Tell Your Maine Legislators to Reject General Dynamics' Request for $60 Million

Tell Your Maine Legislators to Reject General Dynamics' Request for $60 Million. Share this action on Facebook Share this action on Twitter General Dynamics (which owns Bath Iron Works) is embarking on a statewide public relations campaign to ask the state legislature in Maine for a $60 million tax break over the next 20 years for its operation in Bath. Click here to email your Maine legislators to say No! Already over many years General Dynamics has received more than $200 million in state and local tax breaks for BIW. In 2013 General Dynamics asked for another $6 million tax break from the City of Bath, but a local campaign persuaded the city council to reduce that to $3 million. Now General Dynamics is back to ask an already financially strapped state of Maine for an additional $60 million. How badly does General Dynamics need the money? Not at all! General Dynamics spent $9.4 billion between 2013 and 2016 buying back its own stocks. William Lazonick, an economist at UMASS-Lowell and an expert on stock buybacks says, "I think, as taxpayers, we're being taken for fools. At a minimum, I would have a rule saying, 'You're not getting any subsidies if you're doing buybacks. You're showing us you don't need the money.'" General Dynamics last year paid CEO Phebe Novakovic $21 million. Click here to easily email your Maine legislators to tell them what you'd like your money spent on instead of more riches for a mega-wealthy weapons corporation you're already funding with federal taxes. Before General Dynamics gets any more state taxpayer dollars it should be required to begin a transition process to build commuter rail systems, tidal power and offshore wind turbines to help us deal with our real problem - global warming. We have the right, and the responsibility, to speak out and demand this nonsense stops now. We are handing a collapsing nation, facing the ravages of global warming, to our children and grandchildren.  The least we can do is call upon on state legislators to go to Augusta and say no to General Dynamics. Enough is enough. Let General Dynamics take back some of the extravagant pay increases and bonuses from its top executives before it comes poor-mouthing to our already financially barren state treasury. After emailing your Maine legislators, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends in Maine. This campaign is supported by: Americans Who Tell the Truth (Brooksville) COAST (Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats, Hancock) Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space (Bath) Greater Brunswick PeaceWorks Green Horizon Magazine (Topsham) Island Peace & Justice (Deer Isle) Maine Green Independent Party Maine Peace Fund (Portland) Maine Veterans For Peace Maine War Tax Resistance Resource Center (Portland) Maine Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom (Brunswick) Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine (Bangor) Peace & Justice Group of Waldo County Peninsula Peace & Justice Center (Blue Hill) Resources for Organizing & Social Change (Augusta) This work is only possible with your financial support. Please chip in $3 now. -- The RootsAction.org Team P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others. Background: > Bruce Gagnon: Bath Iron Works In Poor House, Asking Maine For Welfare Check > Providence Journal: Defense firms spend big on lucrative stock buybacks   www.RootsAction.org

U.S. Threats & War Games are Illegal and Criminal

Protests in South Korea against US war games aimed at North Korea

1. The US government threats of “preventive warfare” against DPRK are illegal and criminal. The Nuremberg Tribunal in their Judgment of 1946, which the US helped organize, condemned “preventive war” when the Lawyers for the Nazis made the argument on their behalf. This is an illegal and criminal threat in violation of international law. According to the World Court in its Advisory Opinion (1996) on the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, the legality vel non of a threat stands or falls on the same legal grounds  as if the threat were carried out.

2. The repeated US government threats to “destroy” or “annihilate” DPRK are an international crime under the 1948 Genocide Convention to which the United States is a party. These genocidal threats are also illegal and criminal under the rationale of the 1996 World Court Advisory Opinion mentioned above.

3. The United States has an absolute obligation under UN Charter article 2(3) and article 33 to open “negotiation” with DPRK in good faith in order to produce a peace resolution of this dispute. Instead, the US government has repeatedly rejected these obligations under the UN Charter.

4. The proposal by Russia and China for a “dual-freeze” is an excellent basis to produce good faith and direct negotiations between USA and DPRK as required by the UN Charter.

5. The United States is deliberately provoking DPRK, ratcheting up these provocations in the hope that they will provoke the DPRK to commit an act of aggression against the United States that the USA can then use as a pretext for war.  Pursuant to the terms of their mutual self-defense treaty, China has stated that if the US attacks first it will defend DPRK, but that if DPRK strikes first, China will remain out of any war. So the United States is trying to provoke DPRK into striking first.

6. It is an extremely dangerous situation. It is really up to the United States to take the first step down the Ladder of Escalation that it has constructed here. Instead it appears that the Trump administration is going to escalate up the Ladder of Escalation in the hope and expectation that DPRK will capitulate. This is what  International Political Scientists call a Game of Chicken -- with cosmic consequences. Who will blink first? Anything can go wrong. Thank you so much for being here today to prevent World War III.

Francis A. Boyle
Professor of Law
University of Illinois College of Law

End the Empire - Close U.S. Overseas Bases

Activists outside Beale AFB in northern California hold banner where recon drones, U-2 spy planes and 'missile defense' radar are stationed.

The US military empire is costing our nation and arm and a leg and is a direct reason why social progress and our physical infrastructure are being dismantled.

A National Conference on U.S. Foreign Military Bases on January 12-14, 2018 will be held at the Learning Commons Town Hall, University of Baltimore (1415 Maryland Avenue) in Maryland.

A slew of excellent speakers will be headlining the event including:

• Ajamu Baraka, 2016 Green Party candidate for vice president of the United States; President of Black Alliance for Peace

• Ann Wright, Retired US Army Colonel, and former US diplomat; Leading member of Veterans For Peace and CODEPINK

•  David Vine, Associate Professor of Anthropology at American University in Washington, DC, and author of Base Nation

See much more here 

The corporate money-go-round

Excellent video produced by Will Griffin (Veterans For Peace) about GD/BIW request for more corporate welfare from state of Maine. 

Finding the Truth in Ukraine

Snipers sent to Kiev in 2014 from Republic of Georgia which at the time was run by a total US puppet Mikheil Saakashvili.  Likely he was under orders from the CIA to send the snipers to help create chaos in Ukraine which is exactly what happened.

Now the snipers have confessed.  Saakashvili was eventually run out of Georgia by the people and today he is in Ukraine stirring up trouble there.

Monsanto trying to control food supply......

On the old farm making cane syrup

On Friday MB and I arrived in Jacksonville, Florida and went to the Geiger farm which sits very near the airport off Hwy 295.  We quickly found ourselves loading sugar can stalks into the trailer behind Al Geiger's old tractor.  Al, now 87 years old, and his son Danny were cutting the cane in preparation for Saturday's cane syrup making.

Quite a bunch of people showed up on Saturday to help with the cane squeezing and boiling process that is outlined in great detail in the video below shot a few years ago at the Geiger farm.

Then late Saturday afternoon MB and I drove to Gainvesville (about 90 minutes away) to meet friends Julie Netzer and Miriam Elliott for supper at a favorite BBQ joint.  MB and I lived in Gainesville for many years before moving to Maine in 2003.

Today MB, Miriam, Julie and I met John and Martina Linnehan for lunch in Gainesville.  All of these folks were deeply involved in the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice which I coordinated for 15 years.  So we had a wonderful visit.

We are staying at the home of Bill and Sally Warrick in Gainesville.  Bill is a Veterans For Peace member and was my medical doctor during the 10 years I lived in town.  So it is also a lovely reunion with them as well.

Tomorrow we are driving to the Atlantic Coast city of St Augustine (the oldest city in America) where we will have a visit with Yosi McIntire who is like a brother to me.  His mom Peg McIntire was the heart and soul of the Florida Coalition during our prime years.  She lived to about 98 years old and stayed active to the end.

What a trip it has been so far.  Much more excitement to come.

Bruce

Sunday Song

Round and round we go......

Making cane syrup in Jacksonville, Florida

Mary Beth and I just arrived in Jacksonville, Florida and tonight we will be staying at the home of longtime friend Al Geiger and his daughter Wendy.

Al's family has had a farm near the Jax airport for a couple generations and each year after Thanksgiving they bring family and friends together to make syrup from sugarcane that is grown on their farm.  The video above shows Al telling the whole story.

For many years, while working at the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice, I had the wonderful chance to spend lots of time with Al who gave the organization land just outside of Gainesville for our office and a summer camp facility for kids.

In the middle of a pine tree farm that Al's family owned was a beautiful pecan grove and Al donated that land to us.  He'd often come to work on various things at this site and we'd have lunch together and talk about politics and life.

Al had much to do with my own liberation from the worries of being a 'successful' activist.  He suggested I just focus on doing the best I could and to leave the worries behind me.  This was such simple and good advice from a wonderful Quaker man and it had much to do with my own positive internal changes at the time.

So MB and I look forward to grinding cane with the Geiger family tomorrow.

After that we'll go on to Gainesville to meet other friends and then spend time with my sister Laura who was the recipient of a healthy kidney from MB 10 years ago.

Bruce

Come on over......

First U.S. nuclear sub enters Jeju Island Navy base

Today the attack nuclear submarine USS Mississippi (SSN 782) arrived at the new Navy base on Jeju Island, South Korea for a port call as part of its deployment to the Asia-Pacific region.

The sub was participating in recent provocative US war games off the Korean peninsula along with Japanese and South Korean forces.

“We are honored to be the first submarine to visit Jeju,” said Cmdr. Eric J. Rozek, commanding officer. “This visit will allow Mississippi crew members the opportunity to enjoy the unique culture of the residents of Jeju-do island.”

The truth is that the people of Jeju Island don't want the US military around as the new Navy base makes the 500-year old Gangjeong fishing and farming village a direct target in any war.  In addition the construction, and operation of the base, is ruining their once pristine environment.

With a crew of approximately 150 the Mississippi is one of the stealthiest and most advanced submarines in the world. This submarine is outfitted for a multitude of missions, including anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface ship warfare, strike intelligence, and reconnaissance.

Home-ported out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii the sub was built at the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corporation in Groton, Connecticut.

Tax the rich

BIW parent company in poor house - needs Maine state welfare check

General Dynamics (which own Bath Iron Works - BIW) is embarking on a statewide public relations campaign to ask the state legislature in Maine for a $60 million tax break over the next 20 years for their Navy shipbuilding operation in Bath.

They claim that in order to stay competitive they must have state financial support - what I'd call corporate welfare.

Already over many years General Dynamics has received more than $197 million in state and local tax breaks for BIW.  In 2013 BIW asked for another $6 million tax break from the City of Bath.  I worked with a small committee that organized a local campaign to oppose the tax cut and in the end a very reluctant city council voted to cut the request in half giving General Dynamics/BIW $3 million. That meant that citizen intervention saved the community $3 million that could be used for other local needs like salaries for firefighters, police, and for fixing crumbling infrastructure.

Now they dare to come around to an already financially strapped state of Maine with their corporate silver cup in hand asking for another $60 million. 

On top of this I recently discovered an article in the Providence (Rhode Island) Journal entitled Defense firms spend big on lucrative stock buybacks.  The article reports (as shown in the photo above) General Dynamics spent $9.4 billion buying back its own stocks during 2013-2016.

In the article William Lazonick, an economist at UMASS-Lowell and an expert on stock buybacks says, "I think, as taxpayers, we're being taken for fools.  At a minimum, I would have a rule saying, 'You're not getting any subsidies if you're doing buybacks.  You're showing us you don't need the money.' "

The article also suggests that buybacks are bad for workers and average shareholders because the real beneficiaries are savvy traders who can time their sales and corporate brass with pay packages linked to stock performance and earnings per share.

In fact the top CEO at General Dynamics, Phebe Novakovic, last year made $21 million ($5 million of which was bonuses). It was Novakovic who accelerated General Dynamics stock repurchases since taking over the corporation in 2013 - so her bonuses are likely due to these fiscal shell games.

Novakovic netted $49 million in take-home pay in her first four years as General Dynamics CEO, with an annual average of 43% of her total compensation coming by way of stock-based pay.  So essentially this whole thing is a scam to bleed the taxpayers.

What is most disgusting is how they play one state against another saying that if they don't get more tax breaks in Maine then they can't maintain their operations because a similar shipyard in Mississippi gets tax breaks from their state.  So the poor in Maine are pitted against the poor in Mississippi and all the politicians - Republican and Democrat alike - get on their knees and give these thieving corporate pirates everything they want.

Of course some of the politicians get a kick-back too in campaign donations for having played the Wall Street game.  It's sick.

General Dynamics, like most weapons corporations, get the vast majority of their operating funds from the federal treasury.  The taxpayers are paying the freight from the start.  But then the military industrial complex adds another twist – a strategy to extract even more profit from the taxpayers by going to the states and even to small cities like Bath demanding additional tax breaks.

We all should demand that our state legislators oppose this corporate welfare giveaway. Before General Dynamics gets anymore state taxpayer dollars they should be required to begin a transition process to build commuter rail systems, tidal power and offshore wind turbines to help us deal with our real problem - global warming.

We have the right, and the responsibility, to speak out and demand this nonsense stops now.  We are handing a collapsing nation, facing the ravages of global warming, to our children and grandchildren.  The least we can do is call upon on state legislators to go to Augusta and say no to General Dynamics. Enough is enough.

Let General Dynamics take back some of the extravagant pay increases and bonuses from their top executives before they come poor mouthing to our already financially barren state treasury.

Bruce