“After having foolishly spent $7 trillion in the Middle East, it is time to start rebuilding our country!”
President Donald Trump December 22, 2017
“We spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. And you know what we have for it? Nothing,”
President Donald Trump March, 2018
“As of a couple of months ago, we have spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. Seven trillion dollars. What a mistake. But it is what is…. We’re trying to build roads and bridges and fix bridges that are falling down, and we have a hard time getting the money. It’s crazy.”
President Donald Trump February, 2018
A Note To Readers
One way money can be redirected to building infrastructure is to, as President Trump has often said, stop spending trillions on wars in the Middle-East. Well, the President is beginning to act on that idea. And, the proper approach in dealing with the migrant problem on the southern U.S. border is to create conditions in Mexico and the Central American nations in which people are not desperate enough to risk the trek to the U.S. border. And now the President is doing just that.
But, the real and only workable way to be able to put the $2-3 trillion per year required into building and rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure remains in killing this parasitical, bankrupt, speculative financial system and returning to the American System of Alexander Hamilton. That policy is best expressed today by Lyndon LaRouche’s “Four Laws for Economic Recovery and the Four Powers Agreement” between the U.S., Russia, China and India. That will be the subject of this week’s Feature below.
First, more on the President’s actions over the past 24 hours:
President Trump is beginning to find some room to act upon his actual intentions, having consolidated support in the Senate in the election, making impeachment essentially impossible, while the British Russiagate hoax is crumbling. In the past 24 hours, Trump struck two blows on the Empire, declaring that all US troops and State Department operatives are being pulled out of Syria, quickly, while also declaring that the US and Mexico will proceed with large-scale joint investment into job-creating programs in the poverty-stricken (and drug-infested) areas of southern Mexico and the Central American nations of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
On Syria, his spokesperson confirmed that the pullout will proceed rapidly. According to the New York Times, some Pentagon officials have been fighting tooth and nail to stop him, or at least make it a phased withdrawal, but Trump wouldn’t break.
On Mexico, Trump has found common ground with the new Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador on the necessary means to deal with the illegal migration crisis — create jobs. AMLO on Tuesday morning said: “This is a new, different way of dealing with the problem of migration, which addresses the causes. The day is going to come, very soon, in which people are not going to emigrate from Mexico — at least, that is my dream.” The deal agreed to yesterday will approximately double the US planned investment into the region, perhaps exceeding $10 billion.
And today, pulling the troops out of Afghanistan appears to be next for this President:
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – December 20–US President Donald Trump is considering a significant reduction of US troops currently stationed in Afghanistan, according to media reports.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday citing US officials that a drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan could begin in several weeks.
The President is also in no mood to take prisoners, Republican or not:
President Trump hit back Thursday at GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, his normally reliable ally, for opposing his decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria.
“So hard to believe that Lindsey Graham would be against saving soldier lives & billions of $$$,” the president said in a tweet.
In This Week’s Report
We begin this week’s report with items on El Nino, the California Drought Monitor and a study claiming that the Southwest is now in a mega-drought.
To quote the opening sentence of the next section, “If you thought that California water policy could not get more chaotic, confused, and completely misdirected than it was last week, well this week has proven you wrong.” Among such developments is the agreement between Governor Brown and the Trump administration that has the environmentalists chewing the rug. Of course, in response to the state going with restricted use of the San Joaquin Valley rivers, the farmers are up in arms. So, no one is really happy now, and the state’s water policy as is, will be paralyzed for years unless Trump becomes a new FDR.
The Colorado River, after 19 years of drought in the region, is heading for that moment that water managers have feared for years. Most likely rationing of the river’s waters to seven states and Mexico will begin within one to two years, maybe sooner. An agreement on how to delay or even prevent that requires a voluntary de facto rationing now, which the Bureau of Reclamation is insisting be agreed upon by the end of January next year.
The Wildfires, PG&E, and Enron is the title of the next section. PG&E is being sued for the Camp Fire, and so it is worth exploring a little history of PG&E and how its bankruptcy in 2001 caused by the Enron criminal enterprise played a role in especially PG&E not hardening its equipment and burying electrical lines.
