Portside

"The Pentagon and the military industrial complex have been plagued by a massive amount of waste, fraud, and financial mismanagement for decades," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "That is absolutely unacceptable."

Climate change poses an existential threat. That doesn’t mean we should further empower an already bloated Pentagon.

Will fear, exaggerated threats, and pork-barrel politics be enough to keep the Pentagon and its contractors fat and happy, even as the urgent priorities of so many of the rest of us are starved of much-needed funding?

A Rising China Lifts All Boats (Submarines, Aircraft Carriers, and Surface Ships), Not to Speak of Fighter Planes, in the Military-Industrial Complex.

The military says that the “health” of the defense industry is crucial to national security. But the CARES Act money was specifically allocated to protect the health of the people of this country — not the companies that build weapons.

A Post-Coronavirus economy can no longer afford to put the Pentagon first. As it turns out, creating jobs through Pentagon spending is among the least effective ways to rebuild the economy.

Sharp reductions in spending on police, prisons, and the Pentagon could free up hundreds of billions of dollars for programs that might begin to fill the gap in spending on public investments in communities of color and elsewhere.

Reader Comments: Protests Work, #BlackLivesMatter, Standing Rock, Teachers Response to School Reopening; Pulling Down Statutes; Labor and Black Lives; NLRB Attack on Worker Protections; Cut Pentagon Budget; BDS; Concert for Cuba this weekend; more..

Thanks to years of hyper militarization, American police departments are recreating our global war zones here at home. With these weapons on our streets, our history of structural racism becomes that much deadlier.

Reader Comments: Today's Movement - Make It Last; American Fascism; Carl Reiner and Black Lives Matter; Confederate Monuments; Defund the Military; Police Violence; Slavery in Illinois; Laundry Workers & COVID; Student Voting; Concert for Cuba; more