory media
Let Them Pay Their Own Way
by Sudhama Ranganathan
Tuesday, Feb. 08, 2011 at 10:25 AM
uconnharassment@gmail.com (email address validated)
One of the third rail issues in US politics gets looked at each time politicians seriously consider the closing of American military bases or cuts to the Pentagon budget. It might seem strange to be broaching the subject now while there are two major theaters of conflict - those being Afghanistan and Iraq, yet in some ways it is the perfect time. Americans still spend huge amounts around the world in other places and those two only compound the costs. America hasn’t always kept so many bases worldwide, yet always maintained a healthy and muscular military. It’s true times change it’s also true nothing in life comes without a price
According to Global research, “Estimates of the Defense Department budget needs, made public in 2006 in the DoD Green Book for FY 2007 are of the order of 440 billion dollars. Military and other staff required numbered 1,332,300. But those figures do not include the money required for the ‘Global World on Terrorism’ (GWOT). In other words, these figures largely pertain to the regular Defense budget.” (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5564)
Outside of the America, “the US Military has bases in 63 countries. Brand new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries. In total, there are [1,580,255] US military personnel deployed worldwide.
“These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments. The underlying land surface is of the order of 30 million acres. According to […] 2005 official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of 737 bases in foreign lands.” (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5564) Those figures do not account for the money being spent to pay private security and intelligence contractors in employed by the Pentagon to make up for shortfalls.
Now before saying anything else further it should be said I am not a total peacenik and do believe in maintaining a healthy military. There are genuine threats to us around the world and most likely always will be. I believe in engaging as necessary and staying out of conflicts and definitely not starting trouble as enough comes looking for folk whether they ask for it or not. Neither Gandhi nor MLK were able to escape violence and if we were invaded my idea of defense would be to take up arms not roll over and allow it.
The first Zen Buddhists developed and practiced forms of martial arts to defend them selves in part as a realization that to be completely non-violent would not be to follow the middle way as talked about in Buddhism. Also allowing thugs to always have their way does not help the world. As someone interested in the teachings of Buddhism that makes sense to me.
Philosophies aside the figures referred to earlier exclude any and all money to fight the global war on terror and the expenditures on the conflict in Iraq. When it comes to these places certain people claim we do so because of our national interests. I am not one that believes all bases should be closed or that avoiding war or violent conflict always is possible. However, it doesn’t make sense walking around with a 300 lb suit of armor all the time in order to avoid getting hurt. After a while the suit itself will be a great source of pain.
Though many believe it to be, all the bases and dollars spent are not merely to stave off perceived “bad guys that hate us” as certain politicians and pundits would have people believe. In most places they are meant to protect sources of revenue for various US based commercial interests. Oil is an easy one and with all the bases in the Middle East in certain strategic nations there can be no doubt American forces are protecting those sources of revenue.
The Middle East is not the only place, though it is the most prominent as we hear about it often. There are US troops stationed in Latin America to look over oil interests there. There are troops in Central Asia to look over oil interests also.
Our troops look over renewable resources such as natural gas. We look over large fresh water sources in Latin America also. We have bases looking over biological resources. There are the Cold War leftover nations in Eastern Asia the American government has deals with to obtain cheaply manufactured goods. We protect those too.
Certain people may say these are in the national interest, and average Americans are paying the billions to protect these places. They are being protected to maintain the level of access to those things Americans want and to maintain a certain way of life – that’s what taxpayers have been told. But the jobs in those areas aren’t going mostly to middle-class and poor Americans being shipped over there to work. The majority of that work is given to locals at cut rate prices.
In fact, the middle class and poor of America have been sacrificed to ensure jobs in many of those regions that have overwhelmingly benefitted other nations. Only America’s wealthy have been beneficiaries and Pentagon brass with expansive swaths of power not set forth in the US Constitution for them to have, but had nonetheless.
While Americans pay for the expanse of bases and security for the rich corporations to go in and get loot, the middle class here gets poorer. They shipped American jobs to Eastern Asia starting at the end of WWII so the USSR’s style of government, which collapsed in 1989, could be proven to not bring the kinds of economic benefits to nations America’s did. Our government manipulated currencies and made it work and still do though the Cold War is long since dead.
But, while it was working and the companies that shipped the jobs over there became wealthier and wealthier, Americans that used to manufacture here watched their incomes stagnate, then fall. It’s no secret the middleclass here is disappearing. It is also no secret the rich here are getting richer with most enjoying economic ties overseas.
But the money gained has not come back to us – the Average voter, taxpayers and workers. Their reckless behavior caused an economic collapse the rest were forced to bail them out of with what little we had. During the ensuing recession they got richer while Americans became poorer. All the while the places receiving the jobs that once built the American middle class have curiously seen huge spikes in their standards of living and growing if not booming middle classes. In fact I was just listening to a program telling how in many nations American jobs have been exported to, their greatest concerns are how to deal with and address the needs and concerns of their burgeoning middle class. (http://www.yourpublicmedia.org/node/10222) At the same time our president is going around the country asking people to create jobs.
Why are average Americans being forced to pay to watch rich people’s oil, minerals and manufacturing concerns in other nations? Why are average Americans paying for their security? Right now in Iraq many private interests are guarded by private security concerns that in other places, are overcharging taxpayers by vast sums. Why can’t they pay for their own protection in all of their oil fields, etc?
Why can’t they pay them to watch their factories and mineral mines? Why can’t they pay them to watch their timber interests? Why can’t they pay private security to look after their other biological concerns? When people feel the resources in their nations are taken advantage of, then people see with the American flag on the uniforms of those guarding the companies they see a place to lay blame.
Some of the private security concerns have become hugely rich as a result of tax dollars paid them post 9/11. “Blackwater reportedly has revenues of about $100 million annually, almost all of it from government contracts, and maintains “a compound half the size of Manhattan and 450 permanent employees,” according to the newspaper.” (http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/09/sb-revolving-door-blackwater-1158094722) They even develop aircraft and land vehicles for our military. That is one company alone out of the thousands can handle what’s necessary. They’ve obviously soaked up enough taxpayer dollars, let the billion dollar golden parachute multinationals pay for them now.
Average Americans aren’t getting richer. We are becoming less educated because of crumbling schools while Eastern Asian countries, bolstered by our government’s deals with theirs to manipulate currency and build up a middle class there, aren’t just catching up, they’re racing ahead of America’s children. Average Americans are more in debt than ever while wealthy corporations get richer, because our government and Defense Department could care less about the fact American workers get sacrificed. This twisted system forces them to pay to protect private corporations in a supposedly ‘hands off’ economic system. Those are not American jobs being protected.
America’s government entitlements are cut while the wealthy elite take million dollar mud baths on corporate retreats with middle class and poor American bailout tax dollars. They build gleaming new corporate headquarters in other countries with top dollar designs inside and out all protected by average taxpayer dollars. How many average Americans work there?
If they want to relocate, fine. Average Americans don’t need them here to have oil, we would still have it. They would not stop selling to the world’s largest consumer market, nor would they jack prices. Citgo and BP are not US based firms and their prices are no different than the US companies. In fact they could leave and act as distributors while American based concerns handles things here. The amount of people from this nation working in petroleum would not change.
These are not patriotic companies that want to contribute to and build up this great nation. They are taking American tax dollars and hardly contributing a thing. When ‘Joe’s Plumbing Service’ pays taxes they must pay all their taxes or face serious repercussions. Large multi-national corporations - oil and otherwise - skip out on this national responsibility with virtually no consequences.
An article in Mother Jones quotes Forbes saying, “Exxon[Mobil] tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. No wonder that of $15 billion in income taxes last year, Exxon paid none of it to Uncle Sam, and has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas.” (http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/04/exxon-mobil-paid-zero-income-tax-offshore%20shelter-wal-mart-general-electric-forbes)
They aren’t the only ones. A report in IBS Case Development Center states, “GE is targeting the Asian and South East Asian Markets as it finds a lot of scope for growth there. It has been predicted that 60% of its growth over the next decade would be from these developing markets. It finds a bright future in these markets which will help it keep pace with globalisation.” (http://www.ibscdc.org/Case_Studies/Strategy/Growth%20Strategies/GRS0177C.htm)
(‘Globalization’ being shorthand for American companies and the manufacturing on the cheap in other nations they do, of course allowed by our government’s working in concert to manipulate currencies so that remains.) Regarding GE Forbes reported in 2010, “Last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.
“Avoiding taxes is nothing new for General Electric. In 2008 its effective tax rate was 5.3%; in 2007 it was 15%. The marginal U.S. corporate rate is 35%.” (http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-washington-corporate-taxes.html) If these companies want to go in and get money from otgher nations why should the majority of Americans foot the bill to protect them? There are approximately 97,000 US military service personnel in Asia (excluding the Middle East and Central Asia) thus, average Americans pay most of the bill to protect companies like GE that paid no taxes in 2009. That makes no sense.
Generals play Golf on million dollar courses paid for by average Americans in Korea few average Joe’s will ever see pictures of. Contractors overcharge to provide food and do laundry for the military and sometimes don’t even provide the basic services they are charging us for. When the American government goes after them they relocate to the Middle East. What did average Americans lose when Halliburton relocated, for example? (Insert favorite Halliburton colloquialism here.)
Many generals and other career military power players end up retiring and going over to the private sector to work for those very same overcharging private contractors at huge salaries anyways. That’s part of the whole power play.
But, average Americans already rely on dangerous levels of private security contractors to do dirty work at huge prices to even giving them far too many non-government employee classified clearance. Let the corporations hire them to watch their own backside and let average Americans keep all that money. Bring it all back to America. We don’t need to close all the bases to do it, but we could certainly close many and make huge cutbacks. We could close the bases and bring back the jobs by ending government policies allowing other nations to sell to us at falsely manipulated prices forcing our workers to go without good jobs plus making them give up on opportunities America now gives to other nations.
While they buy more cars and middle class houses for themselves overseas our once thriving middle-class defaults on its loans and former promise. That once shining example of American pride goes into disrepair and we build more prisons to hold the scores of white, black and Latino poor that once had a shot at making it out of poverty and seeing their kids educated because we have lost sight of the most important element of America and that’s Americans.
The future of America’s not in Eastern Asia or the Middle East. If the government wants more jobs to be created they should stop the hemorrhaging and bring the jobs home. Factories are waiting. If the government wants to make civil rights a priority that’s great, but how about ending the taxes going to pay for the security of factories that don’t employ Americans plus only help to impoverish the average people here. This is about us period. It’s time for the Defense Department to understand, America needs to see progress in that theater now.
To read about my inspiration for this article go to www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com.
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