A Nation and People Caught in Torrent of Loss and Costs

Rabid Wastefulness of Life and Treasure, Entrenched Power Turned against America

US Officials and Partners Reject 

America’s People

Duty of Governance

Loss: Shutout, Shutdown

SUMITOMO closes shop, dumps Americans
Why would those Over There care if those OVER HERE do not care

Evidence of Intertwined Public-Private Sector Betrayal

Sumitomo Rubber USA, LLC, on November 7, 2024, announces immediate shutdown and cease of all production at its “Tonawanda, New York-based facility (manufacturing automotive tires for passenger cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles). However, the announcement said, the conglomerate would by use “a larger percentage” of subsidiary Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd’s “global production capacity” so as not to interrupt “service to existing customers.” Contact: media@sumitomorubber-usa.com; https://srusa-tonawanda-update.com/Media%20Release%20Landing%20Page%20Nov%202024%20Final%201.pdf]

The history of the Tonawanda plant extends to the early twentieth century, long before 2015 Sumitomo takeover.

TONAWANDA is situated in Western New York 5.8 miles from Amherst, NY, 7.5 miles from Buffalo, NY; 284.2 miles from Philadelphia, PA. Its population estimate around 15,000, among them some 1,200 foreign born residents; and more than 10 percent of Tonawanda’s total population (more than 90 percent secondary school graduates) living in poverty. https://www.city-data.com/city/Tonawanda-New-York.html

SUMITOMO CORPORATION is a Japanese Conglomerate (owned by Sumitomo Group, headquartered in Tokyo; subsidiaries: SCSK; TBC Corporation; constituent company: The Nikkei 225 or Nikkei Stock Average); estimated revenue and net income latest update $32.16 billion, $ 2.16 billion respectively. Sumitomo is described as a general trading industry its commodities metal, construction, transportation, infrastructure, chemicals, energy, mineral resources, food, other goods.

MULTINATIONALS
Now you see them - Now you don’t

DUNLOP or GOODRICH or GOODYEAR or SUMITOMO
Who Knows?

• 1985 Dunlop Rubber Company is acquired by British multinational industrial conglomerate company originally founded in 1924 as the British Goodrich Rubber Co. Ltd a subsidiary of US rubber specialist B.F. Goodrich Company (BTR headquartered in London, England, now nonexistent). Sumitomo, without acquiring Dunlop company, acquires rights to manufacture and market Dunlop branded road tyres. Dunlop Ltd then becomes a brand operated by different companies worldwide.

• 1997 Sumitomo completes agreement to use the Dunlop name in its corporate name, changes name of its UK subsidiary to “Dunlop Tyres Ltd”

• 1998 BTR sells … Dunlop Aviation and Dunlop Precision Rubber (among others) to Doughty Hanson & Co to form Dunlop Standard.

• 1999 Sumitomo Rubber Industries and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company form joint venture (Sumitomo continuing to manufacture all Japanese-made tyres under the Dunlop name and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company buying three quarters of Sumitomo’s European and North American tyre businesses. (Since 1999, the Dunlop brand has been part of Goodyear’s North American and European portfolio) Goodyear obtains Dunlop tire assets in Europe; US and Sumitomo Rubber Industries continue selling Dunlop tires in other countries

• 2004 Dunlop Standard is sold to London based Meggitt plc (or Ltd)

• 2006 India’s multinational Apollo Tyres Limited (tyre manufacturing company) acquires Dunlop Tyres International

• 2008 Goodyear Dunlop Tires North America Inc (Tonawanda plant) reduces production and cuts 150 jobs

• 2013 Sumitomo Rubber Industries acquire Dunlop Tyre trademark rights in Africa from Apollo Tyres; and Sumitomo Rubber Industries in 2014 changes its name to Sumitomo Rubber South Africa (Pty) Ltd.

• 2014 Goodyear accuses Sumitomo of “anticompetitive conduct in violation of applicable antitrust law”

• 2015 Sumitomo reclaims ownership of Tonawanda Dunlop plant

• 2024 Sumitomo Rubber in Tonawanda, New York eliminates “all 1,550 union and salaried jobs” and shuts down plant operations.

USA 

CONDITIONS, OUTLOOK

BLEAK

• Recession Probability by December 2025: 45 percent

DISCARDED: Poverty in the United States of America

• Thirty-eight million (more than 11 percent of) Americans live in poverty.

• Half a Million-plus People are Homeless, i.e., living temporary shelter or transitional housing or sleeping in places not meant for human habitation (under bridges or viaducts, along sidewalks, in doorways or abandoned buildings).

Homelessness numbers by State
At or Above 10,000 Homeless
(13 States)

California 171,521	New York 74,178	Florida 25,959	Washington 25,211
Texas 24,432	Oregon 17,959	Massachusetts 15,507	Arizona 13,553
Pennsylvania 12,691	Georgia 10,689	Ohio 10,654	Tennessee 10,567	Colorado 10,397

Homelessness Percentages

District of Columbia 65.8	California 43.7	Vermont 43.1	Oregon      42.3	Hawaii 41.4
New York 37.7	Washington 32.6	Maine 32.1	Alaska 31.7	Nevada 24.2

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/homeless-population-by-state

2024 US elections PAID out or Wasted

Projections by OpenSecrets

Congressional Races $10,286,346,287

Presidential Race $5,514,721,998

Total Cost of Election $15,901,068, 285 BILLION

2024 Presidential Election Cycle
https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/cost-of-election

Waste Fraud Abuse - US Monetary Costs of War (estimates) 2024

October 7, 2023-September 30, 2024
United States Spending on Israel’s Military Operations and
Related U.S. Operations in the West Asia Region

• Includes “approved security assistance funding since October 7, 2023, supplemental funding for regional operations, and an estimated additional cost of operations”

• Excludes “any other economic costs” https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2024/USspendingIsrael

$22.76 BILLION

And RISING

October 7, 2023 – October 7, 2024 U.S. spending on aid for Israeli military operations in Gaza and elsewhere exceeds $17.9 billion. Spending on related U.S. operations in the region exceeds $4.86 billion. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2024/USspendingIsrael

 

United States War Spending September 11, 2001-September 11, 2022

$8 Trillion

Veteran Care over 30-year period going forward: $2.2 Trillion

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/summary

DEBT

Federal Debt as of September 30, 2024
$35.5 trillion
UP $2.3 trillion from FY 2023

FY 2024 Interest on the debt $1,126.5 billion
INCREASE from FY 2023: $251.0 billion

FY 2024 budget deficit $1.8 trillion

US Government Accountability Office Financial Audit: Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s FY 2024 and FY 2023 Schedules of Federal Debt GAO-25-107138 Published: November 7, 2024; Publicly Released: November 7, 2024. (NOTED: “GAO has previously recommended that Congress consider developing a plan to place the government on a sustainable fiscal path and that the plan should include considering alternative approaches to the debt limit.”) https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107138

Accelerated Business and Industry Failures affecting Workers and Income

2024

2,000+ stores closing across United States of America

13 retail brands = 2,055 locations

UBS (formerly known as the Union Bank of Switzerland) UBS Group AG/UBS Group SA/UBS Group Inc analysts project over five-year period (- 2029) 

45000 US retail closures

Business Insider (Yahoo) by Dominick Reuter, Alex Bitter, October 24, 2024
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2024/10/more-than-2000-stores-are-closing-in-the-us-this-year-is-your-favorite-on-the-list.html

ABANDONMENT!

Betrayal of America

Never Ends

Shutdowns 
UK Independent, Graig Graziosi reporting June 10, 2024

“Store closures are rocking the US market. … Thousands of brick-and-mortar retail and dining storefronts are sitting empty in the wake of a tsunami of business closures across the US in recent months.

“Inflation has beaten down consumers, forcing Americans, whose salaries have largely not kept pace, to rethink how and when they shop. This has pushed some already-struggling retailers and restaurants to the brink, sparking a rash of bankruptcies and the closures of nearly 3,200 store locations in 2024.” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/store-closures-us-inflation-chains-b2559894.html

Commercial and Employment Sectors
Two Exclusivist Political Parties
Nearly Half Century 1980/1993 Through 2024

• Sell Offs
• Off Shoring
• Sellouts
• Downsizing
• Discouraging transferrable skills development
• Promoting causal-slippery-nonpermanent-easily disposal American work and workers
• Fielding and support of mercenaries and incompetents, malleable (bought and sold) panderers (patriots for hire masquerading as public officials)

US deciders have shown, repeatedly, their general contempt for life—though in disingenuousness, they profess otherwise. Up and down the spectrum of public office and endeavor (federal to local, and with their “partners”), people in US public office and positions of influence have demonstrated a cavalier dismissal and disavowal of the sacred duty of governance—governance which means, at its most fundamental:

• To Provide for America’s common defense (not command, commit, enable or arm aggression on American streets or against world nations and peoples) and

• To Promote Americans’ general welfare.

• To Embrace fully and put into practice the promise and principles inherent in the oath, ethic, and work ethic of public office: to serve and protect the United States of America and its people

• To Work toward a more perfect union.

Long time coming Crisis of Legitimacy
From the late Twentieth Century to the Present day

In 1973, the United States of America is “mired in a series of … economic, political, military crises… eroding US domestic confidence in government and thwarting US geopolitical ambitions US powers and influencers response to which is to expand US hegemony “through

• Conventional and hybrid warfare, often outsourced to non-state actors
• Financialization of the economy and
• Weaponization of the dollar…”

The middle twentieth century saw “the industrial corporation displace the banking system as the prime economic symbol of success”; and “late twentieth-century saw the “growth of derivatives and a novel banking model ushering “a new period of finance capitalism.”

What the powers that be termed “‘solutions’”— Financialization of the U.S. economy PLUS movement of American capital abroad PLUS relentless de-industrialization in the United States—created even “more intractable problems” culminating in today’s “crisis of legitimacy” pervading the United States of America.

Financialization, Rentiers Rule
Government is Held Hostage

Finance is “‘liberated’ from any functional connection to the real economy, becoming a source of great wealth from speculation (and) the grand destabilizer of both the domestic and global economy.”

“Export of capital … isolates the rentiers”—those living on income from property or securities—from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labor of several overseas countries.”

“Shareholder capitalism” is king, “deregulation and privatization its handmaidens.”

“… Large multinational companies and financial capital organized a takeover of political power, and labor and middle-class interests were pushed to the side-lines.”

“… Production of profit from the manipulation and global expansion of financial capital … (becomes) the biggest and most profitable sector of the economy; … (and holds) government hostage to its interests.

For the parasitic financier “crises are just an opportunity to increase their power and line their pockets. Hedge funds profit from geopolitical instability and stock market volatility. Political chaos, boom and bust cycles are their bread and butter because when investors are worried, they want to be hedged.”

Despite the appearance of wealth (fueled by money-printing and unsustainable debt) the United States of America, as a nation and a people, “is actually teetering on the edge.”

“Under the cover of ‘boom and bust’, rot and decay have set in.” The “parasitic rentier class has weakened its host….” “The global balance of power has already shifted.”

Loss of Legitimacy
Self-inflicted Crisis, Chaos, National Weakness

The Executive Branch of US government, from the early second-half of the twentieth century, “encouraged the outsourcing of non-inherently governmental functions” to private entities. And, as if deliberately shirking duty and proper governmental responsibilities, elected officials increased and accelerated outsourcing practices through the 1990s into the present day.

Powerful US and US-allied entities and individuals within and outside the United States of America succeed in “blurring the lines” between public and private sectors and interests. They move in and out of the official US government, operating “in the gray zone between Hard and Soft Power” — a calculated arrangement “no longer juxtaposed but conceptualized as a continuum integrated into a single framework” wherein nongovernmental entities are permitted to receive “tax-deductible donations from corporate-financier groups (often indirectly through the think-tanks they control”) and receive “state funding”— and empowered “to shape domestic and foreign policy.”

This surrender and disestablishment of standards, official duty and responsibility of Government and Governance of the United States not only have threatened the sovereignty of other nations of the world; but this manufactured, exclusivist, self-interested arrangement has destroyed the essential interior fabric and operations (work, labor, earning, human rights, multi-level physical, health, education, welfare, banking services, structures and infrastructures) together with the citizenry’s presumed “democratic” (of-by-for-the-people) Constitutional institution of Government of the United States of America.

America’s crisis of legitimacy, in 2024, far exceeds the economic, political, military crises of the previous century. “The impact will be acutely felt” by the nation and people of these United States.

Excerpted and adapted from Laura Ruggeri’s “Unleashing Chaos: The responses to the first crisis of U.S. hegemony unleashed forces that ultimately eroded its power.” November 4, 2024, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/11/04/unleashing-chaos/

Researcher and geopolitical analyst, former academic Laura RUGGERI investigates “colour revolutions and hybrid warfare.” Her work appears in at least four languages English, Chinese, Italian and Russian

Those who would pen their hopes or hitch their wagons 

to the prevailing, intermingled narcissists and swindlers spread throughout public and private sectors are partners in crime. Americans who would embrace or acquiesce to the current breed, the prevailing characters and manifestations, arrayed against the public good, become partners—whether intentionally or not—in America’s downfall: the aiding and abetting in the great loss and enormous costs being suffered by the United States of America and its people.

###

Prolific Southern-Born American Writer Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett focuses on People, Press, Politics USA; Domestic and Foreign Affairs (no copyright claimed in direct quotes and individual image)

Latest book: Are There No Champions? Yes and No

Links: https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett

https://insightbeyondtodaysnews.blogspot.com/

(live limited) https://www.bennettsareherenochampions.com/

https://www.xlibris.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/859250-are-there-no-champions-yes-and-no

https://www.xlibris.com

Email: Nolandanisland@hotmail.com or Authorswork@gmail.com

 

Washington Waste forces World (including USA) to Languish in Want

Santa cannot Cure the Depravity of Man

World Situation Today 

2021 USA Defense Expenditures, Projections toward 2023

The U.S. military budget is poised to surge above $800 billion. 

Committee Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, is reported saying that “the FY23 budget would be ‘bigger than we thought,’ as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ... complicated the U.S. security posture and impressed a greater sense of urgency for funding defense priorities.”

Yet the figures tell another story

• United States of America spending $828 Billion
• NATO (i.e., USA spending) $324 Billion
• Russian Federation spending: $65.9 Billion

Follow the Money

OpenSecrets reports on Congressman Smith

Smith’s 2018 Estimated Net worth: $393,006

Donors to Congressman Smith 2021-2022

TOP INDUSTRY: Defense Electronics $110,500

TOP CONTRIBUTOR Kratos Defense & Security Solutions: $70,000

Bio Brief

Politician, former private practice attorney (JD University of Washington School of Law), Washington State prosecutor and senator, Washington, D.C.-native (raised in Seattle, Washington Metropolitan), David Adam Smith has been a member of the U.S. Congress since 1997 and chairman of the Arms Services Committee since 2019. 

Congressman Smith is on record voting in 2008 for the FISA Amendment Act of 2008 (FAA) “reauthorizing unconstitutional provisions in the expired Protect America Act,” significantly modifying the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act granting expansive new monitoring powers to the executive branch with very little court oversight; and ensuring the dismissal of all pending cases against telecommunication companies for their previous illegal spying on American citizens on behalf of the Executive Branch.

Smith also voted for the 2001 USA Patriot Act and to extend the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.

U.S. military spending has long surpassed military spending of Russia; and, in the post-9/11 era, U.S. military spending has escalated dramatically (military strategy expert Lyle Goldstein in a new study from the Costs of War Project)

The Russian military budget amounts to less than one-tenth of the U.S. military budget; just one-fifth of non-U.S. NATO spending; and six percent of the NATO defense spending aggregate.

 U.S. Navy

• has more than 10 times the number of aircraft carriers as Russia (Russia has just 37 percent of the total U.S. combat aircraft);
• has more than five times the number of large surface combatants; and
• has more than double the number of amphibious attack ships and nuclear submarines.
  

Hidden in Plain Sight: War-Making Waste Fraud Abuse

Wartime Contract Spending in Afghanistan Since 2001

“UNDISCLOSED”—“Over one-third of the $108 billion in contract work performed in Afghanistan from 201-2021 for the U.S. Department of Defense went to undisclosed recipients.”

“Over the 20-year period of the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, the U.S. Department of Defense paid various companies about $108 billion in contracts for work performed in the country, according to our latest research.

“This is in addition to the trillions of dollars spent on Department of Defense contracts performed in the U.S. over that period – and does not include other goods and services produced in the U.S. and used in the war in Afghanistan, such as weapons.

“What’s more, this figure is just a fraction of the over $14 trillion in Pentagon spending since the start of the war in Afghanistan in total, with one-third to one-half of the total going to military contractors.

“Over one-third of the contract spending went to “undisclosed” recipients – domestic and foreign businesses who are not uniquely identifiable in the publicly available contracting databases – USASpending.gov and the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS).”

FY2002-2022

“Of the $108 billion spent in Afghanistan from fiscal years 2002-2022, over 40 percent went to the 14 largest companies, which each received over one billion dollars in total contract spending, with the largest receiving over $13.5 billion. There were also thousands of smaller contracts.

2001-2022 WASTE, FRAUD, ABUSE: $14 TRILLION

In the period since starting the latest war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon has plundered the US Treasury for one-third of an estimated 14 trillion U.S. dollars to “defense contractors” (i.e., militarists, military industrialists, mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, and sundry shady and shadowy nongovernmental entities)

“Weapons makers have spent $2.5 billion on lobbying (in the most recent 5-year period employing and deploying “more than 700 lobbyists”—more than one for each member of the U.S. Congress!) 

 

Paymaster calls the Law and Policy

Recent years’ record of all Pentagon-issued contracts

One-fourth to one-third of contracts to Big Five (their total assets estimate 2021)

Lockheed Martin: $50.87 billion	General Dynamics: $50.07 billion
Boeing: $138.5 billion	Raytheon: $161.40 billion
	Northrop Grumman: $42.58 billion

 

(Lockheed Martin’s Pentagon extortion in contracts for FY2020 was a whopping “$75 billion”—“well over one and one-half times” FT2020’s “entire budget for the State Department and Agency for International Development.”)

As “wartime” conditions allow laxity in oversight and haste in delivery, many companies exploit the situation to make exorbitant double-edged killings in “overcharging” the U.S. government, or engaging “in outright fraud.”

A documentary estimate of Waste, Fraud and Abuse found in 2011 by the “Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan” totaled “$31 billion to $60 billion.”

Reductions in U.S. adventures in one set of countries morph into ramped-up U.S. special or self interested rages against another set of countries or regions (Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Horn of Africa, China, Russia, Iran)—name the flavor or rationale of convenience—and up spikes the War Department’s budget to unheard of highs.

Government officials in service to their paymasters, lobbyists, and revolving door riders, their incestuous militarists and mercenaries inflate spending by legislation or decree—and the whole cabal breaks out in laughter all the way to those private (or quasi-public) national, international and off-shore exchanges and havens.

At the end of 2021 Business Insider reported on “At least 15 lawmakers who shape US defense policy have investments in military contractors” by Warren Rojas, Camila DeChalus, Kimberly Leonard, and Dave Levinthal, December13, 2021 https://www.businessinsider.com/congress-members-are-trading-defense-stocks-while-shaping-military-policy-2021-12

Months earlier The Intercept reported “Joe Biden Filling Top Pentagon Positions With Defense Contractors: Some of the top Defense Department officials — including Defense Secretary nominee Lloyd Austin — have deep ties to the private sector” by Sara Sirota and Lee Fang May 6, 2021 https://theintercept.com/2021/05/28/biden-pentagon-defense-contractors/

Lloyd Austin (Biden administration’s incumbent United States Secretary of Defense January 22, 2021-) and before him Mark Esper (Trump administration’s United States Secretary of Defense July 23, 2019 – November 9, 2020) had deep ties to multibillion-dollar defense contractor that Raytheon;

Patrick Shanahan (Acting United States Secretary of Defense January 1, 2019 – June 23, 2019) and James Mattis (United States Secretary of Defense January 20, 2017 – January 1, 2019), respectively, had been senior vice president at Boeing and board member of General Dynamics.

Ellen Lord (Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment February 1, 2018 – January 20, 2021), the former president and CEO of Textron Systems, oversaw the Pentagon’s weapon acquisitions.

Biden’s pick for Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, Ronald Moultrie (Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Incumbent June 1, 2021 –present), “comes from at least a dozen consulting firms and contractors, which he joined after holding positions in the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, and Navy.”

Biden’s nomination to lead the Air Force, Frank Kendall (United States Secretary of the Air Force Incumbent July 28, 2021 –present), was a vice president at Raytheon.

 

WANT USA

United States of America
Sectors of Hunger (“food insecurity”)

Every U.S. state, county, and congressional district

• United States Hungry (“food insecure”) Americans: one in eight
• United States of America’s households 2020 experiencing Hunger (“food insecurity”): one in four
• United States of America’s children uncertain about their next meal: 12 Million
• United States of America’s poor or low-income population: 140 million (estimated 40 percent of total)
• United States of America’s people in Poverty (2020) 37 million
  
• United States Homelessness stretches across every state and territory and affects every grouping of people.
  

Homelessness

During the pandemic no data were taken.

The latest figures as of January 2020 show “580,466 people” on the streets or in shelters in the United States of America because they have no homes.

Poverty:World Population Review

“Poverty is a state of being in which a person lacks the income (or other means of support) to reliably meet their basic personal needs, such as food, shelter, and clothing.”

“The poverty rate is the number of people (usually expressed as a percentage) in a given demographic group whose income falls below the poverty line.” https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/poverty-rate-by-country

Conditions in the USA parallel Conditions across the World.  

War making and the waste fraud and abuse that accompanies and compounds it impoverishes all nations and peoples

2022 finds “828 million” of the world’s people are languishing in hunger. Forty-nine million people in 49 countries are on the edge of famine.” Acute hunger or starvation euphemistically termed “food insecurity” has risen, in a three-year period, “from 135 million to 345 million.”

The World Food program in early December reports emergencies in these sovereign nations—all of which are suffering U.S. officials’ decreed weapons transfers and mercenary deployment, plunder, on-the-ground violence, meddling, destabilization, or hostile occupation

Afghanistan	Sahel
Democratic Republic of the Congo	Somalia
Ethiopia	Southern Madagascar
Haiti	South Sudan
Kenya	Sudan
Myanmar	Syria
North Eastern Nigeria	Ukraine
Northern Mozambique	Yemen

“The World Food Programme” is the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.

Neither Santa Claus nor deities can cure what man has done. 

War, aggression, conflict, major climate events, rising global recession, plunder and disproportionate taking, use and misuse of farmlands, agriculture, and resources—have resulted in food crises of “unprecedented proportions.”  Mendacious and militarist men (and women) persist taking more than their share. With impunity, they rape and waste, plunder and decimate the world's human, natural and material resources. Corrupt to the core, their waste, fraud and abuse is routinely covered up by their cohorts and funders, equally sharing in the taking.

The depravity of man is man's doing. Therefore, man must undo it: cure his sickness and rein in the manifestations of his depravity.

 

URL sources

World Population Review https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/poverty-rate-by-country
Move for Hunger https://moveforhunger.org/hunger-and-homelessness
 

World Food Program “2022: a year of unprecedented hunger,” https://www.wfp.org/global-hunger-crisis; https://www.wfp.org/who-we-are

Costs of War Project

“Profits of War: Corporate Beneficiaries of the Post-9/11 Pentagon Spending Surge” https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/ProfitsOfWar
“Why the United States should not exaggerate the threat posed by Russia or raise military spending as a result” https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2022/220819%20Goldstein%20One%20Pager-2.pdf
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2022/ThreatInflation
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2022/WartimeContractSpending
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/ProfitsOfWar
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2022/220819%20Goldstein%20One%20Pager-2.pdf

https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/S000510
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith_(Washington_politician)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act

OpenSecrets “All the numbers are for the 2021 - 2022 election cycle and based on Federal Election Commission data released electronically on 12/09/22 for Fundraising totals, Source of Funds and Total Raised vs Average, and on 10/28/22 for Top Contributors and Industries.”

https://www.opensecrets.org/personal-finances/adam-smith/net-worth?cid=N00007833
National Alliance to End Homelessness, https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/

Composition and Commentary excluding quoted material and individual images
Copyright © Carolyn LaDelle Bennett
Author’s links: www.BennettsAmericanEpitaph.com; https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett; https://insightbeyondtodaysnews.blogspot.com/; https://www.xlibris.com/en/search?query=Carolyn+LaDelle+Bennett;
https://www.xlibris.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/828689-epitaph