“The Pentagon is moving forward with pressuring Congress to add women to the Selective Service program, which will make virtually all young people eligible for the military draft.”
Read more: https://mises.org/blog/pentagon-pushes-plan-female-draft-registration
“Amending the charter’s pacifist Article 9 would be hugely symbolic for Japan. Supporters see it as the foundation of post-war democracy but many conservatives view it as a humiliating imposition after Japan’s defeat in 1945. It would also be a victory for Abe, whose conservative agenda of restoring traditional values, stressing obligations to the state over individual rights and loosening constraints on the military, centers on revising the constitution.”
“It originated in the early 1990s when the neocons in the George HW Bush administration realized that with the Cold War’s end, the Warfare State was in grave danger of massive demobilization like the US had done after every war until 1945. So among many other invented two-bit threats, the Iranian regime was demonized in order to keep the Imperial City in thrall to its purported national security threat and in support of the vast global armada of military forces, bases and occupations needed to contain it (including the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf and US bases throughout the region).”
“There is but one true bipartisan subject: the Pentagon. War, it turns out, is the ultimate domestic scam and your tax dollars are its heart and soul.”
“Between 2012 and 2015, the DOD shelled out $53 million to professional sports—including $10 million to the NFL—on ‘marketing and advertising’ for military recruitment. To be sure, some of that was bona fide advertising. But many of those heart-tugging ceremonies honoring heroes and recreating drills and marches and flyovers are what the report denounced as propaganda. Of course, this being government, no one is really sure how much has been spent or where the money went.”
Read more: https://fee.org/articles/its-time-to-end-the-paid-militarization-of-the-nfl/
“75.1 is America’s lowest score in the twenty-plus years that the Index has been published. The United States is ranked #17 in the latest Index. We’re only in the ‘Mostly Free’ category, behind Luxembourg and the Netherlands and tied with Denmark.”
Read more: https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2017/02/15/americas-diminishing-economic-liberty/
“This is going to put Obama’s shovel-ready, anti-recession boondoggle to shame. Only it isn’t going to happen. It didn’t happen for Obama, either.”
Read more: https://www.garynorth.com/public/16743.cfm
“The GOP’s dreams have collided with interest-group lobbying and the tax system’s reality. Politicians all profess to hate the tax code, but they don’t agree on exactly what they hate. Voters gripe about complexity but are wary of losing cherished breaks that are woven into the economy.”
Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/05/30/gop-bid-to-rewrite-tax-code-falters.html
“Obama signed off on a surge that ended with 100,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. His generals also promised to break the stalemate. Today, the Taliban controls more of the country than it has since 2001. Why are we still there? We went into Afghanistan after 9/11 to get Osama bin Laden and to punish the Taliban for harboring al-Qaeda. Now bin Laden is dead; al-Qaeda is dispersed; the Taliban has been battered. The United Nations reports that there were more than 11,000 war-related civilian casualties last year, and 660,000 Afghans were displaced, adding to the country’s massive refugee crisis. The war has now cost us over $1 trillion, making it the second-costliest U.S. war.”
“The Treasury disclosed that it is studying the possibility of ultra-long bonds, with maturities greater than 30 years, currently the bond with the longest maturity. It also said it is preparing for the time when the Fed begins to reduce its giant $4.5 trillion balance sheet — by buying fewer Treasurys and mortgage securities, and perhaps ultimately even unloading the ones it holds.”