Budgets

Boondoggle: Inc. Making Sense Of The $1.25 Trillion National Security State Budget

January 30, 2020 By William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger, Tomdispatch.com Educate! Budgets, National Security, US Imperialism

In its latest budget request, the Trump administration is asking for a near-record $750 billion for the Pentagon and related defense activities, an astonishing figure by any measure. If passed by Congress, it will, in fact, be one of the largest military budgets in American history, topping peak levels reached during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. And keep one thing in mind: that $750 billion represents only part of the actual annual cost of our national security state.

Democrats Cave In Secret Budget Deal With Trump

December 30, 2019 Ralph Nader, Nader.org Educate! Budgets, Electoral Politics, Trump Administration

While attention was focused on the House of Representatives’ impeachment of Donald J. Trump, legislators from both parties were secretly huddling with White House aides to seal a $1.4 trillion budget deal to fund the government until next September. They were rushing to do this to avoid a partial government shutdown starting December 21, 2019. Had the budget been deliberated in open Congressional hearings, the media would have reported on this backroom deal and the people of this country would have had a chance to weigh in during the proceedings.

The US Is Spending 1.25 Trillion Annually On War

November 2, 2019 By William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger, Tomdispatch.com Educate! Budgets, War, War and Militarism

One Million Protest In Brazil Against Education Budget Cuts And Pension Reform

May 25, 2019 Emilly Dulce, Igor Carvalho and Luciana Console, Brasildefato.com.br Resist! Brazil, Budgets, Education, Protests, Reform

Hundreds of thousands of school and university students, teachers, professors, and staff took to the streets on Wednesday, May 15, all over Brazil to protest against the education budget cuts announced by the government. According to Brazil’s National Confederation of Workers in Education (CNTE), more than one million people took part in the demonstrations. Based on reports from all over the country, Brasil de Fato estimates that there were protests in more than 180 cities. On Apr. 30, Brazil’s Education minister, Abraham Weintraub, announced budget cuts for all levels of public education.

Boondoggle, Inc. Making Sense Of The $1.25 Trillion National Security State Budget

May 8, 2019 By William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger, Tomdispatch.com Educate! Budgets, National Security, US Imperialism

Hey America, Here’s What Your Budget Buys + Big Brother’s New Censorship Tool

March 21, 2019 Eleanor Goldfield, Occupy.com Resistance Report Budgets, Censorship

Rob from the poor to give to our wars. We take a dive into the grotesque sludge that is Trump's proposed budget - and why we should really care regardless of whether it passes Congress or not. Next up, Mnar Muhawesh with Mint Press News introduces us to NewsGuard, the new Big Brother that's here to tell you what to believe via a neo-con backed news ranking system. Hint: they wouldn't like our show.

Want To Improve Education? Empower The Students.

January 11, 2019 Shari Davis and Dylan Welch, Medium.com Create! Budgets, Education, Participatory budgeting, Schools, Students

Autumn is here — and with it, a renewed conversation about how educators, parents, and communities improve their students’ education. Often in this discussion, solutions come down from on high through public officials or people within the educational system. This fall, visionary school leaders will be challenging that top-down norm by showing that empowering students and families to directly decide what their schools need, through participatory budgeting (PB), can drastically improve the quality of their schooling. What is PB? Instead of government and school officials making every budgetary decision, PB gives real people real power over budget decisions in their schools and communities.

Our Poor, Defenseless Military Industrial Complex

December 22, 2018 Alan McLeod, Fair.org Educate! Budgets, US Imperialism, US military

It is a sign of our times that our media attempt to decipher future government policy by analyzing the president’s tweets, like some bizarre game of telephone. Throughout November, there was speculation of a coming reduction in military spending, and when Donald Trump took to Twitter (12/3/18) to describe the $716 billion budget as “crazy,” media took this as confirmation. The prospect of a cut to the military elicited a storm of condemnation across the media landscape. The National Review (11/17/18) wrote that “cutting the resources available to the Pentagon is a bad idea,” noting that, “for decades, America has short-changed defense” meaning “America’s ability to defend its allies, its partners, and its own vital interests is increasingly in doubt.”

The Pentagon Failed Its Audit Amid A $21 Trillion Scandal (Yes, Trillion)

December 19, 2018 By Lee Camp, Truthdig.com Educate! Budgets, Corruption, Pentagon

New York Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was ruthlessly attacked recently, and I feel a bit responsible. I might have accidentally tainted her Twitter feed with truth serum. But that sounds weird—so let me back up. A few months ago, I covered the story of the $21 trillion that has gone unaccounted for at the Pentagon. That’s right—trillion with a T—an amount of money you can’t possibly come to terms with, so stop trying. Seriously, stop. It’s like trying to comprehend the age of the earth.

Cost Of War On Terror Soon To Be Over $6 Trillion

November 16, 2018 Staff, Watson.brown.edu Educate! Budgets, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, War

The United States has appropriated and is obligated to spend an estimated $5.9 trillion (in current dollars) on the war on terror through Fiscal Year 2019, including direct war and war-related spending and obligations for future spending on post-9/11 war veterans (see Table 1). This number differs substantially from the Pentagon’s estimates of the costs of the post-9/11warsbecause it includes not only war appropriations made to the Department of Defense –spending in the war zones of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in other places the government designates as sites of “overseas contingency operations,” –but also includes spending across the federal government that is a consequence of these wars.

Military-Friendly: Zooming Into The State-Level War Machine

October 16, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Artkillingapathy.com Educate! Budgets, Militarism and War, military spending, US Imperialism

It’s a pretty boring drive. My friends in Sweden always engage their rose-colored paradigms when I talk about driving in the US. They think it’s like Thelma and Louise or that Johnny Depp commercial where he’s driving out in the desert at sunset, burying some jewelry in the midst of a wide expanse of red earth and rock. But, no. This is not a way-out-west badass, cool guyliner kinda drive. It’s a snoozer, tunnel-vision-maker of a drive – with too many cops and not enough Sheetz locations. Come to think of it, I’m pretty surprised that I even noticed the sign. At the same time, I’m rather surprised I’ve never seen it before.

Here’s What We Could Have If We Slashed The Military Budget

September 29, 2018 Lindsay Koshgarian, Jacobinmag.com Educate! Budgets, Military, US Imperialism

The Pentagon is set to receive $717 billion in 2019 — more than half of the roughly trillion-dollar annual budget. That level of Pentagon funding is immense by any standard. Next year’s budget will be roughly twice the size of military appropriations in the mid-1990s, before George W. Bush and his twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it will be higher than the peak of Pentagon spending during the Vietnam War. None of this is necessary. The Pentagon is the least accountable part of the federal government, wasting billions of dollars on needless bureaucracy, pouring billions more into dangerous (and redundant) nuclear weapons, and cozying up to contractors who siphon off roughly half of the Pentagon’s budget each year.

Beijing Notes Signs Of US Decline Behind Bloated New Pentagon Budget

August 23, 2018 By Elliott Gabriel, Mintpressnews.com Educate! Budgets, China, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Pentagon, US Imperialism

BEIJING – China has expressed serious concern about the new United States military budget, which explicitly notes the U.S.’ “long-term strategic competition with China” as a top priority and raises the government’s annual investment in the military to an unprecedented $716 billion – an exponentially higher budget than that of any other defense department across the world. The passage of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, authorizes a 2.3 percent boost in military funding — the U.S. government’s largest-yet war budget. The perpetually swollen U.S. military budget allows Washington to subsidize its massive and highly-profitable military-industrial complex while boosting its power to coerce rivals and wage wars abroad.

The Real Driver of Health Care Spending

July 17, 2018 By Edward M Murphy, Portside.org Educate! Budgets, Health Care, Spending

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATES that occurred in Washington over the past year were largely irrelevant to what’s happening in the health care marketplace. Republicans couldn’t repeal the Affordable Care Act but they made some changes that weakened it. Those changes will increase insurance premiums in the individual market but they do nothing to address the most significant trends that are evolving across the system. To understand the important trends, one must look elsewhere. In March, three researchers from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health published a study in JAMA analyzing the well-known reality that the United States spends dramatically more on health care than other wealthy countries. They compared the US, where health care consumes 17.8 per cent of gross domestic product, to 10 comparable nations where the mean expenditure is 11.5 percent.

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