Wednesday
WHY ARE WE HELPING SAUDI ARABIA DESTROY YEMEN? by RON PAUL
It’s remarkable that whenever you read an article about Yemen in the mainstream media, the central role of Saudi Arabia and the United States in the tragedy is glossed over or completely ignored. A recent Washington Post article purporting to tell us “how things got so bad” explains to us that, “it’s a complicated story” involving “warring regional superpowers, terrorism, oil, and an impending climate catastrophe.”
No, Washington Post, it’s simpler than that. The tragedy in Yemen is the result of foreign military intervention in the internal affairs of that country. It started with the “Arab Spring” which had all the fingerprints of State Department meddling, and it escalated with 2015’s unprovoked Saudi attack on the country to re-install Riyadh’s preferred leader. Thousands of innocent civilians have been killed and millions more are at risk as starvation and cholera rage.
We are told that US foreign policy should reflect American values. So how can Washington support Saudi Arabia – a tyrannical state with one of the worst human rights record on earth – as it commits by what any measure is a genocide against the Yemeni people? The UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs warned just last week that Yemen faces “the largest famine the world has seen for many decades with millions of victims.” The Red Cross has just estimated that a million people are vulnerable in the cholera epidemic that rages through Yemen.
The United States is backing Saudi aggression against Yemen by cooperating in every way with the Saudi military. Targeting, intelligence, weapons sales, and more. The US is a partner in Saudi Arabia’s Yemen crimes.
Does holding hands with Saudi Arabia as it slaughters Yemeni children really reflect American values? Is anyone even playing attention?
The claim that we are fighting al-Qaeda in Yemen and thus our involvement is covered under the post-9/11 authorization for the use of force is without merit. In fact it has been reported numerous times in the mainstream media that US intervention on behalf of the Saudis in Yemen is actually a boost to al-Qaeda in the country. Al-Qaeda is at war with the Houthis who had taken control of much of the country because the Houthis practice a form of Shi’a Islam they claim is tied to Iran. We are fighting on the same side as al-Qaeda in Yemen.
Adding insult to injury, the US Congress can’t be bothered to even question how we got so involved in a war that has nothing to do with us. A few conscientious Members of Congress got together recently to introduce a special motion under the 1973 War Powers Act that would have required a vote on our continued military involvement in the Yemen genocide. The leadership of both parties joined together to destroy this attempt to at least get a vote on US aggression against Yemen. As it turns out, the only Members to vote against this shamefully gutted resolution were the original Members who introduced it. This is bipartisanship at its worst.
US involvement in Saudi Arabia’s crimes against Yemen is a national disgrace. That the mainstream media fails to accurately cover this genocide is shameful. Let us join our voices now to demand that our US Representatives end US involvement in Yemen immediately!
WILL TAX REFORM INCREASE OR LIMIT LIBERTY? by RON PAUL
President Trump and the congressional Republican leadership recently unveiled a tax reform “framework.” The framework has a number of provisions that will lower taxes on middle-class Americans. For example, the framework doubles the standard deduction and increases the child care tax credit. It also eliminates the alternative minimum tax (AMT). Created in the 1960s, the AMT was designed to ensure the “wealthy” did not use “loopholes” to “get out of” paying taxes. Today the AMT is mostly a means to increase taxes on the middle class.
The framework eliminates the “death tax,” thus enabling family-owned small businesses and farms to remain family owned. It also helps the economy by lowering the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, reducing taxes on small businesses. The framework also adopts a territorial tax system, which means US companies would only pay tax on profits earned in the United States.
However, the framework is far from a total victory for liberty. Concerns have been raised that, depending on what income levels are assigned to what tax brackets, the plan could increase taxes on many middle- and lower-income Americans! This is largely due to the framework’s elimination of most tax deductions .
The framework also contains a stealth tax increase imposed via the chained consumer price index (chained CPI). Supporters of chained CPI clam the government is currently overstating inflation. The truth is exactly the opposite: government statistics are manipulated to understate inflation.
Chained CPI enhances the government’s ability to lie about inflation. One way it does so is by claiming that inflation does not lower our standard of living if we can substitute cheaper goods for goods made unaffordable by inflation. So inflation does not harm you if you can’t afford a steak dinner as long as you can still buy a cheeseburger.
Chained CPI allows the government to take maximum advantage of “bracket creep,” where individuals are pushed into higher tax brackets not because they are actually earning more money, but because inflation creates the illusion they are wealthier. In fact, by decreasing their purchasing power , inflation makes most people poorer. The inflation tax thus raises taxes on declining incomes. It is hidden and regressive, making it the most insidious of all taxes.
Most of the framework’s problems stem from Congress’ continued refusal to offset tax cuts with spending cuts. Instead, Congress continues to increase spending, with the only real debate over whether the government should spend more on welfare or warfare.
Pairing tax cuts with increases in federal spending and debt — and the drafters of the framework admit their plan will increase the debt by at least $2.2 trillion — means that the economic benefit from the tax cuts will be outweighed by the economic harm caused by the increase in debt. Increasing the debt also means the Federal Reserve will further devalue the dollar in order to monetize that debt. While the Republican tax and budget plans predict uninterrupted economic growth, the US economy is far more likely to undergo a major economic crisis caused by a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status.
While all supporters of individual liberty and sound economics should support tax cuts, the Republicans’ failure to cut spending means that their tax plan will do little to increase liberty or prosperity. Instead of increasing debt, eliminating deductions, and relying on the inflation tax to “pay for tax cuts,” Congress should cut two dollars in spending on the military-industrial complex and other forms of corporate welfare for every dollar in tax cuts. Cutting both taxes and spending is the only way to protect prosperity and liberty.
Wednesday
JEFF SESSIONS ENDORSES THEFT by RON PAUL
Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently ordered the Justice Department to increase the use of civil asset forfeiture, thus once again endorsing an unconstitutional , authoritarian, and increasingly unpopular policy.
Civil asset forfeiture, which should be called civil asset theft, is the practice of seizing property believed to be involved in a crime. The government keeps the property even if it never convicts, or even charges, the owner of the property.
Police can even use civil asset theft to steal from people whose property was used in criminal activity without the owners’ knowledge. Some have even lost their homes because a renter or houseguest was dealing drugs on the premises behind the owners’ backs.
Civil asset theft is a multi-billion dollar a year moneymaker for all levels of government. Police and prosecutors receive more than their “fair share” of the loot. According to a 2016 study by the Institute for Justice, 43 states allow police and prosecutors to keep at least half of the loot they got from civil asset theft.
Obviously, this gives police an incentive to aggressively use civil asset theft, even against those who are not even tangentially involved in a crime. For example, police in Tenaha, Texas literally engaged in highway robbery — seizing cash and other items from innocent motorists — while police in Detroit once seized every car in an art institute’s parking lot. The official justification for that seizure was that the cars belonged to attendees at an event for which the institute had failed to get a liquor license.
The Tenaha police are not the only ones targeting those carrying large sums of cash. Anyone traveling with “too much” cash runs the risk of having it stolen by a police officer, since carrying large amounts of cash is treated as evidence of involvement in criminal activity .
Civil asset theft also provides an easy way for the IRS to squeeze more money from the American taxpayer. As the growing federal debt increases the pressure to increase tax collections without raising tax rates, the IRS will likely ramp up its use of civil asset forfeiture.
Growing opposition to the legalized theft called civil asset forfeiture has led 24 states to pass laws limiting its use. Sadly, but not surprisingly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is out of step with this growing consensus. After all, Sessions is a cheerleader for the drug war, and civil asset theft came into common usage as a tool in the drug war.
President Trump could do the American people a favor by naming a new attorney general who opposes police state policies like the drug war and police state tactics like civil asset theft.
Friday
BIG MILITARY SPENDING BOOST THREATENS OUR ECONOMY AND SECURITY by RON PAUL
On Friday the House overwhelmingly approved a massive increase in military spending, passing a $696 billion National Defense Authorization bill for 2018. President Trump’s request already included a huge fifty or so billion dollar spending increase, but the Republican-led House found even that to be far too small. They added another $30 billion to the bill for good measure. Even President Trump, in his official statement , expressed some concern over spending in the House-passed bill.
According to the already weak limitations on military spending increases in the 2011 “sequestration” law, the base military budget for 2018 would be $72 billion more than allowed.
Don’t worry, they’ll find a way to get around that!
The big explosion in military spending comes as the US is planning to dramatically increase its military actions overseas. The president is expected to send thousands more troops back to Afghanistan, the longest war in US history. After nearly 16 years, the Taliban controls more territory than at anytime since the initial US invasion and ISIS is seeping into the cracks created by constant US military action in the country.
The Pentagon and Defense Secretary James Mattis are already telling us that even when ISIS is finally defeated in Iraq, the US military doesn’t dare end its occupation of the country again. Look for a very expensive array of permanent US military bases throughout the country. So much for our 2003 invasion creating a stable democracy, as the neocons promised.
In Syria, the United States has currently established at least eight military bases even though it has no permission to do so from the Syrian government nor does it have a UN resolution authorizing the US military presence there. Pentagon officials have made it clear they will continue to occupy Syrian territory even after ISIS is defeated, to “stabilize” the region.
And let’s not forget that Washington is planning to send the US military back to Libya, another US intervention we were promised would be stabilizing but that turned out to be a disaster.
Also, the drone wars continue in Somalia and elsewhere, as does the US participation in Saudi Arabia’s horrific two year war on impoverished Yemen.
President Trump often makes encouraging statements suggesting that he shares some of our non-interventionist views. For example while Congress was shoveling billions into an already bloated military budget last week, President Trump said that he did not want to spent trillions more dollars in the Middle East where we get “nothing” for our efforts. He’d rather fix roads here in the US, he said. The only reason we are there, he said, was to “get rid of terrorists,” after which we can focus on our problems at home.
Unfortunately President Trump seems to be incapable of understanding that it is US intervention and occupation of foreign countries that creates instability and feeds terrorism. Continuing to do the same thing for more than 17 years – more US bombs to “stabilize” the Middle East – and expecting different results is hardly a sensible foreign policy. It is insanity. Until he realizes that our military empire is the source of rather than the solution to our problems, we will continue to wildly spend on our military empire until the dollar collapses and we are brought to our knees. Then what?
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