Bring on the devastating Pentagon cuts

The Pentagon is facing $400 billion cuts in future spending over 10 years from Obama's budget, with another potential $500 billion ic the "supercommittee" doesn't succeed in fucking the poor, the elderly, and the sick. That's over 10 years...$90 billion per year. The current DoD budget is $685 billion excluding the VA, DoE nuclear weapons, etc. Next year it's supposed to go to $707.5 billion, according to the federal gov., http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/ , and the cuts aren't until 2013.

Just to put things into perspective:


and one more item:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/13/MNG96MUHPF1.DTL
The Office of Management and Budget, the GAO and the Pentagon accountants "all cannot tell you and agree on how much the Pentagon is spending at any given time," said Chan.

Winslow Wheeler, a former national security expert for the Senate Budget Committee, called the Defense Department "the worst-managed agency in the federal government, (that) can't account for the half-trillion dollars it spends each year, and seeks to produce weapons that are irrelevant or ineffective, or both.''

Here's what the Cato institute (hardly a bunch of wild eyed anti-DoD radicals) says this means:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13691
The "doomsday" scenario would only return America to its 2007-level of defense spending.

That's right, the 'devastating' cuts as described by Panetta would roll us back 4 years. This is insane, truly insane. Clearly the DoD needs far bigger cuts...how about 50%, maybe that would make them pay attention to where the money goes.

...spend further billions catching and incarcerating
drug abusers.

...spend further billions manufacturing and distributing
handguns used for "self defense" against drug abusers
who turn to crime to support their habits.

...spend further billions defending against terror
funded in no small part by the profits generated
from the sales of those opium poppies.

All in all, it's a "win every way" expenditure for
the merchants of death and militarism.

Tesha

building up the crumbling mess we've left our in own country while we're out there making the world safe for lord knows who/what

''The Minneapolis bridge disaster is no isolated incident but a warning signal: More than 160,000 road bridges in the USA are considered to be in danger of collapse. Highways, tunnels, dams and dykes are in such miserable condition that engineers have long been ringing the alarm -- so far in vain.

On April 5, 1987 the Schoharie Creek Bridge in New York state collapsed. The 35-meter-wide highway bridge had only recently been examined. Nevertheless it suddenly gave way, caved in and fell crashing into the river. Five vehicles fell into the river 25 meters below, and ten people died.

The tragic sequence of events bears grisly similarities to the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis Wednesday, more than 20 years later. The causes of the accident also seem identical after the preliminary investigation: Wear and tear, obsolescence, carelessness, sloppiness.

It doesn't surprise experts. "The crumbling state of our infrastructure poses a real threat to public safety and the nation's economy," Bill Marcuson, the president of the American Society Of Civil Engineers (ASCE), wrote on his ASCE blog just a few days before the most recent disaster. "Financing the urgently needed repairs must become a priority for our nation's leaders." In total, ASCE calculates, at least $1.6 trillion must be invested in order to avoid further disasters like the one that happened this week in Minneapolis.''

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,498028,00.html

:nuke:

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What we spend on defense and the Pentagon is immoral. imo

Maybe Bosnia? Before that, WWII?

And in between, colossal waste of life and resources, and big profits for corporate war criminals. No "fighting for freedom" to be found.

(I'm not referring to targeted strikes such as Bin Laden. But we didn't need a massive ten-year war for that.)

but it is clear that Eisenhower's warning was true and that they were probably even then beginning to create the state of unending war (read: permanent budget) referred to in 1984.

The amount of money wasted by the Pentagon is incredible. And a lot of it is pork to keep Congressfolks' constituents working and happy.

Talk about overpaid. That's people in the defense industry.

Not the rank and file soldiers -- but the weapons manufacturers.

When there's always more money to be gotten and failure is never punished (when did Lockheed ever lose a contract due to mismanagement?), then money will be wasted and lost like crazy.

Due to years of insane overspending, the argument of smaller budget == better military is the correct one to make. No one in Congress will ever make that argument in public though.

was given with a "covered yer arse" smirk... :puke:

signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Dwight D. Eisenhower



Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/dwightdei112029.html#ixzz1cqogIHxA




I think we should all remind the super-committee of the standard President Eisenhower (R) held.

and those who strive to become the 1%. This is the purest example of Socialism for the Wealthy. Little of this funding makes it's way down to the troop level.

Although they did manage to defeat mighty Grenada, their track record since WWII is not exactly stellar.