What Most Americans Don't Know About Our National Defense Budget--But Should

There is an excellent, even important article out presently at Alternet I wish all adult, voting-age Americans would read. It is this.

How to Blow $700 Billion and Lose Wars

A Guide to America's Exploding Defense Budget and Military Failure

Step 1: Buy the most expensive weapons in history. Step 2: Don’t use them, since they mostly don’t work

And before any military patriots or just disbelievers dismiss the article, out of hand, before reading it, they should know it's written by a Veteran and who served in Iraq, on the ground. It's not from some "Left Wing" "librul" they can or should dismiss.

A bit from the article:

This year, President Trump signed the largest defense budget in our history: $700 billion. The budget includes $13.7 billion for 90 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, which according to CNN are “in service and mission capable only 26 percent of the time.” Not a single F-35 jet has yet to see combat duty.

The budget will provide $4.5 billion for the construction of a new Ford class aircraft carrier, $450 million for three Littoral Combat Ships, $4 billion for two new guided missile destroyers, $5.5 billion for two new Virginia Class submarines, and tens of billions more for upgrades and repairs on various aircraft and naval vessels. Two of the guided missile destroyers already in service were involved in deadly collisions with cargo ships in the western Pacific last year. A Navy investigation revealed that for all of the hundreds of billions spent on defense, there was apparently not enough in the budget to provide for adequate training in standing watch and driving Navy combat ships...

He finishes the article perfectly, to me. It's something I've been saying for some time.

Fifteen years in Iraq. Seventeen years in Afghanistan. There is no end in sight.

From 2011 to today, 2018, we more than doubled our national defense budget from 354 billion dollars to 700 billion.

We have no new enemies. No new group has attacked us or is attacking. Or is going to.

We are weakening, actually weakening our nation with all this absurd, obscenely expensive and very wasteful spending.

Understand this:

Our defense budget is very huge, very bloated and very wasteful and is actually making the nation weaker.  Not stronger.

What are we going to do about this, America?

Links:

The Secret Side of Military Spending & The Wastes of War

We Are Spending a Trillion on War 

and We Need to Own Up to It

The 10 Most Blatantly Wasteful Defense Items

Note this next article is from the American Conservative magazine:

Expanding the Military Budget Is 

Wasteful and Unnecessary'

Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion 

in bureaucratic waste

The F-35: A Weapon That Costs More 

Than Australia

What People Don't Understand About Our National Defense Spending

What too many people, too many Americans don't understand or realize about our obscene, absurd, very bloated and extremely wasteful defense spending.

It's actually making us weaker, as a nation.

Quote of the Day -- On War and Peace

Buckminster Fuller's words still ring true.

Congress, of All Groups, in the Way of Shrinking Government Spending

This news just hit today:

The Pentagon is once again asking Congress to let it close military bases, and Congress is once again expected to say no

A Washington ritual: Pentagon, Congress at odds over bases

Some things about our government are so difficult to imagine, let alone accept. This is certainly one of those.

All Republicans in public, government office sing out that we must cut spending. They all say we're spending our way to insolvency and bankruptcy. It's common and repetitive as can be. You can nearly not go a day without hearing one of these people decrying our spending and the huge size of our government.

And of course, the biggest source of spending in our national budget is none other than the Defense Department. We spend most of our entire budget on Defense/defense and we also, far and away, spend many times over what all other nations combined on that very same thing, defense. 

It's a huge waste.

It's gargantuan spending, it's wasteful, as I said, it's obscene, it's unaccounted for since the Pentagon isn't held accountable for this money. It is, in the end, immoral and makes no sense, fiscal or otherwise.

So, then, we come here, today, and the military themselves realize we should and even must close some unnecessary, wasteful bases.

But Congressional representatives, plenty of them Republican, say no.

How does this make any sense? Again, how does this make any logical sense, fiscal or otherwise?

And the truth is, of course, it doesn't.

We have to end this. We have to put a stop to this. And cutting this spending, this wasteful military spending, will make the nation stronger.

Please go to this link and write your Congressional representatives. Tell them we must do the right and smart and responsible thing and close these unnecessary bases and cut this wasteful military spending.

Contacting the Congress: 

A Citizen's Congressional Directory

Thank you, in advance. Let's do this. It's an election year. They're much more likely to be responsive to us this year than any other.

Let's cut government spending.

Quote of the Day -- From Martin Luther King, Jr.

And we still do.

World Hunger Quotes

Quot

2016: Imagine

The way to justice and peace. End endless, perpetual war.

The United States---the Actual Big Problem in the World?

I've said it here before. I'll say it again.

The United States is the world's warmonger.

We spend more on war and what we call "defense" than any other nation in the world, far and away. Here's 2009 alone.

We're in more nations, with more bases and more weapons and more bombs and tanks and planes and ships and more of everything else's than any other nation, bar none.



Look at the last big wars of the past 5 decades. What were they and who was in them? Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan is where they were and we started them. We keep saying we're saving someone from something so we go over and blow 'em up real good.

Then there's weapons manufacturers as a nation. Guess who's making more weapons, by country, than any other nation and putting those out in the world. I think you see where this is going.

(H)ere is the list of the world’s top 10 arms exporters, along with their respective shares of global exports between 2010 and 2014, from SIPRI:

1. United States: 31%
2. Russia: 27%
3. China: 5%
4. Germany: 5%
5. France: 5%
6. U.K.: 4%
7. Spain: 3%
8. Italy: 3%
9. Ukraine: 3%
10. Israel: 2%

See the entire study from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

And those two are external. Now let's consider ourselves internally.

I think we know which nation on the planet has more weapons, for civilians, than any other, don't we? Sure we do. It's the good old, USA, once again, bar none.

We, as a nation, as a people, need to both stop thinking of ourselves as a "peace-loving people" and nation, we need to stop kidding ourselves and we need, badly, to do something about it. More people are being killed on this planet, both inside and outside the US.

We need to cut down on the weapons. There are a lot better ways to "do business" on this planet than by creating and selling and profiting from weapons.

We need to get started.

We need to give peace a chance.

The world--our own and the rest of it--will be a lot better place for our having done it.

Link: Ceasefire in Yemen Faces Collapse as U.S. Continues Weapons Sales to Saudi Arabia, Fueling Civil War

What Actually Happened in Iraq

What the government, lead largely by the Republicans and Right Wing, actually did in Iraq.

The best hour and fifteen minutes you can spend, learning about your government and our spending.



Our defense spending is what is bankrupting America. That and giving corporate welfare in the billions of dollars.

Why We Need To Cut the Defense Budget

The fact is, our Defense Department budget is not just large but huge. It's bloated, truth be told. It's famously beyond what any other one nation spends, many times over, it's wasteful, it's actually unaccounted for and downright immoral. It ends up actually weakening us. Professor Reich, once again, educates us Americans.

America's Priorities

I saw this on Facebook yesterday and had to post.

You wouldn't think this is an actual, accurate description of the state of our spending and our priorities in America today but it is.

This is what spending more--far more--on "defense" in this nation gets you.

Forget that we Americans paid into Social Security with our own money, from our paychecks. All that was spent and is still being spent on other things, instead of back to us on Social Security, for which it was created.

Instead, we keep making and buying bombs and guns and bullets and tanks and weapons of war.

Our priorities, America's priorities, are seriously screwed up, without question.

So what are we going to do about it?

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.

Who and What's Bankrupting America?

The corporations and wealthy are bankrupting America, for one, what with all the tax deductions they buy themselves from their---our----legislators, with campaign contributions. They get to write off untold "expenses." Even "Big Oil", one of the most profitable industries in the nation and world, and then they offshore profits, on top of it.

The other culprit bankrupting America?

Look no further than the obscene, bloated, wasteful, nearly completely unaccounted for, utterly immoral defense budget:

The Real War --- On the American Middle Class

Kev Mo

Kev Mo

A Question for America

A question for Americans.

Senator Bernie Sanders on the Insanity of Our National Spending and Priorities

It seems only Senator Bernie Sanders, out of everyone in Congress, understands and elucidates both how skewed and wrong and out of kilter our national spending and priorities are and what they should be.



Truth to power.

Push to cut the defense budget.

And mightily.

We will still be strong. In fact, we would actually be stronger yet, internally and externally.

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.

Important National Anniversary

I learned today, out here on the interwebs, that today is the nation's 13th anniversary of going into Afghanistan. I was reminded by some military veterans and their call:

Iraq Veterans Against the War

Today marks the 13th year since our country began the occupation of Afghanistan. It's long time for it to end yet we just signed a Bi-Lateral Security agreement that places us there for at least another decade. What do you think should be done?

To this I have three responses.

First, we absolutely should, at long last, get the hell out of Afghanistan.

Second, we need to end "perpetual war" in this country.

Finally, we have to recognize that we are, America is the world's warmonger, we have to stop it and we need to cut our absurd, huge, hugely wasteful, fiscally irresponsible, totally unsustainable, actually unaccounted for, nation-weakening defense budget.

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

― Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Our Obscene, Huge, Immoral Defense Spending

Think our government spends too much? 

Sure you do.

So let's cut the spending that is the biggest, most wasteful, most irresponsible segment of all that spending. 

Fight to cut funding for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). It's absurdly bloated, it's immoral, it's obscene, it isn't even accounted for, they get so much money. They cannot and do not even account for all they get and spend.

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