Reprinted from EricMargolis.com.
When I was a boy growing up in New York City I was taught – and re-taught – to always save half of my weekly allowance and never spend more than I had in savings.
Too bad Joe Biden was not taught this useful Presbyterian virtue. Recently, Biden’s government has sought $106 billion in the latest aid for arms for Israel and Ukraine, the biggest expenditure since the Vietnam War. This while the bills for the incredibly foolish war in Afghanistan keep coming in, to date $2 trillion.
Now, the US in high-fever pre-election time, is lavishing billions upon Israel. Most of the world is trying to get Israel out of its lethal rampage in Gaza, but the US and its failing colonial partner, Great Britain, continue to wave the banner of empire. Britain, as hardly anyone has noticed, has been bombing Yemen for the past 14 years, supplying warplanes, bombs and mercenary pilots and technicians.
President Biden is growing desperate as the election draws closer. Polls show him way behind Donald Trump. Both Trump and Biden are too old for the job of president. In my old-fashioned view, only military veterans should be allowed to run for high office.
Meanwhile, Biden is splashing around tens of millions on schemes for blacks, who have become his electoral mainstay. Jewish voters who ardently back Israel are said to provide a large proportion of the Democratic party’s finances. They are advocating deeper US involvement in the Gaza Conflict and even more money for Israel, already the largest recipient of US cash.
Pandering to Israel is standard pre-election behavior. In the old days elections were always marked by huge cash grants and the latest US weapons lavished on Israel. And money on the ‘three I’s,’ Israel, Italy and Ireland.
Biden and his aides seem to have lost all concept of money. What’s being dished out to Ukraine and Israel is green paper. This huge amount was not raised in true democratic style but by slapping these mammoth charges on the national credit card – better known as the national debt.
The newly proposed $106 billion for Israel and Ukraine will delight partisans of the two beleaguered nations. But what people forget is that these little green pieces of printed paper are IOUs for the nation’s debt. Much of the war costs we have incurred were for Iraq, Afghanistan and now Ukraine and Israel which, in Washington’s eyes, have become almost one united nation. Talk that Ukraine is fast becoming `new Israel’ appeals to many Israeli voters whose ancestors came from Ukraine or western Russia.
Joe Biden has created a tsunami of inflation with his giveaways to black voters, his open-ended support of Israel’s far right government and now billions more spending. It’s been a financial disaster. Donald Trump understands. After all, it was he who ended the stupid, pointless war in Afghanistan.
Now Biden and his free spenders are inflicting even more runaway debt on the government. The latest, in January 2024, is $34 trillion of debt! We are in hock up to our heads, yet we still keep dishing out the little green paper. This is the behavior of very drunken sailors.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2024
Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times, Nation (Pakistan), Hurriyet (Turkey), Sun Times (Malaysia), and other news sites in Asia. He writes at EricMargolis.com.
