Fund Your Utopia Without Me.™

10 December 2012

There Can Be No "Sacred Pork" - Defence Cuts Must Be On The Table


M2RB:  Abattoir




  
 Beware the danger
to be left unhealed
Never trust a stranger
by believing in a fool
Protect your children 
Oh, the world is cruel.




 Second look at shari'ah strictures on pork?



"It avoids the tax side of the fiscal cliff. There’s still a spending problem. Most of those cuts in spending are fine with me, except for defense."
- Bill Kristol,  Fox News Sunday, 9 December 2012


Sorry there, Billy, old boy, old pal, but defence has to be cut as well. If you honestly believe that there is not waste, fraud and abuse, along with unnecessary spending on materiel that even the military leaders do not want, then you are seriously deluded. The brokest nation in the history of the world can no longer afford to spend with abandon. It must spend wisely and that goes for defence, too.

Below are the amounts spent on defence since 2001 – keep in mind that the Iraq War is over:

2001: $366.2 billion
2002: $421.7 billion
2003: $482.9 billion
2004: $542.4 billion
2005: $600.0 billion
2006: $621.1 billion
2007: $652.6 billion
2008: $729.6 billion
2009: $794.0 billion
2010: $847.2 billion
2011: $878.5 billion
2012: $902.0 billion

That’s a 146.31% increase in defence spending since 2001. It goes hand-in-hand with the overall explosion in Federal spending. In FY2001, the government spent $1.8629 trillion. In FY2012, the Federal government spent $3.7956 trillion. That’s a 103.75% increase in spending since FY2001!

In addition to disproving the typical response from people like you that Democrats — and, as most everyone here knows, I can’t stand them — “hate the military and always cut defence spending to the bone, decimating national security, to fund their domestic agenda” (It’s quite evident that Dems spend like drunken sailors on the military as much as they do on social programmes), the above figures should give pause to any fiscal hawk. 

Our dire fiscal condition requires MASSIVE spending cuts and there can be NO sacred cows. I simply refuse to believe that everything that we spent $902.0 billion on this year in defence-related expenditures was absolutely, positively, matter-of-factly, without-a-shadow-of-a-doubt the difference between the US having the strongest military on earth and being the UK or France. 

Your nation-building jaunts over the last decade have added tremendously to the national debt; yet, you continue to talk about sending troops here and there. Your willfully blind ignorance about the Arab Spring has consistently demonstrated that you are an idiot. So, excuse me if I don’t buy into your belief that we have to spend almost $1 trillion every year on national defence, winning the hearts and minds of members of a 7th century death cult, and keeping outdated military bases open on obscure atolls in the Pacific that no one has heard of since General MacArthur was planning his revenge solely because they are a large part of the local economy.

The Federal government is grossly bloated and ineffectively uses the limited resources available to it…and that includes the US military. It’s time for everyone to shape up or ship out.



**Sigh**

Americans by a 60/38% margin want to raise taxes on Americans earning more than $250,000 a year, but by a 59/38% margin are against making “significant” defence cuts. If only we had an educated populace!

The expiration of the Bush tax rates on the top 2% will raise about $80 billion a year, assuming no behavioural modifications, or fund the government for about 7.69 days. According to Democrats, raising taxes on the “evil rich” is the magical elixir that will solve all of our fiscal woes while not impact employment or the economy in the slightest.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the 9.4% cut to most defence programmes — except those exempted in the sequestration law — that hits in 2013 is called “devastating” by Secretary of Defence, Leon Panetta, “deeply destructive” by the White House, “catastrophic” by Republicans across-the-board, and require preventative defibrillation for nation-building/Arab Spring cheerleaders like Bill Kristol. The amount of cuts next year is $50 billion.

$80 billion in tax rises = Magical unicorn dust that solves budgetary woes, erases wrinkles, reverses receding hairlines, and will cause a 2 stone reduction in weight overnight!!!

$50 billion in defence cuts = “devastating,” “deeply destructive,” “catastrophic,” etc.

What NONE of them tell people is:

1. The 9.4% cut is to the BASELINE BUDGET for the defence department. It is NOT a 9.4% cut to the FY2012 budget. As with the rest of the Federal budget — even when it isn’t passed **eyeroll** — spending increases automatically across-the-board every year. These increases are built in and require Congress to do nothing. So, if the baseline budget increase for defence is 5%, the sequester cut is actually 4.4% of what we spent in FY2012.

2. Beware the “Raise property taxes or we’ll have to fire first responders and teachers!” routine. Both Democrats and Republicans are arguing that, if we cut defence, it will cost hundreds of thousands of military and defence contractor jobs. Of course there will be job losses…if we cut waste, fraud, abuse, AND WEAPONS SYSTEMS THAT THE MILITARY DOESN’T WANT, BUT HAS BECOME “SACRED PORK.”   


Can Joe Biden far behind with a claim that "if we cut defence by $1, more women will get raped!"?


That’s why we need to go through the defence budget and find the billions in savings that can be made and make cuts where they are sensible and necessary, which is what we MUST do with the rest of the Federal budget, as well.



"I won’t argue with any of your numbers, or what you’re saying. As a defense contractor I see the waste and bloated bureaucracy on a daily basis, so cuts could easily be made, if made in the right places, without hurting the military.

However, I would suggest you lay out the same figures for entitlement spending – and see how they compare to the defense budget. The basic reality is that defense is a relatively small part of the overall federal spending – but one of the few Constitutionally valid responsibilities for the federal government. Entitlements are the part of the “budget” that are bankrupting the country – and they aren’t even a valid expense for the federal government according to the Constitution."

dentarthurdent on December 10, 2012 at 12:51 PM


Luv, I would end ALL welfare and subsidies TODAY. I would also end Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If you got the impression from my post that I am some sort of cut-defence-so-that-we-fan-create-a-socialist-utopia kind of Progressive lunatic, I very much regret that. It was certainly not my intent.

Apart from pointing out the explosion in defence spending — and, obviously, I am fully aware of the change in circumstances since 2001 — and the FACT that the country is broke, which requires that there be NO sacred pork, the point of my post was the polling numbers.

60% – 38%: Increase taxes on the “evil rich,” which will fund 7.69 days of Federal government spending and are counter-intuitive to basic Keynesian principles because even tax rises are contractionary and Maynard opposed same in weak economic conditions. The expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the “evil rich” is a meaningless jaunt in pure “envy” politics, which are poisonous. I chose to become an American to get away from such destructiveness.

59% – 38%: Do not make any “significant” cuts to defence. “Significant” being defined by Democrats and Republicans as $50 billion out of a $900+ billion defence budget.

I am all with you on entitlements. In fact, I’d wager that I am far more radical than the overwhelming majority of people that frequent HA. I just don’t buy into the ring-fencing of defence, which too many Americans, including solid conservatives and Tea Partiers, do. I believe that the brokest nation in the history of civilisation MUST start making better choices in the way that it spends limited resources.


"Our military could be better equipped and better funded than it is now with a significant reduction in cost if we just stopped allowing ourselves to be used by our chubby allies and changed our footprint to allow for a little more “defense” in our “offense” . . ."

- Axe on December 10, 2012 at 1:29 PM


^^This. If Progs weren’t so incredibly stupid and foolish about My Progressive Little Ponyland, they’d take a look across the pond and learn that Western European-style socialism is a FAILUREEVEN AFTER AMERICAN TAXPAYERS HAVE PICKED UP THE TAB FOR THEIR DEFENCE FOR MORE THAN 7 DECADES.

The UK and France, who were the real drivers behind the “Let’s Get the Lypsynka of Libya and Who Cares Who/What Takes His Place?” campaign, nearly depleted their ENTIRE STOCKS OF TOMAHAWKS IN THE FIRST FOUR DAYS. When it fired its FIRST Tomahawk on Qaddafi, it was #64…of a STOCKPILE OF A WHOLE 64 MISSILES!!!

When the US and France conducted joint exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, Muffin had to call Sarko to beg him to call Obama and plead with him to allow Her Majesty’s Royal Navy to participate! The bloody British Navy BEGGING to be allowed to participate in exercises to keep one of the most important and strategic waterways in the entire world open for shipping! Unf*ckingbelieveable.

Less than a century ago, the British Empire RULED the world’s seas, 20% of the global population, and 25% of the Earth’s land masses. Now, it has ONE aircraft carrier. 2 years ago, the Coalition proposed that HMRN merge with France’s Royal Navy and Marine Nationale and share carriers. Considering the fact that England has historically been enemies more than allies with France, the howls of protest were as one would imagine they would be if Obama suggested a similar merger with Putin.

Seriously, I am not a colonialist or imperialist, but shit! It took the Germans less than a century to breed militarism out of their people — suggested course at military academies: “From Prussification to Pussification in Less Than A Century” — and even less time for “Rule, Britannia!” to become “Rule, National Health Service!” I doubt whether we could even defend The Falklands, if that Bolivarianist, Evita-wannabe bitch, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, decided to invade.




Nothing Sacred - Abattoir

Look in the darkness
See the fire burning bright
A shadow flickers
An unholy light
Watch the little children
Their dreams brought down
Run to hideaway
Of the shame that they found

CHORUS:

On their world is filed with hell
Oh, the children
Searching for an answer to tell
Emotion runs in their blood
Oh, the children
Straight to their head the spell begun

They give no thought
To the way of life
Walking a path
With many lies
An evil image
Remaining in their mind
Stonewalling down
‘Til the end of time
Oh, the past will stalk until...
Oh, the children
Judgment has been fulfilled

Broken hearts left in the cold
Oh, the children
But, keep the faith remain bold
Don't leave your young ones
Like a fawn in a field
Beware the danger
To be left unhealed
Never trust a stranger
By believing in a fool
Protect your children
Oh, the world is cruel.

CHORUS
 



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