INTRODUCTION

This is what we've come to.  Seventy years of hollowing out our manufacturing sector to support the military sector instead.  Started in the name of the Cold War and perpetuated with the Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq now in the name of terror.  Endless backfires overseas from CIA operations gone bad.  Now our police have become an occupying army in our cities.

MICHAEL BROWN AND SAINT LOUIS

Saint Louis proudly rose to be the #1 per capita military spending city of the top 25 metro areas as the manufacturer of the F-15, the best fighter plane in the world during the 1991 Gulf War.  But militarization causes crime problems and the empire attitude of power and control.  The Saint Louis County former police chief learned his anti-terrorism from the Israelis, and the militarized response to the protest of the Michael Brown execution by a policeman embarrassed even Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.  So on August 14, 2014 one hundred US cities held vigils and moments of silence against police overreactions like this one and many others in recent years or months.  Here in Madison, Wisconsin, I called a rally and over 100 people showed up along with three TV cameras and a Capital Times story.  We raised $540 for the funeral expenses of Michael Brown.  Military spending and murder rates are twice as high for the Southern militarized states including civil war Border States and former slave states like Missouri.  But even low military low crime Madison has had three white men shot dead by police under questionable circumstances in the last year.

HOMICIDES AND THE MILITARY

Among the developed countries, the higher the military spending rate the higher the homicide rates.  So when the Cold War ended in 1991, the cutting in half of the military spending share of the economy cut our murder and crime rates in half as well.  But political trends can often run counter to economic ones.  Nixon's war on drugs started the militarization of our police forces, then we doubled our total prisoners from 1 million in 1990 to 2 million in 2000, exactly when crime and the unemployment rates were dropping.  And in 1997 the 1033 program began offering military hardware to our civilian police forces.  But the big push came after the controlled demolition of three skyscrapers in Manhattan on September 11, 2001, blamed on terrorist commandeered airplanes despite the fact that 1700 degree kerosene aircraft fuel fires cannot melt steel that melts at 2600 degrees.  Despite the fact that freefall collapse would have left a pile of debris fifteen stories high, not the three stories of actual debris that resulted.  Traces of the CIA nano-thermite explosive were everywhere according to peer reviewed papers.  The truth is the first casualty in war.

International graph of murder and the military:  https://www.academia.edu/4862977/CRIME_and_the_Military

 

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

The agencies making up homeland security had budgets averaging $15 billion a year in the three years from 2000-2002, doubling immediately on forming the new agency to an average of  $32 billion the next three years 2003-2005.  That first doubling began the militarization of police forces in earnest.  Then with the NSA spying on all our emails and phones, homeland security jumped up to $69 billion in 2006, with a five year average of $45 billion from 2007 to 2011.  Thanks to all this money armored vehicles started to become standard in small communities of 70,000 people or so.

MILITARY BUILDUP

The military budget increased 50 percent in the three years after 9-11-01, explaining 1.7 million of the 2.8 million manufacturing jobs lost from September 2001 to August 2003.  Trade treaties and outsourcing explain the other 1 million jobs lost.  This military buildup distorted the growth rates around the country, as real estate prices soured in the military buildup states like Connecticut, Texas, California, and Florida.  These later became the leading mortgage fraud states in the coming debacle.  Much later, the military buildup rate of increase suddenly doubled in 2008 as the money for the 2007 Iraq surge finally caught up with the troop activity.  This military burden cracked the fragile fraudulent mortgage market as the unemployment rates steadily increased that year peaking in mid 2009.  Economists have calculated the recession beginning in December 2007.  As the steam evaporated from the overheated military buildup economy, the housing market crashes, especially in the military buildup states.

Detail on the military buildup:

http://www.realeconomy.com/Military%20Econ.pdf