If we had people who understood violence in places of legislation, we would be less likely to legislate violence to the world from the Halls of Congress. I want to work towards peace, as aggressively as our current Representatives work towards war.
The Department of Defense failed its 6th consecutive audit, unable to account for 61% of $3.5 trillion. The American taxpayers fund 73% of the world’s authoritarian dictatorships. We have 1.3 million active-duty troops with 171,736 deployed across 178 countries.
Article 1 Section 8 Clause 11 of the Constitution gives Congress the ability to declare war. The last time Congress declared war was 1942. The United States backed over 80 coups from 1946 to 2001. Since 2000, America backed coups in 10 more countries, plus two times each in Venezuela and Syria. Currently, America is engaged in 15 conflicts.
Since 2022, hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives in Ukraine and Russia. We’re supposed to feel better about the war because they’re not American and we send money and weapons? This is not compassion.
The only thing more dangerous than being an enemy of America, is being an ally. We seem to have learned nothing from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan where we left behind $7B in operable military equipment in the hands of the Taliban.
In 1961, President General Eisenhower warned of The Military Industrial Complex. Another Veteran experienced the same system during World War I. In 1935, General Smedley Butler traveled the country delivering a speech on his short book entitled “War is a Racket”.
A plot had been orchestrated to overthrow President FDR. Big business wanted to establish an authoritarian government in America. General Smedley Butler blew the whistle on The Business Coup and testified before Congress.
In “New Confessions of an Economic Hitman” John Perkins highlights how our government uses loaded contracts and developmental aid to bankrupt countries and take control of their government and natural resources.
I couldn’t help but think the same thing had been done in America.
There are two ways to take over a country; monetarily or militarily. Traditionally, we think of war waged with a military campaign. However, people and countries are often taken over with economics and contracts enforced by courts at the point of a gun.
When a country is taken over, the education system becomes an indoctrination system. People are kept mentally, spiritually, and financially bankrupt. They do not own their homes, the land they sit on, or their businesses.
Local farming and water infrastructure is attacked. Food is controlled. Resources are taken over, made scarce, and rationed back to the people. To qualm unrest people are medicated and incarcerated, media controls the narrative, and speech is limited.
Does this sound familiar?
Corporate interests are taking over farming throughout the world. Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe. Iran is the breadbasket of The Middle East. California is the breadbasket of America.
For decades, California farmers lined the 5-freeway with signs stating, “Food Grows Where Water Flows”. California’s water infrastructure is often developed on the public dollar and then water rights are sold to private interests.
In San Bernardino County, Nestle paid the Forest Service $2,100 for 2.3 million gallons of water per year. The permit expired in 1988 but Nestle continued bottling millions of gallons of water, averaging 25 times what their permit allotted annually. Last month, the US Forest Service ordered BlueTriton Brands to cease and for all equipment to be removed.
In Kern County, The Resnick’s Wonderful Company was highlighted by National Geographic in a piece entitled “Water & Power; A California Heist”. The Resnicks were able to privatize public water in a closed-door meeting in Monterrey. The Resnicks are now the biggest farmers in California and use 150 billion gallons of water every year.
Vice President Harris said “For years and generations, wars have been fought over oil. In a short matter of time, they will be fought over water.” We do not need to fight over resources, only manage what is abundantly at our fingertips.
We have oil in Kern County, lithium in the Salton Sea, uranium in Kern County and Death Valley, uranium oxide in Calaveras, San Bernardino, and Madera Counties, and an 840-mile coastline. We have everything we need in the Golden State.
It’s amazing what can be accomplished when we take systems designed for war and repurpose them for peace. During the fall of the Soviet Union MIT Physicist Thomas Neff designed the program Megatons to Megawatts which helped America purchase 20,000 nuclear warheads from Russia to convert into 20 years of American power.
From 1993 to 2013, 10% of all US power came from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads for the cost of $17 billion. The US has 5,244 nuclear warheads, 1,536 are scheduled to bedismantled. There are about 12,100 nukes worldwide, 90% are in possession of the United States and Russia. If you’re curious, it would take about 400 to destroy the world.
Why not repurpose destructive energy for good? This is quintessential political alchemy.
Unfortunately, the United States privatized uranium in the Energy Policy Act of 1992. This year President Biden sent another $2.7 billion in subsidies to private companies, making it appear the US will no longer purchase uranium from Russia.
There are four steps to converting uranium, the US outsources all but fabrication. Russia controls 46% of enrichment and 38% of conversion. The only two nuclear enrichment facilities in the US were shut down in 2013. America is dependent on Russia due to public funds subsidizing private companies’ incapable of delivering solutions.
The largest uranium deposits in America are in Wyoming. These deposits are owned by several companies, the largest owner is Uranium Energy Corps. Amongst their largest shareholders are BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard.
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The same corporations who control private military contracting companies, control our nuclear energy, natural resources, food, medicine, healthcare, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Main Street, and are expected to own 40% of the homes in our neighborhoods by 2030.
What could go wrong?
America is the richest country in the world with 30.8% of the world’s total wealth. California is the richest state in the country holding 17% of all US wealth. Yet the people are treated like Russian serfs, wage slaves, debt slaves, and sharecroppers.
The government makes public investment, subsidizes corporations, privatizes gains, and then rations healthcare, education, energy, water, and safety. Government is a business; it should have products. Those products should yield dividends to pay for social systems.
Economic Nationalism is a form of self-love and self-care for our nation and its people. It is time to put American people first. Our problems are here but so are the solutions. We must get our house in order. Starting with The House of Representatives on November 5th.
David Serpa is a USMC combat veteran running for Congress. He served as a machine gunner with the 1st Battalion 1st Marines and deployed to the Helmand River Valley of Afghanistan in 2012.