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Tariffs Violate Freedom

by | Jul 18, 2024 | , ,

Debate goes on over who suffers from U.S. tariffs. Biden and Trump, for example, think U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods hurt China, not Americans. This is nonsense. Even if they hurt Chinese producers (who can sell their goods elsewhere), the tariffs still hurt Americans. Whatever the Chinese do, prices in America for the relevant consumer and producer goods, imported and domestic, will rise—that’s the point of the tariff—and choice will shrink. Here’s what Henry George had to say in Protection or Free Trade:

If Americans did not want to buy foreign goods, foreign goods could not be sold here even if there were no tariff. The efficient cause of the trade which our tariff aims to prevent is the desire of Americans to buy foreign goods, not the desire of foreign producers to sell them…. It is not from foreigners that protection preserves and defends us; it is from ourselves.

He also wrote:

Free trade consists simply in letting people buy and sell as they want to buy and sell. It is protection that requires force, for it consists in preventing people from doing what they want to do. Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same—to prevent trade. The difference between the two is that blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war. [Emphasis added.]

 

If Pigs Could Fly: The F35 Continues to Miss the Mark

by | Jul 18, 2024 |

f35cash

The Pentagon will continue to pay Bugatti prices for Yugos until the morale improves.

Software upgrades have haunted this flying circus since its “full operational status” was fabricated years ago.

The combination of a severely Sovietized acquisition system married to the trillions spent on “defense” makes for a witches brew of chaos avalanches that keep on giving. And remember, the GAO further highlighted that the defense contractor’s liability cap is $100,000 per F-35 jet, despite each aircraft’s price tag ranging from $82.5 million to $109 million.

Not only is the aircraft idling at a roughly 30 percent readiness rating (35B/C models) for the fleet, cost in excess of 40,000 an hour to fly and a relatively short combat radius but no one has lost their job, faced a tribunal or gone to jail over this trillion[s] dollar cock-up.

The delays in the Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3) hardware and software upgrade, originally set for completion by July 2023, have left newly delivered F-35s parked at an airfield in Fort Worth, Texas, exposing them to the risks of severe weather. That delay is now a year and counting.

Blocks 1,2, and 3 were initial capabilities with Block 3 providing basic combat capability. Block 4 is the full combat capability. Many of the planned Block 4 capabilities have now been pushed into the indefinitely-delayed-to-some-future-date category which means they’ll never happen.

Blocks 1A and 1B – initial pilot training and multi-level security
Block 2A – improved training capabilities
Block 2B – basic air-to-air combat capability; basic air-to-ground combat capability
Block 3i – Block 2B plus new hardware to support USAF Initial Operating Capability (IOC)
Block 3F – full flight envelope and baseline combat capabilities; began 2018 and completed 2023
Block 4 – full weapons (17 new weapons) and ESM capabilities; pending; requires TR-3

The delays in delivery to the Pentagon were linked to the lingering issue with the TR-3 tech refresh, which refers to a series of software and hardware improvements to the F-35, giving the jets better displays, computer memory, and processing power. But now, as is a DoD habit, the forces will accept the “training” birds which are NOT combat capable according to the DoD.

COMNAVOPS avers in his splendid fashion flensing the corpus of bureaucratic bungling:

About a year ago, the Pentagon put a freeze on deliveries of new F-35s pending fixes for the TR-3 implementation. F-35s have been piling up in warehouses awaiting a resolution of the software issues.
 
Honestly, the freeze on deliveries has been more symbolic than effective since the Pentagon has continued payments for the new aircraft with just a $7M withholding per aircraft.[1] That means that Lockheed has still been getting around 91% of the contract price for aircraft that don’t meet spec and can’t be delivered. That’s not a bad deal if you can get it!
 
Financial aspects aside, I’m not sure any of us fully appreciate just how badly broken the software side of things are in the F-35 program. The Pentagon has just caved to various pressures and announced that the delivery freeze has been lifted despite the software problem remaining unresolved. Hmm …
 
Bowing to operational demands, the Pentagon has lifted a year-long freeze on accepting new F-35 stealth fighters — even though the problem that prompted the standstill has not been fully resolved.[1]

Persistent problems with TR-3 prompted officials to eventually capitulate to an interim software fix …[1] 
Read this next quote slowly and carefully and fully grasp the meaning and implications.
 
… jets will be delivered with interim software that facilitates training, but a second software drop that enables combat capabilities likely won’t be available for at least another year.[1]

That’s right. We’re delivering training jets but not fully combat capable jets. We’re decades into this program, have built a thousand aircraft, and still don’t have a fully combat capable aircraft. Someone should face a firing squad for this.

https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2024/07/f-35-software-problems-continue.html

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The Empire Strikes Back: Soldiering and Brain Injury

by | Jul 17, 2024 |

tbi1

Whatever empires do abroad eventually comes home. Yet another unintended consequences come home in a tidal wave.

This is personal; I was diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injury in 2019. I spent nearly a quarter century in the US military. I know there’s a connection. This isn’t isolated to the military, concussion in amateur and professional sports is real along with a number of blue collar jobs. The downstream effects of so many soldiers deployed overseas in combat theaters for the first two decades of the 21st century will resonate through American society for generations and even on the margin, accelerate civilizational decay. It may be yet another manifestation of the competency crisis in the chaos avalanche of American incipient degradation now.

Aside from the moral injury from war that every soldier with a conscience takes to the end of his life, here is yet another. Brain injury in the military is real.

This is yet another gift to America from imperial wars overseas.

shi tbi

The New York Times isolates the inquiry to the connection between brain injury and suicide but it is far greater in range effects than that. The cognition degradation is real.

I don’t normally quote the New York Times but here is a rare instance where they seem to ask the right questions and arrive at the right answers.

Ms. Collins is the reason that the brains of a high proportion of the SEALs who died by suicide made it to the Defense Department’s lab.
Her husband was in many ways a typical SEAL: smart, confident, easygoing and high-achieving. He deployed to Afghanistan twice and to Iraq three times. When he was not deployed, he was away from home for hundreds of days each year in training.
Combat never seemed to faze Mr. Collins, but near the end of his Navy career, he started to change in subtle ways that Ms. Collins pieced together only in retrospect. He began to avoid social gatherings. He struggled to sleep. He started to make strange, obsessive family schedules and become irritated when they were not followed. Some simple chores, like raking leaves into a tarp, started to confound him. He would step out the door to go to work, realize that he had forgotten his keys, go back inside to get them and then forget why he had returned.
All were signs of brain injury. But at the time, the military generally associated brain injury with big blasts from roadside bombs — something Mr. Collins never experienced. No one was telling the troops that repeated exposure to routine blasts from their own weapons might be a risk.

The SEALs are emblematic of a much larger and more pervasive happenstance of brain injury in all the services. The combination of the day-to-day training around munitions and explosions in concert with combat operations makes for a lethal cocktail that arguably, even in a correlative fashion, ends up causing significant brain and cognitive degradation and failure.

The men who died by suicide represent only a small fraction of the career SEALs with signs of brain injuries after years around blasts.
Several SEAL veterans said in interviews that many of their former teammates are now divorced and grappling with depression, paranoia and substance abuse — all of which can be caused by deteriorating brain function. Desperate calls from suicidal friends are common, they said.
Ms. Metcalf saw how broad the problem was when she read the letter her husband had left about his brain injury symptoms to two of his SEAL friends.
“One of them was crying on my lap, saying, ‘That’s me, that’s me,’” she said. “And the other told me a lot of them have problems, but don’t know what to do.”

https://archive.ph/MzZMw

Great insight in 2022 from a SOF conference on Brain Injury:

SOF Health Deep Dive: Traumatic Brain Injury

2015 TBI Conference

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US Surface Navy is No Longer a Global Force

by | Jul 16, 2024 |

ddg96

The US Navy may credibly dominate the Atlantic but the Pacific Ocean is no longer an exclusive US naval domination calculus.

The Arctic is still dominated by the Russians and will remain so.

The US Navy’s ability to build functioning surface ships is compromised beyond repair due to a lack of proper planning, enormous maintenance backlogs, and global “commitments” taking the remaining surface fleet endlessly steaming circles in hulls with limited lifespans.

Do hulls have an expiration date? Yes, they do hence the Navy retiring all 22 remaining cruisers in the fleet by 2027.

Not to mention the premature retirement of the entire class of Little Crappy Ships (LCS).

Along with Vicksburg, the Navy wants to decommission USS Bunker Hill (CG-52), USS Mobile Bay (CG-53), USS San Jacinto (CG-56) and USS Lake Champlain (CG-57) in FY 2023 and is already cleared to decommission USS Monterey (CG-61), USS Hué City (CG-66), USS Anzio (CG-68), USS Vella Gulf (CG-72) and USS Port Royal (CG-73) this year.

All 22 remaining cruisers are set to leave the fleet by 2027.

https://news.usni.org/2022/04/21/navy-plans-for-all-22-ticonderoga-cruisers-to-exit-fleet-in-5-years

The perfect storm of inadequate design since 1991 for all new US Navy surface warfare vessels, inadequate maintenance funds and insufficient shipyard throughput is reaching a point of no return. The era of US Navy surface superiority and supremacy planet-wide is over.

Three Los Angeles-class submarines, two Ticonderoga-class cruisers and four mine-detection ships have passed their expected service life dates and are among the 19 ships targeted for retirement by the Navy. However, the other 10 that the Navy wants to remove from the fleet are still short of retirement age. The gaps range from one and two years for two more Ticonderoga-class cruisers to 29 years for USNS John Glenn, an expeditionary land dock vessel only 11 years into its expected 40-year service.

More here:

https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2024-03-18/navy-budget-ships-submarines-f-35s-retirements-cuts-13358793.html

One of the commenters made this keen point:

One of the basic criteria in successful shipbuilding is you do not commence build until design is 100% complete, not 90 or 95% , as nearly always the the last few percent of the design the most difficult, but Navy authorized F/MM start build in August 2022 even though they said the detail design was only just over 80 percent finished. Congress had previously mandated in 2020 that design must be “complete” before build can commence, as the Navy doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “complete” in the FY2025 NDAA House legislators were said to be changing the wording to “100% complete”, though Senate draft wording reported to be 95% of functional design drawings have to been approved.

No wonder Constellation expected delivery will be three years late and 10 percent above the shipbuilder’s June 2020 weight estimate.

You cannot complete a complex ship design of the plans aren’t complete on initiation of building.

Period.

In contrast, because the Navy no longer designs ships, generates blueprints, or even requires complete designs and blueprints prior to the start of construction, only the contracted yard can build a given ship. The LCS is the standout example of this badly flawed approach. Lacking any guidance or blueprints, both Lockheed and Austal generated their own LCS designs, spec’ed their own equipment and combat systems, and no one else could build them. Thus, we wound up with two LCS classes that had almost nothing in common; the epitome of inefficiency.
 
What should have happened is that the Navy should have generated a complete design concept – and locked it down instead of continuously changing it! – followed by a complete set of construction blueprints. They could have then shopped around for the best manufacturing deal and, if necessary, utilized multiple shipyards to in competition to ensure that costs and quality were well controlled.

https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2024/07/efficiency-and-competition.html

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The Family Will Never Get Over It – Anti-War Blog

The Family Will Never Get Over It – Anti-War Blog

by | Jul 15, 2024 |

The Middle East Eye reports of desperate screams as Muhammad Bhar, a 24-year old Palestinian man with down syndrome was attacked by Israelil military dogs. The IDF soldiers watched on as the animals mauled the helpless Muhammad. He was then left to die from his wounds. Those close to Muhammad said that he was mentally “one years of age.” To those who set their dogs onto him, he was just a Palestinian.

Muhammad another victim of the Israel government as it executes its 21st century settler colonialism. Dogs mauling the innocent as their handlers watch on is not new, in fact it’s ancient. It occurred to the Aboriginal Australians and Native Americans as their conquerors “civilised” the land by spilling native blood. We bear witness through our screens the modern incarnation of such conquest

“They Will Get Over It. The Japanese Did.” – Corey Comperartore from his X account in regards to the Palestinians of Gaza.

The bystander who was murdered during the attempted assassination of Donald Trump has been named. The fifty-year old retired fire chief died while shielding his young daughter and wife during the shooting. A church goer and family man who loved and gave to is community with courage as a firefighter. Corey Comperatore is the man who was killed. It is likely that Corey would have rescued Muhammad from mauling dogs, he would have carried him from a blazing fire never once concerned where the young man had been born. In such moments, to a man of action, the fact that Muhammad was a Palestinian would not matter.

Politics, especially from a distance is putrid thing. It relegates individual humans into camps and demographics. A father and husband, fire fighter killed is celebrated with “good riddance” by those who despise Trump and MAGA politics. Corey did died at the Trump rally, therefore through the prism of partisan politics is an enemy to some. While a young man like Muhammad is dismissed as a human being, his horrible death shrugged away, his family told that, “they will get over it.”

Collectivism is frightening. It turns entire groups into an enemy, so pariah that dogs mauling a young man with down syndrome is tolerated. Dismissed as the reality of war or the consequences of policy. On a human level, few ask what ones religion or political ideology is when they shake hands as strangers or buy goods in a market. It’s when coercive funding and war mentality arises, especially when separated through screens that an insane sociopathic normality arises. Where men of good actions, heroic conduct and who love and have saved lives could look at images on a screen and dismiss thousands of mostly children so callously. Including Muhammad who would die to dog attack. “They Will Get Over it…”

Or for those so caught up in partisan politics that they would celebrate, “One Less Trumper,” over the corpse of a dead father. Nietzsche argued that one should be wary of those who would try and shame others. Then perhaps be wary of my words, because if shame does not reach ones heart and conscience then there is a delusion that is so perverse it seems to be normal. Accepted. History shall go on, a bullet takes a man’s life and dogs kill a younger one, for what? Policy, manifest destiny, democracy, politics, ideology, religion? All of it, or none of it.

Life is complicated. A man can have an active politic presence on social media, expressing views that come across as simplistic and terrible. A troll if you will. Though in the real world, where flesh and blood are not pixelated, he was a good man. For Muhammad, what did he do to deserve his death? What abhorrent exceptionalism sees him as an enemy? I can only ask questions, those who worship government and the religions of imperial violence, demand others yield to their politics or ideologies through threat of violence or by bullet or from the mouth of war dogs. I don’t expect an answer. Two lay dead, thousands more to follow. Rest in peace.

July, 2024

Assassin Murders Bystander

Assassin Murders Bystander

by | Jul 14, 2024 |

 

Twenty Year old Thomas Mathew Crooks murdered a bystander and injured others in an attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. Trump suffered, a bullet injuring his ear. The killer was shot dead by a secret service counter sniper. The crowd cheered, “USA, USA!” once Trump raised his fists in defiance, proof of life. A relief for his supporters. Those shot and close to the dead and wounded struggled with life and death in desperate and confused moments. Though history will now relegate them as props to an event of significance, as human beings they lived a life. In politics they matter nought, just faces in the crowd wearing slogans on their shirts.

At this time just another ‘lone gun man’, American political assassinations are enshrined in such a killer tradition. If only, the killer of Arch Duke Frans Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian empire was deemed as such, then the stupidity that led to World War One may not occurred, instead contained between killer and slain. The US is different. At crucial historical moments a deranged man can swipe away the politically important. The bystanders hit, need not matter.

Before presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy died, after being shot by an assassin, he asked, “Is every body OK?” The 18-year old hotel busboy Juan Romero who held his hand as he lay bleeding on the floor, nodded, “Yes.” To which RFK replied, “Everything will be OK.” Kennedy died moments later. His murderer Sirhan Sirhan would go on to be immortalised alongside John Wilkes Boothe and Lee Harvey Oswald. If Thomas Mathew Crooks had of been slightly more accurate and Trump had not of turned to face the direction of the shooter, then his name would have become as historically significant. The bystanders he shot as forgotten.

In an attempt to prevent the former president of reclaiming his mantle in the oval office, the would be assassin has ensured his victory. Biden is out of ice cream cones and children to sniff, the senile in chief has been abandoned by the media and party diehards who had pretended that he was of sound mind and body. Robert F Kennedy, Jr now may be the candidate to face the former president. He could wear his Democrat feathers again, with a fringe following online and has his father and dead uncles last name. He is like Trump, royalty from the long 20th century, sacred to Pax Americana. What’s her face, Kamala Harris doesn’t even have supporters in her own household and despite the media suddenly reminding the world that she exists, her likeliness of contesting the former president is as enthralling as running Walter Mondale again.

Rest in peace the forgotten fallen of history, those who see themselves as your betters will stand upon the corpse you lived in so that they may ascend. Politics is that ugly place where those who seek to rule use the violent monopoly, they may even sometimes come to a violent end themselves. Politics is that ugly thing where those who politically oppose mutter, “pity they missed.” All the while pretending to be a peaceful person or that the religion of government is anything other than violent absurdity. Politics is the craziness that motivates not just the lone gun men of history but the marching hordes of genocide to do bloody deeds. Politics validates both.

Rejoice those who believe in popular messiahs, The Donald lives. If an assassin’s bullets hissed past his head to which his fists raise in response imagine how pointless the many “rhee!”of screams are should he find re-election again. Rest assured, Trump or Biden, same government. But with the magic wand of executive powers Orange man 2.0 shall dust off the 4d chess board and attempt to drain the swamp, again and make the place great again for the usual types. It’s not that Trump is that great a candidate, be honest, Biden, Hilary. “Vote Blue No Matter Who!” has led to a very embarrassing period for the devoted believers in government and party politics. But we have the Butterbean era of politics, smoker fights for the low attention spans. Simple slogans to seduce and placate, complex issues be damned, raise the debt ceiling and bomb Tehran or Moscow or a tent in the Yemen. All presidential things.

“USA! USA!” Cheers the crowd. And unlike other political candidates, real human beings like this one. Those outside of the status quo sectors that is. Donald Trump survived, he walks on now vindicated. He is a living martyr having bled for the cause, to his supporters and those on the fence, it means Vote One for him. RFK, Jr even with namesake and the podcast generation and all their memes doesn’t stand a chance. If anyone really wanted an alternative to the status quo, Jill Stein and Chase Oliver exist. But Red and Blue is choice enough.

Rest in Peace, the at present unknown bystander who was murdered. A real person lays dead.

July, 2024

Kyle Anzalone on Judge Nap: The Hannibal Directive

by | Jul 11, 2024 |

Check out Kyle’s latest appearance on Judge Napolitano’s show, ‘Judging Freedom,’ where they discuss recent reporting by Haaretz suggesting Israel’s military repeatedly invoked the infamous ‘Hannibal Directive’ during Hamas’ October 7 attack.

The Hannibal policy calls on IDF troops to kill their own people in order to prevent capture.

US Government Teachers: The Overseas Army of Marxian Educators

by | Jul 11, 2024 |

dodea school and student locations, 2021 (51855420285)

When I was active duty and deployed overseas, we thankfully home educated our children because the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) is just as rancid and immoral as the government schools in CONUS.

They lied, the DoDEA did not cancel their IED propaganda in the DoD schools. They shifted the funding to a less visible place.

As you can imagine, it may be even worse than the NEA/AFT Marxist madrassas that soil the landscape of America in government schooling.

The DoDEA refuses to disclose the individual salaries of its staff, unlike government schools nationwide and almost every other federal agency.

No names, job titles, or compensation details on the $1.4 billion payroll.

Much like the Pentagon audits, just stonewalling and obfuscation.

The Pentagon, under Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, is preventing details of their DEI policies from coming to light by abusing the Freedom of Information Act. They bamboozled the public with window dressing in Congressional hearings while forcing woke extremism on the roughly 70,000 children of our military service members.

It’s critical that taxpayers understand the scope of the DEI philosophy within the DoD’s schools – deployed service members often have no alternative but to use the Pentagon-run school system, called the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA).

***

We have further found that DoD under Secretary Austin is leveraging public record laws to the hilt to prevent parents and the public from knowing details of its efforts, while spending millions of taxpayer dollars on objectionable content for school children.  

DoDEA did not dismantle its DEI efforts. It redoubled those efforts and added deceit and dissembling to its mix.  

Given DoDEA’s recent history and press regarding extremist content in schools, heads must roll, and the agency must provide full transparency of teaching methods and its DEI-related policy operations. 

https://www.openthebooks.com/substack-pentagon-secretly-institutionalized-dei-in-its-k-12-public-schools/

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