- "Consequences for NATO": Germany Rebuffs UK Call To Back Off Saudi Arms Freeze
Germany is feeling the pressure from western allies over its weapons exports freeze in the wake of the Saudi killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a freeze first announced in November, which included plans to reject any future export licences to Riyadh, but not previously approved deals.
German allies like the UK have lately implored the German government to soften its stance, noting the potential broader economic impact on Europe. British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt, currently in Berlin to discuss the terms of Brexit, reportedly wrote to the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, in a private letter first revealed by Der Spiegel that UK defense companies would be hindered in contractual obligations related to Eurofighter Typhoon and the Tornado fighter jet delivery, namely to supply parts affected by the German arms freeze.
F-5E J-3065 and Eurofighter Typhoon. Image source: Eurofighter Gmbh-Austrian AF Hunt told Maas in the letter published in German press: “I am very concerned about the impact of the German government’s decision on the British and European defence industry and the consequences for Europe’s ability to fulfil its Nato commitments.”
This follows comments by German chancellor Angela Merkel at the past weekend’s Munich Security Conference acknowledging the need for “common export controls guidelines” across Europe. She said during a question-and-answer session after her speech at the conference:
We have because of our history very good reasons to have very strict arms export guidelines, but we have just as good reasons in our defense community to stand together in a joint defense policy. And if we want … to develop joint fighter planes, joint tanks, then there’s no other way but to move step-by-step towards common export controls guidelines.
However, German Economy Ministry spokeswoman indicated that no change was imminent when questioned by Reuters. “The view of the government is clear and there is no new situation. There is at the moment no basis for further approvals,” she said.
Germany has further said the decision to halt new arms sales is connected to the worsening humanitarian catastrophe still unfolding in Yemen, led by the Saudis and its gulf and US/UK allies.
On Wednesday Mass reaffirmed while speaking to reporters following the meeting with Hunt: “We are not delivering any weapons to Saudi Arabia at the moment and we will make future decisions depend on how the Yemen conflict develops and whether what has been agreed in the peace talks in Stockholm is being implemented,” according to Reuters.
Interestingly, the UK also appears ready to play the Russia and China card, warning Germany that Riyadh could turn to Russia and Chinese defense companies should Europe prove an unwilling partner.
But the most pressing and immediate UK concern remains the pending jet deal. Reuters notes that this week’s meeting in Berlin “followed complaints last week from a top Airbus official who told Reuters that the halt was preventing Britain from completing the sale of 48 Eurofighter Typhoon warplanes to Riyadh. He said the issue was also affecting potential sales of other weapons such as the A400M military transporter.”
The four countries involved in the production of the Eurofighter include Germany, Britain, Italy, and Spain, involving the companies Airbus, BAE and Italy’s Leonardo.
- Hungary Prime Minister Attacks Juncker And Soros In Billboard Ad
Submitted by Mish Shedlock of MishTalk
Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán attacked EC President Jean Claude Jucker and George Soros in a billboard ad.
The EU has never seen anything quite like this. Orbán has a billboard campaign that claims European Commission president Juncker and and George Soros are “Endangering Hungary’s Safety”.
Opening a new front against Brussels a few months before European [parliament] elections, the poster shows the European commission president alongside the Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros, a familiar target in Hungary.
“You have the right to know what Brussels is planning to do,” the poster says. On its official Facebook page, the Hungarian government says the poster is part of an information campaign to tell the public about Brussels’ migration plans, which it claims “fundamentally endangered Hungary’s safety”.
Although the government has previously run a “Stop Brussels” campaign, the decision to use an image of Junker is an escalation in the Orbán government’s public relations war with the EU’s most senior leaders.
It also exposes the rift in the centre-right European People’s party in the European parliament, which counts Juncker and Orbán, as members.
Orbán was re-elected for a third straight term last April, after a campaign dominated by immigration. A long-term critic of the EU, Orbán has accused NGOs and critical media of being part of a plot orchestrated by Soros to send millions of people to Hungary.
In recent weeks, Orbán has spoken of his hopes that the next European parliament will be dominated by anti-immigration parties.
Birds of a Feather Not
Juncker once met Orbán with the jokey greeting “hello, dictator” and playfully tapped his face.
Today, Juncker responded Orban Should Leave Europe’s Centre-Right.
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has said Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban’s ruling Fidesz party should leave the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) group in the European Parliament (EP).
“Against lies there’s not much you can do,” Juncker was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency, adding that he had called for Fidesz’s expulsion from the EPP.
”They didn’t vote for me in the European Parliament,” he said in Stuttgart, Germany, in a speech. “The far right didn’t either. I remember Ms. Le Pen, she said: ‘I’m not voting for you.’ I said: ‘I don’t want your vote.’ There are certain votes you just don’t want,” Juncker said, referring to the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
Eurointelligence Comments
Looking at Orbán’s previous record, and noting that one cannot of be sure, we continue doubt that Hungary’s Prime Minister has changed his European strategy and is now working to provoke the exclusion of his party from the EPP. Rather, Orbán seems to be doing one his classic hit-and-runs.
There is little doubt that the new smear campaign will make life on the campaign trail much more difficult for Manfred Weber, the CSU MEP and EPP spitzenkandidat. Juncker himself has now declared more forcefully than ever before that the EPP values are not consistent with keeping Fidesz in.
But we note that the CSU leadership in Munich has in the past consistently worked to maintain close and even warm ties with Orban.
Spitzenkandidat
US readers no doubt need an explanation of Spitzenkandidat. The following video explains.
In short, the term refers to an election process instead of an appointment process to determine the head of the European Commission.
63% of Europeans want the commission president determined by vote. Those in power still support the behind closed doors process for obvious reasons.
Orbán’s mission
Orbán’s mission is to weaken the EU from within. Italy has the same mission, for different reasons, as does President Trump.
EU Splintering
Two days ago I reported a Commerce Study Deems “European Cars a Threat to US National Security”. That’s nonsensical, of course. But Trump’s mission is easy to spot. He is doing his best to bust up the EU.
And now Trump has a lot of help on the inside: Marine Le Pen in France, Victor Orbán in Hungary, and Matteo Salvini in Italy.
I response to Trump, I noted, EU Pokes Trump Again, This Time Over Huawei’ s 5G Technology.
In the UK, Seven UK MPs Split from Labour Party Over Brexit. More MPs joined that parade today.
The splintering of the EU continues with escalating infighting at unprecedented levels.
It is illogical for the UK to want to part of this mess. Yet, the UK Remainers want to stay in.
- Let's Face It: The U.S. Constitution Has Failed
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
Elections provide the bread-and-circuses staged-drama that is passed off as democracy.
Despite the anything-goes quality of American culture, one thing remains verboten to say publicly: the U.S. Constitution has failed. The reason why this painfully obvious fact cannot be discussed publicly is that it gives the lie to the legitimacy of the entire status quo.
The Constitution was intended to limit 1) the power of government over the citizenry 2) the power of each branch of government and 3) the power of political/financial elites over the government and the citizenry, as the Founders recognized the intrinsic risks of an all-powerful state, an all-powerful state dominated by one branch of government and the risks of a financial elite corrupting the state to serve their interests above those of the citizenry.
The Constitution has failed to place limits on the power of government, on the emergence of unaccountable states-within-a-state agencies and on the political power of financial elites.
How has the Constitution failed? It has failed in three ways:
1. Corporations and the super-wealthy elite control the machinery of governance. The public interest is not represented except as interpreted / filtered through corporate/elite interests.
2. The nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, has the power to debauch the nation’s currency and reward the wealthy via issuing new currency and buying Treasury bonds in whatever sums it deems necessary at the moment. The Fed is only nominally under the control of the elected government. It is in effect an independent state-within-a-state that dominates the financial well-being of the entire nation.
3. The National Security State–the alphabet agencies of the FBI, CIA, NSA et al.–are an independent state-within-a-state, answerable only to themselves, not to the public or their representatives. Congressional oversight is little more than feeble rubber-stamping of the Imperial Project and whatever the unelected National Security leadership deems worthy of pursuit.
The Constitution’s core regulatory element–the balancing of executive, legislative and judicial power–has broken down. The judiciary’s independence is as nominal as the legislative branch’s control of the central bank and National Security state: the gradual encroachment of corporate and state power is rubber-stamped and declared constitutional.
The secret power of the National Security agencies was declared constitutional early in the Cold war, when unleashing unaccountable and secret agencies was deemed necessary.
The bizarre public-private Federal Reserve was deemed constitutional at its founding in 1913, and the Supreme Court famously declared that corporations have the same rights to free speech (including loudspeakers that cost millions of dollars) as living citizens.
The powers of the Imperial Presidency also continue expanding, regardless of which party is in office or the supposed ideological tropisms of Supreme Court justices.
Every step of this erosion of public representation and the elected government’s power is declared fully constitutional, in classic boiled-frog fashion. The frog detects the rising temperature of the water but isn’t alarmed as the heat is increased so gradually.
Since the rise of unaccountable states-within-a-state are constitutional, as is the dominance of corporate / private-wealth elites, on what grounds can citizens protest their loss of representation?
Elections provide the bread-and-circuses staged drama that is passed off as democracy. The key goal of the corporate/state media coverage, of course, is to foster the illusion that elections really, really, really matter, when the reality is they don’t. The National Security State grinds on, the Federal Reserve grinds on and the dominance of corporate-wealth elites grinds on regardless of who’s in office.
Every emergency is met by the ceding of more power to unelected elites in positions to serve their own interests. The Cold War, financial panics, Cold War Redux–every crisis is an excuse to expand the powers of the unaccountable, opaque states-within-a-state.
The media is already gearing up with 24/7 coverage of the 2020 elections. The constant churn of drama-trauma serves to mask the impotence and powerlessness of the citizenry and the unaccountability of the states-within-a-state that rule the nation.
* * *
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- Sig Sauer Unveils The MPX Copperhead: Is This The Army's Next Submachine Gun?
Sig Sauer, Inc. has announced the latest addition to the Sig Sauer MPX weapon series, the ultra-compact MPX Copperhead submachine gun at the annual SHOT Show firearms trade show in Las Vegas.
The gun manufacturer has geared the new submachine gun toward the US civilian market as a 9mm “pistol,” but its select-fire version could trigger interest from the US military.
“The MPX Copperhead considerably reduces the length, width, and size of the MPX platform making it the most compact addition to the MPX family of firearms,” Tom Taylor, Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President of Commercial Sales at SIG SAUER, Inc., told Shooting Illustrated in an interview last month. “The Copperhead is the perfect combination of the features and performance our consumers expect from a SIG MPX in a compact package.”
The submachine gun incorporates a three-and-a-half-inch barrel and has a total length of 14.5-inches. It is much smaller than a traditional submachine gun and weighs only four-and-half pounds, which is a 30% reduction in weight compared to the AR-15 style rifle.
The civilian version has a barrel with a flash hider machined at the end. The military version has a threaded muzzle that allows for a quick-detach system like a sound suppressor.
According to Guns.com, the design of the MPX Copperhead closely mirrors what the US Army has in mind for their Sub Compact Weapon (SCW) program, for which Sig Sauer, along with five other defense firms, have submitted their submachine guns for testing.
The Army set up the SCW program to solicit defense companies for the ability to submit their next generation of submachine guns, which there will only be one winner, to swap out the decades-old HK MP5s and other similar weapons.
The MPX Copperhead is already a leading contender given the Army’s growing interest in the MPX weapon series.
In July 2018, the Army contracted Sig Sauer to provide MPX and MCX weapon types, as part of a large order for American special forces, other unnamed government agencies, and unspecified foreign partners.
The new submachine gun is ultra-compact, it is powerful, and it could be the newest submachine gun the Army fields.
- Michael Cohen Gets Two-Month Delay Before Starting Prison Sentence
Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen was granted a 60-day delay before he has to report to prison, ruled a federal judge in Manhattan on Wednesday.
The decision by US District Judge William Pauley III was granted after Cohen’s attorneys cited the need to recover from recent shoulder surgery and prepare for congressional testimony before three committees – one of which is scheduled for February 28, while dates for the other two have not been publicly announced.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for a series of crimes, including tax evasion, financial fraud and campaign finance violations stemming from a scheme to pay off women who claimed to have had decade-old affairs with Donald Trump.
Cohen has attracted massive attention since he pleaded guilty to the offenses last August in a deal with federal prosecutors in New York. He separately pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about discussions within the Trump Organization about building a property in Moscow, and agreed to cooperate in special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian interference.
Cohen was a longtime ally of Trump but their relationship quickly turned sour last year, after Cohen implicated Trump in the hush-money scheme. Trump has denied wrongdoing and lambasted Cohen as a liar. -The Hill
The former Trump attorney is scheduled to appear before the House Oversight and Intelligence Committees, as well as the Senate Intelligence Committee, after the latter subpoenaed him to for closed-door testimony.
Cohen was originally scheduled to report to prison on March 6, however the 60-day delay was granted following a letter from his attorney, Michael Monico, in a letter released by the court on Wednesday.
“Defendant makes the request because he recently underwent a serious surgical procedure and he needs to undergo intensive post-surgical physical therapy and be monitored by his physician for recovery,” wrote Monico, who added: “Mr. Cohen also anticipates being called to testify before three (3) Congressional committees at the end of the month.”
“Doing so will require Mr. Cohen to spend substantial time in preparation that will limit the time he has to get his affairs in order and spend time with his family, especially given such a short period between the anticipated hearings and the present reporting date.”
- These 10 GOP Senators May Vote To Terminate Trump Border Emergency
As Congress prepares to pass a resolution to preemptively terminate President Trump’s national emergency declaration before he can redirect some $7 billion in military and Treasury Department funding, lawmakers have said that the resolution will likely make it to Trump’s desk, prompting what would be his first veto.
Of course, passing the resolution in the Senate would be impossible without the support of at least a handful of Republicans. And already, several have spoken out to criticize the decision for circumventing Congress, robbing the coffers of the military and setting a dangerous precedent.
Rand Paul
While it’s possible (likely, even) that the Ninth Circuit Court will do Congress’s work for them by responding to a lawsuit filed by 16 states challenging the declaration and calling for an injunction to stop construction on over 200 miles of Trump’s border barrier, Congress is moving ahead with its plans to vote on the resolution that Democrats are expected to bring to the floor on Friday. While no GOP senators have publicly said they would oppose the order, the Hill has compiled a list of 10 who are uncomfortable in the measure, and might move to oppose it.
Sen. Susan Collins (Maine)
Collins, a top Democratic target in 2020, has warned that the emergency declaration is “of dubious constitutionality” and a “mistake.”
She hasn’t definitively said how she will vote and suggested to reporters Thursday that her decision could swing on how much money Trump plans to redirect through his emergency declaration.Voting against Trump’s declaration would give her some distance from the president, which could help her politically after she voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)
Murkowski said last week that the lack of a border wall is not “a matter that should be declared a national emergency.”
She has also said that acting “unilaterally” raises a concern about precedent.
“We don’t know who our next president may be, but it may be a president whose No. 1 priority is dealing with climate change, who says ‘I don’t care whether I have the support of the Congress,'” she said in a CBS interview. “Or a president who may say ‘I believe that gun violence in this country is the most pressing issue and I don’t care whether the Congress supports me or not.'”
She has also voiced anxiety about how the action could erode congressional authority.
Sen. Thom Tillis (NC)
Tillis is another Democratic target in 2020, though his state has voted for the GOP candidate for president in the past two cycles.
He has generally been a strong ally of Trump’s, but he may want to demonstrate independence.Tillis, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, worries that Trump’s plan to take money from military construction projects for the wall could undermine defense readiness.
He warned in a statement that “it wouldn’t provide enough funding to adequately secure our borders” and “would create a new precedent that a left-wing president would undoubtedly utilize to implement their radical policy agenda while bypassing the authority of Congress.”
Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.)
Alexander, an institutionalist and student of history, is attuned to the constitutional and separation of powers questions raised by Trump’s action.
He’s also retiring, which gives him the freedom to vote his conscience.
Alexander was one of six Republicans who voted last month for a Democratic measure to reopen the federal government without additional funding for the border wall.
On Friday, he called Trump’s action “unnecessary, unwise and inconsistent with the Constitution,” warning it could set the precedent for a president to declare an emergency to tear down border barriers or close coal plants.
Sen. Cory Gardner (Colo.)
Gardner, like Collins, faces reelection next year in a state won by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
In a statement, he said Congress is “most appropriately situated to fund border security,” but he hasn’t said how he’d vote on a disapproval resolution.
He is facing pressure from within his state, one of 16 that have filed a lawsuit against Trump’s action. Nearly 100 people gathered outside Gardner’s Fort Collins office Monday to protest Trump’s announcement.
Gardner says he is “currently reviewing the authorities the administration is using.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.)
Rubio, whom Trump defeated in the 2016 GOP primary, says he will review the administration’s arguments on its statutory and constitutional powers.
“I am skeptical it will be something I can support,” he has said, noting the precedent it could set.
He warned Monday of its implications for military projects.
“Just as a matter of policy, our military construction budget is already behind schedule compared to where we need to be for some of our facilities around this country, so I think it’s a bad idea,” he said.
Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah)
Romney, one of six Republicans to vote to reopen the government without additional wall funding, last week said he wanted to see what “legislative authority he might cite” before rendering a decision on an emergency declaration.
The Utah senator has harshly criticized Trump, and his national stature as a past GOP presidential nominee has set him up as a rival leader within the party to Trump.
He predicted last month there was a “good chance” Trump would declare an emergency and warned it would set a bad precedent. “We Republicans will be concerned that this kind of approach could be used by perhaps a Democrat president in the future,” he told KSL Newsradio’s “Dave and Dujanovic.”
Sen. Mike Lee (Utah)
Lee said in a tweet Friday that “Congress has been ceding far too much power to the exec. Branch for decades. We should use this moment as an opportunity to start taking that power back.”
A spokesman said Lee is undecided on how to vote on any resolution that comes to the Senate floor.
Lee has been a leading advocate for giving Congress more say over Trump’s authority to use military force.
In December, he was one of seven Republicans who voted for a resolution to end U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia in Yemen’s civil war. He co-wrote the resolution with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Sen. Jerry Moran (Kan.)
Moran has quietly emerged as an independent-minded lawmaker who’s willing to buck Trump on big votes.
He also voted with Lee and Collins in December to rein in Trump’s war-making authority, sending a message to Saudi Arabia after the killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Moran argues that Trump’s decision could embolden future presidents to circumvent Congress.
“I’m worried that if it gets used this time, what’s the next instance in which it becomes used?” he said last week.
Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.)
Paul has emerged as a confidant of Trump’s, but he has also styled himself a constitutionalist throughout his Senate career and regularly bucks his party’s leadership on votes that strike at his core principles.
Paul has warned against circumventing Congress’s power of the purse.
On Thursday, he said he was “disappointed” with the president’s “intention to declare an emergency to build the wall.”
While Paul supports stronger border security, he said “extraconstitutional executive actions are wrong, no matter which party does them.”
And Paul hasn’t been shy about bucking Trump on other high-profile questions, as shown through his attempt to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
He voted with Lee, Collins and Moran in December to curb the president’s war powers and regularly defends the independence of the separate branches of government.
Assuming no Democratic Senators vote with Republicans, the Dems would need four GOP senators to break ranks and vote to support the resolution to send it on to Trump’s desk (that’s assuming that both of the chamber’s independents who caucus with the Dems support the resolution).
- The Nightmare Fairyland Of The Green New Dealers
Authored by Richard Ebeling via The American Institute for Economic Research,
When a small child runs around waving their arms saying, “I’m a bird, I’m a bird,” we often will say what a creative imagination they have. If an adult runs around doing the same, we usually say that that person needs help because they are clearly out of touch with reality. Anyone who takes the time to read the proposed Green New Deal legislation can only conclude that the authors are living in a fairyland that is also deeply out of touch with reality.
Read through the list of desired and, indeed, demanded activities the congressional sponsors say they want the federal government to undertake over the next decade. The sponsors resemble a child running around the toy store saying, “I want that, and that, and that, and that, and…” while all the time completely oblivious to the fact that everything they want costs money that their parents do not have an unlimited quantity of.
The child may very well throw a temper tantrum when they are told that not everything they want can be had, or at least not right now all at the same time. What the child is not yet fully cognizant of is the existence and meaning of scarcity, costs, and trade-offs. Food, clothing, a room in which to sleep, and various other nice things from their parents just seem to be there. So why can’t they just have all these other things as well, and just for the asking?
The Green New Deal’s Grab Bag of Desired Things
House Resolution 109 (February 7, 2019), “Recognizing the Duty of the Federal Government to Create a Green New Deal,” has a long list of sponsoring congresspersons who seem to be not much different from that child in the toy store.
I want an end to climate change;
and I want an end to poverty;
I want an end to social injustice, and an end to racism, sexism, and ethnic discrimination;
I want a fossil fuel–free environment with renewable-energy sources and high-speed railways;
I want everyone to have a well-paying, secure, and meaningful job, guaranteed by the government;
I want everyone to have good, inexpensive government-supplied housing;
I want everyone to have a free education all the way to the PhD level;
I want manufacturing and agriculture to be balanced through government support and subsidies;
I want happy and respected indigenous peoples;
and I want guaranteed and comfortable government-secured retirement pensions for everyone;
plus, I want everyone to have guaranteed vacations.
In addition, each of the sponsors of the legislation says,
I also want labor unions to have the power to determine work conditions and set wages;
and I want all the groups in society, and most especially the ones that I consider to be underprivileged and under-represented and not treated nicely, to sit at the table of governmental decision-making and make sure that every one of these groups gets what I know they want and deserve.
And I also want the U.S. government to guide and subsidize the rest of the world to do the same.
And I want the government to do it now, before the oceans rise, the sky falls, and greedy capitalists who don’t care about anything other than their selfish profits destroy all living things on the planet.
Then with beautiful little birds chirping in the air in a clear blue sky, we will all live happily ever after in the Green New Deal paradise. The End.
Ignoring Criticisms to Pursue Political Purposes
A variety of critics have pointed out that the potential financial costs if the government attempted to implement all of this would likely run into the tens of trillions of dollars, looking over the next few decades. Others have calculated that the possible environmental benefits in monetary terms between now and the end of the 21st century most likely would be way too small to justify the lost growth in the overall American economy. And still others have reminded people of the dangerous loss of personal freedom and decision-making that would result from shifting to the required government central planning if the Green New Deal were to be fully implemented. (See my article “The Green New Dealers and the New Socialism.”)
That most of the politicians who have signed up in support of the Green New Deal seem unconcerned by these consequences should not be too surprising.
First, they are spending other people’s money — that is, money to be taxed from the American people or borrowed with future taxpayers expected to foot the bill. Besides, once you are talking in terms of trillions of dollars, one loses all sense of reality. Who can even picture in their mind what those kinds of sums really mean? It all seems like play money in a Monopoly game.
Second, all those politicians suffer from electoral near-sightedness. Their vision extends no further than the next election. For members of the House of Representatives this is only two years after the last election, which means they were already running for re-election even before they were sworn in to their term of office in early January 2019. Their mindset is that of “Après nous, le deluge” (After us, the flood). The full, long-run effects of vote-getting short-run policies will only emerge much later, possibly long after many of them are no longer in office. And if they are still in government when some of those longer-run consequences start to appear, who will go back and check their voting record from decades earlier to prove that it’s really all their fault? The finger can be so easily pointed in other directions.
Third, far too many of them are guided by an ideological zeal that is accompanied by a power lusting for remaking the world in their own image. Which one of them does not suffer from the hubris of the would-be social engineer, the redesigner of society according to their own presumptuous conception of how people should live, work, and interact with their fellow human beings? Nary a one demonstrates any modesty or hesitation in believing that they know better how humanity should live than all those actually living out their individual lives in the world according to their own lights concerning what would be best for them and their families.
Few Politicians Know the Meaning of Bottom Lines
According to the Congressional Research Service in its December 2018 profile of Congress, less than 40 percent of all members of the House of Representatives and less than 30 percent of those in the Senate had any prior experience in business. Before winning their congressional positions, the large majority had careers in state or local government offices, or in the law profession, or in teaching.
Many in Congress have had little or no experience in running an enterprise, satisfying customer demands, meeting employee payrolls, or ensuring that a company’s bottom line remains in the black in the face of market competition. This does not mean that law or teaching are not worthy occupations, or that they preclude someone from having a good understanding of the market process or the value of securing individual liberty; after all, I’m in the teaching profession myself. But those who have operated a business are likely to be more aware of the reality and workings of financial costs and benefits, uncertain investment decision-making, the need for making inescapable trade-offs, and personal risks of success and failure that occur in the world of competitive private enterprise.
Of course, having been a businessperson before entering politics does not ensure that someone is immune to the power-lusting or social-engineering bug, nor does it prevent such a person from easily falling into the mindset of spending other people’s money. Even those who claim to be for free enterprise, individual freedom, and limited government too often show themselves cut from the same political cloth as any others running for or holding political office. Indeed, those businesspeople who end up in political positions too frequently seem badly infected by the interventionist and welfare-statist viruses. (See my articles “If Political Candidates Advocated Liberty” and “Donald Trump the Corrupt Creation of America’s Bankrupt Politics.”)
Green New Dealers’ Scarcity-Free Fairyland
It is not really surprising that those who have most enthusiastically signed on to the Green New Deal are those in the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party, and especially those who are the self-declared democratic socialists among them. Only a socialist can still believe that government planning can solve all the problems of the world, that merely commanding resources and directing people can take care of humanity’s economic and social shortcomings, and all within a decade of setting the plan in motion.
Read through House Resolution 109, and not once do you find any reference to limits, scarcity, trade-offs, costs, or consumer choice and private-enterprise decision-making. Like a throwback to the Stalinist five-year plans of the 1930s, great transformations will be conjured up: new infrastructures in the form of roads, transportation, buildings, energy, and production will be redesigned and introduced in every corner of society with merely the will and command to free the world of fossil fuels and their effects. To be fair, they have shown greater modesty than the Stalinist enthusiasts of that earlier time; the Green New Dealers have given themselves a decade to perform these miracles, rather than work within the frame of a Soviet-style five-year plan.
They admit at several points that there may be the constraints of what science and technology will allow to be physically achieved; but they also propose the necessary government funding for research and development so that even nature should not serve as an inescapable obstacle to Utopia. The government experts will surely know which technologies deserve support to meet the targets and goals laid out in the economy-wide encompassing green central plan.
Nor should there be any concern about the money for all this, because that is what taxing the rich and government borrowing are for; and last but certainly not least, the money to pay for it can always be created since that is what central banks are for. The latter especially may have to be used since America is also to guide and subsidize similar green plans in the other parts of the world. Who said American progressives and democratic socialists don’t believe in making America great again? What could be greater than Americans paying for all that may be needed to save the entire planet? If that does not make you proud to be an American, what does?
Listen to their responses to those who challenge their green plan. Again, like the immature child, they pout and stamp their feet that the only problem is that the rich don’t want to pay up what they owe society. Or the racists and sexists want to maintain the existing social order of things so they can have the power to oppress the victims of their exploitive profit seeking. If not for the enemies of the good, all would be possible without limit or natural constraint.
Green Planning and the Abolition of Rational Calculation
Is it really necessary nearly 100 years after the publication of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises’ famous essay “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” (1920) to point out that it is not enough to know in technological terms what you would like to do or achieve? It is fundamentally essential in a world of inescapable scarcity of the means to attain our various desired ends to know in value terms what are the competing and most highly valued uses for which the limited factors of production might be applied.
How will the Green New Dealers know whether they have invested too much in a high-speed railway line in Nebraska compared to one in Idaho?
Or how will they know whether either one has been worth it at that time and in those places compared to solar panel constructions in North Dakota or wind turbines in Mississippi?
How will they know whether a government housing project in Boston has really been affordable in comparison to a new “free” medical clinic in Tucson, Arizona?
How will they know any of this in relation to a vast and complex variety of consumer items that citizens all around the country would have been willing to buy, if their incomes had not been taxed and there had been a competitive free market in the production and sale of finished consumption goods?
The answer is, there will be no real and meaningful answer. Without a private competitive market for the factors of production (land, labor, capital) in which private enterprisers offer factors prices based on their alternative entrepreneurial judgments about the types and quantities of consumer goods that market demanders might be willing to buy in the future at particular anticipated prices, there is no way to know whether the means at society’s disposal (that means all of us as individual buyers and sellers) have been cost-efficiently used to attain as many of the alternative and competing ends we would like to see possibly achieved. (See my article “Why Socialism Is Impossible.”)
But the proposed Green New Deal implicitly does away with a functioning, competitive price system. Instead, what the Green New Dealers offer is a free-for-all of political plundering through interest group horse-trading and pandering. That’s what they say in the proposal: “A Green New Deal must be developed through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses.” The government, labor unions, and stakeholder groups will also acquire equity ownership in the private enterprises that, clearly, now will be producing for environmental-sustainability and social-justice outcomes rather than for self-interested profit guided by market-based prices to satisfy consumer demands.
Green New Dealers Ignore How Little They Really Know
Is it also necessary nearly 75 years after the publication of Friedrich A. Hayek’s classic essay “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945) to remind people who should know better that it is the height of arrogance to presume that the designers of the Green New Deal and any others appointed to detail and implement such a grand epoch in American central planning, that there is more dispersed, decentralized, and ever-changing knowledge possessed in the minds of all of humanity combined than any group of social engineers can ever hope to master and integrate to solve the various problems of society?
Here, too, is an instance of the infantile ignorance of the green social engineers who believe that, like Olympian gods high above the ordinary mortals of humankind, they can direct the best future for not only all those in the United States but the entire population of the world. Straitjacketing everyone within the confines of the green plan means that hundreds of millions of people are prevented from deciding how best to use what they know that many others do not, and in ways that in the competitive, price-guided market process enable all to benefit from what everyone else knows. (See my article “F.A. Hayek and Why Government Can’t Manage Society.”)
The Green New Deal Leads to Planned Chaos
With the implementation of the Green New Dealers’ dreamland, America will begin the transition from a system of price-guided production serving and satisfying market-based consumer demand to what Ludwig von Mises called the “planned chaos” of waste-creating surpluses of unneeded and wrongly made goods along with life-frustrating shortages of desired and essential consumer items and producer commodities.
No longer singularly directed by competitive prices, the forms and types of production will increasingly be determined by the political dictates of the coalition of “inclusive” groups participating in the democratic decision-making of remaking America into the green world of the future. But precisely because of the direct and indirect supply-chain interdependencies of sectors of the economy in a social system of division of labor, resulting imbalances and distortions in one sector will have inescapable spillover effects on many other sectors.
A component part needed for one production process is lagging in availability because of manufacturing delays in the factory supplying that part because its energy supplies are dependent upon faulty solar panels caused by inferior inputs allocated to its manufacture under the green plan.
In another part of the country, highways are crisscrossed with newly installed electric-car powering stations, which are underutilized or not used at all because far fewer electric-powered automobiles have been produced than the planners had planned. Or the traffic flows in that area of the country have turned out to be far less than the green planners had projected because of other mismatches between central plan and local realities.
The types of competitive, market-based flexibilities in resource allocations and production adjustments that are constantly adapting the supplies to the demands in the face of unexpected and changing circumstances in a system of private, free enterprise under the incentives of profit and loss are all lacking under the green plan.
Prices and wages cannot adapt to the changing circumstances because various politically connected stakeholders in these imbalanced corners of the economy insist on preserving their socially just standards and locations of living while numerous historically “victimized” groups insist that any change that does occur must protect or improve upon their existing material or social status in society; to not listen to these groups would imply continuing residues of racism, sexism, and social injustice. And there are, of course, the diehard Green New Deal ideologues who insist that personal sacrifices must be happily made because there is no going back to “capitalism.” It’s either the green plan or an end to the planet.
With each passing day, every passing month and year, the dislocations in the economy grow with accompanying acrimonious accusations, buck-passing rationalizations and excuses, and grandiose political justifications for the increasing shortages, decreasing qualities, and lagging achievements in all the green plan had promised.
There are outspoken complaints by more and more people; here and there groups of consumers and workers and disappointed members of old or new victimized groups publicly demonstrate with anger and insistence that something better be done. They are met with the green planners promising plan corrections and social improvements, along with accusations about shadowy and dangerous enemies of the beautiful green world being built.
Green Planning Equals Political Plunder
The “democratic” socialism about which its new proponents almost lyrically sing is really an extended political plunderland of all those groups listed in the proposed legislation whose leaders will get together and decide how much of other people’s money, social positions, and future life opportunities will be divvied up among their assigned followers at the expense of others in society. It is a gangster politics of coercively imposed outcomes that reduces both victims and recipients of redistributed booty to the status of slave-like dependents of those in governmental power who are determining their fates.
In spite of the colorful rhetoric of the common good, the general welfare, and social justice, the political arena is populated with those hungering for political power, with those wanting to take from others what they cannot peacefully acquire, and with those who dream dreams of remolding the human matter of society into a better world of their fanciful imaginations.
Everyday democratic politics is corrupt and wealth-inhibiting enough in the context of the modern interventionist welfare state. But if the Green New Dealers have their way, this will be taken to an entirely new and more destructive level as one great plan for global salvation is imposed on everyone, everywhere, with no avenues of escape in our age of electronic Big Brother surveillance and control. Once embarked on, history suggests that such central-planning systems are very difficult to reverse without great and costly hardships to nearly everyone in society.
- World's First Anti-Tank Drone Debuts At IDEX 2019
MBDA Missile Systems and Milrem Robotics unveiled an anti-tank unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) on Sunday at the IDEX-2019 arms exhibition in the United Arab Emirates.
Claimed to be the world’s first anti-tank UGV, the new weapon system integrates the Milrem Robotics THeMIS (Tracked Hybrid Modular Infantry System) unmanned ground vehicle with the MBDA IMPACT (Integrated MMP Precision Attack Combat Turret) system fitted with two MMP 5th generation ground combat missiles and a self-defense machine gun.
“This combination of two of the most modern technologies in their field is a very good example how robotic warfare systems will bring disruption to the battlefield and make some traditional technologies obsolete,” said Kuldar Väärsi, CEO of Milrem Robotics.
Väärsi added: “Our unmanned land combat system under study together with MBDA will be very efficient in keeping our troops safe and significantly increasing the capability to fight main battle tanks, as well as any other ground target.”
Due to the UGV’s lightweight and size, the remotely operated drone can be deployed with mounted and/or dismounted units, requiring less logistical efforts. Powered by a diesel engine and an electric generator, the hybrid function of the UVG enables it to operate for 8 to 10 hours. For maximum stealthiness, the UGV can run on electric for .5 to 1.5 hours.
The UGV has a low heat and noise signature so it can remain undetected, hidden from the enemy’s surveillance equipment while hunting for main battle tanks.
The command and control center is displayed remotely in a vehicle cab so the operator of the UGV remains safe from enemy fire.
The purpose of the UGV is clear: Disrupt the main battle tank which has had dominance on the battlefield for almost the last half century of wars.
- Chase Bank De-Platforms Conservative Performance Artist Martina Markota
Two weeks after Chase Bank announced that it would no longer do business with Proud Boys Chairman Enrique Tarrio, Conservative performance artist and Rebel Media personality Martina Markota has become the latest conservative media figure to be targeted by the bank which has made no secret of its support for liberal causes (see its decision to cut ties with the gun industry).
In an interview with Big League Politics, Markota explained that the account that was shuttered had been linked to an Indiegogo campaign that Markota had used to raise more than $34,000 for a graphic novel that she had been working on, which made the decision to shut down the account more of a financial burden for her.
Markota was mailed a letter form the bank, which she shared on twitter.
When she contacted the bank to try and figure out why the account had been shut down, Markota said they refused to give her a reason. She believes that the decision was politically motivated due to her support for President Trump.
Upon getting notice of her account shutdown, Markota contacted Chase Bank by phone to ask why her account was shut down.
“They refused to tell me why,” Markota stated. “They said they have the right to end our relationship and not tell me why.”
She began to believe that her bank account shutdown was was politically motivated after reading Big League Politics‘ story on Tarrio. This suspicion is well warranted considering the fact that her outspoken support for President Trump has exposed her to a torrent of harassment in recent years.
Markota added that she has been the victim of harassment from former coworkers when she was a burlesque dancer.
Markota’s former co-workers from her burlesque days have been on a crusade to make her life miserable ever since she came out as a Trump supporter.
Their harassment got so bad that Markota is pursuing legal action against the most vicious tormentor.
If political motivations were in fact behind her de-platforming, that would make Markota the latest in a string of conservatives including Alex Jones, Laura Loomer and Jordan Peterson who have been financially targeted for their political views by what are still perceived as unbiased, apolitical organizations, when in reality financial isolation and boycotts is precisely how outspoken, ideologically opposing voices get silenced.
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