We are about to be treated to another disgusting show of “richest country in history cries ‘poor’ over politics.”
What infuriates me is that the press, other politicians, nobody, basically, wants to talk about the defense budget. In spite of the fact that we are now ‘officially’ out of Afghanistan, congress has reached across the aisle in a spirit of bipartisanship to give the pentagon a 30 billion dollar raise. Meanwhile, there is this mass cluster-jerk circular firing squad dance going on over how the country can afford to deal with important things, and nobody seems to have the guts to say, “you know, I can’t take you seriously about your fiscal conservatism and concern for the deficit when you keep giving money to the pentagon that doesn’t even know how they spend it.”
The pentagon doesn’t know where the money goes because it can’t audit its own books. So the only answer to “how much money do you need?” is “MORE!” And congress, useless corrupt cowards that they are, has to pretend not to understand that.
Meanwhile, I was horrified to learn that Ilhan Omar – for some reason – decided to vote for $3 billion to help Israel fund its military after all the money they spent on war crimes in Gaza. [midd] Of “The Squad” Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Occasio-Cortez voted against the bill. Omar, who opposed earlier emergency legislation to approve the sale of smart bombs to Israel seems to have flipped over to just giving them money unconditionally. The appropriation for Israel is hidden inside a larger bill that funds foreign diplomacy and UN participation, so that’s probably why she voted for it. That, or, she’s just temporarily run out of fucks.
It’s disgusting, to me, that we can have open discussions regarding where Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema are getting their money from, who their donors are, and the media and congress pretend that it’s not completely corrupt. Oh, by all means we have to take these people seriously. No, we don’t. But we’re stuck with them because we’re expected to assent that they represent us.
There are two major questions that go along with that. How intentional is the broken budget of the DOD? It makes their life and the life of Congress easier if they don’t have to explain exactly where the money is going. The other is really, how broken is the budget? It wouldn’t surprise me if there is a budget book that is more precise and detailed then what is made public. I’m not talking the big black project holes but rather the DOD having a better budget then what they admit.
Along with any problem of that sort you have to ask how much fraud is happening. One of the points of accurate accounting is tracking down fraud. If the DOD can’t do it then you know there is some fraud in there somewhere.
There also questions of how much DOD budget is hidden in other departments. They shrink the DOD budget by hiding funding the budgets of other departments. The Department of Energy does a lot of nuclear work that exists only for the DOD and there is some NASA work that is for the DOD.
Really the DOD’s broken budget is a huge scandal that nobody wants to talk about.
The thing about highly profitable crime, like leeching off runaway military budgets, is that the racket is likely to develop the means to protect itself. That is to say, it’s a mob, and it has hit men and fixers. The most charitable explanation I have for good people supporting bad shit when they get into politics is that they literally have a gun to their head.
But that theory isn’t even necessary for explanation, honestly. It seems like anybody with the means and motivation to run for office is inherently corrupt enough to be bought off for the price of a free dinner at IHOP. If I had even upper middle class money, I’d spend some each year making congressmen dance in G strings for me.
–
@Great American Satan:
As Robert T. Morris sr once said “the shocking thin about ABSCAM was not that congresspeople are corrupt, it’s that you or I can afford one.”
It can be very frustrating, but it’s completely normal that you sometimes have to take some wins with some losses, much like reconciliation and infrastructure bills. A bunch of terrible crap mixed into those too. They have very little actual power to make things exactly as they want them to be, and the blame should really be directed at the rest of the shitheads who are forcing that shit on us.
It’s not nothing, but the Israel related stuff seems relatively minor to me, compared to everything else the bill does — mostly diplomatic efforts that we should be supporting. Just take a look at the votes to get a sense of this….
Democrats: 217 Yea, 3 Nay
Republicans: 0 Yea, 209 Nay, 2 Not voting
(By the way, Cori Bush also voted against it, in addition to AOC and Tlaib. She’s “officially” in the squad too, along with Jamaal Bowman…. not just the original four members.)
Anyway, if we’re talking about “DOD spending,” Omar did actually just vote against the gigantic defense bill (NDAA ‘22, H.R. 4350), which was nonetheless approved by the House 316-113. Those who voted against: 38 Ds and 75 Rs.
Busy as a bee, I cross-fertilise.
“Hopefully this isn’t news to most of my readers, but the United States is the heart of a global pseudo-empire that uses its military, diplomatic, and economic power primarily to safeguard the economic interests of its ruling class.”, wrote Abe Drayton.
So, any wastage within the military-political-industrial comples benefits the ruling class, anyway. All good!