So while the parrots have been barking about an email scandal which is probably the most boring scandal in the history of mankind, a huge benghazi scandal, which isnt actually a scandal, and the hundreds of other meaningless filler, a REAL issue has been looming for years which is far more dangerous than any emails or embassy attacks: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/...unted-Should-Congress-Increase-Defense-Budget
We really wasted the '90s: ten years of economic prosperity without a Cold War or genuinely imminent threat. Our defense budget shouldn't be any more than $100 - 200 billion, and we'd still be the most powerful, best-trained and technically advanced force on the planet.
I have a friend who did counter intelligence in Iraq. The first they gave him when he landed there was a brief case with 100K in it to buy information. That money lasted a week. Do you think the military wants to account for that cash. There is a lot of stuff that the military has to spend money on that is easier explained by "I lost it" than to tell the government what they really spent it on.
Yes, I can handle the truth, as can everyone else. If briefcases are being handed out to buy information that should be accounted for and transparent. There should also be a system of information effectiveness which shows how efficient this spending is, without divulging what the information is. Everyone knows this process happens, there is no reason to NOT know how often and how much we spend on this. This helps us to understand the true cost of wars and good decision making can be made accordingly.
Interesting how we pump trillions of dollars into the defense budget and have to throw in extra tax dollars so military families can get food stamps. Brave men and women risk their lives to defend this country and their families have to get food stamps to survive... Guess those trillions of dollars the defense budget gets isn't enough to pay the employees who actually put their lives on the line.
This thread reminds me of an old fella I used to work with 20yrs ago. He told me he used to do a lot of contract work for the military when he was younger and that he made a bundle doing it! He said the trick was to get the contract! By that he meant that he had to make sure his bid was the lowest, even if he was losing money on it! That the REAL money was in the repair and maintenance of whatever he was peddling! That he would inflate the price of everything once he was already in and that this was a common practice! This old geezer is more than likely dead by now since he was nearly 70 when I met him, but boy did he have some stories to tell! Like Don King used to say: "Only in Murica!"... (not true by the way) ....... ....... .......
Democrats do not have the bully pulpit or trust of the people to handle issues related to the military. Poll after poll has shown that on issues related to national security, Republicans are trusted more than Democrats. Until the Republican platform shifts to be against bloated defense spending or until you get a Republican President who is elected to slash defense spending, the American people will not accept it. Unfortunately, I feel like this is a long way off. All the Republican hopefuls are all making proposals for increasing funding. Christ, even Rand Paul has flip-flopped on the issue and wants more spending.
The reality is this has little to do with defense. Going back to the briefcase example, I dont really care who is determining how to conduct a war, how to extract information,etc. etc. What this is about is the fundamental business type operations of budgeting, appropriations, recording, negotiating, etc. etc.
Well, we have a defense department of well over a million personnel, so just about any extra, staff-wide expense or incremental salary bump would run in the tens of billions annually. We have to seriously consider reducing the manpower and backing away from the postwar notion of the standing army as a college financing mechanism or fall back entry level job.
When the GOP said Military don't know what they are doing and will appropriate more money than they asked for....
This issue is much more complicated than it appears. Much of the spending on military hardware is cycled back through the US economy in wages, profits and taxes. It would however, be easy to argue that that you could do the same with bridges highways and affordable houseing, but you can't discount that US military spending is what makes the US Dollar the currency of the world, US treasuries the unassailable storehouse of wealth, and allows the fiat principle of money where we can apparently print all of it we want without causing internal inflation. It's way complicated.
The 90's didn't actually have ten years of economic prosperity, it just looked like that's what happened because so many people were cooking the books and you had a huge bubble that hadn't quite burst yet. Talking about the economy being great in the mid 90's is like talking about how great Enron was doing in the late 90's.
Do you argue just to argue? Good god, your posts are incredibly annoying. My problem with all this is that nearly ever Republican candidate supports increased military spending (while cutting taxes and supporting deep cuts to domestic programs of course). Why would anyone think that this is a good strategy? Even Rand Paul has sold out on this issue. The defense spending issue pertains to both sides but I just don't understand how people can support politicians who continually run on platforms of increasing the already massively bloated defense budget, especially when these are the same politicians who are always catering to the "cut government spending!!!" crowd.
This is not remotely accurate. When the internet bubble blew up, there were job losses in that area, but the recession was incredibly mild and was a blip on the radar. The losses were mostly centered in the tech world and on Wall Street. The vast majority of jobs, income, and wealth gained survived completely intact. It was very different, for example, from the 2008 bubble burst where immense wealth was actually lost across the board between the housing crash and global financial meltdown.
I think that's a bit overstated; there was some inflated equity value in a specific sector, LTCM and some currency issues abroad. Some of the practices that led to the housing bubble had originated and gone unregulated, but those weren't fully exploited until rate cuts in early 2000s. Irrespective, that was just a tangential point to the broader argument about domestic stability and reduced military obligations abroad.
No, I don't argue just to argue. I'm not a fan of the Republicans either and I agree that military spending is something that should be cut back just like everything else. Of course, none of that changes what I said about the 90's not being the great economic boom that has been the narrative the last 15-20 years. The problem with the 2 parties is that they are essentially the same thing, they just cater to different special interests. Ask the Donkey party to cut spending and the only thing they'll want to cut is the military....while giving increases to entitlement programs to help them buy votes offsetting the cuts, ask the Elephant party to cut spending and they'll cut only entitlement programs while increasing military spending and their other pet projects offsetting the cuts. Neither would do anything that would actually address the problem.
Government and military spending contributes directly to GDP and the economy, but as long as were in a deficit position we have to look towards reducing it. Your last assertion is a little unsettling, we've seen runaway inflation before and, worse, the measures needed to curtail it.
This issue has been on my mind for a while - our budget is fundamentally wrong. I truly think our country would look remarkably different just by effectively utilizing the money we waste in defense, let alone with some gradual shifting in the budget pie. It will always bother me that this will never happen in my lifetime because of some irrational paranoia or the need to outspend the next twenty countries combined on military just to maintain an image of power. (This is also what irks the hell out of me with the gun culture, which is definitely related, but this is another discussion). I'm not naive and I am all for maintaining the strongest military in the world, but we do NOT need to be spending what we do to accomplish that. The waste, cronyism, and corruption on this sector is staggering, and I pray that there are people with influence fighting to fix this. Poverty. Jobs. Infrastructure. There are so many things we could knock those out of the park with the money they waste. Valuable government programs and agencies are scraping by while DoD wipes their asses with cash. I wonder if you can expound on this. I do understand defense and its related industries are part of the backbone of our economy. I understand we can't cant just blow this up tomorrow. I wonder if a gradual shift is possible. Are the politics with this just insurmountable? Will any president truly dare put defense under a microscope and at least hold them accountable for every dollar of their spending, as it should be, as other gov't agencies are subject to?
Totally agree with this and this is why I'm not going to blame the Republicans solely for this and why this shouldn't be a partisan issue. Every politician wants to help out their district with jobs and economic development and one of the easiest way so of doing that is getting fat defense contracts to their districts. This is why so we have weapons assembled all over the country even when it makes no sense logistically. It's also why it is so hard to kill any weapon system program as the the money for them is spread out among so many districts. The military industrial complex is alive and well and has its tentacles in many many pockets.
We can come up with all kinds of excuses when the defense department doesn't have to account for every penny they spend and what they are spending it on.
