Small Government? Cut Government Spending?

Anyone who has ever complained about "big government" or that our government spends too much and that we should cut spending needs to see this video over 8 minutes and 18 seconds.



The fact is, we need to cut Defense spending. What we spend is obscene, the amount we spend is obscene, it's bloated, it's wasteful, it's unaccounted for, it's immoral it can easily be argued and it actually ends up  actually weakening the nation.

Further Proof--Long Past Time to Cut the Defense Department Budget

I have read enough to not just have the opinion but to know, it is long, long past time to cut the Defense Department's budget.

It is huge, it is wasteful, it is unaccounted for, it is actually immoral and even makes the nation weaker, not stronger and finally, it is unsustainable.

Sixty-nine percent of every tax dollar in spending goes to defense spending. Beyond that, check this out from Sunday's New York Times:

The Pentagon's Excess Space

"For the past three years, officials at the Pentagon have asked Congress for permission to take stock of how many of the military’s vast network of installations across the country have become obsolete and ought to be shrunk or shuttered. The Defense Department, by far the nation’s largest and costliest bureaucracy, estimates that it could operate far more efficiently and save billions of dollars each year by shedding at least 20 percent of its real estate.

Yet, year after year, the nearly unanimous response from lawmakers has been: Don’t even think about it. They have barred the Pentagon from carrying out a detailed assessment of its properties, because closing useless bases would mean lost jobs and revenue in home districts."

Under pressure from lawmakers, the Air Force has spread its fleet of aircraft across the country to justify keeping the lights on at bases that outlived their use years ago. A stark example is the Air Force base in Grand Forks, N.D., a once strategically important hub for bombers during the Cold War. Currently, it’s home to 11 drones.

The Army has hundreds of buildings across the country that are only nominally open for business. In 2013, a senior Army official, testifying before Congress, said she had recently been on a base with 800 buildings, where only 300 were occupied. Last summer, when thousands of unaccompanied Central American migrant children were detained entering the country, many were temporarily housed at military bases, an odd arrangement that drew attention to how much space the Pentagon had to spare.

And when it comes to cutting the spending of the Defense Department budget, there will be those who say it will weaken the nation that, somehow, we will be "soft on defense." And of course it's nonsense. Quite the opposite is true.

Ironically, even hypocritically, there will be plenty of Republicans in Congress, in both the House and Senate, who will want to maintain this spending because, of course, they want to keep the money coming back to their districts. Forget that they are supposedly the political party of slashing budgets and screaming for "small government." "Damn the torpedoes!" they seem to say. "Full spending speed ahead!" 

Well, it's ridiculous. It's absurd. It should stop. It needs to stop. We need to cut the Defense budget, the Pentagon's budget and this is an excellent place to begin.

Now if we can just get them to listen.

And act.

The Nightmare That Is US Military Spening

Americans, you think you're a "peace-loving country", don't you?




Contact your Congressional Representatives and the President. Tell them to get the Defense budget cut. It's bloated, it's wasteful, it's unaccounted for, it's immoral, it's downright obscene.

Contact the U.S. Congress and the White House 

Tell them, not in our name. Not any longer.

How we spend too much on "Defense" and what we should do about it

From Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's ice cream:



Our defense budget is huge, bloated, grossly over-funded, wasteful, unaccounted for, wildly immoral, unsustatinable and ends up weakening the nation, ultimately, in very real terms.

Let's get started.

Endless War

And the "war on terror" fits perfectly into this since such a war can never really be won.

Like

The World's Warmonger

Driving back to Southwest Missouri yesterday afternoon, I came on what seemed to me to be a rather large convoy of diesel trucks about 1/2 way there:

If you'll notice, they're 5 across.

And then this shows they are also 4 deep meaning there are 20 trucks here, total.

It immediately got me thinking, about these trucks, about their destination, everything.

Here they are, our own American government no doubt bought them, likely at full price, from some corporation. 

Then the government--we--had them painted beige--"desert sand", no doubt, right?

And now we're going to send them overseas, to Afghanistan, likely.

Then think about that.

We're pulling out of that war shortly. We're getting out.

But right now, we're probably sending these over there.

Can you imagine the collective costs?

I mean, sure, it's probably only in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and given that the American Pentagon/Department of "Defense" budget is at least $711 billion, this is, certainly a tiny, tiny fraction of that budget.

But wait. It gets more interesting.

As I left, after I took these pictures, 21 MORE of these trucks came convoying up the freeway, no doubt to get with these.

Yet more hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So what's the point?

Can you imagine what all those hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on this portion of war could do for kids in our schools?  Or for any other number of things that would actually be useful and helpful in the world?

America's priorities

America, the world's warmonger

Yessirree, Bob.

Good ol' America, the beautiful.

Right?

Isn't that who we are?

 Former leader of the Free World, for peace. Now the world's warmonger, as we have been and have become, in the last few decades. We outspend everyone, every other nation on the planet, many times over, on spending for war.

Think we're not?  Want proof?

Well, then, here you go, as posted by none other than the Iraq Veterans Against the War :

Iraq Gets $2 Billion Weapons Package from the Pentagon

Does that make sense to anyone out there?

And the only way it will change, folks, is if we, the people, stand up, organize, and demand an end to it.

All of it.



Food for thought

Most Americans want the defense budget cut

From a recent survey:

Americans Overwhelmingly Support Defense Cuts

"As Congress struggles to rein in the federal deficit, a new survey finds Americans preferred to cut defense spending more than any other program.

In a new survey that not only asked for opinion, but also briefed the respondents on the federal budget, Americans came to a bipartisan conclusion: 67 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats supported cutting the defense budget."

More:

"'When Americans look at the amount of defense spending compared to spending on other programs, they see defense as the one that should take a substantial hit to reduce the deficit,' said Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation (PPC), and the lead developer of the survey. 'Clearly the polarization that you are seeing on the floor of the Congress is not reflective of the American people.'"

We spend over 711 billion dollars, annually on defense.

It's disgusting.

It's out of balance.

It's not realistic.

It's not sustainable.

Write your Congressional members today. By email, it's easy.

Links: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/05/10/152426302/survey-americans-overwhelmingly-support-defense-cuts: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/355447-defense-budget-survey-full-results.html

Yet more reasons why we need to cut the defense budget by half

"A million dollars appropriated for highway construction would create two to three times as many jobs as a million dollars appropriated for Pentagon weapons procurement..." --Mike Lofgren, retired June 17 after 28 years as a Congressional staffer. He served 16 years as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees. Link to original post: http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779

Heads up, folks: $61B is pocket change at the Pentagon

Okay, so the Republicans are threatening to "shut down the government" again, this Friday, by not compromising with anyone else in Washington.

These guys just don't learn.

They did it before, in 1995, and took a beating for it but no, no, here they go again, threatening us all.

President Obama is playing this one smart, unlike other negotiations with them like health care.  He's pointing out that the military wouldn't get their pay and other necessities.

Shrewd move.

But seriously, if anyone really wanted 61 billion dollars out of our spending, for the love of pete, just take it out of defense spending.

On the real, hard budget books alone, we spend some $711 billion dollars a year on defense.

As I've said before, it's insane.

And that's just what's on the books.  What's not shown goes far beyond a trillion dollars.  They've got so much money, time and again we find they've lost a few billion here and unaccounted for a few billion more over there.

So for pity's sake, Republicans, if you want this precious $61 billion slashed from our spending, take it from the Pentagon.

It's just sitting there at the Pentagon, it's small potatoes for them and they won't even miss it.

Links:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_government_shutdown;_ylt=Ao5x4JZDlsOMBZD.nZWKp8tH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTNhdW1tdXBjBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNDA2L3VzX2dvdmVybm1lbnRfc2h1dGRvd24EY2NvZGUDbXBfZWNfOF8xMARjcG9zAzIEcG9zAzIEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawN3aGl0ZWhvdXNlc2E-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_government_shutdown;_ylt=Ao5x4JZDlsOMBZD.nZWKp8tH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTNhdW1tdXBjBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNDA2L3VzX2dvdmVybm1lbnRfc2h1dGRvd24EY2NvZGUDbXBfZWNfOF8xMARjcG9zAzIEcG9zAzIEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawN3aGl0ZWhvdXNlc2E-

Tuesdays stink?

So I wake today to find out that a) the US can't account for nearly 9 billion dollars in funds for Iraq (thank you, Department of Defense) and the Royals got beat up at a nearly historical rate, losing last night to the Minnesota Twins 19-1. Yow. Tuesdays really do stink, don't they? Good luck out there today, y'all.

The "Pentagon Papers" vs. the "Afghanistan Papers" at Wikileaks

Propublica does a terrific job of showing both the similarities and differences between the "Pentagon Papers" release by Daniel Ellsberg some 40 years ago and the Wikileaks release of 92,000 classified documents this week (see my earlier entry on this, from this weekend): http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/sheehan-interview. According to Wikeleaks' founder, Julian Assange, there are more documents to come out on this, too. Stay tuned, campers.

Hard data on the US military and Dept. of Defense--and a challenge for America

"the Pentagon..." has "perhaps the single largest public relations apparatus on earth – spending $4.7 billion on P.R. in 2009 alone and employing 27,000 people, a staff nearly as large as the 30,000-person State Department..." "...most of the major TV outlets are completely in the bag for the Pentagon, with two of them (NBC/GE and Logan's own CBS, until recently owned by Westinghouse, one of the world's largest nuclear weapons manufacturers) having operated for years as leaders in both the broadcast media and weapons-making businesses." That should make you feel good, right? "Does the fact that the country is basically barred from seeing dead bodies on TV, or the fact that an embedded reporter in a war zone literally cannot take a shit without a military attaché at his side (I'm not joking: while embedded at Camp Liberty in Iraq, I had to be escorted from my bunk to the latrine) really provide the working general with the security and peace of mind he needs to do his job effectively?" So here's the final question and challenge: "What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan? Is it worth all the bloodshed and the hatred? Who are the people running this thing, what is their agenda, and is that agenda the same thing we voted for? By the severely unlikely virtue of a drunken accident we get a tiny glimpse of an answer to some of these vital questions, but instead of cheering this as a great break for our profession, a waytago moment, one so-called reputable journalist after another lines up to protest the leak and attack the reporter for doing his job. God, do you all suck!" Link to original article: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi/blogs/TaibbiData_May2010/122137/83512

My depressing find for the day (week, month)

On reading a bit yesterday about the shooter at the Pentagon yesterday and then on true government hate groups, I learned that there is a group organizing a "Second Amendment March" who's coordinating a march on Washington right now set for April 19th this year.

That's bad enough by itself.

But the date?

Besides being my Mother's birthday (God rest her soul) it is also the date of the first shots fired at Lexington in the Revolutionary War, the anniversary of the fiery end of the government siege in Waco and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Sick.

Sick in so many ways.

America seems to be one sad and hurting pup.

Fossil fuels, climate change, our American Troops and terrorism

From Senator John Kerry :

The Pentagon recently released their quadrennial defense review, and they included the instability from climate change as a factor that could cost the lives of the men and women who serve in our armed forces.

The Center for Naval Analysis brought together a blue-ribbon panel of generals and admirals who concluded that "climate change is a serious national security threat." And General Anthony Zinni said flatly that if we don't deal with climate change now, "we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives."

And these veterans know it already does.

The politicians don't have it tough. The troops do. End of story. Now the Senate needs to do its job -- for them.

------------------------
Conclusions:

We need out of the Middle East.

We need to reduce, dramatically and quickly, our use of fossil fuels.

We need to pass a comprehensive, effective Clean Energy bill in Congress.

All, at minimum.

Update on gunman at the Pentagon

Reportedly (and with documentation, thank you), the "Pentagon shooter" yesterday was apparently a Right-wing, anti-government terrorist.

First, let me just say, this isn't my claim so don't attack me.

Second, I think it's important to point out that he was clearly anti-government if, again, the person who shot the security guards and then died is the same guy who had the blog with the same name. That guy railed against the government.

Third, I don't think calling him a terrorist is a big stretch since he did, in fact, shoot the guards.

The only thing left open to question, then, is the "Right-wing" accusation and that seems well documented here.

If this is true--and it seems as though it is--then "Right-wing gun nut" seems justified.

This should make Fox "News", with all their absurd, irresponsible reporting, vitriole and hyperbole quite proud. They're getting more and more results for their work at pumping people up and dividing the American people.

Question/proposal/challenge for Fox "News": No chance you guys will quit all that stupid ugliness and just truly report unbiased news, is there?

Nah, I thought not.

More on the gunman here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-05/the-crazy-gunman-who-attacked-the-pentagon/

A report on right-wing hate groups here:
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/rage-on-the-right

Another psycho lashes out: do you suppose our representatives are paying attention?

This time, once more--though not always, of course--with guns.

The last time, you'll remember, was with an airplane.

Yesterday:

"A California man killed in a shootout with Pentagon police drove cross-country and arrived at the military headquarters' subway entrance armed with two semiautomatic weapons, authorities said Friday. The shooter apparently left behind Internet postings resentful of the government and airing suspicions about the 9/11 attacks."

One more person angry about our government.

Another gun-nut, conspiracy theorist, it seems, if the guy who did it is the guy with the same name who posted a bunch of rants on the 'net. We'll see. Stay tuned.

Doesn't it seem like there's been a lot of these lately?

For a brief update on recent attacks:

"The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon — the U.S. capital's ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 — came four months after a deadly attack on the Army's Fort Hood, Texas, post allegedly by a U.S. Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings."

"Hatred of the government motivated a man in Texas last month to fly a small plane into a building housing Internal Revenue Service offices, killing an IRS employee and himself."

"The shooting resembled one in January in which a gunman walked up to the security entrance of a Las Vegas courthouse and opened fire with a shotgun, killing one officer and wounding another before being gunned down in a barrage of return fire."

It would be nice if this, then, would end this stuff but I wouldn't count on it.

What would also be nice, though, is if we knew all our representatives--especially the ones in Washington--were paying attention to this palpable anger and frustration on the part of the citizens of the country, regardless of the source of the anger.

What any and all representatives in Washington ought to take from this is that we have problems, we want and need them fixed and they need to stop the bickering and the partisan nonsense and the log-jamming legislation they've been doing and get to work, compromise, come up with good solutions and pass that legislation.

And quickly.

That's what should happen.

It won't, of course, but that's what should happen.



Have a great, sunny, warm weekend, folks.

___________________________________

Update:

The Pentagon shooting suspect died of his wounds.

What's that about living by the sword/dying by the sword?