Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain
Washington just approved millions of dollars more money for military aid to Kyiv. That means the government there has been given over $35.4 billion in weapons and ammo since February 24, 2022. That’s around $88 million a day in a little more than a year. The Kyiv government has also been given tens of billions in dollars of other aid during this period. In addition, the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security are budgeted to receive around a trillion dollars for war and homeland security in 2023. Meanwhile, Medicaid is being taken away from millions, SNAP/EBT benefits are being cut. Tenants are being tossed from their homes because they can’t pay the rent. Social Security and Medicare are being targeted and the rich pay relatively little in taxes.
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88 million dollars a day breaks down to about 61,000 dollars a minute—solely for military aid to Ukraine while adamantly refusing to negotiate.
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Librarians around the country are being threatened and even attacked for doing their job and providing books on a wide variety of topics. County and state governments are defunding libraries when the library staff defends their book choices in the name of freedom. Fascists and other right-wingers respond by destroying books, intimidating library patrons and otherwise endangering library workers and the first amendment. Schoolteachers are facing similar situations as right wing zealots under the flag of religion force their reactionary politics on school boards around the country.
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Members of the Black freedom organizations called the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru movement have been indicted on charges of being foreign agents, among other things. These charges came after a brutal raid by military-garbed police in late 2022. According to the US Department of Justice, the charges were filed because of the members’ “engaging in agitprop” that the government says contained Russian propaganda especially in regards to their opposition to the US involvement in the war in Ukraine. (In other words, they oppose NATO’s involvement and provocations.) At the very least, these charges go against the first amendment guarantees of freedom of speech. The potential use of similar charges against others who oppose NATO and its war in Ukraine are likely now part of Washington’s arsenal in its attempts to silence antiwar voices. Meanwhile, self-declared supporters of Israel and its occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza who receive money form Israeli groups serve in Congress without having to acknowledge their role as agents for Israel.
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The Biden administration approved the Willow project. It is an $8 billion plan to extract 600 million barrels of oil from federal land in Alaska—about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. According to CNN, this project could produce enough oil to release around 9.2 million metric tons of carbon into the air, which is roughly equivalent to adding 2 million gas cars to the roads. Overall, this project is expected to create about 260 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of creating around 70 new coal-fired power plants. To put it succinctly, it is a step backward in the fight to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy and is in direct contradiction to Joe Biden’s campaign promise to reject any new fossil fuel projects.
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Donald Trump remains free. No charges have been filed against him for his role in the January 6, 2021 attempt to overturn the November 2020 national election results. Meanwhile, he is campaigning for president despite thirty-four felony charges filed against him in New York. It is quite likely he will never pay for his crimes.
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As part of the co-called Safer America bill, Congress and the White House are funding the hiring of 100,000 more police. History has proven too many times to remember that more police do not mean safer streets for many US residents, especially those who are poor, Black or Latino. After all, it is often the police that make them less safer for these residents. The demands of the millions who protested after George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police in 2020 for a more progressive kind of policing are not only being ignored, they are being ridiculed by the authorities with actions like this.
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Women’s reproductive rights continue to be curtailed. Right wing judges continue to use their position to change laws and regulations that make contraception, including abortions, more difficult. Medicine that was previously available to women is being removed from the marketplace because of the religious beliefs of certain members of the judiciary and legislatures. This is in direct contradiction to the first amendment that begins with the clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion… “
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Due to a spate of laws across the nation, LBGTQ citizens are facing legalized discrimination on a scale not seen in the United States since the first half of the twentieth century.
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Instead of attempting some form of detente with the government of China, Washington is ratcheting up threats of military action against Beijing and its military. Despite a fifty year international understanding regarding the status of Taiwan, the White House and Congress (together with the always pliant media) are resurrecting an artifact of the Cold War by challenging the current status of Taiwan–a status that was instituted by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. This begs the question, if it was good enough for them, why should it be changed? War and threats of war should not be the primary diplomatic strategy for any government in a world that badly needs a redirection towards coexistence. Yet, the Congress, White House and the Pentagon continue to issue threats and move troops closer to Chinese and Russian borders.
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Immigrants continue to sit on the other side of the border in facilities that are often unsafe. In recent weeks, a fire at one such facility killed more than three dozen people. Meanwhile, Biden is considering restarting the detention of families and unaccompanied minors who have crossed the border. That policy was roundly denounced when the Trump administration did the same thing. In addition, recent reports in the New York Times have uncovered the exploitation of underaged migrants by various corporations and employment agencies. In short, the immigration policies of the Biden administration are not much different than those of his predecessor.
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I could continue the above litany. However, I believe you get my point. Unless, of course, you think my point is that by voting for someone else, these things would not be happening. That is definitely not my point. The electoral system is designed to prevent the fundamental changes necessary for a humane future from taking place. Voting is not enough even when politicians keep their promises; a phenomenon that is at least as rare as an albino Bison. When one considers that most politicians don’t keep their promises once they are in office, the value of voting becomes even less. No, I’m not saying don’t vote. I am saying that pretending voting is enough in itself requires a tremendous amount of denial. Yes, it matters when a wannabe fascist is voted out. However, when that fascist is replaced by someone determined to maintain a dying empire even if it means nuclear war, the difference is almost too slight to matter. Politicians only respond when their power is challenged by a greater power. The last time this happened in the United States was in the 1960s and 1970s. The various popular movements against war, white supremacy, sexism and heterosexism were deep, broad and constantly expanding during that period. The combined power of those movements was greater than the power of the governments in the United States. They changed the way politics and culture operated in the United States and elsewhere around the world. Unfortunately, the backlash has been well-funded and well organized. If we are to prevent an even greater authoritarianism today than what currently exists, the time to go beyond voting and the two mainstream parties is now, if not yesterday.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ron Jacobs.