RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Senate Judiciary Committee has launched an investigation into the Uranium One bribery case. It will be asking several federal agencies to disclose if they knew the FBI had uncovered corruption before the Obama administration approved the suspect uranium deal with Moscow in 2010.

According to The Hill, the committee has already “sent requests for information to 10 federal agencies involved in the Russian uranium approvals.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the Judiciary Committee chairman, wrote in the letters that he no longer buys the Obama administration’s 2015 “assurances” that there was no basis to block the deal.

Said Grassley in a letter to Homeland Security last week:

I am not convinced by these assurances. … The sale of Uranium One resulted in a Russian government takeover of a significant portion of U.S. uranium mining capacity. In light of that fact, very serious questions remain about the basis for the finding that this transaction did not threaten to impair U.S. national security. CONTINUE AT SITE

The policy take-away from President Trump’s remarks last night at the Heritage Foundation centered around tax cuts. The president likes ‘em, and if he has his way (and on this issue, I think he will), we will see a sharp cut to the corporate tax rate (from 35 percent to 20 percent), a simplification and reduction of the individual tax rate, and a big expansion of the individual exemption (to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples filing jointly).

There is a certain kind of politician who likes high taxes, partly because he likes big government, which is the natural result of high taxes, partly because he wants most people (not his tribe, of course) to have as little money as possible. The poorer people are, the more dependent they are. Politicians of a certain stripe want people to be dependent on the government, i.e., on them and the instruments they control.

To my mind, that unholy dialectic between political power and an agenda of enforced dependency is one of the most despicable and destructive coefficients of the administrative state. It is despicable because it deploys power for personal aggrandizement under the camouflage of helping (i.e., pretending to help) others (the “Great Society,” etc.). It is destructive because its end is the eclipse of liberty for the sake of expanding and institutionalizing the apparatus of bureaucracy (and the perquisites of the bureaucrats running it).

So I applaud the president’s plan to cut taxes and allow Americans to keep a bit more of what after all is their own money. (We tend to forget this.)

But although taxes formed the official centerpiece of the president’s speech last night, and though I liked what he said about taxes, I thought the most impressive part of the speech was its rhetorical setting. The occasion was a meeting of Heritage Foundation supporters. Accordingly, President Trump began by talking about the importance of embracing our history, our heritage. “For America to have CONFIDENCE in our future, we must have PRIDE in our HISTORY.”

I think that is right, and I think it is worth pondering each of the three stressed words.

One of the great liabilities of so-called identity politics is that, ironically, it acts as a solvent on shared cultural confidence. The irony flows from the fact that identity politics is supposed to leave its partisans with an enhanced sense of self-worth and solidarity but in fact it tends to isolate them in rancid grievance ghettos.

Along the way last night, the president spoke up for preserving our heritage, our history, an enterprise that encompasses not just the preservation of monuments and other historical markers that commemorate our past, but also extends to the spiritual decorum of civic respect: standing for the national anthem, for example, or (since this multiethnic country was and is, as Samuel Huntington observed, a country of “Anglo-Protestant” values) wishing people “Merry Christmas” in due season.
Here’s my question: in what does the alleged “degradation” consist? That Donald Trump tweets?
Bill Kristol

✔ @BillKristol

I like Gorsuch, decertifying Iran and leaving UNESCO. But they’re not worth the degradation of our public life that is the Trump presidency.

That can’t be right, since Bill himself avails himself of that demotic medium. That he does not speak like a Harvard graduate? That may be part of it, but Bill knows as well as I do that the end of rhetoric is persuasion, and no one can deny Trump’s masterly powers of persuasion. Donald Trump may be an imperfect vessel for our national hopes, but then of whom may that not be said? In the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on national television “we have someone admitting to being a sexual assaulter in the Oval Office.” I am pretty sure she was not talking about her husband. No, she was talking about Donald Trump. But what can that mean? As far as we know, Donald Trump (unlike Bill Clinton) is not guilty of sexual assault. Certainly, he has never said he was. Yes, there was that crude Access Hollywood video—a video, remember, that captured a private conversation between two bragging men more than a decade ago. But how many crude locker-room expostulations equal one Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office? CONTINUE AT SITE

At the end of their lengthy editorial regarding the new Uranium One revelations — “Team Obama’s stunning coverup of Russian crimes” — the New York Post editorial board writes:

Until September 2013, the FBI director was Robert Mueller — who’s now the special counsel probing Russian meddling in the 2016 election. It’s hard to see how he can be trusted in that job unless he explains what he knew about this Obama-era cover-up.

I’ll go the Post one better. Virtually whatever Mueller has to say about his involvement or non-involvement in this metastasizing scandal, he must recuse himself immediately for the most obvious reasons of propriety and appearance. Frankly, it’s outrageous that he, Ron Rosenstein, or anyone who even touched the Uranium One investigation now be involved with the current probe — unless the real name of the FBI is actually the NKVD. This is not how a democracy is supposed to work, even remotely. Forget transparency — this was deliberate occlusion.

The collusion Trump & Co have been accused of is chickenfeed compared to twenty percent of U.S. uranium ending up in Putin’s hands under the aegis of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder, the latter two members of CFIUS (the inter-agency committee that reviews the transfer of U.S. companies to foreign entities and was then chaired by Timothy Geithner). We have heard disturbing allegations of this for some time, via “Clinton Cash” and even from the New York Times, but the new disclosure that a 2009 FBI investigation of this possible nuclear deal uncovered kickbacks, money laundering, and bribes from the Russian company involved (Rosatom) and yet it still was given the go-ahead by the Obama administration is — I can think of no better word — appalling. How could it have come to pass that this occurred? Why are we supposed to believe anyone now?

On Wednesday, Senator Grassley asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions: “What are you doing to find out how the Russian takeover of the American uranium was allowed to occur despite criminal conduct by the Russia company that the Obama administration approved the purchase?”
What Did Mueller Know? New Documents Show…

Evidently, not much. At least so far. In fact Sessions said that Deputy Attorney General Ron Rosenstein, who led this long-hidden investigation, should “investigate himself.”

No, Jeff. You may have properly recused yourself from the Russian investigation, despite Trump’s criticism, but this one is your job. You run the Department of Justice and therefore the FBI. Something is rotten as much as it ever was in Denmark. Indeed it’s worse, since nuclear weapons were not even dreamed of in Hamlet’s time. So don’t be like Hamlet. Act now.

For starters, Mueller must step down. We cannot have an investigation of this magnitude that half the country will completely disrespect — and for increasingly good reason. History will mock it, also for good reason. On top of that, with our country as split as it is, the results could be catastrophic.

Equally important, the reputation of the FBI must be resuscitated. Speaking entirely as a private citizen, I do no trust the FBI anymore. To be honest, it scares me. And I am certain I am not alone. It feels like an often-biased organization so bent on self-preservation that it hides evidence and lets the powerful off the hook. That’s the royal road to totalitarianism. No, it’s not the NKVD yet. No one that I know of is being hauled off in the middle of the night. But very few of us know what it is really up to, how it makes its frequently dubious decisions, or whether it is working for the good of the citizenry at all. Almost everything we learn of its investigations is so heavily redacted, no one but one of the myriad leakers seems to know what it means — and they’re usually lying. This, as they say, will not end well. CONTINUE AT SITE

Back in July, I called for a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s collusion with Russia to turn over control of 20 percent of our uranium supplies to Russian interests in return for some $145 million in donation to the Clinton Foundation. Now it turns out that there was one, an FBI investigation dating back to 2009, with current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller up to their eyeballs in covering up evidence of Hillary’s collusion, bordering on treason, with Vladimir Putin’s Russia:

Prior to the Obama administration approving the very controversial deal in 2010 giving Russia 20% of America’s Uranium, the FBI had evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were involved in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering in order to benefit Vladimir Putin, says a report by The Hill….

John Solomon and Alison Spann of The Hill: Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show….

From today’s report we find out that the investigation was supervised by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, who is now President Trump’s Deputy Attorney General, and then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who is now the deputy FBI director under Trump.

Robert Mueller was head of the FBI from Sept 2001-Sept 2013 until James Comey took over as FBI Director in 2013. They were BOTH involved in this Russian scam being that this case started in 2009 and ended in 2015.

If evidence of bribery, kickbacks, extortion, and money laundering in the Uranium One affair are not grounds for a special prosecutor assigned to investigate Hillary Clinton, what is? Rosenstein and Mueller, by their silence on this investigation hidden from Congress and the American people, are unindicted coconspirators in Hillary’s crimes and should be terminated immediately.

Someone should tell Senator McCain he is about eight years late in giving his message on American leadership in a speech accepting the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal.

To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.

Somehow, Senator McCain was able to stand and watch as:

Obama, Hillary, and Kerry essentially bragged about leading from behind.
Obama said he wanted to remake America.
Obama went around the world apologizing for what America had previously done.
Obama drew the fictitious red line in Syria.
North Korea, Russia, Syria, and Iran were essentially able to do whatever they wanted with almost zero consequences.
Obama tried to undermine Israeli elections.
Obama sold uranium to Russia.
We paid ransom – over a billion dollar in cash – to Iran.
Obama considered ISIS the J.V. team.

How could McCain have watched everything Obama did from his seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and not given a speech about abdicating American leadership? I would love to have McCain or anyone else list Obama’s foreign policy successes and how they maintained our leadership position that McCain says is now under attack because of Trump.

Does anyone believe that Biden, Obama, Democrats, and reporters would have cheered and given McCain an award if McCain had given that speech while Obama was abdicating our leadership position in the world instead of trashing Trump?

Nope, McCain waited until Trump is reasserting our power against Iran, Syria, and North Korea and bragging about America’s greatness and again standing up for Israel.

Free at last! Free at last! That’s the message for millions who don’t get health coverage at work and, until now, faced two dismal options: going without insurance or paying Obamacare’s soaring premiums. Last week, President Donald Trump announced regulatory changes that will potentially allow consumers to choose coverage options costing half what Obamacare’s cheapest bronze plans cost. Democrats are already accusing the president of kneecapping Obamacare, but in fact these changes will actually reduce the number of uninsured — something Democrats claim is their goal.

The Affordable Care Act requires everyone to buy the one-size-fits-all Washington-designed benefit package. You have to pay for maternity care, even if you’re too old to give birth. You’re also on the hook for pediatric dental care, even if you’re childless. It’s like passing a law that the only car you can buy is a fully loaded, four-door sedan. No more hatchbacks, convertibles or two-seaters.

Trump’s taking the opposite approach — allowing consumers choice. His new regulation would free people to once again buy short-term health plans that exclude many costly services such as inpatient drug rehab. These plans are not guaranteed renewable year to year. The upside is they cost much less.

Short-term plans have been around for years. But after Obamacare premiums began soaring, these plans became very attractive to people who were not eligible for an Obamacare subsidy and balked at paying full freight. Hundreds of thousands of customers signed up for these short-term plans — that is, until the Obama administration slammed the door shut. A year ago, Obama slapped a 90-day limit on these plans, as a way to force people into Obamacare, no matter how unaffordable. His way or the highway.

Trump is removing Obama’s 90-day limit, re-opening that low-cost option. That’s good news for some 8 million people currently getting whacked with an Obamacare tax penalty for not having insurance, and another 11 million uninsured who avoided the penalty by pleading hardship. Count on many of them to buy coverage when they have an affordable option. That will reduce the number of uninsured.

Yet, Democrats are ranting that Trump’s regulatory changes are sabotaging the Affordable Care Act. They warn that healthy people will abandon the Obamacare exchanges to buy these low-cost plans, destabilizing the system.

Of course they will. Why shouldn’t they? After all, Obamacare unfairly forces the healthy to pay the same for insurance as the chronically ill. Healthy people never reach their sky-high deductibles. Instead, the premiums extorted from them are used to cover huge medical bills for the sick, who consume 10 times as much health care. Of course, people with pre-existing conditions should be subsidized, but instead of burdening healthy insurance buyers in the individual market, the entire nation should chip in. That’s what Republican Obamacare replacement bills proposed.

Obamacare’s community pricing is the biggest reason premiums have soared since 2013.

The Hill this morning broke what could be a very big news story, if anyone is willing to follow up on it. As is often the case with these kinds of stories, it bears watching if the reporting falls apart somehow, but as of yet, it seems there’s almost no pushback out there. You can see why Democrats would not be eager to talk about this one:

Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews….[Federal agents] obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.

This was back during the period when the Obama Administration and Secretary Clinton were touting a “reset” of relations with Russia; it was years before Obama mocked Mitt Romney’s concerns about the Russian threat with his famous “the 80s called” sneer. Yet, it now appears that the Obama Administration knew a lot more than it let on,

leaving the American public and Congress in the dark about Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil during a period when the Obama administration made two major decisions benefiting Putin’s commercial nuclear ambitions.

The first decision occurred in October 2010, when the State Department and government agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States unanimously approved the partial sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, giving Moscow control of more than 20 percent of America’s uranium supply…In 2011, the administration gave approval for Rosatom’s Tenex subsidiary to sell commercial uranium to U.S. nuclear power plants in a partnership with the United States Enrichment Corp. Before then, Tenex had been limited to selling U.S. nuclear power plants reprocessed uranium recovered from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons under the 1990s Megatons to Megawatts peace program.

“The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns. And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions,” a person who worked on the case told The Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by U.S. or Russian officials.

At a minimum, as Noah Rothman notes, the involvement of key members of the current Trump-Russia probe in conducting this investigation will play right into Trump’s hands in his campaign to discredit the investigation, and Democrats thus far seem likely to just circle the wagons against any further inquiry for that reason as well as how this reflects on the Clintons, Eric Holder, and the Obama Administration’s Russia policy. But the national security implications run deeper than that, and as Ed Morrissey observes, Congress ought to dig in further to see what else it wasn’t told:

House Intelligence chair Mike Rogers claimed to the Hill that no one ever mentioned the case at all to him, despite already-extant concerns over the Uranium One deal on Capitol Hill.

If you’re going to do Muhammad Ali–type activism, you’d better have Muhammad Ali–type talent. That is the ultimate lesson of the Colin Kaepernick saga.

The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, who has been without a team this season, announced this week that he will file a grievance against the NFL. Collusion, he claims, can be the only explanation for his unemployment: the league and its owners, fueled by President Trump’s “partisan political provocation,” have schemed to blackball him in violation of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the NFL and the players’ union.

Kaepernick appears to be within his CBA rights to file the grievance, and to do so personally — i.e., to challenge the league and its owners on his own, rather than through the NFL Players Association. But unless some of the owners and league officials have said or written idiotic things in meetings, emails, text messages, and the like, the collusion suit should be a loser. There is no need to collude against a player who is not an obvious net-plus (in terms of performance and popularity) for any particular team.

To take the easy part first, Kaepernick’s invocation of Trump is just an atmospheric. The player had been out of the league for months before the president recently began inveighing against the form of protest Kaepernick initiated — “taking a knee” during the pregame playing of the national anthem. No player has been cut or suspended in the wake of the presidential outbursts, which markedly increased the number of players protesting. Trump has crystallized the public anger over the protest as only his bully pulpit can, but he has had no impact on the status of Kaepernick or any other player.

So let’s talk Colin Kaepernick.

To be clear, as a lifelong football fan (who continues to love the game, however soured I am over the infusion of leftist activism in what used to be an oasis from politics), I can attest: Kaepernick is certainly good enough to make an NFL roster — or at least he was when last seen on the gridiron. His problem is that he is not a great player. Indeed, he is now a mediocre player. Mediocre players cannot afford to have his kind of baggage.

I happen to have been in the stands to see Kaepernick’s first pro touchdown, scored against my New York Jets (a streak of lightning captured in this YouTube clip, a minute and a half in). He was a dynamic but flawed talent when he burst on the NFL scene as the 49ers’ second-round pick out of the University of Nevada in 2011: a breathtaking runner with a strong arm, though not a particularly accurate one. In his rookie year, he was used sparingly (almost exclusively in running situations) by coach Jim Harbaugh. But the Niners were an excellent team (they got to but lost the NFC championship game in Kaepernick’s first season), and Harbaugh — a former pro QB — ran a system maximally suited to Kaepernick’s strengths.

Kaepernick got his break when the starter, Alex Smith, got injured in 2012. He made the most of it, getting the 49ers to the Super Bowl, where they lost to the Baltimore Ravens despite his capable performance. The next year, as the undisputed starter, Kaepernick led the Niners to the conference championship game again, but they lost to the Seattle Seahawks, no small thanks to two killer interceptions Kaepernick threw in crunch time.

Still, he had had an impressive run of success. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the high-water mark of his career. Kaepernick was rewarded with a big contract. As with many big NFL contracts, the dollar amount, $126 million over six years, sounds impressive. Only $13 million was guaranteed, though. In such deals, if the player fails to perform up to standard, he runs a high risk of being cut. The high per annum pay counts against the team’s salary cap if the team decides to keep the player at the contract rate. (That’s why football players can be pressured to accept salary cuts, something that never happens in, say, Major League Baseball, where the money is guaranteed throughout multi-year contract terms.)

Alas, 2014 was a stormy year: Kaepernick struggled and the team finished 8–8, missing the playoffs for the first time in many years. Harbaugh had a falling out with Niners brass, ultimately moving on to the University of Michigan, his alma mater (and Jay Nordlinger’s!). The 49ers have been a mess ever since.

The next year, 2015, was a disaster for Kaepernick, who played poorly, was benched, and eventually missed most of the second half of the season with a shoulder injury that required surgery. The Niners collapsed, finishing 5–11, and the new coach was fired.

The 2016 season, during which Kaepernick began his kneeling protest, was even worse: Kaepernick was a second-stringer on a team that finished an NFL-worst 2–14. Signs of a lost season were in the air before it even started: Kaepernick expressed an interest in being traded after the 49ers hired Chip Kelly. This is consistent with Kaepernick’s activism: On Kelly’s prior team, the Philadelphia Eagles, LaSean McCoy, a star African-American player who had been traded, slanderously claimed Kelly had gotten rid of “all the good black players” on the Eagles. By mid-season, Kaepernick had reworked his contract, with the 49ers allowing him to opt out and become a free agent. Meanwhile, the season went so badly that the Niners fired Kelly.

Three years ago, Susan Rice, Obama’s obsequious national security advisor and the one who infamously blamed the Libyan consulate outrage on a YouTube video, noted on ABC News that Bowe Bergdahl “served the United States with honor and distinction,” and further stated that Bergdahl “wasn’t simply a hostage; he was an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield.” Three years later, Rice was forced to choke on her words. Her absurd comments represented the zenith of mendacity, and for an administration primarily known for deceitfulness, spin and echo chambers, that’s saying something.

On Monday, Bergdahl pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. The latter charge could mean life behind bars for the deserter while the former carries a five-year term. Bergdahl deserted his post in June 2009 sparking frantic search and rescue efforts to retrieve him. He was later captured by the Taliban. Some within the military, citing a surge of more accurate targeting of U.S. soldiers following his capture, believe that he provided the enemy with information on U.S. Army troop movements.

Bergdahl’s pre-sentencing trial date begins on October 23. Three service members who were wounded by hostile fire while searching for him will likely testify. Two of those wounded sustained permanent life-altering injuries. Navy SEAL Jimmy Hatch now walks with permanent limp thanks to a Taliban bullet to the leg. Hatch’s comrade, Army National Guard Sgt. 1st Class Mark Allen, wasn’t so “lucky.” He took a bullet to the head while searching for the deserter and is now permanently confined to a wheelchair and unable to talk.

Rice’s skewed characterization of Bergdahl’s military service record wasn’t simply drivel spewed by someone speaking out of abject ignorance. Rather, her comments were a sad reflection of her ex-boss’s convoluted mindset where things such as morality, decency and integrity played second fiddle to ideologically-driven, political expediency. Obama had always wished to close the Guantanamo facility and the Bergdahl exchange was an expedient way for him to dump five hard-core terrorist detainees.

But the exchange, which carried a hefty price tag of nearly $1 million, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer, left the administration facing two potential powder kegs with severe legal, political and security implications. Obama and his sycophants, including Rice and Ben Rhodes, therefore embarked on a campaign of deceit aimed at garnering sympathy for Bergdahl.

The release of the detainees without giving Congress adequate notice violated the law and posed a legal hurdle for the administration. Under the National Defense Authorization Act, a law passed by Congress and signed by Obama, the administration was required to provide notice to four Senate and four House committees at least 30 days prior to the release of Taliban detainees from Guantánamo. But notice was only given by phone on the actual day of the exchange, which occurred on May 31, 2014. Consequently, the chief counsel for the Government Accountability Office determined that the Pentagon had illegally spent the money used to facilitate the prisoner exchange.

As he had done countless times before (and after), Obama dismissed this legal transgression saying that he had consulted with the Justice Department beforehand and was assured that the manner in which the prisoner exchange occurred was perfectly legal. In other words, Obama consulted his echo chamber, which provided him with the necessary political cover. A similar scenario was to unfold two years later when the Obama administration paid the Iranian regime protection money and provided it with $1.7 billion as ransom in exchange for the release of four American hostages unlawfully imprisoned by the Islamic Republic.

While America’s adversaries have been increasing their defense budgets and the power of their armed forces, the United States has been doing the opposite.

Although the Senate and House Armed Services Committees passed a bill for 2018 that would exceed President Trump’s defense budget request, there is still the problem of the 2011 Budget Control Act, which caps defense spending at an extremely low level. Modernization has been curtailed significantly.

Unfortunately, there remains a widely held assumption that unless tax reform is “revenue-neutral,” deficits will increase. The trouble with this assumption is that although revenue-neutral tax reform may make the system more efficient or fair, it neither increases government revenue nor generates additional investment in the private sector. The purpose of the new tax-reform plan is to do both: increase revenue and spur economic growth at the same time.

One crucial aspect of the new tax reform bill, unveiled by President Donald Trump and the “Big Six” group of Republican tax negotiators at the end of September, is the potentially positive effect it will have on the US defense budget, which is sorely in need of an increase.

The assertion made by former President Barack Obama during his final State of the Union address in January 2016, that the United States spends “more on our military than the next eight nations combined,” bolstered the belief that America’s national-security needs are beyond being met. However, as a recent Heritage Foundation report reveals, such claims, which have led to the conclusion that the United States allocates an excessive amount to the defense budget, are “disingenuous,” as they “give no consideration to the decisions driving defense spending or the factors contributing to costs across national economies.”

As the Heritage Foundation points out, although “the U.S. military remains the largest and most capable in the world… [t]he security environment in which in which the U.S. military is expected to operate has grown increasingly complex, and national defense resourcing warrants more than a solitary sentence of discussion.”

America’s major military adversaries, Russia and China, pay their soldiers, sailors and pilots far less than America pays the members of its own forces, which enables Moscow and Beijing to spend more on weapons and research. In addition, unlike the U.S., Russia and China are not transparent about their defense spending at best, and lie about it at worst, with the former reportedly “cooking its defense books,” and the latter publishing nothing about its nuclear weapons program. In addition, while America’s adversaries have been increasing their defense budgets and the power of their armed forces, the United States has been doing the opposite. As former US Senator James Talent wrote in 2013:

“…[T]he picture isn’t pretty. Congress and the president [Obama] will probably agree to increase defense spending by a small amount, but they will probably also take money away from future defense budgets. This will allow them to say that they have increased defense spending while in reality the wholesale unraveling of American power will continue.”

In addition — according to USAF Maj Gen Garrett Harencak — during decades of a “procurement holiday,” America failed to upgrade its nuclear-deterrent capabilities.

This is the bad news. The good news is:

“For the first time in nearly 35 years, the United States is back on track to modernize its entire nuclear deterrent. After previously approving the building of 12 new Columbia class submarines and a new B-21 nuclear-capable bomber, the United States has selected two contractors to compete to build the next land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) nuclear deterrent. This would be the first new land-based ICBM since the Peacekeeper missile was deployed in 1986 and completes a nuclear modernization effort plan promised by the administration.”