U.S. tax-payers’ aid to Ukraine $67.5 billion – Taiwan will be the next beneficiary

Nothing But Welfare Queens: American Aid to Zelensky and Tsai Ing-wen

Libertarian Institute, by Patrick Macfarlane | Oct 13, 2022,

As it pertains to the American public, Ukraine’s response to the Russian invasion can be summed up with two words: “Zelensky demands.”

To date, Washington elites and their politicians have been happy to provide—at public expense—lining their own pockets in the process.

As of this writing, U.S. aid for Ukraine has reached approximately $67.5 billion, a figure greater than Russia’s entire 2021 military budget. According to the State Department, this support includes $15.2 billion in direct military assistance. The support comes although 60-70% of lethal aid never reaches the front lines, according to a now-redacted CBS interview with on-the-ground activists.

Not only is the American taxpayer supporting much of the Ukrainian military, it is also supporting the Ukrainian government. The same working class Americans who were deemed “nonessential” in 2020—who saw their businesses shuttered and burned down—now have to pay entitlement programs both at home and in Ukraine. As of September 30, 2022, the U.S. has provided $13 billion in “direct budget support,” which is ostensibly used;

…to pay government salaries, meet pension obligations, maintain hospitals and schools, and protect critical infrastructure[,] support continuity operations at the national, regional, and local levels, support for [sic] the health sector, agricultural production, civil society, [and enable] programs to hold Russia and its forces accountable for their actions in Ukraine.

Although American taxpayers have already matched Russia’s 2021 military budget, Ukrainian president Vlodomyr Zelensky only demands more. During a Tuesday phone call, President Biden reviewed Washington’s latest $625 million dole to Zelensky. It includes, inter alia, 4 additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), 16 155mm Howitzers, 75,000 155 mm artillery rounds, 500 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds, 16 105mm Howitzers, 30,000 120 mm mortar rounds, and 200 MaxxPro Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles.

This latest boon notwithstanding, in the same phone call, Zelensky urged Biden to provide Ukraine with air defense systems that would be used to shoot down Russian planes.

………………… Republicans like Taylor-Greene, Gaetz, and Hawley understand the cost of empire: endless warfare, a decaying homefront, and a beclowned international reputation. They understand that a war between the U.S. and Russia will be unlike anything Americans have ever experienced. Although they cloak their condemnation of war with Russia in criticism of “weak Joe Biden,” they understand it is the West that provoked this conflict and seeks to prolong it “to the last Ukrainian.” They know that the conflict—even if it remains by-proxy—is a cost war-weary working class Americans do not want and cannot afford.

They must, then, realize that the same Washington elites waxing American fat off the Ukraine conflict are cultivating Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen as a Zelensky in-waiting.

Although U.S. military aid to Taiwan traditionally comes by way of arms sales, that may soon change. Senators Bob Menendez and Lindsey Graham have introduced the Taiwan Policy Act—a piece of legislation that would radically overhaul Sino-American relations.

In short, “the Taiwan Policy Act would give Taiwan $6.5 billion in military aid, give the island the benefits of being a ‘major non-NATO ally,’ expedite arms sales to Taipei, and require sanction in the event of Chinese aggression.” The bill would also authorize up to $2 billion in loans to Taiwan.

On September 14, the bill passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Rather than passing it as a standalone piece of legislation, the bill’s supporters currently seek to incorporate “much” of the bill into the $817 billion 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. As of Wednesday, it is not clear exactly which provisions would be incorporated.

As above noted, the Taiwan Policy Act was introduced in the Senate on June 16, 2022 by Senators Bob Menendez and Lindsey Graham. Both Menendez and Graham are ardent supporters of Ukraine and Zelensky.

Graham met with Zelensky in July to hand deliver a plaque of his proposed Senate resolution to designate Russia as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. Since the Russian invasion, Graham has made regular appearances on Fox News whipping up lethal aid for Ukraine while calling for regime change in Moscow.

Menendez, as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has spearheaded Washington’s Ukraine support. In January, he began and continues to lead the comprehensive U.S. sanctions campaign against Russia. In March, Menendez lambasted Congressional Republicans, mainly Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), for undermining Ukraine aid. In May, Menendez, among others, introduced a Senate resolution approving the bids of Finland and Sweden to join NATO (something Josh Hawley correctly opposed).

On June 23 Menendez specifically invoked the 75th anniversary of the Marshall Plan to stoke support for Ukraine, but the Marshall Plan came after WWII, not during it, when similar support further involves the U.S. in the conflict.

Republicans opposing U.S. support for Ukraine should take note that both Menendez and Graham have repeatedly met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to pledge American support for Taiwan. In their latest visit on April 15, 2022, president Ing-wen called Lindsey Graham a “pillar of strength for Taiwan in the U.S. Congress” and dubbed Menendez one of Taiwan’s “staunchest friends.”

In his meeting remarks, Graham likened U.S. support for Ukraine to its support for Taiwan, saying:……………………………………………….

Menendez echoed Graham’s sentiment in his own remarks, shedding light on Washington’s Ukrainian plans for Taiwan:…………………..

Menendez followed up these remarks with an op-ed in The New York Times, stating:…………………………

These remarks should terrify working class Americans. Essentially, Menendez is proposing a redoubling of military support for Taiwan—the same “preventive policy” which played a large role in provoking Putin to invade Ukraine. We simply cannot afford it.

The above-named Congressional Republicans were right to oppose aid to Ukraine. For those same reasons, they should oppose adding Tsai Ing-wen to the same dole as the entitled and ungrateful Zelensky. Like Rand Paul, they should oppose the Taiwan Policy Act in all its forms.  https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/nothing-but-welfare-queens-american-aid-to-zelensky-and-tsai-ing-wen/

October 14, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA | 6 Comments

Joshua Frank’s book Atomic Days shows the nuclear industry’s only real role – it is essential for the USA’s ‘permanent war economy’

As the atomic energy business is increasingly priced out of the electricity market by wind, solar, batteries, and increased efficiency and conservation, we will likely see the nuclear power industry increasingly admitting to what it always was — a necessary servant of the nuclear weapons industry.

Nuclear Power Isn’t Clean — It Creates Hellish Wastelands of Radioactive Sewage, Harvey Wasserman, Truthout October 12, 2022,

“……………………………..To put the nuclear power industry in a larger context, Frank guides us through the “permanent war economy” birthed during WWII, and discusses Franklin Roosevelt’s ambivalent relations with the “Malefactors of Great Wealth” who often stood in the way of making the U.S. the “Arsenal of Democracy,” and who once even plotted to kill him.

With the decision to build an A-Bomb, the giant Bechtel Corporation used the 120-square-mile reservation at Hanford to produce 103.5 metric tons of plutonium, perhaps the deadliest substance known to humanity.

But there was no effective solution for what might happen to the place in the aftermath. The Waste Treatment Plant meant to “vitrify” rad wastes into glass began construction in 2002, with plans to open in 2011. It has become, in both cost and area, “the largest single construction operation taking place anywhere in the United States,” now with an estimated price tag of $41 billion and a projected opening in 2036.

With “a string of bungled jobs under its belt,” Bechtel’s failed “Big Dig” in Boston — a much-vaunted tunnel from Logan Airport to downtown — reflected its work at Hanford when a collapse killed a 39-year-old woman and resulted in $357.1 million settlement exempting management from criminal prosecution.

As the U.S.’s fourth-largest privately held company, Bechtel spending $1.8 million on D.C. lobbying in 2019-20 was par for the course. The payback, Frank writes, comes in the tragic diseases suffered by Hanford workers like Abe Garza and Lawrence Rouse, usually amid terse, well-funded official denials. Researchers like Karen Wetterhahn and veterans like Victor Skaar have joined Vietnam victims of Agent Orange in being victimized by exposures they were repeatedly assured were “safe.” Whistleblowers like Ed Bricker were even subjected to intense spying and sabotage by close associates he was deceived into accepting as friends.

Meanwhile activists like Russell Jim of the Yakama Tribe began to force “an immeasurable amount of transparency” around the Hanford disaster. Their decades of hardcore community organizing came with a growing demand for accountability that has changed the political atmosphere surrounding the cleanup.

The debate has carried into the use of commercial atomic power.

Because of Hanford’s nuclear presence, five atomic reactors were constructed in Washington State, promising electricity that would be “too cheap to meter.”

But like the soaring costs of plutonium production and clean-up, the Washington Public Power System plunged into the biggest public bankruptcy in U.S. history, due to massive delays and cost overruns. Only one of the nukes now operates.

Sadly, some self-proclaimed climate activists have fallen into the atomic pit, arguing that in the face of the acute threat of climate change, nuclear power should be pursued as a way to lower emissions.

But they all ignore the big lesson Joshua Frank teaches us about Hanford: All the rhetoric in the world can’t cover for the physical realities of dealing with atomic radiation. And atomic fires burning at 571 degrees Fahrenheit will never cool the planet. The mines, the mills, the fuel fabrication, the reactors themselves, the waste dumps, all that horrendous multitrillion-dollar paraphernalia — they together comprise the most lethal and expensive technological failure in human history.

Many reactor promoters have long vehemently denied any connection between their “peaceful atom” and the scourge of war, but anti-nuclear activists have exposed the falsity of those claims. For example, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a British advocacy organization that opposes both nuclear weapons and the building of new nuclear power facilities, writes:

The civil nuclear power industry grew out of the atomic bomb programme in the 1940s and the 1950s. In Britain, the civil nuclear power programme was deliberately used as a cover for military activities…. The development of both the nuclear weapons and nuclear power industries is mutually beneficial. Scientists from Sussex University confirmed this once again in 2017, stating that the government is using the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to subsidise Trident, Britain’s nuclear weapons system.

As the atomic energy business is increasingly priced out of the electricity market by wind, solar, batteries, and increased efficiency and conservation, we will likely see the nuclear power industry increasingly admitting to what it always was — a necessary servant of the nuclear weapons industry.

Fittingly, the only future for atomic reactors will be as a bottomless pit for ecological suicide and massive public subsidies — exactly like Hanford.

Indeed, for readers truly interested in the future of atomic energy, take a good look at how it plays in Joshua Frank’s Atomic Days. Then ask how soon we can cover the whole damn place with solar panels.  https://truthout.org/articles/nuclear-power-isnt-clean-it-creates-hellish-wastelands-of-radioactive-sewage/

October 12, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Georgia nuclear plant’s cost now forecast to top $30 billion

 https://www.gpb.org/news/2022/05/09/georgia-nuclear-plants-cost-now-forecast-top-30-billion?fbclid=IwAR3OXo4tKdYJgJPMQxXjl_l4VnbN1cFZkTtiYE7KZ-NEPngOb5_FnB_GpRY May 9, 2022 Associated Press,

A nuclear power plant being built in Georgia is now projected to cost its owners more than $30 billion.

A financial report from one of the owners on Friday clearly pushed the cost of Plant Vogtle near Augusta past that milestone, bringing its total cost to $30.34 billion.

That amount doesn’t count the $3.68 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to the owners after going bankrupt, which would bring total spending to more than $34 billion.

Vogtle is the only nuclear plant under construction in the United States, and its costs could deter other utilities from building such plants, even though they generate electricity without releasing climate-changing carbon emissions.

The latest increase in the budget, by the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia, wasn’t a surprise after lead owner Georgia Power Co. announced delays and $920 million in overruns on March 3. Georgia Power’s costs only cover the 45.7% of the plant it owns, meaning that the cooperatives and municipal utilities that own the majority of the two-reactor project later update their financial projections as well.

MEAG, which owns 22.7% of Vogtle and provides power to city-owned utilities, raised its total cost forecast, including capital spending and borrowing costs, to $7.8 billion from the previous level of $7.5 billion.

Oglethorpe Power Corp., which provides power to 38 cooperatives in Georgia, owns 30% of Vogtle. In March bumped up its cost projects by $250 million to $8.5 billion.

The city of Dalton, which owns 1.6%, estimated its cost at $240 million in 2021. It hasn’t released a public update.

The municipal utility in Jacksonville, Florida, as well as some other municipal utilities and cooperatives in Florida and Alabama are obligated to buy power from the plant.

When approved in 2012, the third and fourth reactors were estimated to cost $14 billion, with the first electricity being generated in 2016. Now the third reactor is set to begin operation in March 2023, and the fourth reactor is set to begin operation in December 2023.

Atlanta-based Southern Co., which owns Georgia Power, has been charging increasing shares of its cost overruns as shareholder losses, saying it’s unlikely that the Georgia Public Service Commission will approve adding amounts to the bills of Georgia Power’s 2.6 million customers. But Oglethorpe, MEAG and Dalton don’t have shareholders, meaning customers are fully exposed to overruns.

Georgia Power’s customers, as well as some Oglethorpe customers, are already paying the costs of Vogtle.

To protect themselves, the other owners signed an agreement with Georgia Power in 2018 specifying that if costs reach a certain point, the other owners can choose to freeze their costs at that level. In exchange for paying more of the costs, Georgia Power would own a larger share of the reactors.

Oglethorpe wants to freeze its costs at $8.1 billion, selling 2% of the reactor to Georgia Power in exchange for Georgia Power paying $400 million more in costs. MEAG also said Friday it wants to freeze its costs, but didn’t say how much it sought to shift to Georgia Power.

Southern has acknowledged it will have to pay at least $440 million more to cover what would have been other owners’ costs, and has said another $460 million is in dispute.

Georgia Power is disputing the cost threshold at which it must shoulder more of the burden and saying it shouldn’t have to pay the other owners’ share of extra costs stemming from COVID-19. The owners are in talks aimed at resolving their disagreements.

“Cost sharing is imminent, however, until the parties reach agreement, Oglethorpe will continue to pay its full share of the construction costs as billed by Georgia Power, but will do so under contractual protest,” Oglethorpe CEO Mike Smith said in March.

All the owners did vote to continue construction on Feb. 25. Also, the owners report that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March completed a follow-up inspection of wiring problems at the third reactor and signed off that problems it identified in November had been fixed, returning the reactor to its less intensive baseline inspection regime.

October 12, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment