African-Americans and the Military: a Predestined Relationship?

Screenshot from The Americanization of Emily (1964), starring Julie Andrews 

The United States preys on young black men. The pattern--where the civilian government's negligence is used to promote the military as savior--is devastating: 

1. Continue racial and religious segregation across American cities, assuring areas with the progeny of former slaves will have fewer economic opportunities than others; 

2. Fund K-12 education through local taxes or complex state formulas, thereby guaranteeing comparatively less funding for racially segregated areas and less attraction for top teachers due to longer travel times and inferior student quality; 

3. In non-segregated areas, promote legal immigration, especially of immigrants holding degrees in engineering, math, and science; 

[Note: all American STEM hubs have substantial immigrant populations, which attract venture capital.] 

Venture-backed companies outperformed the overall economy in terms of creating jobs and growing revenue... In recent decades, venture capital has played an instrumental role in creating high-tech, high-growth industries such as information technology, biotechnology, semiconductors and online retailing... -- IHS Insight, "Venture Impact" (2009) 

On real estate, in particular, if I had one piece of advice--go where the creative and technology types are, because those are the markets where there will be the most economic activity... Tech is driving so much of the growth in this global economy. -- Blackstone Group Inc. President Jon Gray (Bloomberg News, June 11, 2021) 

4. In segregated areas lacking viable educational, economic, and extracurricular opportunities, watch as the environment promotes short-term thinking and thus less long-term family creation, which impacts inter-generational wealth creation and transfer; 

5. As single motherhood increases in more racially segregated neighborhoods, blame everything except vestiges of Christian and Catholic-led chattel slavery and the de jure, then de facto segregation resulting from it;

6. When K-12 graduates from more segregated neighborhoods are comparatively less prepared for college and professional growth, watch as they are either coddled and advanced or treated equally and failed unless exceptional; 

7.  When non-K-12 graduates mature, watch as they confront a formal labor market without significant advancement opportunities and an informal labor market with comparatively superior opportunities; 

Seeing dead bodies and machine guns, that is what I remember most from my childhood in the South Side of Chicago. Drive-by shootings. It was the biggest black ghetto in the worst depression. There was nothing but gangsters around us and I wanted to be one, too. -- Quincy Jones (2010)

8. For both recent graduates and non-graduates in segregated American neighborhoods, watch as well-funded military recruitment centers offer a way out of the inferior formal job market and the superior but riskier informal job market; 

[Fact: Quincy Jones, Malcolm X, Mark Twain, and James Lipton all worked for pimps or as pimps/mecs, proving the draw of the informal labor market in recessionary or exclusionary times.] 

9. Watch as well-funded, finely-tuned military propaganda convinces deliberately under-prepared young adults to join an organization that gives them opportunities they lacked in their first 18 years of life--as long as they follow orders; 

I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. -- Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam" (1967) 

10.  Watch as the United States military, through negligence, fear, and funding, replaces the father figure in the African-American community. 

And so it goes. 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2021)

Dedicated to Dr. Vincent Harding and Veterans of Hope. 

Bonus: American mainstream religion lost moral authority as military spending became unaccountable and all-encompassing at the same time lawyers perfected tax shelters. The lure of low-cost debt in an age of increased tax resistance was bound to reduce civilian government's efficacy, but the impact on communities, especially segregated ones, was perhaps more profound than anticipated. Without civilian government offering principled leadership or effective service, American women reasonably sought community in religious structures while their men reasonably joined the cult of the military. 

Bonus: "Negroes have always held the hope that if they really demonstrate they are great soldiers and if they really fight for America and help save American democracy, then when they come back home, American will treat them better. This has not been the case... for the Negro GI, military service still represents a means of escape from the oppressive ghettos of the rural South and the urban North. He often sees the Army as an avenue for educational opportunities and job training. He sees in the military uniform a symbol of dignity that has long been denied him by society. The tragedy in this is that military serve is probably the only possible escape for most young Negro men... They know that life in the city ghetto or life in the rural South almost certainly means jail or death or humiliation. And so, by comparison, military service is really the lesser risk." -- Martin Luther King, Jr., Playboy Magazine, January 1969, pp. 236, published posthumously 

Guns and Butter

People who think power comes from the barrel of a gun are mistaken. Real power comes from controlling the conduits, both legal and technological, of the currency that buys the gun. The more power involved, the more entities can buy protection, whether domestic or international, fueling further expansion and thus influence. In short, guns are the result, not the cause of stability, which makes sense once you realize a village with nothing valuable has no need for advanced weaponry.

There is another component most people miss when discussing protection, and we can re-use the undeveloped village as an example. Such a village exists not only because of internal factors, but external ones. Its lack of development means it has not attracted foreign direct investment or cannot do so. Were it part of a larger economic unit, the larger economic unit would be interested in maintaining as little a gap as possible between its most developed areas and its least developed ones--assuming a cohesive system. (An empire merely makes the same mistake as a successful country, misapplying domestic lessons to international ones.) Though degrees vary, power is always connected somewhere so it can extend influence, the strong seeking out the weak. The absence of a need for a gun connotes not only a lack of influence but a lack of connectivity to neighbors and thus a failure to build sufficient conduits to exchange information. Now ask yourself: would you rather have a gun and a midnight sentry, or information that tells you when you will be attacked? 

I realized this morning though the United States has a strong military, it continues to decline because it attempts to overuse its influence overseas. If I am a small village, and a superpower approaches to offer its technology, which of course requires me to use its currency, I may be flattered, especially if I do not understand debt and currency arbitrage. Yet, even a naive villager realizes the same superpower that approaches and demands a rider requiring the village not to use another country's technology--thus inhibiting more diverse development--is not a true superpower, no matter the quantity or quality of its guns. The villager may even, after some deliberation, realize such a superpower does not see his community as an opportunity to exchange information but a way to block competitors. Now ask yourself: if you had a choice, would you rather buy guns from someone demanding an exclusive contract, or someone allowing you to diversify your economic contacts? 

The path from kampong to city to respected state may be long, uncertain, and arduous--and Singapore, which took this path successfully, makes its own guns--but the road from superpower to failed state is straightforward: when credibility goes, so does your empire. One wonders if USA President Biden, who is promoting unity, comprehends he is looking too far ahead in the dictionary. 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (January 2021) 

Scandinavian Military Conscription: Cyberattacks & the Failure of Diplomacy

Sweden recently enacted mandatory military service, following Norway's lead. Both countries claim they must be ready in the face of renewed Russian threats, but Crimea's one-off aside, it's hard to believe higher troop counts will prevent continued cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns. The truth is the United Nations' failure to create a deterrence framework for cyberattacks has opened the door for useless and counterproductive military expansion and recruitment. 

Notwithstanding diplomatic shortcomings, cyberattacks present substantial and difficult problems under the military's existing approach of deterrence. For example, when should a country launch physical attacks against another country's cyberattacks? When the cyberattacks impact more than 2% of GDP? When they result in actual theft or loss above a certain threshold? What evidentiary standards ensure impersonation hasn't occurred? What is the penalty for online false flag operations? As of 2018, no one knows. 

Consequently, until a framework for proportional response to cyberattacks can be formulated, Scandinavia's sudden interest in military readiness revolves around trade and access to international markets. Note that almost all international trade still occurs through shipping, necessitating protection through naval cooperation and port security. In the modern world, whether your country's products get safely from Point A to Point B depends on your leverage in trade agreement negotiations, which can be tied to NATO membership or alliances. Such membership is not a casual affair but one involving long-term financial and other commitments. NATO members are required, on paper, to spend at least 2% of their budgets on military spending to ensure proper readiness; however, much of these taxpayer monies will not be used to improve domestic disaster readiness or the lives of military recruits but on military hardware and products from the U.S. and its partners. 

Jim Rogers' Street Smarts (2013)

In the meantime, non-NATO countries, especially Russia and China, are building alternative trade routes on land (aka new Silk Road) or through bridges, presenting a threat to ever-increasing military expenditures that assume constant or increased shipping volumes. 

Now that we have a proper overview, I'm concerned about the discourse in Scandinavian countries following legislation on military conscription. One Swede wrote, 

Sweden needs to impose tax reliefs and increase salaries for its military members as two instruments to meet policy goals. Even if this could result in higher costs, the Swedish government must come to conclusion that the current spending levels are insufficient to meet its own goals, making its latest mandatory conscription policy merely symbolic.

Interestingly, his approach mirrors the United States' desire for Sweden to increase its military spending from around 1% of its budget to 2%. I researched him online, and he is an intern for the Republican Party in America, the pro-military political party. I added the following comments to his post, and I'll share them here as well: 

The United States has mismanaged its economy and harmed social cohesion by failing to properly audit its military spending. The benefits you mention--as well as job preferences for veterans in the private sector--are tied to trillions of dollars of debt post-9/11, most of it on adventurism and some of it on the jobs and benefits you mention. 

One reason these benefits exist is because military volunteerism is often the primary way for citizens and non-citizens to avoid working low-level, dead-end jobs in small American cities. Such spending is not popular in larger, more affluent American cities with diversified economies because people with options don't generally want to join an entity that has arguably lost every war since Vietnam. Where such spending is popular in larger cities, it is often tied to high-paying private sector jobs, i.e., defense contractors.   

In short, the U.S. military has the military benefits you mention as a de facto jobs program, especially for young men in rural areas with underdeveloped private sectors. A country able to create enough meaningful jobs in the private sector may find its military overlooked by most of its citizens. In such a situation, it may need to resort to conscription to maintain troops ready to assist in case of domestic disasters (earthquakes, floods, etc.). In the absence of a clear and present danger or need to spread economic gains more equitably across territories, your advice to increase military spending seems beneficial to countries with military spending as primary economic catalysts rather than countries focused on social welfare and social cohesion. 

Feel free to contact me with any questions. I haven't visited Sweden yet, but Uppsala is on my list :-) 

I often quote Eisenhower in my writing, and I'll quote him again: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense, a theft. The cost of one modern, heavy bomber is this: a modern, brick school in more than 30 cities."

American discourse once recognized citizens could not have both thriving domestic infrastructure and excessive military spending, i.e., "guns vs. butter." In other words, do you want a new aircraft carrier or a new university? When presented with the question directly, almost every citizen will choose the latter. Absent active war or a credible threat, fear or a lack of common sense are needed to choose the former. Accordingly, the so-called Russian threat is being used by NATO and its allies to convince Europe and other countries (e.g., Saudi Arabia) to maintain the military-industrial complex and its trillions of dollars of debt--debt that is unsustainable without additional buyers of weaponry or presumed naval dominance in trade.

Jim Rogers' Street Smarts (2013)

I never imagined a world where diplomacy would be actively thwarted or ignored in order to promote ever-increasing military spending, regardless of necessity or results. Even tiny Singapore has caught the bug: "[D]efense constitutes the largest item in the annual national budget." 

Chua Beng Huat's Liberalism Disavowed (2017)

You're never too young to be indoctrinated, I guess.
Remind me... does Singapore have any enemies besides SARS?

It's as if everyone in the world has forgotten the reason the United Nations was created: to prevent war through superior diplomacy and, by implication, unnecessary military spending. But of course people haven't forgotten the reasons for diplomacy at all--they've replaced international diplomacy with trade agreements and import-export or development banking institutions, reducing the United Nations' efficacy through fragmentation and rendering it a body for social progress and humanitarian aid rather than conflict avoidance. Such changes have serious implications for smaller and less developed countries wishing to maintain their independence and for larger, more developed countries like Turkey, which has realized NATO membership does not automatically confer greater labor and trade cooperation. (Notice how few Turkish products are on European supermarkets' shelves?) 

A world where no international body commands the moral weight necessary to ensure peace without de facto military bribes to larger countries means a world where "might makes right," and larger, more economically-powerful countries can take advantage of smaller countries. Such regression is tragic. Witness Woodrow Wilson's speech on the League of Nations, later the United Nations:  

There is only one power to put behind the liberation of mankind, and that is the power of mankind. It is the power of the united moral forces of the world, and in the Covenant of the League of Nations the moral forces of the world are mobilized. For what purpose? Reflect, my fellow citizens, that the membership of this great League is going to include all the great fighting nations of the world, as well as the weak ones... They enter into a solemn promise to one another that they will never use their power against one anther for aggression; that they never will impair the territorial integrity of a neighbor; that they never will interfere with the political independence of a neighbor; that they will abide by the principle that great populations are entitled to determine their own destiny and that they will not interfere with that destiny; and that no matter what differences arise amongst them they will never resort to war without first having done one or other of two things--either submitted the matter of controversy to arbitration, in which case they agree to abide by the result without question, or submitted it to the consideration of the council of the League of Nations. 

Has everything America championed become dust in the wind? Do we not realize freedom from war and freedom from a police state require sober statesmen and worldwide cooperation to corral private and public weapons markets? Every soldier who joined the military or was conscripted did so because he or she trusted the government not to waste their time, effort, or sacrifices. To that end, neither military leaders nor international bodies have adapted to the threat of unconventional warfare, which vitiates most military expenditures. No matter what Hollywood tells you, nations that cannot resolve agricultural tariffs or shootings of unarmed journalists but seek to increase military cooperation require sleight of hand to maintain such strange juxtapositions. May all of us--not just Scandinavians--remember why diplomacy exists before we weaken domestic economies and social cohesion in honor of the military-industrial machine and its debt-fueled, precarious expectations. 

Bonus: "The United Nations has no power to prevent war, but it can try to avoid another war. The U.N. will be effective only if no one neglects his duty in his private environment. If he does [neglect his duty], he is responsible for the death of our children in a future war." -- Albert Einstein, at Lincoln University in 1946 

Informational Wars in the 21st Century: the Collapse of Creativity

I should be packing for my upcoming Singaporean trip but instead, I re-watched the finale of Star Trek: Next Generation, and the material still captivates. As any Netflix subscriber will tell you, one good show often leads to another, and the 1987 premiere didn't seem dated, either. It got me thinking: why do I enjoy older movies and older dialogue, whether Hitchcock or Hepburn (Audrey, not Katherine)? Why do I often find the old superior to the new? And how is it possible the American intellect has declined so precipitously over the past 30 years? 

Growing up, I loved libraries and bookstores. Any random selection would do, and within minutes, I'd settle into an incredible story. Later, I discovered college bookstores, and within them were even more incredible stories that challenged my brain and entertained my soul. I knew I would never find myself being bored. 

In 2001, a few years after graduating college, I visited Singapore and experienced an anomaly in the world-literature continuum. A few books displayed never-before-seen admonitions: "For Sale Only in Singapore/Malaysia." Standard operating procedure assumed all governments control their reputations through "information boosting," i.e., ensuring their version of events is placed at the top of the shelf, but I didn't know about trade agreements or intelligence tactics and couldn't have told you the difference between MI5 or MI6. Although SEO wasn't yet a priority for private and state actors, its concept was present in that tiny bookstore, revealing the possibility of artifice. 

It was also in Singapore, a former British colony, where I first learned the power of international designations. An NUS professor revealed Singapore had been designated as a "developed," not "developing," country, excluding it from numerous international grants, even though most of its land mass could be called rural in 2001. After two years in one of the West Coast's most expensive and most diverse law schools, tiny Singapore is where I received my first international perspective. Singapore couldn't help itself; as a port-focused city-state, it had to embrace globalization before the term became fashionable in Western academic circles. 

I returned to the United States for my final year of law school wiser but not warier. 9/11 would happen shortly afterwards, and my next seven years would be spent eliminating over 75,000 USD of student loans during a severe recession. Only later would the issues of globalization and informational warfare return to my mental purview. They arose not willingly, but when I finally noticed no bookstore challenged me, no magazine captivated me, and the new could not compare with the old. I was starting to become bored. 

Today, I googled an unfavorable but famous event in a foreign country that should have been easily found. Instead, my search results contained fake news links designed to capture exactly the search terms I'd used, but in ways that concealed the actual event--and therefore the truth. The links included most of the event's general details, but the female protagonist had been replaced by a fake male one, and none of the names were real. During various hacking episodes, I'd suspected we'd progressed from geographical content restrictions to online bleaching, but de facto censorship of legal activities in America was new to me. Only Yahoo--allegedly one of the worst search engines in America, saved from obsolescence by its investments in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan--had the "right" result in the middle of the first page, a single link surrounded by deliberately engineered fake news. Incredibly, SEO manipulation had, in this instance, made my limited analog brain more powerful than one of America's most valuable technology companies. 

"Everything you see is propaganda," I once told a middle school class, and my opinion hasn't changed. Information wars and actions in furtherance of those wars are more obvious when a book's cover discloses geographical limits or when the most prevalent story about another country involves chewing gum, but unbiased information has always been an endangered species. I am young enough to remember Silicon Valley's battle cry, "Information wants to be free," but they never promised accuracy or context. 

In Star Wars, the engineer's revelation of a design flaw in the Death Star gives the rebels hope. Similarly, once we become aware of the informational flaws we receive daily from public and private news sources, perhaps we, too, can recognize "hidden" manipulation not just in search engine algorithms, but in social and mainstream media and even in the very people elevated into positions of power. If we achieve this higher level of understanding, humanity's hope wouldn't be founded on false optimism but upon the realization our species has evolved in the past and can continue to evolve beyond its self-defeating patterns of scapegoating, wishful thinking, and hyperbole. 

Gene Roddenberry, a military veteran and the creator of Star Trek, built his entire life around the inevitability of human progress. He declared, "The strength of a civilization is not measured by its ability to fight wars but by its ability to prevent them." Sadly, by this metric, the United States has failed its citizens, children, and veterans continuously since Vietnam. Having fought one unjust war after another--losing almost every one of them while economic competitors China and Japan focused on domestic infrastructure--America's current Establishment has little choice but to glorify militarism. Such propaganda requires economic support and job preferences to maintain momentum and, most of all, to bury past mistakes. Once activated, the machinery of militarism rarely sets its own boundaries; an enemy always exists just over the horizon, and more measures may always be taken to promote the appearance of safety. 

Few people in America see the connection between the TSA's expansion, its privatized body scanning machines, and the military's concern with employing returning veterans; even fewer realize the trillions of borrowed taxpayer dollars involved reduce not only America's economic potential but its future flexibility; and perhaps fewer still can conjure an alternative result for those same taxpayer dollars (hint: think Tokyo). Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s prescience is worth remembering: "If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read 'Vietnam' ... A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." (From 1967 in, of all places, New York City.) 

Let us now return to the original question: why does the old look, feel, and read better than the new in America when the opposite should be true? Consider that in normal societies, the younger generation is apt to forgo established customs as the older generation's knowledge degrades, diminishing claims to authority. Consider too that in abnormal societies, the old maintain their grips on the future by suffocating change through laws and punishment. And finally, note that diseased societies send their young to die for meaningless purposes, removing opposition as well as potential change agents. I say to you today, if the old appears shinier than the new, it is a sure sign of authoritarianism, evidence the youth are being suppressed or their imaginations stifled. Dr. King answered correctly in 1967, but I will go further: a military/police culture of following orders is incompatible with art, philosophy, nuance--and therefore creativity. 

When little boys and girls are deluged with images linking violence and war to heroism regardless of whether such wars are just, America's adults have replaced responsibility with desensitization and irrationality. 

When the table of brotherhood can only be set if every man reserves his right to a shotgun or a rifle, the spirit of the law has perished. 

When the sweltering heat in which our troops are stationed generates no lasting regional peace but instead parched national pocketbooks, America's vision has been a desert mirage all along. 

When our soldiers claim the ethos of courage while administering death by drones, we are living in a Greek tragedy of our own making. 

When our police officers consider themselves above the law, order becomes subservient to its half-witted cousin, obedience. 

If our judges refuse to read the papers presented to them and instead rely upon secondhand memorandums, the book of justice will remain unused. 

Now is the time to reform our sacred institutions by removing the sacrilegious from their temples and pulpits in Congress, courthouses, police departments, corporate boardrooms, and war rooms. There will be neither cohesion nor stability until each citizen is assured corruption has been driven out and the exorcists given their due. 

To that end, it may surprise you to learn the Muslims had wisdom we lack. They separated civilians, merchants, and the military by placing them in physically distinct areas. The medina was the place of business and barter, and the forts and minarets stationed fighters at a distance. The mosques provided sanitation five times daily in the required act of wudu before prayer, mixing practicality with spirituality. Such arrangements required respect for logistics and infrastructure, not just weaponry. The distance between the two spheres of influence created built-in advantages beyond the freer development of calligraphy, science, algebra, and art; for instance, complaints arising in the medina (aka city) would need time and effort to reach the forts (aka military outposts), increasing the likelihood of legitimacy and thus an appropriate remedy. 

Oman

It may not be easy for an American historian to admit, but the aforementioned separation might have been the only truly "separate but equal" arrangement in modern history. 

Ultimately, if we do not understand some of humanity's problems have already been solved, we will neglect the task of modifying pre-existing solutions to current times and invite a cycle of arrogance. If we compound our error by ignoring history and amplifying propaganda, we will pollute the intellectual waters our children require to swim. Above all, if we are to have a dream worth mentioning, it must be one that facilitates a peaceful transition from old to young as well as a transfer of timeless knowledge. If each successive generation must start the Great Global Novel from scratch, our progress will be needlessly haphazard with no guarantee of reaching the final page. 

Today, the American Dream appears to have been a lie to all but the most talented, the most lucky, and the most likely to inherit. As I seek a better life in Singapore, I hope one day, America rediscovers the generosity of spirit that made it a beacon for honest men and women of a certain character. In the meantime, I'll be in Singapore, taking my chances and charting the unknown possibilities of my existence. May we all live long and prosper. 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2018) 

Adventures from America's Job Market: Factions, Factions Everywhere

I recently applied for a job and was asked if I was disabled or a military veteran. Such questions intend to comply with government data gathering and are required to grant access to certain gov projects. The idea is that the gov, through its massive spending power, can influence corporations for the better. For example, one reason air bags are now standard in cars is because the gov, for its own fleets, issued a RFP where it required them to be installed. And just like that, air bags are now standard for everyone without legislative fiat.

In the case of disabled applicants, the rationale is also straightforward--disabled adults can contribute but are prevented from doing so by various structural barriers, including discrimination. The gov is helping remove such barriers to give them equal access to job opportunities and to keep them off welfare rolls.

The case of giving military veterans preferences is less straightforward. The argument for discrimination doesn't apply in an age where the military and intelligence agencies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing--not just on TV commercials, but on more subtle placements such as pre-sporting game and halftime ceremonies.  Mainstream movies now have fewer Full Metal Jackets and Born on the Fourth of Julys while continuing to make many pre-Vietnam war movies, reflecting not only an erasure of America's prior opposition to proxy wars but a sustained effort to link the current military with an era of defensive wars. (Perhaps I'm the only one who thinks it's odd to reach that far back in history but not introduce new movies about the Kent State student shot by the Ohio National Guard or Abraham Ribicoff.)

Additionally, if a military veteran attended college before joining the military, most likely he or she is already at a level equivalent to the average civilian applicant and doesn't need any barriers removed. If the veteran joined straight out of high school, then the government and taxpayers provided the person with vocational opportunities not generally available or trained the enlistee using taxpayer dollars.  In other words, not only has the civilian taxpayer paid upfront to train the military--many of whom would otherwise lack options or who are ineligible to enroll in a competitive college--but now must compete with ex-military personnel despite not being given similar options in the civilian sector (no GI Bill, no free vocational training, etc.).

You may argue such incentives are necessary in order to have a voluntary draft, but with the advent of drones, we need fewer enlistees, not more. You may argue the enlistee is under contract once signed and sacrifices measures of freedom, but "following orders" in an age of repeatedly unnecessary wars contains no honor--and certainly not a choice that should be encouraged through debt to foreign governments.  Indeed, the only reasons such a system is possible is because America directs 49% of its discretionary spending--about $500 billion annually--to act as the world's cop, a role at which it is clearly failing post-Iraq, post-Syria, post-Libya, post-ISIS, and post-Crimea. According to the U.N., a "total 65.3 million people were displaced at the end of 2015, compared to 59.5 million just 12 months earlier."

To summarize, America's military and civilian leaders have lost every war since Vietnam except for skirmishes in Panama and Grenada, and such wars have cost American taxpayers $14 trillion. It is time for voters and corporate leaders to say, "Enough. President Eisenhower was right about the military-industrial complex.  I shall do nothing to assist America in falling off the cliff it currently teeters upon."

Bonus: Military Times reported in November 2016 that veterans now comprise roughly one-third of the U.S. federal workforce—or more than 600,000 positions.  

Modern Capitalism, or How to Guarantee a Military-Industrial Complex

My uncle once told me, "In the future, there will be five companies, and they'll own everything."  We needn't go into the future to see such a reality--in most important ways, the aforementioned scenario is already here if you add two zeros to the end of the number above.

Where does innovation come from after a company achieves multinational status, starts paying a dividend, but still has to grow by x% annually to please Wall Street? Some people may know that such growth comes from buy-outs and mergers. Indeed, after a certain size, large companies succeed based on how adept they are at incorporating a newly bought company's products and remaining employees into their own pre-configured business and legal systems. In short, scalability, supply chain management, and risk controls drive value in a major corporation if it survives long enough. What about innovation?

Under the current merger-and-acquisition system, major companies will "buy" innovation and pay premiums--sometimes obscene ones--to avoid having large and unpredictable R&D budgets. In such a dynamic, large companies can pay a small percentage of their revenue to attract a smaller company, but without taking the risk of having larger or recurring R&D costs on the books that don't produce consistent ROI. Smart, right?

Yet, it is precisely the large companies, with their established products and revenue streams, that are best able to take the risks necessary to produce great ideas. If only smaller companies are taking bank loans or SBA loans to try new ideas, then the banks become the primary risk-takers and consequently demand greater influence and political power to take on such risk. If the big banks' investment banking, consulting, and M&A groups are the major players backing smaller companies or venture capital firms, then most innovation not linked to academia is supported by the banking sector.

Guess who supports the banking sector? The FDIC and your deposits.  In other words, under America's current capitalist system, taxpayers are back-stopping the risks of innovation under "too big to fail" because many larger corporations aren't investing enough in R&D, which is seen as an unpredictable cost by Wall Street. Today, only Tesla (TSLA) appears to be choosing innovation over steadily increasing share price. Other companies like General Electric have large R&D budgets, but as a percentage of gross revenue, they're actually minuscule--usually no more than 7%.

Seen this way, of course America's banking and insurance sectors will have the most influence in Congress--they're the ones driving innovation by funding R&D that larger companies should be funding but won't. Not only will large banks and insurance companies demand favorable tax policy for their risk-taking (witness Warren Buffett asking for and receiving a "terrorism" exemption post-9/11), they get their funding directly from the Federal Reserve or indirectly by convincing the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. What are you, the taxpayer, getting in exchange for stricter personal deductions than businesses; receiving low interest rates on your deposits; and being the insurer of last resort?

You probably won't guess the correct answer: a military with a budget not subject to audits that does the R&D for you, but with the higher risk of pursuing war as a testing ground for new weapons and strategies, and with debt that could sink or split the entire country if mismanaged. If the larger companies have external checks and balances that mitigate R&D risk-taking, and the banks are being back-stopped by the government (and therefore taxpayers) when they make loans that support R&D, big banks and the military become the two groups not subject to checks and balances but necessary for innovation. Under such incentives, it's only a matter of time before the military and banking sectors dominate the entire country and become powerful enough to ignore President Eisenhower rolling in his grave.

And so it goes.

Matthew Rafat (copyright 2017) 

Bonus: "In the past 30 years, America has had 13 wars at a cost of $14.2 trillion...what if they [had] spent part of the money on building up infrastructure?" -- Alibaba CEO Jack Ma

Bonus: below are the numbers supporting the arguments above:

People don't understand the difference between budgetary outlays and discretionary spending, or appropriations/expenditures, which is responsible for the inability to see eye-to-eye on fiscal responsibility debates.

Mandatory spending is federal spending based on existing laws. This budgetary spending is mainly entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, whose spending criteria are determined by who is eligible to apply for benefits and not by Congress, and includes items supposed to be relatively predictable. Discretionary spending, on the other hand, is the portion of the budget that the president requests and Congress appropriates every year through legislation. In the past, such spending was supposed to be for one-off, unusual and unpredictable items but has now become a slush fund for military adventurism, as we'll see.

Furthermore, when discussing military spending, it's debatable whether to include VA spending as part of the national defense budget, which creates further confusion. Let's try to clear up these issues.

Spending on national defense is estimated to be about 15% of all outlays in 2017. This is less than average when compared to budgets from other years. (Average proportion = 22%). That 15% is about $516 billion, not including VA funding.

The President’s 2017 budget includes $182.3 billion for the VA in 2017. This includes $78.7 billion in discretionary resources and $103.6 billion in mandatory funding (for veteran's disability benefits). Including national defense and VA budgetary amounts together, we have a total of $698 billion spent on military-related budget items. Technically, that's less than what we spend on Health and Human Services (e.g., Medicare) and Social Security (almost a trillion projected in 2017). However, the above figures do not include discretionary spending, which causes annual deficits funded partly by issuing debt to foreign countries. Let's look at those numbers.

For 2017, 49% of total discretionary spending is projected to go towards national defense, or about $500 billion. That means we spend about $1.2 trillion every year on the military and military-related items. Thus, the largest spending items in America in 2017 are the military and the VA; Social Security; and Medicare. Why is that a problem?

In 2017, the government is estimated to have a total debt of $17.7 trillion. At 104.4% of GDP, this percentage is extremely high when compared to other years (avg. 59.0%). Spending on SS is fine--that debt is owed to Americans. Spending money borrowed from future generations on unnecessary or inflated medical expenses like pharmaceuticals and on unnecessary wars or wars of choice is unconscionable. It guarantees fewer opportunities for younger generations. It means our intelligence agencies work overtime trying to justify illegal military invasions or are tempted to engage in false flag or psychological operations to justify security spending. It means millennials are called lazy or immature when they're anything but. In short, when you're going in debt for unnecessary items, and you need the jobs related to that unnecessary spending to get votes and stay in political office, you have to resort to fear and outliers to maintain the status quo. Such an approach is inadvisable in any era, but especially so in an era of increasing competition worldwide and against countries to which you owe money.

Bonus: The local level creates no reason for optimism, either.  In most major American cities, 50% to 70% of all local tax revenue is spent on "public safety" aka cops and firefighters. Many of these taxes go to pension obligations, i.e., paying gov employees who no longer work and who haven't paid into the retirement fund in sufficient amounts to sustain it without higher taxes or cutting other local programs.  Consequently, America's military budget is not subject to any real audits due to the federal gov's ability to borrow almost unlimited debt, while even local entities are forced to divert their taxes into strengthening a police state because by law, pension interests are vested and therefore untouchable. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, this is the kind of activity required in such a regime: http://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2015/11/06/Department-of-Defense-paid-53-million-to-pro-sports-for-military-tributes-report-says/stories/201511060140

Basically, the gov spends taxpayer monies to normalize the abnormal, then demands the entities continue its show at their own cost or be called unpatriotic.

Both parties are complicit, and both parties are locked into unsustainable programs that require more debt because neither party wants to impose any fiscal discipline. Why should they, when they can rely on more debt to maintain the status quo and their jobs? In the case of California Democrats, their allegiance is to an unsustainable K-12 system, teachers' unions, and the teachers' pension plan, which guarantees a return of 7.5%--even though the economy is growing about 2% to 3% a year.

Rather than take a common sense approach and reduce benefits for existing retirees--who negotiated an 8% ROI under much different economic conditions--it appears govs will reduce benefits for incoming, younger employees and wait a generation to try to balance their books without relying so much on debt.  It remains to be seen whether any system that depends on achieving consistent 7.5% ROI can be sustained in the "new normal." 

Justice Hugo Black on State Secrets

Justice Hugo Black, concurring opinion, joined by Justice William Douglas, New York Times Co. v. United States (1971) 403 U.S. 713, 717:

The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic... [P]aramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die...

More here.

Ken Does It Again

Over at Popehat, Ken has delivered yet another awe-inspiring post: A Day in the Life of a Defense Lawyer. Enjoy.

Bonus: http://militaryunderdog.com/

Debate: What is Military Adventurism?

THE BOONDOCKS © Aaron McGruder. 

Dist. By ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION. 

Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

November 11, 2010 was Veterans' Day. Some random thoughts and opinions:

1. Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President: "A Nation that forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten."

2. I do not consider someone's unquestioning willingness to die for a cause or country to be worthy of respect in and of itself. To be worthy of praise, I need that willingness to die to be tied to self-defense. Otherwise, I'm not sure we are helping our soldiers, our safety, or our worldwide reputation.

I understand that a soldier's willingness to die is a necessary component of self-defense. However, I view such an attitude--the willingness to murder your fellow man--as a necessary evil, and I do not see much sense in praising a necessary evil. Therefore, I neither condemn nor praise necessary evils.

War is sometimes necessary. We need soldiers, and we need to make sure we give them the tools they need to succeed. Today, the U.S. does not have a mandatory draft, so everyone voluntarily chooses military service.  
 
3. If you are in charge of American military personnel, you failed us on 9/11; you failed us again after 9/11 by invading the wrong country; and you are failing us now because your agency is designed for wars against countries rather than smaller, more fluid organizations.

Onward to the Facebook debate on military adventurism and the scope of a thinking person's patriotism:

Lawyer: At work in the private sector so the military gets the taxes it needs to exist. Our modern-day military creates no net revenue and causes our country to lose billions of dollars each year. Without the private sector, there would be no military. Thank someone who owns a small business or is working in a non-government job today.

Also, if you fought in WWII or any war prior to Vietnam, thank you. Once we reach the Vietnam era, however, it's unclear whether any war has created safety for Americans on American soil.

Write your government and demand that we bring our soldiers back from Iraq as soon as possible. Why are we leaving so many young Americans in harm's way when it's unclear whether they are increasing our safety?

(I am still undecided about wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As far as I know, none of the 9/11 hijackers lived in either country or received training there that helped them attack America. The terrorists came mostly from Germany. It's also unclear why Pakistan and Afghanistan are America's problem rather than India’s and Iran’s. At the same time, whenever I see pictures of what the Taliban has done to innocent Afghani civilians, especially young girls, my trigger-finger gets itchy.)

Hilarious Buddy: Danger, Will Robinson. Danger.

Judah: Government workers pay taxes too. But since you wrote this on Veteran’s Day to be controversial, I don't suppose that will matter.

Lawyer: @Judah: if I give you 100 bucks and you give me back 30 bucks, I'm still out 70 bucks, right? You've basically taken 70 dollars from me, and all you've done is refund me back my own money. So gov workers don't really pay taxes--they refund money paid to them by the private sector. If they're not creating something, gov workers are causing financial losses and taking money out of the private sector whenever the federal gov provides loans to states and/or fails to maintain a balanced budget without increasing taxes.

And by the way, I said military personnel create no revenue. I didn't say they failed to pay taxes. In any case, whether we spend 5 trillion dollars or 1 dollar on the military, it's all irrelevant unless the military keeps us safe here at home. If our commanders fail to keep us safe at home, we are paying money for nothing while losing some of our best and brightest young people.

Judah: Government workers get paid by the government, the government gets its money from taxes on the private sector and some other sources that we can agree to leave out, those taxes come out of your pay, you are paid by your clients, your clients earn money from their businesses, and so on, and it's non-trivial to determine where the money actually comes from. But if your argument is that the military should be thankful to you because you pay taxes, then you need to admit that taxes are taken out of everyone's pay, and no one has any say about how they're spent. It may be government money to start with in some cases, but from the point of view of the person getting the paycheck, it's identical. You haven't done anything extra that a mailman, or a federal judge, or a park ranger hasn't done. From your pay, you contribute to the running of the government, which includes the military.

Lawyer: @Judah: you could not be more wrong. I created a business. In order for my business to survive, I have to create something either new or more effective than existing services or products. The same philosophy applies to almost every private company, especially here in Silicon Valley--either they innovate or die. In contrast, all the government has to do is exist.

Throw in the toxin of government unionization, and we have a financial miasma that is made worse whenever anyone praises non-creative government workers. With respect to the military, I fail to understand how any war since Vietnam has helped Americans on American soil. It seems like we've lost a lot of American lives and killed a lot of civilians for nothing. If you want to praise that as equivalent to creating new services and introducing more efficient products into the marketplace, go right ahead.

Judah: It sounds like you're suggesting that your business *must* contribute something, or it would cease to exist. Why wouldn't that be true of the military?

Lawyer: B/c government workers and entities receive much of their revenue from the act of printing money, which requires no creation or innovation. Again, it's nonsensical to compare someone in the private sector--which has to actively attract money from voluntary exchanges--with government workers, who do not have to actively attract money using intelligence or innovation. In contrast to someone like me, all a gov worker has to do to get paid is a) unionize; and/or b) vote in their preferred politician. Obviously, I can't do that, and neither can most non-banking businesses. It appears both major political parties will continue printing money to give to the military. Thus, we are left with a military that doesn't seem to keep us safe on our own soil while simultaneously costing us trillions of dollars.

The difference between the private sector and the public sector is that non-banking businesses need to create something or provide something more efficiently to get paid. From this creative destruction comes almost all progress, including Google, eBay, or any small business. In the case of gov entities, because politicians are in charge of a massive amount of money, and the fed gov can print money when it runs a deficit, the normal requirement to be useful does not apply. They just need to vote once a year to keep their jobs. And that's exactly what they have done in California.

But don't listen to me--read David Walker's book, Comeback America. He has an entire chapter on the military that is a must-read.

TX Buddy: Geez, way to ruin Veteran's Day :-P

Lawyer: @TX Buddy, hope you're doing well now that Texas has In N’ Out :-) I'm just trying to introduce a different viewpoint. I despise conformity, and holidays tend to bring out the worst cases of unthinking herd mentality on Facebook.

It's always sad to see people base their opinions on propaganda instead of logic and facts. Logically, if we're anti-war and view the military as a necessary evil (not heroic), our soldiers get to stay safer and live longer. All this changes if there is a direct threat to Americans on American soil, and almost all such threats come from domestic residents, not foreigners who are poor, who cannot speak English, or who cannot blend into American society.

Judah: I don't understand your assertion that the military has failed to keep us safe on our own soil, but I never intended to challenge your assertion that the benefit of military action in recent years is difficult to quantify at best.

Today is Veteran’s Day, and what we're honoring today isn't the military, it is the men and women who have served in it. You don't think the military has provided us much benefit in recent years, and you don't think that the individual members of the military have contributed much. They aren't attracting money, they aren't growing the economy, and whatever they're doing on a day to day basis is done in service of a mission you find questionable.

You say that it's nonsensical to compare private sector employees to government workers. In the case of the military, you're spot on. A soldier, airman, sailor, or marine may not be creating wealth, and your taxes pay at least part of their salary, but they also fight and die in their jobs, when they are ordered to.

You and I, and all the creative private sector employees you champion, we don't have to do that. And we don't get a federal holiday, but we're celebrated every day of the year. Your assertion that what matters is creating money-- growing the economy, generating the revenue that pays the salary of the military--is a celebration of the private sector.

No one should have to thank you.

Lawyer: @Judah: if keeping us safe on American soil involved only killing people and dying when ordered to do so, then your statement would be correct. But safety is multifaceted, and it usually includes a thriving economy. For example, the more men who are unemployed, esp young men, the higher the risk of domestic crime. Long story short, without a thriving private sector, we risk higher domestic crime and unrest, which sometimes leads to coups and pogroms. Thus, when someone in the private sector goes to work, s/he is helping keep us safe at home. It's unclear why we shouldn't thank people who maintain our way of life and who keep us safe here at home.

Moreover, it is unclear whether military operations abroad protect us from collapse from within. Indeed, history tells us that pro-military countries tend to collapse. If true, when we praise any part of the military that is not directly useful to domestic security, or when we view military members as always heroic (and therefore unworthy of any criticism, especially towards higher level military leaders), we plant the seeds of our own downfall.

You focus on death, and you view a soldier's willingness to die as deserving of thanks, but a country can die, too, and death can come in many different forms. For instance, one way to destroy a country is to destroy its economy by providing too much money or printing too much money to give to non-useful government workers. Another way is to implement poor fiscal policies, such as excessive or non-useful military spending. It is unclear why anyone who is part of an inefficient machinery of military adventurism deserves thanks, unless--like private sector workers--they are keeping Americans safe here at home. I do not believe our military is focused on keeping us safe here at home, because I believe that our biggest threats come from English-speakers who can blend into society, not foreigners. Richard Reid, Vincent Padilla, the NY car bomber, and almost all recent terrorism attempts against America support my belief.

Americans ought to consider Veteran's Day as a period of sadness or stoicism rather than a time to praise or thank our soldiers for their military adventurism. When that attitude shift happens--as it has in countries such as modern-day Germany--we will have a safer country as well as safer soldiers and young men and women.

Judah: And you focus only on the economy. When I focus on fighting and dying in the context of the military, I am focusing on the job that they are asked to do. When you focus on the economy, you are focusing on a job that is someone else’s to do and decrying the military's failure to do it. If you think the military is overfunded, the blame for that lies with the organization that sets the funding. If you think the military mission diverts attention and resources from economic problems, the blame lies in the hands of the politicians that set the agenda (I will concede here that at the top levels, the military has some power in setting its agenda).

The military is not the entire government, and if the economy becomes the death of the country, there will be others far more responsible for it than veterans.

Lawyer: @Judah: you may be correct, but unlike you, I do not consider the willingness to die in an era of military adventurism as heroic or deserving of praise.

Pointing to corrupt politicians--who also deserve blame--is a diversion. Can’t one condemn corrupt politicians while refusing to plant the cultural seeds for further military adventurism? I believe that when you praise the military or any part of it during a time of wars that do not help keep Americans safe on American soil, you do not help soldiers, civilians, the economy, or the cause of peace. In fact, it is more reasonable to argue that your praise helps maintain America’s cultural ease towards war.

You end your comment with statements that are true, but hyperbolic. Of course the "military is not the entire government." However, when the military is between 20% to 30% (when including black ops, foreign military assistance, and the CIA) of our federal budget, it should not be immune from criticism or responsibility for our current economic woes. It is also not a valid argument to say that b/c "X" is not the primary factor of a problem, we must focus on other contributing factors.

At the end of the day, our country is safer now because of our private sector workers’ diligence and dedication to improving the economy, not because of our military commanders. Today, I praise all of the private sector workers who have not rioted or acted violently against others and who have diligently continued looking for work, paying their bills, and taking care of their families. Thank you. Keep your chin high. You are the people who are holding up this country, and if we lose you, we will collapse from within.

Eric: The military is expensive and, it can be argued successfully, I think, that we have too many military obligations overseas. You would be surprised how many countries we have some form of military involvement in. The other day, I heard it was over 100 different countries. Is that really necessary? Well, that's arguable. One might suggest that, if it weren't for us, the world we be a much less stable place. Much less stable for trade, so that small and large businesses in the United States and elsewhere would not be able to do business.

Certainly, the military kept us safe during the cold war. If we had been week and had no military, would not the Soviets have taken us over? Since the fall of the USSR, one can argue that it was not as necessary to keep a strong military. Or is it?

Was Iraq necessary? No. It was expensive and achieved nothing. Afghanistan? I suppose it did send potential terrorists (who do have money to commit acts of terror internationally) running for cover, so that war is arguable.

But having a military in general protects us and stabilizes us. It doesn't seem like we need the military when we sit in our safe offices and homes and grouse about taxes. Nobody is breaking down our doors with guns and tanks. But that's because the world knows that if someone did try to come at us, we would utterly destroy them. Knowing that everyone knows we would utterly destroy them if they came at us is a comforting thought, because it allows us to have our businesses and our homes and know they won't go away. We can even type on Facebook about how we dislike government and wish that taxes could be lower (which in some countries would get you thrown in a gulag). We are free and stable, because of the military. Is it expensive? Yes. Is it worth the expense? Absolutely!

Lawyer: we do not need to thank our modern military for being a deterrent, b/c it is not clear that they are in fact deterring anything right now. In fact, the military may be causing Americans on American soil to be less safe by their actions.

Also, plenty of countries don't spend trillions on war and manage to do business and not get invaded. Consider Switzerland or modern-day Germany.

Now, take a look at countries that go to war or engage in war, and there is usually one very clear commonality: inflation, high unemployment, or a lack of a strong private sector economy. Look at wars/invasions in Africa; Bosnia/Serbia; Cambodia; old Germany; Iraq; perhaps even Ecuador now, etc. All of them had a weak or nonexistent private sector economy. A strong military wouldn't have protected the average citizen from war. It would have only caused a military coup and a probable military dictatorship.

P.S. the Cold War is over. You might want to get that memo over to the Pentagon and the Dept of Defense, who are still spending our money on weapons more suited to the Cold War instead of domestic threats and smaller, fluid groups of terrorists.

Eric: I agree that war is a bad thing and that having a military can lead to a military dictatorship without a strong civilian government and a private sector. For whatever reason, our country has been spared a military dictatorship and wars on our own soil (for the last 135 years anyway). I think that our brand of military, strong, but loyal to the civilian government, is owed a lot of the credit.

I'm not saying that military incursions and having a very strong military is always a good thing everywhere. I'm just saying it worked here. I don't think you can compare the United States to Africa, the Balkans, Cambodia, etc., Iraq, and other countries you mentioned. The United States went down a different path. I don't know why. I cannot explain it. Perhaps it was the sheer vastness of the country. It's resources. None of the countries/continents you mention are stable in any sense of the word. Not militarily. Not economically. Not legally.

Besides, I'm not talking about going to war. I'm talking about having a military that is so big and so powerful that anyone would be stupid to invade us. With our Navy, we can have huge warships anywhere in the world in just a few days, etc.

Does it deter people from being stupid? I think it does. I suppose that is debatable. But I'm not willing to take the deterrent away for any period of time to test your theory.

Lawyer: in an age of nuclear weapons, it's unclear whether we need to spend trillions of dollars on military adventurism to create a deterrent. In any case, you miss my point. I am not against a well-funded or strong military. I am against praising the military or its members during times of military adventurism, which helps support a pro-war culture.

Eric: So strong military good. Military adventurism and excessive military spending bad. I'm okay with that. We could spend a little less on the military right now. Perhaps a lot less. I'm not sure I an in sync with your definition of military adventurism. I might put the Iraq war in that definition, but I'm not sure we do that a lot. Other than Iraq, what else is included in the definition of military adventurism?

Lawyer: @Erik: see Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. (Are we fighting wars in other countries?) Unless you can directly link our military’s activities in those three countries with more safety here at home, we are engaging in military adventurism.

Also, have you noticed the kind of people who have been attacking us here at home? (NY car bomb, Padilla, Reid, 9/11 terrorists, etc.) They are almost always domestic or European residents who speak English, not foreigners who live in the Middle East. It's unclear whether blowing up two foreign terrorists and three civilians (I'm estimating a high civilian death count as a result of our military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) makes us safer. A foreigner who cannot integrate at least superficially into Western culture cannot effectively deliver a bomb close to American soil. I do not believe the people we are blowing up in the Middle East can effectively deliver a bomb on American soil without being easily detected. Therefore, I call our wars there military adventurism because they do not seem to support a viable self-defense strategy.

Sean: I am all for pulling out of Germany, Japan, the Middle East etc...but at the same time I thank those who are willing to risk their lives for me. Note that I did not include those that decide what those men and women in uniform will risk their lives for, but those who actually are willing to risk their lives...I do not expect soldiers to be policy makers, I oppose the policies, including military policies, of the policy makers, while being thankful for the soldiers.

Without a strong military someone else will want to set you policies for you...

Lawyer: @Sean: thank you for your comment. You've made the only comment so far that may cause me to shift my position. At the same time, I do not believe that praising a person's willingness to die for his country is a positive action during times of military adventurism. Condemning or praising a military member is different from taking a neutral position towards him/her.

Also, I never said we shouldn't have a strong military. Being against military adventurism and excessive military spending are not inconsistent with supporting a strong military.

If we want to be the world's policeman, that's fine. I just don't know how we're going to pay for it. With the money we save on reducing military obligations, we can support a stronger dollar and our position as the world's reserve currency. I'd rather exert power through trade and tariffs than hard military power. Since we're a consumer-based economy and other countries rely on us to buy their exports, it's unclear why we can't maintain our influence by using trade incentives and disincentives.

I will let Matthew Hoh have the last word. See here.

© Matthew Rafat (2010)

[The comic strip above is from Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks (1996-2006); single strip copied under fair use doctrine for educational purposes.] 

Bonus: from Slawek: "thank god for the new wars we still got going for us, otherwise we would run out of veterans pretty soon. and how silly would we feel come veteran’s day then? pretty f*cking silly."

Liberal Judges vs. Conservative Judges

I was thinking this morning about courts and politics. I've discovered I tend to get along very well with former military servicemembers and police officers. One of my best friends is a JAG (from ultra-conservative Orange County, no less). Another lawyer I respect is also a JAG. While I don't know many police officers, I've found most of them to be hard workers.

As an anti-war libertarian, I find it strange that I can easily socialize with people on opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum. (At least now I understand Ron Paul's comment that individual military servicemembers, as a group, contributed more to his presidential campaign than to any other candidate's.) I did some thinking, and I realized I get along with liberals because I favor change and diversity, and I get along with conservatives because I see the limits of the law in creating any real change. In other words, I am hopeful enough to get along with the liberals, but cynical enough to see the inefficacy of most liberal programs.

As attorneys, there comes a period of time when we get enough experience to see the system as it is, not as we want it to be. Think of the famous Gandhi quote--"Be the change you want to see in the world"--but minus the idealism. After we clean the pixie dust from our eyes, young lawyers look at our student loans and get back to work. (The potential for starvation helps clear the mind rather quickly.) We realize, sadly, that the law doesn't matter so much as the audience, and the only audience that much of the time is the judge, who gets selected randomly. Is it strange to think that the law relies so much on randomness? I assure you, at some point, you get over it, or you go insane. As fans of Trainspotting will appreciate, I choose sanity.

I have also noticed that conservatives tend to work harder. For example, I've noticed that judges who were former military servicemembers work the hardest. Even politicians who used to be military, like Chuck Reed, are known for working hard. Servicemen don't seem to lose their work ethic, and they bring it with them to every job, whether it's politics or the bench. Thus, while many government jobs are filled with "lifers" resistant to change and who do the absolute minimum required, the military is probably the one branch of government that demands you work hard, no exceptions allowed. As a result, when servicemembers finish their military commitment, they bring the same "hardcore" attitude to their civilian careers. In my experience, judges who are ex-military usually read the court filings and are well-prepared for court hearings, even if they don't reach a fair result or go overboard. Many other judges are quite content to show up and let their law clerks do most or all of the work, but that lax attitude doesn't seem to afflict most ex-military members.

Police officers tend to function like military servicemembers. They're also hardcore, and they respect hard work. (By the way, the police officers I've met usually hate Democrats, because they think Democrats are naive in thinking their policies or laws would have any effect on a child molester or a drug dealer trying to make a buck.)

So why do I tend to get along with cops and military servicemembers, even though I am anti-war and I favor more police oversight? I guess it's because I'm hardcore, too. I'm fond of saying, "I do what I say, I say what I mean." As I get older (cue Winston Churchill and his comment about young hearts and old brains), I've noticed that many self-proclaimed liberals tend to be big thinkers and big talkers but lack the capacity for actual sacrifice. For example, I recently saw a liberal activist with a T-shirt that said, "Anti-War." Well, that's great, but how does buying yourself a T-shirt help some little kid in Iraq? Personally, I would take that T-shirt money and donate it to kiva.org, the Red Cross, or some other organization. That's the problem I've seen with many liberals--they have strong views, but they refuse to sacrifice anything themselves. It's usually someone else who has to do the sacrificing--either the rich, the small business owner, etc.

As for liberal judges, I've found many of them tend to have a poor work ethic. While the conservative judges are at home reading the papers for court the next day, the liberal judges tend to be teaching law classes, giving seminars, publishing some legal treatise--i.e., something that allows them to impart their knowledge to the public.

Don't get me wrong--I love legal seminars, especially the ones that include judges. But other than one judge, who's in federal court, I don't tend to see liberal-minded judges prepared with insightful questions to ask. One time, I provided a liberal-minded judge with extensive legislative history relating to a law. I marked in bold and 14 point font all the relevant sections of the history that showed the judge that his law clerk's statutory interpretation was wrong. The judge practically freaked out (I could almost hear him thinking, "You don't expect me to read all this, do you?"), and--in my subjective opinion--may or may not have ignored the legislature's intent.

Maybe I'm a terrible oral advocate, but I've left court several times feeling like my hard work and research were a waste of my time and my client's time. Too often, there are no tentative rulings to focus the oral argument, or the judge does not ask me a single question. As a result, I've become critical of judges who rely solely on their law clerks, even when their clerks do excellent work. As far as I'm concerned, judges who don't personally read the legal briefs are stealing from taxpayers. It seems no different than a lawyer who bills for time never worked. A lawyer who tried to bill for unworked hours would be fired, so why should a judge be treated any differently? After all, judges are paid for their time and expertise, just like lawyers. Shouldn't they read the legal briefs, even if they have research attorneys?

Before addressing some differences between conservative and liberal judges, it's important to note that I am generalizing--there are liberal judges who are hard-working, and conservative judges who appreciate nuance. At the same time, I have noticed some distinct patterns among liberal judges and conservative judges. In my experience, conservative judges tend to read the papers; either ask relevant questions or none at all (think Clarence Thomas); tend to work hard; tend to avoid legal seminars and other outside legal activities; and have a well-run, efficient courtroom (i.e., if someone starts repeating arguments already stated in the papers, they get cut off).

The downside to conservative judges is when they're good, they're great, but when they're bad, they're the Devil's spawn. Really horrible conservative judges, for example, think they're the only thing standing between anarchy and civilized society. As a result, if the bad conservative judge hates your case, you and your clients will get sanctioned or will suffer somehow. Another characteristic of terrible conservative judges is that if you don't suck up to them, you will pay for it. The legal system has many technicalities, and a bad conservative judge can make your trial or legal motion Kafkaesque if he feels like you're not giving him appropriate respect; in the alternative, he may just dismiss your case, knowing that your client probably doesn't have the resources to appeal.

In contrast, liberal judges tend not to sanction parties, even when they richly deserve it. Say what you want about "sympathetic" judges, but when it comes to avoiding embarrassing scenarios, I'm putting my money on the liberal judge. At the same time, generally speaking, liberal judges tend to believe their compassion and wisdom absolves them from reading every paper that is filed. Perhaps that is a reasonable perspective. After all, most law/research clerks are quite good, and they summarize the legal papers very well. The downside to relying on law clerks is that it takes a long time for a new lawyer to get any respect from some liberal judges. If a new lawyer is good, but the judge never reads his papers, the new lawyer will never get any respect.

When I first started out, I could tell who read my legal briefs by the level of respect I got from the bench. Typically, due to my youthful appearance, if a judge hadn't read my legal briefs, he would act like he was doing me a favor when I won. In contrast, the judges who had read the papers knew I wrote well, and they would treat me no differently than anyone else. Over time, I realized that most of the judges who read my papers happened to be more conservative. I really enjoyed not being treated differently just because I didn't have 40 years of experience. After all, if your papers are well-written, and you cited the proper case law, why should the number of years you've had a bar card matter?

Again, I realize this post relies on generalizations, but I hope you've enjoyed it. One last comment: if you get the chance, vote for female judges. There aren't enough of them in court, and, just like in real life, the more women around, the less likely it is that the men do crazy things. According to the Federal Judicial Center's History Office, only 25% of Article III judges are female, and only 1% identify themselves as Asian Americans. (Source: Shawna Wilson, Oct 2009, Young Lawyer.) I don't know the exact state court statistics, but a similar gender imbalance probably exists in California state courts.

P.S. I just realized a shorthand way to summarize my entire post. Have you seen the early episodes of the TV series, Scrubs? If so, think of Bob Kelso as the average liberal judge--the one who doesn't practice medicine and lets other people do much of the work--and think of Dr. Cox as the average conservative judge--the one who looks like the a**hole, but who's really the main person holding up the place. I'd probably play Dr. Dorian, who, "despite his numerous flaws, quirks, and personal insecurities," is shown to be a very competent doctor. Well, at least that's what Wikipedia says.

P.P.S. Make sure you read Ken's comment. Overall, he may be right that there are only two categories of judges: judges who require strict, slavish compliance with evidentiary rules, and judges who don't. But Ken's comment also tells you that judges have wide discretion in interpreting the evidence rules, which should tell you that the rules are too convoluted. The more convoluted the law, the more the legislature is allowing judges to potentially decide outcomes based on individual preferences.

Let me give you two examples of a judge administering evidence rules differently. In one trial, opposing counsel had numerous emails that hadn't been verified, i.e., no custodian of records appeared, no declaration, just a bunch of emails sent by some employees. No one was disputing that the employees had sent the emails. Opposing counsel waited the end of his examination before asking the court to admit the twenty or so emails into evidence. The judge, knowing my objections would require tedious parsing of the emails, glared at me, almost daring me to tick him off by making an objection. This was a bench trial (no jury), so I didn't object to the emails. The judge admitted the emails into evidence. The judge glaring at me won't show up anywhere in the record or transcript.

In another case, I had numerous emails to introduce. All emails were given to me by the corporate defendant. All the people who had sent the emails used corporate email accounts. No one was disputing that the plaintiff had sent these emails. A company employee admitted on the stand that no one had hacked into the server, and there was no reason to believe the emails had been altered or forged in any way. Opposing counsel came from a large law firm and objected several times to the emails. The judge refused to admit the emails into evidence.

What's the difference between scenario A and scenario B? I don't know what to tell you. One was a jury trial, and the other one was non-jury, but that should not have made any difference. By the way, the same judge presided over both trials.

[Update: about a year after the trial in which the judge refused to admit numerous emails into evidence, I had another jury trial with a different judge. This trial also involved several important emails. I was able to get the emails admitted into evidence.]

(A federal judge, the Hon. Judge James Rosenbaum, has tried to come up with a solution, FRE 808; however, other than one law review article, I don't see much else on this new proposed rule of evidence.)