MooPig Evolving Budget Department :: "The Military Budget Deal"

How to Spend a Couple of Hundred Billion in an Afternoon
Mashed MoJo articles by Pat Darnell  |  Dec 15, 2013  |  Bryan TX

[Picture LINK] Awase Meadows Golf Course was built in 1948 by the U.S. Army and was most recently operated by Marine Corps Community Services. It was closed in February and turned over to Japanese control in June as part of a 1996 agreement to return 21 percent of the U.S. military property on the island.



Mother Jones Magazine has been around for about 40 years. I was on Trinity University campus "on its inception in 1970-1973, Mother Jones operated with an editorial board, and members of the board took turns serving as managing editor for one-year terms." They had a unique way of marketing; they gave free monthly copies away the first year to all us students in the dorms. Mother Jones would show up in my mail box each month. It also littered the mailroom floor as many students just threw their free copies there. Since then I have subscribed to Mother Jones once. But now I can read it online, HERE. MoJo tells me it is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and we rely on YOU to support our fiercely independent reporting.

TIME and NEWSWEEK were also pushed on the student body during my years at college. I also subscribed to them at the student rate, 19 cents a copy. I also subscribed to Mother Earth News during that time.

As MoJo is reporting military spending, Young Turks network also reports "the pentagon has apparently misplaced or can't account for 8.5 trillion dollars in the last decade and a half ..." in this youTube HERE.

The Budget Deal Is a Big Win for the Pentagon | Mother Jones: "Until Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) rode to the rescue this week, Pentagon brass and their allies had been issuing dire warnings about the nation's military readiness: The armed services were being decimated, they said, by sequestration—the automatic budget cuts that were set to trim $1 trillion from the Pentagon budget over the next decade. "It's one thing for the Pentagon to go on a diet. It's another for the Pentagon to wear a straitjacket while dieting," grumbled Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.). The message got through: The House overwhelmingly approved the Ryan-Murray plan just two days after it was introduced."

'via Blog this'

Like everything else, if I think too hard about this subject, I will get dizzy and feel old. The Pentagon has re-framed the military budget again just recently with a unanimous YES vote in Congress. Both parties saved military budget cutbacks with emergency legislation, right before they go for their own month and a half holiday break. Said MoJo: "... The House overwhelmingly approved the Ryan-Murray plan just two days after it was introduced ..."

" ... The Department of Defense expects its total 2014 budget, including supplemental war funding, to be more than $600 billion. (MoJo. 12/2013. HERE)..."

Recently, the government had resorted to the action of taking legal possession of assets until a debt has been paid or other claims have been met. This is called sequestration. The entire legislature is run by lawyers. Every Senate and Congress Person and every intern has a law degree. And they also therefore are officers of the courts. [Even Michelle Bachmann has a law degree]. So, every thing those government types do is always "lawyerly." There is no bigger cock blocker in the world than a high powered lawyer politician, believe you me. There are no beekeepers, pharmacists, MBA's, nor doctors in government. If there are other non-lawyer types in government by popular election, they end up being labeled "whack jobs."

" ... According to Lawrence J. Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, the Pentagon could reduce its budget by $100 billion a year without undermining its readiness. The sequestration cuts for 2013 amounted to $37 billion. (MoJo. 12/2013. ibid) ..."

[Graphic LINK]

Our military can not abide a "sequestration" so they are let off the hook again this year by our lawyer leaders of the Legislature, Courts, and Executive Branch ... no audit, no accountability, just systems normal: all fouled up, SNAFU.

" ... David Vine who teaches at American University in Washington D.C. who has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Guardian, attempted to find out himself the cost of the more than 1,000 U.S. military bases outside of the United States and is currently completing a book on the subject.

Vine talked to budget experts, and both current and former Pentagon officials, among many others in his attempt to gather relevant data. Many interviewed said that Vine's task was hopeless because of the huge number of bases involved, the secrecy of Pentagon budgets and the often fictional nature of Pentagon figures. The Department of Defence Vine notes is the only federal budget yet to pass a financial audit. (Ken Hanly. Dec 16, 2012. HERE)..."

"The 2009 U.S. military budget accounts for approximately 40% of global arms spending. The 2012 budget is 6-7 times larger than the $106 billion of the military budget of China, and is more than the next twenty largest military spenders combined.(Ken Hanly. Dec 16, 2012. ibid.)..."

CONCLUSION

• The Pentagon employs 3 million people, 800,000 more than Walmart.
• The Pentagon's 2012 budget was 47 percent bigger than Walmart's.
• Serving 9.6 million people, the Pentagon and Veterans Administration together constitute the nation's largest healthcare provider.
• 70 percent of the value of the federal government's $1.8 trillion in property, land, and equipment belongs to the Pentagon.
• Los Angeles could fit into the land managed by the Pentagon 93 times. The Army uses more than twice as much building space as all the offices in New York City.
• The Pentagon holds more than 80 percent of the federal government's inventories, including $6.8 billion of excess, obsolete, or unserviceable stuff.
• The Pentagon operates more than 170 golf courses worldwide.

NEXT WEEK: ...Now if the US military is SNAFU, what is the condition of all the other nations' military?




__________________________Reference
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/pentagon-budget-deal-charts-cuts
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/26/exclusive_fired_army_whistleblower_receives_970k?fb_action_ids=606208336081746&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_ref=.UqzVMTsFDmg.like
http://youtu.be/68A_HPYGdlk
http://youtu.be/kUIrSAznMbM
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/14249/malaise-over-syria
http://youtu.be/fjOG_huEY70
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_deployments
http://digitaljournal.com/article/339184
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/20121213122226666895.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nd0z8/eli5_why_dont_other_countries_have_military_bases/
http://moopigwisdom.blogspot.com/2013/12/moopig-budget-department-how-many-us.html