How Elites Will Create a New Class of Slaves | Whitney Webb |
US budget deal will accelerate savage cuts to public education
A wave of mass austerity is being planned and carried out against public education as part of the bipartisan plan to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. The agreement reached by President Biden and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, which is headed to a vote in the US House of Representatives today, includes far-reaching cuts to social spending. Discretionary non-military spending for the 2024 fiscal year will be frozen at present 2023 levels and a 1 percent cap imposed on any increases for the 2025 fiscal year.
The cuts are being prepared against the backdrop of the ongoing pandemic, which has claimed the lives of more than 1.1 million people in the US since 2020, including an estimated 2,200 children and 8,000 educators. Of the 96 percent of US children who were infected, an estimated 10 to 25 percent have Long COVID.
The same politicians who swore they were only concerned for the educational and emotional well-being of children when they were herding them back into infected classrooms are now taking an axe to public education.
The third and last federal stimulus bill that provided $122 billion in relief to the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund is set to expire in September 2024. As of April this year, most districts have already spent about three-quarters of ESSER funds, according to EdWeek Research Center. Under the bipartisan budget agreement, any unspent funds by school districts are set to be rescinded as part of the $30 billion in total unspent COVID relief funds to be clawed back by the federal government.
Given the impact of inflation, the cap on spending at 2023 levels in the new budget deal will mean a cut in billions of real dollars to already cash-strapped school districts.
A recent report by K-12 Dive indicates the potential scope of the sweeping cuts to education. Title I schools, a federal program which serves low-income students, would see an $850 million loss, and 60,000 teachers would be laid off. State grants under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) would be reduced by $3.1 billion, laying off 48,000 special education teachers. These cuts are all taking place amid historic teacher shortages in all categories (but especially special education) as a result of decades of bipartisan austerity and the devastation of the education system through mass infection.
The following is a brief survey of the cuts already planned or underway in major districts across the US.
Northeast
New York City is the largest school district in the US, with about 1 million students and almost 100,000 teachers and paraprofessionals and other staff. On top of major cuts last year, Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, proposed a 4 percent cut for most city agencies and a reduction of 3 percent for the Department of Education, along with a further $176 million in midyear education cuts.
Adam’s proposed education budget of $30.7 billion for the 2023-2024 fiscal year would be a reduction of $800 million. Budgets were cut in the fall in 77 percent of schools, for a total of $469 million. Eighty-six percent of schools had cuts totaling $893 million compared to last year, averaging about $655,000 each.
At least $700 million in the city’s recurring expenses, such as 3-K, the Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL), the arts, community schools and social workers, will evaporate with the expiration of ESSER funds.
The American Federation of Teachers-affiliated United Federation of Teachers has collaborated in the cuts by forcing through real wage cuts against educators.
In New Jersey, 157 school districts face budget cuts under Democratic Governor Phil Murphy’s proposed 2023-24 budget. Twenty-five of those districts would see cuts of over $1 million, including Jersey City, where state funding will be reduced by $50 million. Even if Jersey City is successful in applying for a one-time grant, it will only give two-thirds of the cuts back.
Montclair Public School District, which eliminated 31 teaching positions, is cutting 73 paraprofessional positions to balance a $5.5 million budget deficit. Hundreds of Montclair High School students walked out of school in protest of the cuts on May 18, calling for the reinstatement of laid off staff, among other demands.
Mid-Atlantic
In Maryland, Frederick County Public Schools is planning major cuts to close a more than $40 million budget deficit by the end of June, lowering its budget by $10.8 million. The Board of Education proposed to cut $15 million from the salary pool and eliminate a summer school program funded with around $2 million in COVID relief funds and serving 3,500 students. Three grades of the district’s online classes are to be removed due to $900,000 in cuts. Special education was revised down from $10.7 million in the initial budget proposal to $7.3 million.
Midwest
In Chicago, Illinois, the pseudo-left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-backed mayor, Brandon Johnson, has already floated cuts for the near future. During his campaign, Johnson, a former organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, said he would have to make some “tough decisions” when he was mayor, including telling the CTU there was no money to increase school funding. He asked, “Who is better able to deliver bad news to a friend than a friend?”
In Detroit, Michigan, at least 150 jobs at the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) are on the chopping block, with the AFT-affiliated Detroit Federation of Teachers and the DSA collaborating in the cuts. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s proposed budget would decrease school funding in real terms. DPSCD has budgeted according to Whitmer’s budget, which will lead to shortfalls as costs increase with inflation. According to Chalkbeat, the district has proposed eliminating “deans of culture, assistant principals, school culture facilitators, college transition advisers, and kindergarten paraprofessionals.”
West Coast
In California, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed $1.5 billion in cuts to education in the state. The Los Angeles Unified School District—the second largest school district in the US—is facing major cuts in school programs and employee salaries in anticipation of the decline in funding sources. The United Teachers Los Angeles forced through a below inflation tentative agreement, imposing the district’s austerity measures.
Oakland Unified School District is preparing cuts to close a $79 million deficit, having already approved initial layoffs of support staff. Recently, the school board brought school closures and mergers back on the table, despite years of protests by school staff, students and families. The recent strike in the district was shut down by the union to force through a pay cut, as in the 2019 strike.
Washington state has lost about 44,800 public school students since the 2019-20 school year, causing many school districts to consider plans for closing schools and cutting staff, salaries and the arts.
Seattle Public Schools faces a $131 million deficit in the 2023-24 school year and $92 million the following year. To close the budget gap, $33 million is being cut from the central office and $11.2 million from salaries for school-based staff. In addition to cutting programs, such as the Washington Middle School band program, the district is looking at closures of some of its 106 schools, particularly 30 that have enrollment under 300 students.
South
In Louisiana, East Baton Rouge Parish Public Schools has announced $15.2 million in proposed cuts directed at central office positions as well as contracts with outside vendors for the 2023-24 budget. The district is also increasing the student-to-teacher ratio from the already onerous 28-to-1 to 33-to-1 in grades 6-12. Eighteen teaching positions are being cut. Support staff in various areas such as Special Programs, Guidance Services and Information Technology will also be cut.
Teachers, though no other staff, will supposedly receive an 8 percent pay increase, and then a 12 percent increase over three years, for an insulting 5 percent per year. The district notes that it has not secured a sustainable funding source for these raises past this coming school year.
In Fort Bend, Texas, the district has reduced its budget by $40 million since 2021. Deputy Superintendent Steve Bassett told local news that if the district wants to provide a paltry 2 percent raise to its teachers next year, it will have to cut another $23 million elsewhere. Even that, he notes, “is not going to be enough to keep our teachers.” The Austin Independent School District faces a $54 million budget deficit after proposing a 7 percent raise for its teachers.
Multiple districts have pleaded with the state government to raise per pupil spending, which has been frozen since 2019. The Spring Branch Independent School District says it needs an additional $1,000 per student to maintain operations, while the state has only offered an increase of $50 per student.
The cost of war
The massive cuts in social spending are taking place as both parties spend trillions on war and bank bailouts. The budget deal exempts the military from a spending cap. It follows the enactment of Biden’s record $1 trillion war budget and his administration’s allotment of another $375 billion to arm Ukraine for the US proxy war against Russia.
This outcome is exactly what the WSWS warned of in the November 2020 article, “What would a Biden administration mean for public education?“ In it we warned:
[A] Biden administration will continue the austerity policies [of President Trump] against public education, under conditions of a severe economic crisis. … Under these conditions, any new programs or budgetary reforms will be rejected as “unfeasible” in light of Wall Street’s demands for mass austerity and state deficits.
This is the restructuring of public education along class lines, or rather the destruction of public education. The children of poor and working class people will be increasingly shut out of education, which will become ever more exclusive to the upper-middle class and ruling class.
At the same time, ever younger children are being pushed into the workforce to address the labor shortage caused by the ruling elite’s criminal response to the pandemic. At least eight states have already introduced bills this year to loosen child labor laws, and North Carolina is poised to approve a bill requiring all public high schools to create a three-year track to graduate. This will allow students to be pushed into the military or manual labor jobs earlier. In addition, several states have passed legislation to fund school choice and voucher programs.
Such attacks are taking place around the world and provoking opposition by educators in the US and internationally. There is no shortage of opposition to these attacks, as can be seen from Michigan educators seeking to protect students after a six-year-old child died from a “mystery illness;” from San Diego teachers who have been without a contract for over a year; from educators, parents and nurses who oppose the budget cuts in Detroit schools, and from countless other instances.
If workers are to halt these attacks and reverse the decades of destruction of public education, they must form rank-and-file committees that are independent of the union bureaucracies and the capitalist political parties. In opposition to war and austerity, educational workers should spearhead the fight for an industrial and political counteroffensive by the working class against capitalism and the grotesque social inequality it creates. Only in this way can the social right to a high-quality and free public education be guaranteed to all.
Protest erupts against demolition of collapsed building in Iowa while five residents remain unaccounted for
As Sunday night extended into the early hours of Monday in downtown Davenport, Iowa, people gathered around a partially collapsed century-old apartment building, protesting the city’s demolition plan. With individuals believed to be still trapped inside and five residents unaccounted for at the time of this writing, protesters shouted, “Find them first!” and “Move the bricks!”
Known as “The Davenport,” the apartment building at 324 Main Street, built in 1911, collapsed on Sunday evening at around 5 p.m. The city government had plans to initiate demolition by Tuesday morning, citing a safety risk and danger of imminent collapse.
News about the planned demolition circulated rapidly through social media, sparking protests. Initially, the city’s Democratic mayor, Mike Matson, a former Army Ranger, asserted that no additional individuals were thought to be trapped within the wreckage. However, on Monday afternoon, a rescue team found Lisa Brooks, a 45-year-old mother of three and nurse at Davenport’s local hospital, alive in the rubble. As of now, the authorities have reported no deaths.
The public outcry grew following the delayed discovery of Brooks, the ninth survivor, and protests spilled over into Tuesday. Residents feared that the scheduled demolition could seal the fate of potential survivors trapped within the wreckage.
Friends and family of the residents began to gather outside the building on Monday, desperate for news about loved ones who lived there. On Tuesday morning, city officials retracted their initial proposal, stating, “The actual timing for the physical obliteration of the property remains under consideration.”
Five individuals, including Ryan Hitchcock and Branden Colvin, remain unaccounted for and are believed to be inside the building.
Protests have intensified, with news outlets reporting that around 250 people had gathered near the building by 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday.
Davenport is one of the Quad Cities on the Iowa-Illinois border. Jade McGuire, a Moline, Illinois, resident, told the Quad City Times that she had joined fellow protesters for nine hours on Monday near the partially collapsed apartment building. By 6 a.m. Tuesday, she had returned to the heartrending scene.
The 29-year-old was drawn to the site by her personal experience with the grim realities of living in dilapidated rental accommodations. “I went two years without heat. It was so bad my partner got frostbite on her toes,” she said. “In the rental before that, we had eight gas leaks.”
“This also has a lot to do with poor people being forced to live in bad conditions,” she added. “I came here because I wanted to be a voice of reason.” She said renters often lack a say in the maintenance of their living spaces and their concerns are frequently dismissed.
Criticizing the police on the scene, she said, “[The police officers] were shaking their heads, smirking and lying to family members. If you’re going to be someone in higher authority, you have to be willing to answer questions. I know the officers can’t do that, but they were smirking and scoffing at people, who were crying.”
An employee at aluminum maker Arconic in nearby Riverdale, Iowa, told the WSWS: “I have seen it and have been following a few updates. I don’t know anyone personally involved, but some of my coworkers do. It’s a very bad deal.”
He expressed shock at the city’s moves to demolish the building on Tuesday, saying, “Yeah, that’s crazy. I’m sure there was some money pushing behind that idea.”
Multiple residents told WQAD News 8 that the building had deteriorated before its partial collapse.
The building had consistent water issues and cracks in the walls. “There is always something wrong with the water,” resident Toriana Hill said. “It’s always something wrong with the building, period.”
Yvette Williams, another resident, said, “When you first come into my apartment, on the right-hand side, before you go into the kitchen, there was a crack.”
Scott County records show that Davenport Hotel LLC, associated with Andrew Wold, owns the apartment building. Although city officials have been in contact with Wold, it remains unclear whether a criminal investigation will follow the disaster.
In response to the collapse, Republican Governor Kim Reynolds issued a disaster proclamation for Scott County. The proclamation activates the Iowa Individual Assistance Grant Program and the Disaster Case Management Program for affected residents, which provide grants of up to $5,000 for households with incomes up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level.
Beyond the physical collapse, the disaster has had a devastating personal impact. The collapse has destroyed entire homes filled with treasured possessions, leaving residents homeless.
The chilling images of the partially collapsed building, with personal belongings dangling precariously, evoke other structural failures such as the Surfside, Florida, condo collapse in 2021.
The residents of the beachfront building, located just north of Miami Beach, include retirees, middle-class families and vacation renters. Depending on how many people were in bed and how many survivors can be pulled from the rubble, the Champlain Towers disaster will rank as one of the deadliest residential building collapses in American history. The incident once again exposes the decrepit state of infrastructure in the United States and raises questions about how such a building could fall down in the wealthiest country in the world.
The Davenport disaster exposes once more the reality facing workers in the United States. As with the pandemic, in which profit was placed over lives, leading to over a million deaths in the United States and millions more worldwide, even the most basic of rights, including the right to live in a safe home, is under threat.
Biden Admin Unveils $1.5 Million Effort To 'Empower' Female Climate Activists in Northern Kenya
African nation's 'patriarchal' society means women aren't involved in fight against climate change, USAID argues
The Biden administration plans to spend $1.5 million in taxpayer funds on a program aimed at "empowering" female climate change activists in northern Kenya, documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.
President Joe Biden's U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on May 22 unveiled the funding opportunity, which is aimed at "empowering women to adapt to climate change in northern Kenya." Women in the area, the agency wrote in its notice, live in "traditionally patriarchal communities" and therefore lack the ability to steer the African nation's fight against climate change. As such, the agency is putting big money behind a program that will "empower women, improve their participation in decision making, and enhance adaptive capabilities to climate change."
The funding announcement comes roughly one year after USAID released its 2022-2030 climate strategy, which outlines a $150 billion "whole-of-Agency approach" to building an "equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions." As part of that approach, USAID pledged to help "women, youth, and other marginalized and/or underrepresented groups" increase their "meaningful participation and active leadership in climate action." The agency has since set aside millions of dollars to inspire and support overseas climate activists—in addition to its northern Kenya grant, USAID in March announced a program that will help disabled people in the Central Asian country of Tajikistan become "climate leaders," the Free Beacon reported.
Those efforts have prompted criticism from congressional Republicans, who argue that the spending is a waste of taxpayer funds. Florida Republican senator Rick Scott in March said American tax dollars "should be supporting Americans, not overseas climate activists," while Virginia Republican congressman Ben Cline hammered Biden for using public funds "to build an army of Green New Deal activists around the world." Still, USAID's northern Kenya grant shows the agency has no plans to slow its spending on foreign climate activism.
USAID said the grant will "help farmers and other vulnerable groups better prepare for climate impacts in a region hit hard by climate change."
"Women are an integral part of the solution to the climate crisis. They are typically responsible for securing the energy and water needs of their households, the managers of livestock or poultry, and the cooks in the family kitchens," an agency spokesperson said. "Women also often have fewer rights and economic opportunities in the places USAID works, and we work to ensure they benefit from U.S. assistance."
The agency’s climate-focused work in Kenya reflects the Biden administration's government-wide mandate to fight climate change. In January 2021, just one week after taking office, Biden issued an executive order calling on all government agencies to "combat the climate crisis with bold, progressive action." Federal agencies that have seemingly nothing to do with climate change responded by releasing "Climate Action Plans." Biden's Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, in August 2021 unveiled its climate plan, which pledges to respond to the "projected impacts of climate change" by making its buildings more "climate-resilient."
USAID, meanwhile, is not the only Biden administration agency working to spur climate activism abroad. Biden's State Department earlier this month announced a $50,000 effort to create a "climate action podcast" in India, the Free Beacon reported. The department hopes the podcast will inspire Indian "changemakers" to live "lifestyles with more sustainable choices" and "see the United States as a source of partnership and leadership in protecting the planet."
USAID's focus on climate change has come under former Obama administration official Samantha Power, whom Biden tapped to lead the agency in January 2021. Power, who in August 2021 declared that "climate change is sexist," has used her USAID climate work to travel the world—in March, for example, Power filmed a correspondence from a Vietnamese fish farm that she said is "already feeling the effects of climate change."
Power's climate emphasis has in some cases seemed to keep the Biden administration official from discussing more pressing humanitarian issues. In February, for example, Power met with Iraq's foreign minister. USAID's subsequent readout of the sitdown did not mention the words "ISIS" or "terrorism" but did praise Iraq for its work addressing the "impacts of climate change." Power's climate-related work in Tajikistan, meanwhile, comes as the former Soviet republic partners with China to build military bases and conduct joint military drills.
“I am fighting for my students and my program”: Outspoken educator targeted as Detroit school officials prepare mass layoffs
To join the fight to defend public education and oppose the cuts in Detroit and across the US, contact the Michigan Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee at educators@wsws.org, or fill out the form at the end of this article.
Mass layoffs and major cuts to programs loom over the largest school district in Michigan. In just two weeks, on June 13, the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) is scheduled to adopt a 2023-2024 annual budget that is $189 million less than last year.
Over a hundred jobs will be eliminated outright, according to Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, including paraeducators (teaching assistants), school culture facilitators, college transition advisers and even contract nurses. Some 200 other workers will be forced to take on new roles—if they are lucky—in order to keep their jobs.
Behind the backs of rank-and-file educators, DPSCD administrators are presently jockeying over the final details of the cuts. In some cases, individual school principals will have the final say in precisely what jobs and programs will stay and which ones will go.
Administrators have now begun notifying those who have been targeted for transfer or termination. Kay Thomas, the veteran music teacher at Bates Academy, is one of them.
A popular teacher with 22 years in the district, whose students have frequently gone on to win competitions, Kay is known for bringing in artists from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and other venues into her classroom to help train the students.
“I had an observation on April 5, and on April 11, I had a post-observation conference with the assistant principal in which she rated my teaching ‘highly effective,’” Kay told the WSWS.
“My students were able to go to competitions at the MSBOA (Michigan School Band and Orchestra Association) and although they had only started practicing their instruments three months before, won first and second place.
“I work with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO), and the Detroit Jazz Festival. Residency performers come in to help train the students. We also have a program with Michigan State University’s Community Music School, where students receive private lessons. They send an artist to assist the students to learn how to play jazz. Then there is a showcase of what they have been taught. We were the only orchestra performing at the Cliff Bell’s, a jazz club established in 1922 where many famous musicians have played.
“Ms. Marion Hayden, a world renowned Jazz double bassist, came in regularly and our school is the only one that produces double bass students because of this relationship. Renaissance, Cass Tech and the Detroit School of Arts get my students every year. I have a student at Harvard who wrote a letter to the district to support me.”
DPSCD officials even produced a promotional video about the Bates Academy with the principal praising Ms. Thomas’ music program.
But this didn’t stop her from being targeted. On April 12, the day after being rated “highly effective,” she explained, “the principal and the assistant principal called me into the office to say they had to let go of four positions and I was one of them.” Kay was told she would be transferred to another school at the principal’s request, but has not yet been told which school.
Kay believes administrators are targeting her because she has recently taken time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to care for her wheelchair-bound special needs 10-year-old son.
When she asked why she was being transferred, “I was told it was because I was absent a lot and they cannot get subs, and I am therefore ‘ineffective,’” Kay said. “I explained that they cannot hold my FMLA against me.”
Kay is a dues-paying member of the Detroit Federation of Teachers union (DFT). But when she spoke out to rally support for her music program and defend her job, DFT leaders stepped in on the side of the administration to silence her.
“[DFT president] Lakia [Wilson-Lumpkin] called me on April 27 and told me that she was getting calls that I was upsetting the staff and the students,” Kay explained, “and she said she was issuing me a courtesy verbal warning to stop telling the students that they were getting rid of me, or the principal will write me up. It’s inappropriate for her to call me about that!”
Kay also filed a grievance with the DFT, which she says union reps have ignored.
“The school administration is sabotaging the instrumental music program year after year. Parents have the right to know what is happening. They are getting rid of me and closing the music program at the end of the year. Vitti made the staff cuts public on April 22, so why am I being silenced for defending my job? Why are they denying me my First Amendment rights?”
The victimization of Kay Thomas by school administrators with the direct assistance of union leadership gives a preview of what educators across the district face as this school year comes to an end: massive job cuts, and a “union” that takes the side of administration against rank-and-file educators.
If a highly rated music teacher struggling to care for an ill child at home can be victimized with the collusion of her union, no job is safe!
In opposition to the treachery of the DFT bureaucracy, educators must uphold the principle “An injury to one is an injury to all,” and oppose the victimization of Thomas and the elimination of the music program. This must be combined with a fight against all layoffs and budget cuts and the demand for a massive increase in funding for public education.
Contracts for over 3,000 Detroit educators expire on June 30, just weeks after the budget deal is scheduled to go through. The DFT bureaucracy—which negotiated the contract that ends during summer when teachers have no leverage—is opposed to any fight. That is why rank-and-file educators must take the conduct of this struggle in their own hands.
Kay and other educators attended an emergency meeting on May 20, organized by the Michigan Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee (MERFSC) to rally opposition to the looming layoffs and to fight for safe schools in the wake of the death of Marcus Garvey Academy kindergartener Jimari Williams.
“I am not just fighting for my position,” Kay told the meeting. “I am fighting for my students and my program. You can’t just take music away.”
The MERFSC is totally independent of the union apparatus and fights for a rank-and-file rebellion of educators against the combined attacks of the school board and the union bureaucracy. The meeting emphasized the need to link up Detroit teachers with autoworkers, who like teachers also face mass layoffs and a corrupt union apparatus. The United Auto Workers contracts at the Big Three autoworkers in Detroit and across the country expire in September.
The MERFSC is part of the International Workers’ Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), a new and growing network of committees that link up workers across all industries and countries, controlled by workers on the shop floor and teachers in the classroom.
The job and program cuts in the Detroit schools correspond with the ending of federal “COVID-19 relief” funds allocated through the American Rescue Plan Act. As such, they are part of an escalating nationwide wave of school budget cuts.
In New York City Public Schools, the largest district in the US, hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts were implemented at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year, and Democratic Mayor Eric Adams has called for nearly $1 billion in additional cuts. In Sweetwater Public Schools in the San Diego area, at least 214 teachers on temporary contracts will be let go at the end of the year. Like Detroit, each of these districts are in cities and states run by both Democratic Party mayors and governors who are implementing austerity measures even as the Biden administration finds trillions for bank bailouts and war.
Among rank-and-file educators and parents, there is enormous opposition to the attack on public education everywhere. In Grosse Pointe Public Schools, near Detroit, where $5 million in cuts are planned for next school year, there was a nine-hour long school board meeting on May 22, with four hours of public comment from parents and others opposing the cuts.
The defense of public education requires a massive expansion of funding. Billions should be spent to hire educators by the thousands, in addition to counselors, mental health professionals, school nurses and paraeducators of all kinds. All educators and school workers should be given substantial raises to meet the soaring cost of inflation. Academic programs should be expanded and improved. Schools should be modernized with appropriate ventilation, HEPA filters and other scientific protections against the spread of diseases like COVID-19 and H. influenza.
To fight for this, contact the Michigan Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee at educators@wsws.org, or fill out the form below.
Or, how about the $17,000,000 (MILLION) spent on unused hotel rooms for illegal immigrants (DHS) and the $168,000,000 spent to help illegal immigrants avoid deportation (DHS)?
Congressional spendaholics must be stopped
The President and many members of Congress want to keep borrowing money and don’t seem to care about whether their expenditures are essential or non-essential, nor do they seem to care about the very real and perilous ramifications of overspending.
From 2012–2022, interest payments on debt held by the public totaled $3,593 billion; interest payments on intragovernmental debt holdings totaled $1,919 billion. The grand total in interest payments amounted to a hefty $5,512 billion.
Who is benefitting from owning our debt?
The top foreign owners of U.S. National Debt are Japan, China, UK, Belgium and Luxembourg. Other holders of our debt include state and local governments, pension funds, insurance companies, U.S. banks, mutual funds, and savings bonds investors. Intragovernmental debt is held by various agencies and entities within the U.S. government.
In addition to wasting money on interest payments, Congress has been lax about government waste and fraud, and their spending on non-essential projects during a time when we should be belt-tightening is inexplicable. Fortunately, all this waste hasn’t gotten by Senator Rand Paul, who has been tracking all the wasteful spending and reports on it annually. Every citizen should read his annual Festivus report at the following link.
In the report, Senator Paul details a whopping $482,276,543,907 of waste in 2022.
How do you think the over half a million homeless Americans would feel about our spending $2,100,000 to encourage Ethiopians to wear shoes (NIH)? $50,000,000 to boost the Tunisia travel sector during COVID-19 (USAID)? $1,700,000,000 to maintain 77,000 empty Federal buildings (GSA)? Or, how about the $17,000,000 spent on unused hotel rooms for illegal immigrants (DHS) and the $168,000,000 spent to help illegal immigrants avoid deportation (DHS)?
I’m not homeless, but it makes me furious!
What do you think the millions of food-insecure would think about our spending $210,069,000 on basic education projects in Jordan (USAID); $3,000,000 to construct a Gandhi museum, or $1,100,000 for training mice to binge drink alcohol (NIH)?
How do you feel about the billions wasted that could have been used in your community to replace a dangerous bridge, build roads, clean up your water supply (thinking of you, Flint, MI), and so on?
Are our representatives inept or stupid, or do they have nefarious motive? I can’t decide, but it’s time to take away the Congressional credit card until they can be held accountable and stop wasting tax money.
Personally, I don’t mind paying taxes to live in our country, but I just don’t like how my tax dollars are squandered. I worked too hard to have it thrown it away.
If we are of a similar mindset, then please, contact your representatives in Congress today and tell them to start paying down our debt and live within our means. Accruing all this debt is dangerous to our survival and unjustifiable.
Graphic credit: BlueTailLizard
Or, how about the $17,000,000 spent on unused hotel rooms for illegal immigrants (DHS) and the $168,000,000 spent to help illegal immigrants avoid deportation (DHS)?
rosecutors Seek Death Penalty Against MS-13 Gang Member Charged with Murdering Uber Eats Driver
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against an MS-13 gang member who had recently been released from prison on parole, charged with murdering an Uber Eats driver in a case that police have called “demonic.”
Oscar Solis, a 30-year-old MS-13 Gang member, was arrested last month for allegedly murdering and dismembering 59-year-old Randall Cooke, a husband and stepfather, as he was delivering food to the gang member’s home in his final delivery for the night, Breitbart News reported at the time.
This month, Solis pleaded not guilty to murdering and dismembering Cooke, even as prosecutors said the gang member stabbed the Uber Eats driver 35 times.
Prosecutors confirmed they will seek the death penalty against Solis.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Pasco County State Attorney Bruce Bartlett told the Tampa Bay Times. “I cannot focus on how an individual can be so vile. I cannot for the life of me believe he was so nonchalant in what he did.”
Randall Cooke, murdered allegedly by an MS-13 Gang member, alongside his wife Kathy whom he married in 2020. (Photo via Facebook)
According to the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office, on April 19, Cooke was texting with his wife, Kathy, whom he married in 2020, on the night of his murder. Cooke had one final Uber Eats delivery to make, a job he got to support his wife and stepdaughters’ dreams of living oceanside.
Police said security camera footage shows Cooke making the delivery at Solis’s residence before the camera shuts off. From there, police believe Solis yanked Cooke inside the home, murdered him, dismembered his body, and then stuffed his remains in trash bags, which he later took out to garbage cans with another suspect.
Solis had been recently released on parole from prison in January of this year in Indiana and then moved to Holiday and failed to register as a convicted felon — a violation of his parole.
Solis’s lengthy criminal record includes stabbing a fellow prison inmate multiple times, aggravated battery, multiple burglary convictions, drug offenses, resisting law enforcement, and assaulting prison staff.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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