When FDR gave men from the weapons industry carte blanche to run war materiel procurement, he created a monster.

Naturally those guys always resolved their conflict of interest in favor of the weaponmakers they still worked for (they certainly didn't live on their government "dollar a year"). They had no motive at all to ever say No to a military request and every motive to say Yes, and so now we have the MIC.

If the F-35 follows tradition, it will be obsolete before it reaches acceptance testing, and another multi-$G project for its successor will immediately be funded.

The real prize, though, is that $20G USMC V-22 Osprey boondoggle. What do infantry need more than a troop transport that can't glide, can't stay in the air unless both engines are running, is so complex that it can't be kept operational at any reasonable cost, and that has killed 30 Marines so far by crashing during its test flights?

I wonder how much Lockheed Martin pays its CEO. I am just so sick of this continuing Pentagon bullshit. No money for universal health care, plenty of money for universal death machines. Our government's priorities are horribly skewed.

Making the world safe for corporate corruption is the driving force behind both political parties in the united States of America. The pentagon scam is easily pulled off because of the ignorance of a very fearful paranoid population drugged out on sports, religion and garbage culture.

Better off citizens regularly demonized the poor on welfare. Politicians regularly insulted and scapegoated the poor who received welfare. Our government,corporations, the financial sector and banks have used and abused the poor for centuries ... red lining, subprime lending schemes, higher pricing of goods and services or outright denial of those goods and services, segregation, discrimination, denial of equal access and equal treatment in all avenues that could lead at least to self-sufficiency or better yet social and economic improvement. Healthcare for the poor is nominal at best ... deadly at worst ... and inbetween humiliating and degrading if you're lucky enough.

So ... how is it that welfare for war-making corporations, worlwide economic Ponzi operating bankster gangsters, slice-and-dice/shake-and-bake/no better than sideshow tricksters insurance companies, etc... occurs and continues on unabated? No welfare cut-off for them! No welfare-to-work for them! We can't even get a nod of gratitude for saving their asses and another year of outrageous bonuses for a banner screw-job.

Try ... Propaganda. Brainwashing. Corruption. Greed. Lobbyists. Power. Profit. Repeat and repeat again.

We have a government in partnership with the war-makers. War-making is another Ponzi scheme ... socialize the cost of war and privatize the profits. There are a lot of people making tons of money off of the wars. They will be making tons more ... and not a single drop of corporate blood or politician's blood shed for any of it. The worst of it being ... the poor paying the ultimate price again ... whether our own or those of the invaded countries.

Maybe this is all part of the 'jobs program' ... ???

Enough with asking questions already! What's the point?

Just shut the spigot ... just like they did with welfare for the poor ... problem is it won't happen to them.

Boy, do we have our priorities messed up. War kills, Heath Care saves lives.

More key reading on this very topic was posted here at CD a couple of days ago. "Synergy in Security: The Rise of the National Security Complex" by Tom Barry

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/18-3

I have a better name. Call them WARFARE KINGS ! They always say that we don't have enough money for health care or that Social Security is going insolvent but they sure have money for more warfare. Talk about sheer hypocrisy !

Wrong strategy to fight the wrong war with the wrong weapons.

This white elephant is a left over from planning to fight a large scale, multi-theatre war with a similarly armed and equipped superpower.

The coming Collapse will pit an over armed, over stretched US behemoth versus a smaller, lightly armed resistance fighting pop-up guerrilla battles where and when they choose. Tanks, aircraft carriers and multiple-million jet fighters will lose ground to hand-to-hand and house-to-house fighting in dense urban areas.

This is the situation in Iraq.

And will very likely be the situation inside the US if we see a continuation of the economic disparity and desperation.

Another thing the hawks will say is that these weapons programs are providing jobs. But what they don't say is how much of this is outsourced overseas, like everything else.

It's all fine and dandy to complain about the exorbitant cost of our armed forces, but the truth is everything is going according to plan; the corporate plan that is. With the mainstream media in a supporting role, the majority of Americans (78%) are convinced that we need the current DOD defence budget (or larger!) to deal with the threat of terrorism. But the DOD budget has nothing to do with fighting wars, preserving democracy or saving innocent nations form nasty dictators. The DOD is simply a tool in which a handful of wealthy businesses can perpetually rape the American taxpayer in the name of "protecting America!"
The consequences are the absence of universal healthcare, crappy schools, a deteriorating environment, crumbling infrastructure, a booming 'private sector' in prisons and security firms and finally an inadequate social safety net that is gasping for air.
Meanwhile the electorate continues to support the status quo by voting for one of the two corporate parties, watching the MSM, buying into the whole terrorism fiasco and blaming the puppet government rather than the corporate strings that dictate the dance.
So don't expect anyone "to raise a few tough questions about the Pentagonization of our country and its finances." The fix is in and until the American electorate wakes up from its drunken stupor, nothing will change.

Too bad peace is not profitable so that we could have a PIC ( Peace Industrial Complex)!

I noticed a poster mention the 'jobs' issue about defense contractors. It's a common canard to fall back on when all other specious arguments are routed with facts and reason.

Leaving aside the absurdity of outspending the rest of the world combined in defense, plus the amount of nuclear warheads we possess, there is something called the 'efficiency of a dollar'. Basically, it tracks the longterm effects of any investment. Military spending ranks near the bottom of the list. You don't need an economics degree to realize that a bomb or submarine or continued investment of intellectual and real capital into designing the next generation of killing technology produces little in return except security. Which, to a point, I'm all for.

But over the last 30 years, the percentage of our budget dedicated to defense has blown out the ceiling. And don't be fooled by the already obscene numbers coming out of the budget office. Money is hidden in other departments linked to defense, so that now the real cost of empire is more than half of discretionary spending. Meantime, the war-game lunatics in the Pentagon are 6 moves ahead on their grand chessboard while us dummies are still wrestling in the mud about evil dictators and Islamofascists. The goal of the insaniacs is to secure the remainder of fossil fuels and one day defeat China and Russia. And that's going require even more of your dough.

There is also one more pernicious idea to consider. The military is one of the few ways to squeeze such large expenditures from an ever-shrinking Treasury. Fear is the engine and an endless supply of lobbyists and campaign contributions supply the oil. The thing about military spending is that, unlike investments in education, health, parks, job training, etc., there are profits to be had in this area. Huge, guaranteed profits every single year. The phony R's don't mind tax and spend - just who's getting taxed and where it's going.

Report Waste, Fraud and Abuse in government spending.

http://www.recovery.gov/Contact/ReportFraud/Pages/fwa.aspx

Track the money

Brave New Foundation suggests a sample message:

"I'd like to report the waste of billions of dollars of our national wealth in Afghanistan on a war that doesn't make us safer. It's fraud to portray this as a war that increases our security, and it's abusive of U.S. troops and local civilians to drag out this war any longer. End the war so we can have real economic recovery."

It would be interesting to know the degree of the fusion of the governing financial, military and energy corporations. For example: Goldman Sachs, Lockheed-Martin and Exxon. Are they 3 corporations or 3 front-names for one secret gigacorporation? Or at least, how much of their assets are shared between all 3?

'Welfare for Cold Warriors' is the term I've been using for years. Of course military spending does some good, and its hard sometimes to know when 'enough is enough' (I suggest 1/2 our current spending: $250 billion a year, is plenty). But spend any time around military personnel, especially Air Force personnel, and the arrogance is palpable. These people are pampered, preferred, and on a mission for Christ; and the rest of us had just better get out of the way. Very, very scary.

BTW, I know I sound like a broken record but, as with everything else, military spending won't get fixed until Congress gets fixed:

fixcongressfirst.org

That's because, through campaign cash, Lockheed-Martin and other big defense corporations are actually calling the shots. In this system, what the voter wants is a distant second. And it doesn't matter which party is in power, either.

fixcongressfirst.org, or nothing gets fixed. Not healthcare, not defense, not education, not the budget, not the bankers, not the environment. Nothing.

The American government has always maintained the right of its citizens to ship arms to belligerents. President Washington ... took this position when France protested against the sale of arms to England in 1793, the answer being that "the exporting from the United States of warlike instruments and military stores is not to be interfered with." - Theodore Roosevelt's "Fear God..."p.160

Gun runners from the get-go!

"Keep in mind that the Marines, the Air Force, and the Navy are planning to buy a combined 2,450 of them for what's now an eye-popping $323 billion"

No no no. Rather it's the people who are buying the airplanes. It's kind of like Count Dracula, coaxing them to "come... here!", and they walk entranced to the voting booth, and vote for their enslavement-as-usual. But not just any old enslavement. The Africans forced to pick cotton on USan plantations were clothing the world. The 300 million USan slaves of today are clothing mostly USan elites. Hilarious! About the most wacky co-dependency you could imagine!

the russian navy rots in the salt water of the black seas, as does what's left of the ukranian navy. oh, that's right, the ukraine forewent both a navy and a nuclear arsenal when it broke with russia. the chinese navy has but one aircraft carrier, and it is constantly tracked by pentagon satellite experts who could order it blown out of the water on a minute's notice. in the meantime, we spend billions every year making more sophisticated submarines in joe liberman's state of connnecticut, where the military industrial complex is king. that state prospers on an expensive delusion, to wit, that there is even a remotely credible threat to u.s. naval supremacy. accordingly, we continue to throw more and more money at joe's yankees to manufacture hugely expensive weapons against improbable enemies whom our existing forces already dwarf. so these weapons have become ends in themselves, not the means to security. so in their excess, they destroy, not protect us.

Recently, a leader of Hamas, the democratically elected government of the Gaza Strip, was assassinated in Dubai. The suspected killers were caught on camera, going in and out of bathrooms, with and without disguises. This careless brazen behavior lent a Keystone Cops atmosphere to the incident. Anderson Cooper, on CNN, asked a spokesman in Dubai, “Was this a mistake?”. He was referring to the carelessness displayed on camera. The fact that this was murder was of no concern. This is how the Mafia operates. It was a comment on what we have become.
We are an empire, with 737 official hardened military bases in foreign countries. No one, probably even at the Pentagon, knows for sure but 1000 bases may be closer to the truth. As of 2007, we had 325, 000 military personnel stationed abroad, not counting dependents. Our military budget is as big now, as a percentage of GNP, as it was at the close of WWII. Our defense spending is 41.5% of the world total and our annual defense budget exceeds the total of all the next ten nations combined. Instead of asking “Why do they hate us?”, perhaps we should ask, “What are we afraid of?”. A state of permanent emergency has prevailed since the end of WWII. That war melded into the Cold War and the Cold War with the War on Terror. After 68 straight years of emergency war powers, (1941 to 2009), we need war. It is who we are, a militaristic society. We export arms to any buyers in current good ideologically standing and sometimes to both sides in a conflict.
The abnormal has become normal. Contractors, like Boeing, Honeywell, General Dynamics, Armor Holdings and Halliburton can effect who gets elected. They then provide jobs to eager voters. It is a cycle in which everyone benefits. In a typical example, Joe Lieberman, Senator in Connecticut, is pushing for an $18 billion dollar submarine to fight Al-Quida and hunt for Osama Bin Laden. This is described as,”… a down payment on our national security and also job security for workers in South Connecticut”.
Military technology is one of our biggest exports, hence our reluctance to disturb this cash cow, like sign an international land mine treaty. About 50% of our tax dollars go to feed the industrial military complex. It is a form of welfare. Job security is national security however and the present system provides job security to our congressmen, the contractors and to their workers. Those who obsess about high taxes, “welfare queens” and national security however, see no problem in providing welfare to those who profit from war and death.
The State Department has it’s own Praetorian Guard, a private army at the disposal of the administration. Blackwater is the largest of three private security firms used by the State Department.
That name has been changed since it became associated with thuggery and it’s founder became implicated in murder. It is based on 7,000 acres in North Carolina with indoor and outdoor shooting ranges an urban reproduction and a man made lake.. Blackwater has it’s own armored vehicles, drones, air force and ships. It trains 40,000 people per year in military and police services.
In 1630, John Winthrop addressed the colonists of the future Massachusetts Bay Colony. “We must always consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill”, he said. “The eyes of all people are upon us….”. The eyes of all people are still upon us but the lights of that city are now dark. We are feared and mistrusted.
So Anderson Cooper’s blasé attitude about a murder, which is illegal and immoral in most civilized societies, passes us by and life goes on. We are impoverished; financially,constitutionally and morally.

Signs at the peace rally I was at earlier today:
"End the warfare state"

Probably my favorite slogan of the day.

Say what you will about the defense industrial fraud, but if you desire a good life for yourself and your progeny you must somehow get your hands on this spoils pie.