Tom Toles for December 07, 2016

The amount currently getting attention is miniscule compared to the total fraud, most of it in contracting and the “black box” budgets the public never sees.

Excellent. A vastly underestimated President who gets better and better in retrospect.

“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel ,,,” Well, there goes that one.

Awwww… c’mon Guy, how dare you quote a Republican of such stature. Don’t you know that his opposition to the rise in power of the military-industrial complex proves, that would be indisputably proves that he was a RINO?That fact that he was intelligent and thoughtful and understood complex ideas proves that he was not the same as the modern day republicans.

read smedley butler’s book, ‘war is a racket’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racketwhat are the chances of ending fraud under a president who has been indicted and sued for fraud?

There are tanks being built that the Pentagon doesn’t want; after construction they are immediately shipped to over-flowing storage. But members of Congress won’t change that because it would affect jobs in their state.

.

This is just one example; the entire military budget needs review. The US spends as much as the next 12 countries combined, while the VA was not adequately funded. Much of this budget should be used for infrastructure which would create TONS of jobs to build and MAINTAIN; the latter has been severely neglected.

.

Privatizing infrastructure is a BAD idea. The purpose of the private industry is to make money (profits). Therefore, privatization results in higher costs, short-cuts taken or usually both. Look at private prisons; even if crime was slashed, the private prisons require minimum occupancy or the charge fines. Not to mention the numerous violations by private prisons corps., including using an often prosecuted company for juvenile facilities in Florida..

Don’t worry The Donald is going to balance the graft and corruption equally across all branches of government.

Don’t worry The Donald is going to balance the graft and corruption equally across all branches of government.

With the Don in charge and the Republicans backing him we should see another story build on the over budget Hexagon.

And it has been growing larger, stronger and more influential since then. We employ unknown (to us) Mercenaries in our wars, their deaths aren’t mentioned an who they are rare spoken of, but they are there.

I just wonder how any government department can “waste” $125,000,000,000.

@Henr3y 567

.

Untrue

.

A common misperception is that federal, state and local government employees can’t be fired from their jobs despite poor performance or misconduct. This is untrue. According to the United States Merit Systems Protection Board, a federal agency that oversees appeals filed by fired civil servants, the federal government terminated almost 12,000 federal employees in 2009. Since government employees, as compared to private sector employees, are vested with additional constitutional procedural rights before they may be terminated, firing a civil servant is more difficult and takes more time.

.

http://work.chron.com/can-fired-civil-service-jobs-19492.html

Trillions Go Missing from the Military: Pentagon Can’t Account for $6.5T in Taxpayer Cash

.

They have some secret projects they aren’t telling us about.

Money has computer trackable numbers on it these days. The NSA has all the data of all money transfers. The NSA could track the missing money if the government actually wanted to find it.

Privatizing the government gone amuck.

.

You have just about as many contractors as there are people in the military. The argument is it saves money.Tell that to the soldiers that made less pay than the person who was/is dishing their food out in Afganistan or Iraq.It use to be soldiers did the food also and people were paid on the jobs they did. Now you have people cooking making more than people out on the front line.

.

Those wars were big payouts to Haliburton and other contractors.

.

Government is not profit motivated. Now we hire companies that job is to make a profit. Conservatives think that this will save the government money. No it does not. Not only do you pay more it also lead to corruption because all of a sudden you have lobbyist telling politicians they need more weapons, more prisons, more drugs, etc.

.

It is the tax payer getting reamed.

The Military should be required to use all this wasted money to take over the responsibilities of the Veterans Administration. The military should be required to take care of its own. They broke the soldiers .. they should fix and take care of the veterans. As it is now, when the military no longer has use of personnel they just wash their hands of them for the private sector to take care of.

Military contractors make sure that some of the parts for their projects are built in some states (Congressional districts), and others in others, so the members of Congress in all those districts naturally want to protect those projects (whether needed or not) and even those factories (whether needed or not), and will therefore team up against the Pentagon.

America’s “defense” budget is approximately as large as the rest of the world’s combined. We have 5% of the world’s population and 45% of its military spending. For defense, you think? Hardly! The last foreign boot on American soil was British, and it departed from New Orleans, courtesy of Andrew Jackson, about 202 years ago. What we have now is, to put it plainly, a gargantuanly overbloated Department of Intimidation.

Liverlips McCracken

You left out a few significant details. The quote comes from his farewell address. He was leaving the graft and corruption (taking with him the double-dip pensions of general of the army and president of the United States). You gloss over that his one “combat” experience was giving the order for a combined infantry, cavalry, and armor charge against US veterans peacefully petitioning for an advance payment of a bonus at the height of the depression, destroying all their property, in disobedience of a direct order not to do so from his commander in chief. You fail to mention that the main feature of his administration was the reign of terror from McCarthyism. You may be too young – I hadn’t been born when the bonus marchers were “thanked” for their service, although it was fresh in the national memory – but I remember McCarthy and have often been victim of its residue, as have most who have defended their country in a non-military way.

Our government spends on the military like our people spend on health care. We spend more than everyone to be almost as good as everyone.

If you think that is waste: check members of congress retirement,free services and insurance and more.

Don’t forget the flyovers at damn near every sporting event, so we can cheer louder to the words of the National Anthem we only mouth without thinking.

I worked for USPS for nearly 30 years. Luckily, we have contracts that shield us from over zealous managers who want to fire on a whim, and then can’t figure out how to document what it is they allege. One employee was “disciplined” for unauthorized overtime, when his time card showed it was his off day, and he had been called in due to vacations!Many of these same mangers were some of the worst craft employees, and managed to suck up to the right person at the right time.

edinbaltimore

You were lucky to get past probation period. I didn’t make it. Among the fake charges were: I was left handed (I am right handed and there is no rule prohibiting left handeds), I didn’t hang out with other employees (they all were caught having coffee while I was collecting the mail as I should have), they only talked about their favorite prostitutes (not an interest of mine), and I was assaulted by a supervisor (if I had assaulted him it would have been a felony, he got protection), the hearing involved me under oath and the prosecutor reading from a script, having know direct knowledge of the case.