department of defense – Memphis Flyer

Most folks are honest; this tricks them into a belief in the bedrock honesty of others, especially those who make bold public statements. How could someone lie in a public statement? Most folks know they would not want to live with that embarrassment when the truth inevitably came out. And yet we get fooled again. And again. George Santos claimed his mother died in the 9/11 attacks. She did not. He claimed his grandparents survived the European holocaust. As we all know, his shenanigans have been extraordinary.

From Trump’s incessant and continuing lies to the fictions spun up on Fox News, we are awash in a gaslighting culture from the right that cannot seem to stop its relentless daily “flooding the zone.” But this is the chop on the surface; what about the current underneath? Where does the political left join the political right in framing profits as patriotism, bloodshed as glory, immiseration as inspiration?

Here we are in yet another crisis of our own making (well, made by the people we freely elected), the debt ceiling debacle. At the actual nut of the problem is the military budget. Why? Because it seems to be literally more sacred than the money the government takes out of your paycheck for your retirement, Social Security. Just ponder the headlines. Forbes: “Republicans Plan To Cut Social Security — Will Voters Let Them?” Time magazine: “How Biden Got Republicans To Run Away From Their History of Pushing Social Security and Medicare Cuts.” The fight is on, even as your paycheck shows the deductions made to the Social Security fund. That is your money, not Congress’ to play around with. And yet it’s a public debate now.

On the other hand, find me the politicians who are calling for cuts to the biggest budget item by far in the pool of your tax dollars that we do give Congress the right to divide as they see fit, discretionary spending. That would be the Pentagon budget, of course. There is pretty much radio silence on that topic. Where there are minor quibbles it’s usually about how much to increase it, not whether it should be cut.

Back in the day, Ronald Reagan’s head of his Office of Management and Budget, David Stockman, in an interview in The Atlantic, talked about the defense contractors and noted, “The hogs are really feeding now.” Fast forward to today and those hogs are breeding and feeding, gorging on your tax dollars, and yet the Pentagon is so reckless and eager to spend that they cannot pass an audit, year after year. So the bloated Pentagon budget, some $816 billion officially, is far more than every hostile foreign power combined, and yet in reality is much more than that, since military costs are also absorbed into other budgets, such as Veterans Affairs, Dept. of Energy, and NASA, amongst others.

Into all this comes the fatuous self-inflicted threat of a default to the U.S. full faith and credit because Republicans won’t honor past expenses they voted to make. If a dad does that he’s a deadbeat dad. If a contractor does that to a subcontractor, expect a lien. Do that to a neighbor nice enough to sell you an appliance that you never paid for and he’s going to see you in small claims court. Deadbeat Republicans never met a weapons system they wouldn’t vote for but now that the bill is here they want to dip out. Gullible Democrats also voted for those military boondoggles but at least they want to honor those debts.

Republicans are, as usual, aiming to cut programs that really serve human needs, but the budgets they seek to eliminate are so small the Pentagon would regard them as rounding errors. They want to cut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)? No food for poor kids! More caviar for Raytheon war profiteer executives!

It is long past time to really pare down the DoD budget. We should not have sophisticated weaponry all over the Earth, under the seas, and in space while families are living in tents in the snow on sidewalks and while healthcare is still not available to all. Can we unite for peace and prosperity?

Dr. Tom H. Hastings is coordinator of Conflict Resolution BA/BS degree programs and certificates at Portland State University, PeaceVoice senior editor, and on occasion an expert witness for the defense of civil resisters in court.

Military fighting gear has made its way from the Department of Defense to the Memphis Police Department (MPD) over the past decade. But Mayor A C Wharton said the city has only “what we need” with access to more gear if a situation arises.

When officers from the Ferguson Police Department in Missouri clashed with protesters there earlier this month, the nation got a good look at some of the gear that has flowed from the military to local police agencies over the past decade. Police in Ferguson drove armored vehicles, wore body armor, and pointed high-powered rifles at crowds of protestors. The sights made federal leaders uncomfortable, and they are promising action.

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, of Memphis, demanded a House hearing on the militarization of police forces two weeks ago. U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, promised a similar Senate hearing next month. Obama administration officials said they will review the federal military surplus program and training programs that go with them.

Since 2004, MPD has received five automatic rifles, two boats, and two armored personnel carriers from the Defense Department’s 1033 surplus program, according to the Tennessee Department of General Services.

Jackson Baker

Memphis Police don body armor for last year’s KKK rally.

MPD public information officer Sgt. Karen Rudolph said the M14 rifles are kept in storage and have never been used.

The two bridge erection boats, she said, are “basic, flat-bottom, metal boats” that would be used to patrol the Mississippi River, the Port of Memphis, or to rescue passengers from a river boat. But the boats sit in surplus storage, she said.

The MPD’s two armored personnel carriers, which look basically like Army tanks, were built in 1979, Rudolph said, but the department has never used them since they arrived here in 2004. MPD has them, she said, if the need arose to carry officers into a dangerous zone with an active shooter. Also, the carriers’ tracks can travel over terrain too rough for trucks or ATVs.

Wharton said he oversaw the acquisition of all of the surplus military gear here when he served as the district chair of the Tennessee Homeland Security Council. Though he said he “was a bit concerned about it” at the time, he didn’t see “what I would call excesses.”

“Perhaps [using military gear] ratchets things up, things that wouldn’t reach such a fever pitch if it weren’t for the introduction of that kind of foreboding, frightening equipment that makes folks want to take you on, quite frankly,” Wharton said.

He preferred to keep police responses “toned down,” he said, but noted that the city could get more heavy response gear from neighboring communities if it was needed.

But the show of force displayed last year during the Ku Klux Klan’s protest at the Shelby County Courthouse was anything but toned down. It was “overwhelming,” according to an on-the-scene report from Memphis Flyer reporter John Branston.

“There were hundreds of officers in riot gear, scores of vehicles, canine units, horse-mounted units, TACT units, armored vehicles, motorcycles, fire trucks, mobile command posts, and enough firepower to repel, or at least mount a fair challenge, to General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Virginia,” Branston reported.

Rudolph said she would not compare MPD officers to those in Fergurson but defended last year’s response.

“However, as seen during the KKK rally, the Memphis Police Department is adequately equipped with the personnel, equipment, and training needed to address any incident that may occur within our city,” she said. “Our primary goal is to keep our citizens safe.”