Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to visit Washington next week as Congress debates the $24 billion in additional spending on the proxy war in Ukraine that the White House has requested.
The visit hasn’t been officially announced but has been reported by several media outlets, including The Associated Press. Zelensky will stop in the American capital as part of his trip to the US during the UN General Assembly.
Sources told AP that Zelensky will meet President Biden at the White House next Thursday and will also visit Capitol Hill. When he last made the trip in December 2022, Zelensky thanked Congress for all the support but said it wasn’t “enough.”
Zelensky’s next visit comes as support for the proxy war in Ukraine falters among Republican voters. According to a recent poll from CNN, 55% of Americans oppose Congress authorizing more spending on the conflict, including 71% of Republicans who were asked.
General Motors CEO Mary Barra told CNBC in an interview:
“I’m frustrated and disappointed. We don’t need to be on strike right now.
“We have a very generous offer on the table right now. It’s historic. From a wage increase perspective, it’s the most significant offer we’ve had in our 115-year history.”
Barra warned:
Strikes will “not be good for the economy overall.”
She added:
Strikes can be resolved “very quickly” after a “historic” offer from the automaker.
“I’m frustrated and disappointed. We don’t need to be on strike right now,” says $GM CEO Mary Barra. “We have a very generous offer on the table right now. It’s historic. From a wage increase perspective, it’s the most significant offer we’ve had in our 115-year history.” pic.twitter.com/RO6xrv1Yq2 — Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) September 15, 2023
Still, GM’s offer and Ford’s and Stellantis’ offers are still well below the demand threshold for the union.
This brings us to another problem recruiters face. Even those who doubt the regime’s latest imperial adventures oversea might nonetheless be convinced to join the National Guard. But even there, better-informed potential recruits are learning that the National Guard has degenerated into a reserve force for the regular military. The old “two weeks every summer” slogan about the National Guard has been exposed as a lie, and potential recruits seeking to “serve the community” now know that they may end up fighting wars 10,000 miles from home. In 2021, National Public Radio reported on how the National guard exploits recruits. One Idaho National Guardsman described the new reality:
By the middle of 2022, it was already become apparent that the US military was having problems meeting recruitment goals. In August last year, The AP reported that the Army would have to cut force size, and an army spokesman admitted the Army was facing “‘unprecedented challenges’ in bringing in recruits.” This came even with new larger enlistment bonuses. The problem, however, wasn’t as acute for the Air Force, Navy, or Marine Corps.
Since then, things haven’t gotten any better for recruiters. Now, recruitment shortfalls have spread well beyond the Army. The New York Post reported last week:
Much of the military will fall short of recruitment goals by as much as 25% this year …
The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard are all expected to fall short of their recruitment goals this year, they told The Post. …
A spokesperson for the Air Force said they will likely miss their goal of 26,877 new recruits by 10%. The Coast Guard said they will likely only fill 75% of the number of full-time, non-commissioned recruits they need.
And as of April, the Navy, which has over 300,000 active duty personnel, was behind by 6,000 new recruits this year, and the Army by 10,000 out of their 65,000 goal.
Apparently, potential recruits aren’t buying whatever it is the military is selling these days as reasons for signing away one’s freedom to federal bureaucrats for a period of years. After all, the military is the only job that one can’t quit at any time, so any intelligent person will think long and hard before signing up.
There are many reasons for the recruitment problem. The decline in mental and physical fitness is real, and many young people are disqualified from a military job even before applying. Many others are put off by what appears to be an overtly politicized and partisan military. Pentagon leaders appear to be doubling down on ideological crusades more and more. Even while it faces a recruiting crisis, the military still refuses to provide back pay to service members who were forced out for declining the experimental covid vaccines. Unquestioning compliance with vaccine mandates, of course, is a cause near and dear to the current administration. Then there are the “woke” crusades in which military brass use drag queens as Navy recruiters and create recruitment ads tailor-made for LGBT personnel. The military wants to let you know they’ll affirm your gender transition—unless, of course, that gets in way of conscription. (The Pentagon claims the “woke” issue isn’t having much effect on recruitment.)
But there are other more deep-seated problems as well. There is growing evidence that the American public no longer reveres the military as it once did. Moreover, it is more abundantly clear than ever that military service has nothing to do with defending the United States or its people. And then there is the often-seen “problem” of low unemployment and the fact the private sector is drawing the best workers away from military careers.
The head of US Pacific Air Forces said Monday that the Air Force was clearing out jungles in the Pacific to build new airfields and restore old ones as part of the branch’s preparation for war with China in the region.
The Air Force is working to expand its bases as part of a plan to become more mobile in the Pacific, a concept known as Agile Combat Employment (ACE). Pacific Air Forces Commander Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said the Air Force is looking for more money to facilitate the military buildup.
“We’re going to be clearing out the jungle [and] we’re going to be resurfacing some of the surfaces there so that we will have a fairly large and very functional Agile Combat Employment base, an additional base to be able to operate from and we have several other projects like that around the region that we’ll be getting after,” he said at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber conference, according to Defense One.
“That takes resources to be able to accomplish and so those are some of the resources that I argue for when I go back to the headquarters,” Wilsbach added. He said the Air Force requested funds for additional construction in the Pacific for its 2024 military budget.
Vladimir Putin said at the Eastern Economic Forum on Tuesday that he wouldn’t expect any meaningful changes in US policy toward Russia if former president Donald Trump secures re-election next year.
“I think there will be no fundamental changes regarding Russia in US foreign policy, no matter who is elected president,” Putin said. “Mr. [Donald] Trump (ex-president and Republican Party candidate — TASS) says he will solve acute problems, including the Ukrainian crisis, in a few days, this can only please. Nevertheless, he too imposed sanctions on Russia during his presidency,” Putin recalled.
The US, according to the Russian president, “views Russia as a permanent adversary, or even an enemy, and has hammered this into the heads of ordinary Americans.” “The current authorities have tuned American society into an anti-Russian vein and spirit — that’s what it’s all about. They have done it, and now it will be very difficult to somehow turn this ship in the other direction,” Putin said.
This is not the first time Putin has made such comments. When Oliver Stone asked him in an interview during Trump’s presidency what has changed from administration to administration in the four US presidents he’d gone through during his leadership, Putin replied, “Almost nothing. Your bureaucracy is very strong and it is that bureaucracy that rules the world.”
And he’s right; from Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden there has been a consistent pattern of escalation which has now culminated in a terrible proxy war — provoked by western actions — which has the potential to go nuclear at any time. Trump has been campaigning on the claim that he can end the Ukraine war in a day if re-elected, but there is no actual reason to believe that’s true.
Neither mainstream American party likes to admit to this fact because of the implications for their respective political agendas, but in terms of concrete policy decisions Trump actually governed as a virulent Russia hawk who spent his entire term ramping up cold war aggressions against Russia on multiple fronts. He arguably played as much of a role in paving the way toward the war in Ukraine as any other president — it was Trump after all who first began pouring American weapons into Ukraine, an incendiary move that his predecessor Obama had actually resisted for fear of provoking Moscow.
The claim that Trump was a secret agent of the Kremlin has always been a ridiculous conspiracy theory made possible by mass-scale journalistic malpractice
The Group of 20 leaders have agreed to a plan to eventually impose digital currencies and digital IDs on their respective populations, despite fears that governments will use them to monitor their peoples’ spending and crush dissent.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomes leaders during opening session of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi, on Sept. 9, 2023. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
The G20, which is currently under India’s presidency, adopted a final declaration on the subject over the weekend in New Delhi.
The meeting, which included the world’s leading economies, announced last week that they had agreed to build the necessary infrastructure to implement digital currencies and IDs.
The group said that discussions were already underway to create international regulations for cryptocurrencies, but claimed that there was “no talk of banning cryptocurrency” at the summit.
Many critics are concerned that governments and central banks will eventually regulate cryptocurrencies and then immediately replace them with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), which lack similar privacy and security.
Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that discussions were underway to build a global framework to regulate crypto assets since they believe cryptocurrencies can not be regulated efficiently without total international cooperation.
“India’s [G20] presidency has put on the table key issues related to regulating or understanding that there should be a framework for handling issues related to crypto assets,” Ms. Sitharaman said before the G20 gathering.
The top items discussed at the New Delhi summit included “building Digital Public Infrastructure, Digital Economy, Cryptoassets, [Central Bank Digital Currencies].”
Gita Gopinath, the International Monetary Fund’s first deputy managing director, said in a video posted on X that the G20 “helped shape a global perspective on how policymakers should deal with crypto assets.”
She also assured Business Today that there was “no talk of banning cryptocurrencies, indicating a global consensus against such measures” in the discussions.
However, some of the suggestions call for additional policing of cryptocurrencies, which are decentralized and do not operate under central banks’ control.
Critics say that these proposals could allow government authorities to impose a social credit score system and decide how their citizens can spend their money.
European Commission Chief Reemphasizes Need for Digital IDs
At the summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for an international regulatory body for artificial intelligence (AI), digital ID systems similar to coronavirus vaccine passports and advocated for global cooperation to address the challenges presented by AI.
She called for the United Nations to have a role in AI regulation and called the European Union’s COVID-19 digital certificate a perfect model for digital public infrastructures (DPI), which would include digital IDs.
“Many of you are familiar with the COVID-19 digital certificate. The EU developed it for itself. The model was so functional and so trusted that 51 countries on four continents adopted it for free,” said President von der Leyen.
“Today, the WHO uses it as a global standard to facilitate mobility in times of health threats. I want to thank Dr. Tedros again for the excellent cooperation,” she said, referring to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
What they overlook is the basic economic concept of rivalrousness. My use of English—a language that isn’t my mother tongue and that I have thereby thoroughly “appropriated”—does in no way prevent another person from using English, or changing English in any which way they prefer (think teenager neologisms). My applying a decades-old recipe for tonight’s dinner in no way strips someone else from the pleasure of using that same recipe.
If all you wield are government solutions, everything looks like a private-sector nail in desperate need of a hammering.
When I was at the university, I once objected to a classmate’s lazy use of “public goods.” He had used it to favor his policy position, as a shorthand synonym of what’s good for society—only a thinly veiled euphemism for what I want to happen.
“Public goods are things that are nonrivalrous and nonexcludable,” I said, almost sputtering off a nearby economics textbook. “The ones you’re talking about are neither.”
He rolled his eyes in boredom. “Yes, yes, but that’s not what people mean when they say, ‘public goods.’”
Strangely, I think he’s right. These days, the economist’s clear and rather demanding criteria of so-called public goods are largely swept aside in favor of something like “What I think would be good for the public.” And that little linguistic slip opens up a world of economic policymaking from which we still haven’t recovered.
Everything these days are public goods. In a New York Review of Bookspiece by Helen Epstein we learn that money printing isn’t just important for government spending but “for improvements in health care, education, transportation, the power grid, and other public goods that might foster development.”
To proponents of government services, everything that carries even a whiff of external benefits to someone, somewhere, is therefore transformed into a “public good”—which must be provided by government. We might have excused such convictions, chalking them up to ignorance, if it weren’t for economists at the pinnacle of the profession embracing those views; Nobel Prize winner William Nordhaus is a case in point.
We have to dig about three hundred pages into Nordhaus’s bookThe Spirit of Green before we get an admission that government failures can be worse than the failures that ostensibly run amok in private markets. Otherwise they’re just technocratic solutions: rainbows and unicorns, public goods this, public goods that. Everything is an uncorrected externality—from the keyboards we write on to gas stations, hospitals, landlords, and the English language.
In the wake of the September 11th terror attacks, President George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security, a new sprawling federal agency with over 170,000 employees and new intelligence powers dedicated to domestic national security.
At the inception of this agency, Democratic lawmakers challenged its authority and raised concerns that this consolidation of government power would jeopardize civil liberties.
Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., led the opposition. Feingold criticized the formation of DHS, stating it came “at the expense of unnecessarily undermining our privacy rights” and “weakening protections against unwarranted government intrusion into the lives of ordinary Americans.”
Representative Chris Bell, D-Tex., fumed at the agency and warned against the creation of an “Orwellian surveillance state” that would be used to settle “partisan political” disputes.
Civil libertarian opposition once held sway within the party. Democrats worked closely with the ACLU and other privacy groups to question DHS powers, particularly around data mining, surveillance, and interference into domestic politics.
The fear that the newly created agency would weaponize homeland security concerns to advance partisan politics quickly materialized in the 2004 elections. Tom Ridge, after serving as the head of the agency, wrote that the Bush administration officials pressured him to raise the DHS terror threat level just before voting got underway in a bid to influence the electoral outcome.
Even as recently as 2012, House Democrats raised concerns in Congress about DHS violating American civil rights and privacy rights by inappropriately monitoring First Amendment-protected speech on social media. “I am looking forward to learning from the witnesses exactly how DHS uses social media and what DHS is doing to make sure that in its use of social media, it is not being perceived as being a Big Brother,” said Representative Jackie Speier, D-Calif., during an oversight hearing over the Department of Homeland Security’s social media surveillance efforts.
But as the threat of Islamic terror attacks has diminished, the Department of Homeland Security has pivoted and recalibrated its reach, finding new political support for its growth.
A recent report in The Intercept suggests the Pentagon repeatedly misled Congress about the extent and the cost of the US presence in Niger.
Congress must step up and exercise its oversight authority to end the counter-productive US military presence in Africa. Our military empire is bankrupting us and turning the rest of the world against us.
The July military coup in the west African country of Niger has once again brought attention to the fact that the US government runs a global military empire that serves Washington’s special interests, and not the national interest.
Before the coup made news headlines, most Americans – including many serving in Congress – had no idea the US government maintains more than 1,000 troops stationed on several US bases in Niger. But it’s even worse than that. A recent report in The Intercept suggests the Pentagon repeatedly misled Congress about the extent and the cost of the US presence in Niger.
According to The Intercept, “in testimony before the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in March, the chief of US Africa Command described Air Base 201 (in Niger) as ‘minimal’ and ‘low cost.’” In fact the US government has spent a quarter of a billion dollars on the base since construction began in 2016.
So when did Congress declare war so as to legalize US military operations in Niger? They didn’t. But as Kelley Vlahos writes in Responsible Statecraft, US troops have been “training” the military in Niger since 2013 and the US government has constructed a number of military bases to “fight terrorism” in the country and region.
Does that mean that the Pentagon is operating in Niger under the 2001 authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) meant to track down those who attacked the US on 9/11? It’s a good question and thankfully one being asked by Sen. Rand Paul in a recent letter sent to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
MCViewPoint 
