The Fleecing of America

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By Stephen Lendman (about the author) Page 6 of 11 page(s)

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Instead, defending the rich against the poor. Siding one-sidedly with business. Through tax breaks. Huge subsidies. Export ones. Price supports. Loan guarantees. R & D grants. Free use of the public broadcasting spectrum. Bailouts. All sorts of other measures to redistribute wealth upward to the top. Providing legal protections and empowerment. Depriving the many for the few. Socialism for the rich. Free-market capitalism for most others. Sink or swim, on our own, with a disappearing social safety net for those who can't. Redefining "justice" to mean "just us."

Militarism and Wars for Profit - Spending Ourselves Toward Insolvency and Ruin

Since WW II, America was unchallengeable. With no external enemies or threats, the Soviet Union notwithstanding. Yet according to the Center for Defense Information, 60 years of military expenditures (in constant dollars) since 1945 totaled an astonishing $21 trillion. And since 2001, annual defense spending more than doubled under George Bush.

Christopher Hellman, Military Budget Analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, refers to a "runaway military budget" with core allocations and add-ons. Including all defense categories, FY 2008 exceeds $1 trillion for the first time. More than the rest of the world combined. Including war supplementals, budgets expanded dramatically since the mid-1990s and are at the highest level since WW II.

Here's analyst Robert Higgs' breakdown for FY 2006 in billions, and FY 2009 proposed numbers are several hundred billions higher:

-- Department of Defense: $499.4; for FY 2008, it's $623 billion with supplemental add-ons for Iraq and Afghanistan; proposed for FY 2009, it's $711 billion by the same calculation; other estimates place it over $760 billion;

-- Department of Energy: $16.6

-- Department of State: $25.3

-- Department of Veterans Affairs: $69.8

-- Department of Homeland Security: $69.1

-- Department of Justice (including FBI, DEA and other federal law enforcement agencies): $1.9

-- Department of the Treasury (for Military Retirement Fund): $38.5

-- NASA: $7.6, and

-- Net interest attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays: $206.7.

A total of $934.9 billion. Higgs estimated FY 2007 at $1.028 trillion, and each year the numbers grow to more out-of-control levels. Unsustainable, and those reported exclude black budgets for CIA, NSA and other off-the-books operations amounting to tens of billions more. In nominal totals and as a percent of GDP, he calls it nonsensical. Insanity for others. A death wish for the economy at this unsustainable level.

Higgs and others also cite the unreliability of official numbers. He believes it's more accurate to take the Pentagon's basic budget and double it because as much as 40% of it is black or hidden. Concealing secret projects. Now under the most secretive administration in our history. Also, the more powerful the Pentagon becomes, the more spending benefits accrue to congressional districts, and less willing Congress is to hold it accountable.

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I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.

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