More Wonderful Truth
www.newhavenadvocate.com/news/opinion/ht-cintra-wilsons-the-cword-wartime-contractors-run-on-america-20110426,0,1678746.story
— Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, in an interview with Terrence McNally
Behold: the corporate universe, made in the image and likeness of the Citizens United decision, the Chicago School of Economics, and the Neocons — who, apparently, didn’t need to win the presidency in 2008 to keep screwing the world at will.
There has been much fiscal yammering in the halls of power; many insulting dog and pony shows designed to resemble actual intelligent human deliberation over Serious Budget Proposals (and not just a bunch of unregenerate whores presenting their asses and oinking for corporate dollars during their election cycles). But somehow, in the midst of this fearsome display of piggery — during this content-free, postmodern farce of a discourse which has spiraled so far down into the murk of all-out, obscurantist dung that grade school teachers and emergency first responders have found themselves under attack for their lavish middle-class lifestyles — somehow, although there has been much zeal to recommend mind-blowingly stupid and self-destructive ways to decrease the deficit (e.g. gutting our already worthless public schools, and/or cutting or eliminating self-funding programs like Medicare and Social Security) … we still don’t seem to be able to put the hammer down when it comes to taxing billionaires. And, worst of all, we still don’t seem to be even discussing the expense involved in our having been engaged for the last decade in two seemingly endless wars abroad, even though over half of our income tax goes to financing them.
Welcome to Eternal War, America’s sexiest, dirtiest, most raunched-out criminal profit motive. By using a calculation model based on Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz’s The Three Trillion Dollar War, out now, calculated an approximate tab for our current wars, after a decade of fighting on multiple fronts: $12 trillion. Broken down: $3.5 billion a day, $105 billion a month and $1.26 trillion a year. It is safe to say that this sum has contributed quite a chunk to our current budget deficit.
But, in the mainstream cultural conversation — in which Donald Trump’s braying, puerile attempts to Trumpet himself into the arena of the relevant are always considered newsworthy — nobody seems to remember that wars are really expensive, or, historically, how they usually get paid for.
David Swanson on the blog Open Salon remembers. Swanson reminds us that tax increases have always been the way that America has paid for its wars — until the George W. Bush administration.
“Something new arose on the horizon of U.S. history: major and repeated regressive tax cuts during an immensely expensive pair of simultaneous wars,” writes Swanson. “This pattern has essentially continued during President Obama’s tenure. … The result has been a huge budget deficit. And the impact of these and related policies on the economy has been disastrous, leading to an even huger budget deficit. “
And lo: lately, military spending has increased, but taxes are still decreasing.
Shocking, I know.
Wars are mind-blowingly lucrative if you happen to be a war-profiteering corporation set up to suck on the private military-industrial-security-intelligence gravy-hose. Today, mercenaries and private contractors now outnumber actual troops; the use of private contractors has increased considerably under President Obama.
According to Scott Amey from the nonprofit watchdog group Project On Government Oversight (POGO), “[Private] contract award dollars have increased from approximately $200 billion in fiscal year 2000 to over $535 billion in fiscal year 2010.”
(Misspent contractor dollars from fraud, lack of oversight, corruption, etc., are estimated annually in the tens of billions — but we won’t go there today.)
My point is this: the war profiteers — oil companies in particular — have enjoyed smashing record, unheard-of profits since the wars began.
According to author Greg Palast, Exxon’s profit in 2007 was $40.6 billion — the highest annual profit “of any enterprise since the building of the pyramids.” And then, Palast explains, they really started making money.
“Since the invasion of Iraq, the value of Exxon’s reserves has risen by $2 trillion. Last year, Exxon spent $36 billion of its $40 billion income on dividends and special payouts to stockholders in tax-free buy-backs.”
There are truckloads of private corporations hired to do what were traditionally military duties: training foreign armies, for example, mail delivery, spooky things: Dyncorp, Halliburton, KBR, Xe Services (formerly Blackwater), CACI, Triple Canopy, Boeing, General Dynamics, Bechtel. Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor.
These corporations are doing awfully well because the oil companies keep demanding that we throw warm human bodies at the Middle East. Maybe they should pay something like a sin tax for this bloody windfall. You know, like they are cigarettes or something. Just a suggestion. I mean, they are killing people, for money.
Copyright © 2011, Hartford Advocate
