“It’s cheaper to dig mass graves than field hospitals. The kind of capitalism that has infected the US is the most evil on earth. If it is not profitable to save lives,it simply will not get done. Lot of good this multi-trillion dollar war machine is doing us now, huh? We could have spent all that on healthcare, infrastructure, and community resilience. Nope, but we’ve got enough artillery to kill the world 20 times over. The government is not going to help us, not now, not tomorrow, not after this. They’re going to save their own asses, and their rich friend’s asses, and let the rest of us tough it out and die.”
— J.L. Goodman, online comment, Rumble With Michael Moore Podcast Episode 53: The First Million Dead
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‘Do F-35s Fight Pandemics?’ Amid Covid-19 Outbreak, Lawmakers Pushing For Even More Useless Pentagon Spending
“Infuriating doesn’t even begin to describe it. Can you think of a more outrageous thing for members of Congress to be demanding the federal gov’t be spending its money on now than MORE F-35s, a jet that still doesn’t work, than the Pentagon even wants. Do F-35s fight pandemics?”
By Eoin Higgins
As the federal government develops strategies for how to deal with the coronavirus outbreak that has already significantly damaged the U.S. economy and killed over 100 Americans, a group of lawmakers are urging Congress approve the purchasing of 19 more F-35 fighters than the Pentagon requested as part of the battle against the disease, enraging progressives.
“Infuriating doesn’t even begin to describe it,” tweeted Stephen Miles, executive director of Win Without War, on Friday.
According to Politico, the request for more F-35s came from Democrats and Republicans alike:
“It is essential that we continue to increase production of our nation’s only 5th generation stealth fighter in order to ensure the United States maintains air dominance and to further reduce overall program costs,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to the chairmen and top Republicans of the House Armed Services Committee and Defense Appropriations panel.
“The letter was spearheaded by the co-chairs of the Congressional Joint Strike Fighter Caucus — Reps. John Larson (D-Conn.), Marc Veasey (D-Texas), Martha Roby (R-Ala.) and Mike Turner (R-Ohio).”
“Outrageous priorities of militarists during the coronavirus pandemic,” tweeted anti-war group Peace Pledge Union.
Win Without War has issued a list of policy demands—laid out in a document titled “U.S. Foreign Policy in the Face of the Coronavirus“—to help guide the government’s handling of the crisis.
The list includes no more money for Pentagon wars, ending sanctions, protecting refugees and migrants, focusing on international cooperation, and the passage of a Green New Deal.
“The greatest security challenges of the 21st century—global inequality, climate change, pandemics—cannot be solved militarily,” the document declares. “Years of funneling trillions of dollars into the Pentagon instead of investing in critical human needs have left us woefully unprepared to meet them.”
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Here’s What Trump’s Environmental Agencies Were Doing During The Pandemic This Week
They approved pipelines and gold mines while attacking science as the death toll rises from the novel coronavirus and mass layoffs begin.
By Alexander C. Kaufman and Chris D’Angelo
HuffPost (3/20/20)
The novel coronavirus pandemic tanked the stock market and sent jobless claims soaring to unprecedented levels this week, but did little to slow the White House’s efforts to boost fossil fuel production and roll back environmental safeguards.
On Wednesday, as the U.S. death toll surpassed 100 and the virus spread to all 50 states, the Trump administration widened what critics call one of its most aggressive assaults on science, auctioned drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico and greenlit the expansion of a mine.
It started when the Environmental Protection Agency formalized its plans to expand on a controversial proposal to restrict the scientific research used to make regulations, broadening the scope to include non-regulatory divisions of the agency as well.
By the afternoon, the Interior Department wrapped up an auction to sell oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico, offering up some 78 million offshore acres ― an area roughly the size of New Mexico. It proved to be a bust, bringing in approximately $93 million for just shy of 400,000 acres, the smallest total for an offshore auction since 2016.
By the day’s end, the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management approved a nearly 500-acre expansion of a gold and silver mine on public lands near Bullhead City, Arizona. …