That Pentagon, Defense budget?

Yeah, that one. The biggest share of the budget, bar none. Watch this:

And if that's not enough:

When are we going to stop plowing so much money and treasure into war and bombs and planes and the sort, instead of into people and even infrastructure for the people?

When your only tool is a hammer...

...every problem looks like a nail:

America, the world's warmonger.


Link to watch "War Made Easy" (2007): http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/war_made_easy/

Three quarters of one trillion dollars, at least, for weapons and killing and attacking other nations--far beyond what any other nation spends, in fact, far beyond what virtually all other nations spend--but we don't take care of the people.

How does anyone think this is sustainable for the nation?

The Oh-So Hypocritical Political Party

The political party that says it wants to "shrink government" wants to DOUBLE the number of border patrol agents to our South from 21,000 to 42,000--after it was already doubled once, earlier.

Right.

Got it.

It was that same political party that created the bloated, totally unnecessary and extremely wasteful Department of "Homeland Security."

Yeah.

Small government.

Uh-huh.

Great irony--hypocrisy?--from the Airport Authority today

I just saw this, on Facebook, on the KCI Airport page. Check this out:

"Did you know that in 2012, the Kansas City Aviation Department recycled over 200 tons of materials? That is about the weight of 5 Boeing 737 aircraft!"

So, uh, Airport Authority, could we recycle the airport?

Please?

Rather than rather literally throwing it away?

I mean, come on.

The latest on the airport

Yesterday, the City Council downtown voted to go forward with a study on a new, single-terminal airport for Kansas City and the region.

That's the bad news.

Here's the good news:

Three councilmen voted against it--John Sharp, Scott Taylor and Scott Wagner. To them I say kudos and thank you.

More good news, really: "Mayor Sly James admitted he is not completely sold on the current proposal" according to KSHB 41 News.

I'm thinking that, with good information gotten to the Mayor and the will of the people to not throw away our existing facility for all the reasons available--financial, environmental, practicality on so many levels and sheer fondness for and appreciation of the existing airport--I think he can be shown this new single-terminal airport idea is a poor one that should itself be abandoned.

I think the City Council can--and will--be shown and convinced this walking away from our existing airport and building a new, single and very expensive terminal, expensive in so many ways, is a patently bad idea, effort and investment.

Here's hoping.

Link to story:  City council approves single-terminal plan at Kansas City

2 Letters to the Editor at the Star that get it right on KCI

Exhibit A:

Keep KCI as is

I have a new suggestion for the city officials who think we should spend $1.2 billion for a new airport. Many, many fliers who go through Kansas City International Airport talk about how easy and great it is, yet city officials feel the need to destroy that.

You are now talking about building the new terminal on the site of Terminal A, destroying Terminal B and using Terminal C as rental for business offices. Here’s a great idea.

Why not leave Terminals A and B as is and rent out terminal C? Part of the reason we don’t have enough equipment for security scanning now is that the use of the airport has decreased.

This should be put to a vote of the citizens of Kansas City and not left to the few men and women on the City Council.

KCI is a great airport. Leave it that way. Just because you have a brand new sparkling terminal doesn’t mean more passengers are going to use it.

Harry Oliver
Kansas City  Exhibit B: KCI Traveler's dream
I travel about 50 percent of the time in my work and see a lot of airports. Kansas City International Airport is one of the most efficient airports in the country. To think of changing to be like other airports such as Atlanta, Detroit and Charlotte is a poorly thought-out concept and a huge waste of money. You have quick access and a great shuttle system to parking lots, compared with the nightmares of airports like those in New Jersey, Atlanta and California.

Why change something that works great only to waste so much money? This is probably being done by people who do not have to travel in their jobs.

Wake up and take a few sample trips. You will understand what I am saying.

Roger Justice
Olathe  Thank you, gentlemen. You're both so right. We couldn't agree with you more. 

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/09/4170530/kci-heartland-theatre-lobbyists.html#storylink=cpy

 Links: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/09/4170541/brain-drain-afghanistan-abortion.html http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/09/4170530/kci-heartland-theatre-lobbyists.html

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/09/4170541/brain-drain-afghanistan-I travel about 50 percent of the time in my work and see a lot of airports. Kansas City International Airport is one of the most efficient airports in the country.To think of changing to be like other airports such as Atlanta, Detroit and Charlotte is a poorly thought-out concept and a huge waste of money. You have quick access and a great shuttle system to parking lots, compared with the nightmares of airports like those in New Jersey, Atlanta and California.
Why change something that works great only to waste so much money? This is probably being done by people who do not have to travel in their jobs.
Wake up and take a few sample trips. You will understand what I am saying.
Roger Justice
Olathe

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/09/4170530/kci-heartland-theatre-lobbyists.html#storylink=cpy

abortion.html#storylink=cpy

Gross, wasteful defense spending, with 2 local touches in the Star today

There are two important articles in The Kansas City Star today on big, ugly, wasteful government spending--this time through the Department of Defense--with, as said above, local touches. One from our own Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill here:

McCaskill's law aims to stop war profiteering, rein in costs

It seems, in her efforts to rather wisely get better contracting measures and cut unwise, wasteful spending at the Pentagon and in defense spending, Senator McCaskil ran up against powerful interests in Congress and our government that otherwise wanted to support and maintain that ugly, wasteful spending:

 

When Sen. Claire McCaskill set out to crack down on waste and fraud in wartime contracting six years ago, the new senator figured a push to save taxpayer dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be a no-brainer.

"I assumed that cleaning up war contracting and profiteering would be a consensus item that would fly through the process," McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat and former state auditor, said in a recent interview. "I learned quickly that that was very naive."

This month, after half a dozen years of hearings, reports, overseas fact-finding trips, painful compromises and some last-minute, round-the-clock negotiations, the first substantial overhaul of the federal government's wartime contracting practices since World War II finally became law.
In the end, McCaskill didn't get everything she wanted. Some of her proposals were dropped or scaled back, and she acknowledges that the new law will add paperwork for the federal bureaucracy without any additional funds.

So our Senator, Claire, a Democrat, mind you, wanted to cut spending and cut waste out of government budgets but what happens? Her own colleagues cut her off and fought trimming that spending. Insanity. Then, as if that isn't enough, it seems one of our own big, local firms is getting pieces of the money action in defense spending, too:

Audit criticizes more Black & Veatch work in Afghanistan

 

And it's not even the first time it's happened with them, either:

 

An Overland Park contractor under fire for cost overruns and delays in the construction of a major power plant in Afghanistan now faces fresh criticism on another, much smaller project.

 

What's really great about this, too, is that B & V blamed another company for the problems. Trouble is, for B&V, that the government found, in an investigation, that it wasn't the other company, it was, in fact, B&V.

 

Nice, huh?

 

So, you want smaller government spending?

 

Sure we do. Naturally we do.

Read more here: http://midwestdemocracy.com/articles/audit-criticizes-more-black-veatch-work-in-afghanistan/#storylink=cpy

And what agency spends more money than any other in our country?

 

Defense.  The Department of Defense.  The Pentagon.

 

We need to cut spending by the military, without doubt.

 

And here's the even more ugly, blatant truth.  The Pentagon gets so much money, they can't--and don't--account for all of it.  They're that irresponsible:

 

CBS Reports Pentagon Cannot Track $2.3 Trillion

 

"'According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions,' (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld admitted. $2.3 trillion--that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America."

 

So, thank you, Senator McCaskill for your efforts and work. Please keep it up.

 

As for Black and Veatch and all the other government contractors out there, fleecing our country? 

 

Raspberries.

Folks, I say again, we have to work to kill campaign contributions so we can get the big, ugly, corrupting influence of the wealthy's and corporation's money out of our election system and so, finally, out of our government.

Nothing will change until we do.

Most Americans want the defense budget cut

From a recent survey:

Americans Overwhelmingly Support Defense Cuts

"As Congress struggles to rein in the federal deficit, a new survey finds Americans preferred to cut defense spending more than any other program.

In a new survey that not only asked for opinion, but also briefed the respondents on the federal budget, Americans came to a bipartisan conclusion: 67 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats supported cutting the defense budget."

More:

"'When Americans look at the amount of defense spending compared to spending on other programs, they see defense as the one that should take a substantial hit to reduce the deficit,' said Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation (PPC), and the lead developer of the survey. 'Clearly the polarization that you are seeing on the floor of the Congress is not reflective of the American people.'"

We spend over 711 billion dollars, annually on defense.

It's disgusting.

It's out of balance.

It's not realistic.

It's not sustainable.

Write your Congressional members today. By email, it's easy.

Links: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/05/10/152426302/survey-americans-overwhelmingly-support-defense-cuts: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/355447-defense-budget-survey-full-results.html

Out of Afghanistan---out of endless war

The following quote, from Alternet, shows three things to me.
First, it shows me, yet again, how and why we need to cut defense spending.
Second, it proves further that we need to get out of Afghanistan.
Finally, it shows me what a crazy "military-industrial complex" we've become as a nation and how we need to somehow undo that.
The quote:


The Associated Press covered U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry's announcement that a $511 million contract had been awarded to Caddell Construction, one of America’s “largest construction and engineering groups,” for a massive expansion of the U.S. embassy in Kabul.  According to the ambassador, that embassy is already “the largest... in the world with more than 1,100 brave and dedicated civilians... from 16 agencies and working next to their military counterparts in 30 provinces,” and yet it seems it’s still not large enough.


Half a billion dollars, ladies and gentlemen, to make what is already the largest "embassy" in the world, according to this, even larger.
As if that weren't bad enough--remember the huge "embassy" we built in Iraq?  From the same article, read on:


On 104 acres of land in the heart of the Iraqi capital (always referred to in news reports as almost the size of Vatican City), it was slated to cost $590 million. (Predictable cost overruns and delays -- see F-35 above -- would, in the end, bring that figure to at least $740 million, while the cost of running the place yearly is now estimated at $1.5 billion.)


But wait, there's more.  They aren't done yet:  


By May 2009, with Barack Obama in the White House, I knew as much.  That was when two McClatchy reporters broke a storyabout a similar project for a new “embassy” in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, at the projected cost of $736 million (with a couple of hundred million more slated for upgrades of diplomatic facilities in Afghanistan).


A third nearly one billion dollar "embassy" right next door, in Pakistan.

Does this make sense?  Any sense?
Do you like how your taxes are being spent?
Is this the country we want to be?
Surely, clearly the answer to all these questions is no.  
We need to change this.  We need to fight for these huge changes so we quit this, as a country.
And we need to start today.


Links:  http://www.alternet.org/world/148848/the_evidence_is_overwhelming:_we_aren't_getting_out_of_afghanistan_or_even_iraq
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1844674517/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
http://aep.typepad.com/american_empire_project/2010/10/digging-in-for-the-long-haul-in-afghanistan-.html#readmore

Makes ya' wanna pay more taxes, don't it?

Just lifted from Yahoo and the AP because I can't say it better than this:

Too many dollars, too few Army investigators
June 12, 2008 1:11 PM EDT

FORT BELVOIR, Va. - Double-billing. Bribes. Kickbacks. Military contracts are big targets for serious crimes - and there aren't nearly enough investigators to catch them all.

The Army's contracting budget has exploded since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began - from $46 billion in 2002 to $112 billion in 2007. Yet the number of people who hunt down crooked companies and corrupt officials has stayed about the same, according to Associated Press interviews and research.

Army investigation chiefs told the AP they need a dramatic increase in agents to fight contract fraud.

In combat zones, deals can be made quickly, often with foreign companies in countries where bribes are a routine part of doing business. Yet to monitor those billions in contracts, just under 100 civilian agents are assigned to the Army Criminal Investigation Command's procurement fraud office.

Even with more fraud police, there would be no guarantees. Flaws in how the Army awards and manages contracts, especially overseas, also need repairs to curb criminal activity.

"It's sort of like an assembly line for cars and having more checkers at the end of the line when the people aren't building the cars right," said Jacques Gansler, a military acquisition expert. "What we really need to eliminate the abuse is people doing it right in the first place."

Until that happens, the Army's procurement fraud team faces an increasingly complex workload that requires frequent overseas travel and specialized training to spot foul play in mountains of arcane paperwork.

"There's obviously more going on out there today than there was five years ago, but I have the same number of people," said Wes Kilgore, director of the command's Major Procurement Fraud Unit.

There are 95 ongoing investigations into Army contract irregularities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. An additional 500 fraud cases have been launched in the United States, but most of those are not related to wartime contracts.

Under a proposal now being reviewed by senior Army officials at the Pentagon, Kilgore's staff would increase by 143 agents and 30 support personnel between 2010 and 2015. Army leaders approved a request last year to add 36 employees, including 23 agents. Those extra hands are still being hired or trained, however.

Overall, the 166 new agents would cost about $21.5 million a year.

If the latest request is approved, Kilgore's unit would eventually have 260 agents to uncover and prevent contract fraud.

"We're concerned, and that's why we've pushed so hard on getting these numbers ramped up rather than sitting on our hands," said Daniel Quinn, the command's chief of staff. "It's the same reason why police departments will put cops out on a beat or patrol cars flooding an area. If you have a higher chance of getting caught, you're not going to be out there committing a crime."

Criminal Investigation Command officials rarely grant interviews. The decision to speak with a reporter reflects how critical the new hires are to them.

It's not just the enormous flow of wartime money, it's the speed with which contracts are awarded that lures the cheaters. Location is key, too. In Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, supplies such as bottled water, shipping containers, food and transportation might be needed quickly from local vendors. If only a few suppliers can fill the order, the choices may be limited. But the potential for a crooked deal is not.

Army Col. Joe Ethridge, commander of the 701st Military Police Group, likens the situation to buying a plane ticket for travel to a remote location the day before a holiday weekend.

"The vendors know going in (the customer is) going to want this really fast and there's not going to be a lot of competition," said Ethridge, whose military police group includes Kilgore's procurement fraud unit.

Another pitfall of overseas contracting - known in military circles as contingency or expeditionary contracting - is the expectation of bribes. In the Middle East and other parts of the world, they're often assumed to be part of the deal.

"The threat and the opportunity of money passing hands is always there," Ethridge said. "So it's a pretty tough environment to do contracting in, and it's a pretty tough environment to do oversight."

Ethridge and other command officials said they didn't anticipate how reliant the Army would be on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Private companies get paid to provide base security, drive trucks, operate warehouses and serve meals. Contracts for these and other services can be difficult to manage.

"This is a change in how we operate and creates threats that we're going to have to address," Ethridge said.

The investigation command has procurement fraud offices in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. The Iraq office opened in December 2005, two years after the U.S.-led invasion, and the others followed.

In retrospect, the command should have dispatched its fraud agents more quickly, says Quinn, the command's chief of staff.

"They (didn't) have to be with the 1st Armored Division moving up the highway," he said. "But we probably should have sent our fraud guys in there early on."

The concern, and need for more people, is shared by other oversight organizations. In a March 31 report to Congress, the office of the Pentagon inspector general said its ability to adequately audit and investigate military activities and budgets has become strained because staffing levels haven't increased.

The gap, the report said, means a greater chance for fraud, waste and abuse. The Pentagon inspector general and the Army criminal investigation command are separate organizations, although their agents often work together.

The March report was made public last month by the Project on Government Oversight, a public interest group in Washington.

Each new agent costs about $130,000 a year in salary, benefits, training, and equipment.

Army investigation command officials say the investment pays big returns. With fewer than 100 agents, the procurement fraud unit now generates about $130 million a year in recoveries, about $10 million more than the command's annual operating budget.

The pitch for more investigators has to be weighed against an ongoing effort to expand and improve the Army's contracting corps. In October, an independent panel sharply criticized the Army's ability to award and manage contracts, especially for overseas combat forces.

That panel, chaired by Gansler, a former Pentagon acquisition chief, said the Army's contracting employees were "understaffed, overworked, undertrained, undersupported and, most important, undervalued."

The criticisms led the Army to order a major overhaul of the way it buys gear and supplies for the troops. Chief among the moves is the formation of a new contracting command to better manage military purchasing and the addition of 1,400 contracting personnel.
---
On the Net:

Army Criminal Investigation Command: http://www.cid.army.mil/
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Back to more important things

Time magazine has two terrific articles out just now. One is by a soldier in Iraq, about the meaning of 4,000 soldiers dead due to the Iraq war. It's very poignant. You can find it at the following link:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1725642,00.html

And the other, second article quotes Senator and Presidential Candidate John McCain as saying we need to "collaborate more with allies." You'll find it here:

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1725541,00.html

I'm more moved by the first, soldier's article, of course, but find this second one fascinating, too, because, if you'll recall, Senator John Kerry was "shot down", forgive the image, 4 years ago when he was running for President for saying just this. "Too wimpy" it was said. Too soft.

How far we've come. Now we think, after all this time and all the soldier's deaths and all the billions of dollars and materiel we've wasted--along with blowing up and destroying a country, only to have to put it back together--when we finally come back around to realizing that maybe talking with our allies was a good idea after all.

And not wimpy.

Watching PBS' "Frontline" series Monday and Tuesday night should have been required for all American citizens this week so we could all know where this Iraq war came from, what it's done and who's been responsible for what, including the lies and misrepresentations.

Lessons on a Monday in February

Lesson one:

Societies shouldn't have mechanisms created that take large amounts of money and transfer them to people of formerly extremely small means. Put another way, it is nearly crazy for a society to have a lottery in which middle class or lower middle class people can win millions of dollars.

It's a mistake virtually always.

It doesn't make sense.

It's a mistake looking to happen.

Wanna' have a terrific documentary? Rush to Georgia right now and start filming the family who just won 270 million dollars in the "Mega-Millions" lottery. It'll be a runaway success. This has tragedy written all over it (unless this family is extremely lucky--or smart).

Lesson number 2: World leaders should NOT hand uncompeted contracts worth large sums of money (read: millions of dollars--again) to friends, colleagues or associates. (See "Day 2" below).

I was right. The contract given to former Attorney General John Ashcroft for between 27 and 52 million dollars, according to the Associated Press, was not competed by the government--yours and mine--that gave it to him.

I wish I had been wrong.