YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
Snuggly the Security Bear
Animated Cartoon By Mark Fiore
Greetings, from the Department of Justice!
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May 31st, 2013
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
David Swanson: Some Don’t Pay Their War Taxes
Some Don’t Pay Their War Taxes
By David Swanson, May 5, 2013
This past Saturday morning felt like mid-winter in Asheville, North Carolina, but was actually some weeks past tax day, and dozens of people were gathered in front of a federal building to say something about what federal income taxes are used for — something much more unusual than one would expect.
Posters carried messages including: “War steals from the poor” and “Defund Militerrorism.” This in itself was not so unusual. Opponents of war often use tax season to inform their friends and neighbors that roughly half of income tax dollars go to war preparation. We could have the educations and health and happiness that other nations have if we didn’t waste our money on the military, we say. We’d have more and better jobs, and jobs we could feel better about, we tell people.
But the people gathered from across the country in Asheville on Saturday were in town for a meeting of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. They had gathered on Saturday morning to announce the awarding of grants of thousands of dollars to a long list of great humanitarian causes — all the things we wish our taxes were going to. For these people, this is in fact what their taxes are going to. Many of them have put the dollars they owe in taxes into one of a number of funds set up for this purpose. They can take their money back if they choose, but meanwhile the interest it earns goes to worthy causes of their choosing in the form of these grants announced in something more like a celebration than the usual tax-day lamentation that war opponents are all familiar with.
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May 16th, 2013
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
U.S. Veterans Return War Medals at NATO Summit
50 veterans of NATO’s wars gathered in Chicago to return their medals, powerfully symbolizing a rejection of the continued military occupation in Afghanistan.
Your phone calls and emails to the Governor and the head of the Illinois National Guard last week helped ensure that our sisters and brothers in the Guard were not deployed against us, and our collective action on the streets of Chicago remained peaceful and disciplined – an expression of our determination to set the record straight on our military service.
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We are most proud of the fact that our action yesterday was a joint event with our sisters in Afghans for Peace. Together, we led a march of thousands as close as we could get to the meeting location of the NATO summit and performed a reconciliation ceremony.
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Read More At: www.ivaw.org/
May 23rd, 2012
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
Cindy Sheehan: “Peace Has a Day in Court”
Cindy Sheehan
For those of you who know me and have been following my story, you know that part of my resistance to the US Empire is my refusal to pay income taxes.
This morning (April 19th), a new episode unfolded in my ongoing struggle with the IRS and the Empire the agency is nestled in.
I was subpoenaed to appear in the 9th Circuit court of the US Federal Court system in Sacramento, California—my state’s capitol.
For background, I have had two meetings with the IRS agent assigned to my case where I expressed to him my unwillingness, due to my principles, to participate in funding a system that commits crimes almost every second of every day. At this point, the IRS is trying to collect 105 grand that it says I owe for the tax years 2005-2006. I first became a war tax refuser in 2005.
My defense is one based on a far superior morality than one practiced by the US government and the fact that my outspokenness against this immorality, and my notoriety in doing so, has put me into a precarious position in a climate where free speech and peaceful protest is being suppressed, sometimes very violently, as we have increasingly witnessed. (more…)
April 21st, 2012
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)
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WH Okays OKs Military Detention of Terrorism SuspectsThe White House is signing off on a controversial new law that would authorize the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain alleged al Qaeda members or other terrorist operatives captured on American soil. . . The detainee provisions are just one part of the annual NDAA authorizing $662 billion in federal defense spending next year. … |
Obama Had Indefinite Detention Inserted Into NDAA |
There Goes the RepublicBy Robert ScheerOnce again the gods of war have united our Congress like nothing else. Unable to agree on the minimal spending necessary to save our economy, schools, medical system or infrastructure, the cowards who mislead us have retreated to the irrationalities of what George Washington in his farewell address |
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December 15th, 2011
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
Air Force Works to Instill ‘Warrior Culture’ in Drone Crews
By Julian E. Barnes
The Los Angeles Times, March 29, 2010
As part of an effort to extend the military’s “warrior culture” to unmanned planes, the Air Force is overhauling how it trains the crews that operate its rapidly growing fleet of Predators, Reapers and other remotely piloted aircraft.
The changes in training will affect hundreds of personnel who fly the unmanned aircraft remotely over war zones from distant bases and control their powerful cameras and targeting systems.
The effort is part of a move by the Air Force to put as much emphasis on drones as it does on traditional fighters and bombers, officials said.
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The new training is a mix of the technical — details about the radar, camera and laser systems — and what Allen calls “infusing the Air Force warrior culture” into the job.
“They need to understand the battle space. They need to understand working with a crew,” Allen said. “This is absolutely flying a vehicle, and we want someone dedicated to this duty.”
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“You do not want to feel you are not in the actual fight,” said Airman Paul South, 20, of East Smithfield, Pa., a member of the first class of new sensor trainees. “You are in the fight, and you need to realize what is on the line every time you are doing your job.”
Click Here to Read More …
April 2nd, 2010
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
The ‘Long War’ Quagmire
by Tom Hayden
Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2010
Without public debate and without congressional hearings, a segment of the Pentagon and fellow travelers have embraced a doctrine known as the Long War, which projects an “arc of instability” caused by insurgent groups from Europe to South Asia that will last between 50 and 80 years. According to one of its architects, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are just “small wars in the midst of a big one.”
Consider the audacity of such an idea. An 80-year undeclared war would entangle 20 future presidential terms stretching far into the future of voters not yet born. The American death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan now approaches 5,000, with the number of wounded a multiple many times greater. Including the American dead from 9/11, that’s 8,000 dead so far in the first decade of the Long War. And if the American armed forces are stretched thin today, try to conceive of seven more decades of combat.
The costs are unimaginable too. According to economists Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, Iraq alone will be a $3-trillion war. Those costs, and the other deficit spending of recent years, yield “virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors,” according to a New York Times budget analysis in February. Continued deficit financing for the Long War will rob today’s younger generation of resources for their future.
Click Here to Read More …
April 2nd, 2010
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
The Sanctity of Military Spending
Posted on Salon.com, January 26, 2010.
By Glenn Greenwald
Administration officials announced last night that the President, in tomorrow’s State of the Union address, will propose a multi-year freeze on certain domestic discretionary spending programs. This is an “initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit,” officials told The New York Times.
But the freeze is more notable for what it excludes than what it includes. For now, it does not include the largest domestic spending programs: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And all “security-related programs” are also exempted from the freeze, which means it does not apply to military spending, the intelligence budget, the Surveillance State, or foreign military aid. As always, the notion of decreasing the deficit and national debt through reductions in military spending is one of the most absolute Washington taboos. What possible rationale is there for that?
The facts about America’s bloated, excessive, always-increasing military spending are now well-known. The U.S. spends almost as much on military spending as the entire rest of the world combined, and spends roughly six times more than the second-largest spender, China. Even as the U.S. sunk under increasingly crippling levels of debt over the last decade, defense spending rose steadily, sometimes precipitously. That explosion occurred even as overall military spending in the rest of the world decreased, thus expanding the already-vast gap between our expenditures and the world’s. As one “defense” spending watchdog group put it: “The US military budget was almost 29 times as large as the combined spending of the six ‘rogue’ states (Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) who spent $14.65 billion.”
Original Article URL:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/01/26/defense
January 27th, 2010
