Which Govt. Expenditure Pisses You Off More?

No coincidence that the two biggest are also the two that piss me off the most.

Down with Tyranny:

How Far the Kentucky State Police Have Fallen

At least it's not a fucking fighter jet.

But no: there is zero, zip, nada, none reason for KSP to have a Lear Jet.

Even if it were donated by some idiot billionaire (redundant, I know), it's still gotta be gassed up and maintained by the Kentucky taxpayers who have far bigger needs on our plate.

But it's far, far worse than an idiot billionaire: it's our idiot Pentagon.

The Kentucky State Police has added a 1984 Learjet 35 to its aircraft fleet.

A news release from the state police said there is "no up-front cost" to the state in acquiring a former U.S. Air Force jet, valued at $1 million, through a military surplus program.

Justice and Public Safety Secretary J. Michael Brown said in a news release that the state will incur some costs to convert the plane from military to civilian use. The state must pay for navigation and radio systems, inspections and pilot training.

"By registering with the surplus program and moving quickly when this opportunity became available, state police was able to procure an asset that would have otherwise been impossible, but that will have significant long term benefits for the Commonwealth," Brown said.

The state police said the plane was acquired through a program of the Law Enforcement Support Office established by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Defense Logistics Agency.

It allows law enforcement agencies to obtain surplus military weapons, tactical vehicles, aircraft and other equipment for any bona fide law enforcement need at no cost, the state police said.

Yep, this is the same militarizing-the-police program that is destroying civilian law enforcement throughout the country, as chillingly documented in Radley Balko's book The Rise of the Warrior Cop.

Wonder why local cops are killing unarmed citizens in cold blood?  Because programs like this are turning public servants into special forces assholes who see everybody - even bedridden elderly people and disabled teenagers - as the enemy.

Shame on you, KSP: you used to be better than this.

Starving Kids in Order to Overfeed Defense Fat Cats

From the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services:

The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) is notifying recipients of funding from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – formerly known as food stamps – that they will see their benefits decrease beginning Nov. 1.

The change is because increased benefits provided to SNAP by the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in 2009 are set to expire. Congress has not voted to extend this stimulus funding.

CHFS’ Department for Community Based Services (DCBS) administers the Kentucky food benefits program, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), in every county.

SNIP

“The additional funding made a significant impact on our customers’ access to nutritious foods,” James said. “Though we are disappointed this extra funding is lapsing, we will still provide benefits to eligible customers and connect them with other community resources that can help feed their family healthful meals on a lower budget.”

The long-term change in benefits, after the stimulus funding expires, will depend on household size, income and expenses. A household of two who currently receives $367 a month will likely see a decrease in benefits by $20 a month to $347 per month.

SNIP
 

Customers cannot appeal the change in benefits because the decrease is a result of a change in federal law.

Meanwhile:

Shutdown? No problem. Sequestration? No sweat. Defense contracts continue to show huge profits.

 Ask any farmer. This is eating your seed corn.

Where Has All the Money Gone?

Gone to war-waging, every one.

Digby:

I posted the whole thing because I think its fundamental point is so important. None of this surveillance and covert activity could be rationalized if this nation didn't consider itself on a perpetual war footing (the enemies changing as necessary with the times.) This is bankrupting our country both financially and morally. It's been going on since before I was born --- and I'm old. And it has enabled a security state of unprecedented proportions. It's especially concerning now that the Manichean rationale of the cold war is long over and we can no longer make even the slightest claim to a serious, existential threat. That we've ramped this war footing up even beyond our cold war capabilities on the basis of a rag tag bunch of terrorists is mind boggling when you think about it.

We had a good run with this. The US was extremely prosperous even as it became a military behemoth. But it's not working anymore. Yet the machine just keeps on cranking creating new and different reasons for its existence. The money, the secrecy, the overriding power this national security state now produces and depends upon is distorting our democracy, our economy and our security. And we can have dozens of Snowdens revealing secrets or other whistleblowers revealing corruption in the contracting business or government officials being revealed to have overstepped their grounds --- along with all the so-called reforms that will inevitably follow --- but it won't change a thing unless we understand that the fundamental problem is our status as global military empire and the resulting necessity to find new enemies and create perpetual war to rationalize it.

Meanwhile, sequestration is making a worldwide pandemic like the 1918 flu outbreak that killed 100 million people far, far more likely.

Digby on cuts to the National Institutes of Health:

"If you want to convert this into real meaningful numbers, that means people are going to die of influenza five years from now because we don't yet have the universal vaccine," he said. "And God help us if we get a worldwide pandemic that emerges in the next five years, which takes a long time to prepare a vaccine for. If we had the universal vaccine, it would work for that too.

"The clock's been ticking on the potential of the next eruption of a pandemic outbreak from South Asia or wherever. And we've gotten lucky so far [that it hasn't happened]. But are we going to stay lucky? So, how can you justify doing anything other than pulling out all the stops in that kind of circumstance? And yet we're prevented from doing so."

Well that's certainly an upper.

Remember, this isn't because there isn't enough money. There's plenty of money. This is happening because rich people are hoarding all their money, we are spending vast sums on a global military empire and the political system is totally dysfunctional.

You are living in interesting times. If you young people live long enough --- and the country and planet survive --- you'll have quite a tale to tell your grand kids. Nobody will believe what morons we were.

 Eating our seed corn.

Sequester Cuts to Defense Hit n Kentucky

Think the federal budget is bloated? That you can't cut domestic spending enough? Tell that to your neighbor who's going to lose her house if this shit goes on much longer.

From the Herald:

Furloughs began Monday for some of the employees at Blue Grass Army Depot in Madison County responsible for the safe and secure storage of chemical weapons.Blue Grass Chemical Activity (BGCA) began furloughing 108 employees, the agency said Monday. The furlough is expected to run through late September and will require employees to work 32 hours a week rather than 40 hours a week.

Steve Benen:

Just over the last week or so, one ridiculous policy -- Republicans' sequestration cuts, approved two years ago -- has undermined the federal government's capacity to battle wildfires, hurt the federal court system, undercut job growth, and even canceled 4th of July events. The political world shrugged, if it noticed the effects of the sequester at all.

With this in mind, I don't imagine Pentagon furloughs will generate much attention, but they should.

More than 650,000 civilian workers in the Defense Department will be taking their first of 11 furlough days this week.

The Pentagon's 11 weeks of furloughs kick in on Monday, which result in a 20-percent-weekly pay cut through September for 680,000 of the Pentagon's roughly 800,000 civilian employees.

Those are a lot of numbers, so take a moment to look beyond the statistics and think about the human element: a whole lot of Americans are about to take a huge pay cut for a few months, not because they've done a poor job, but because congressional Republicans support unnecessary spending cuts for no apparent reason. This will affect their ability to pay their bills and purchase good and services, which means undermining the economy.

There was a time -- I believe it's a period of American history known as "last year" -- when the right was outraged by the very idea of cutting Defense spending.

And yet, 680,000 Pentagon employees are taking a steep pay cut -- and being told to stay home without pay -- because of a policy that was designed to hurt the country. Congress isn't rushing to prevent these furloughs; Congress isn't even talking about these furloughs. It just a rolling disaster on auto-pilot.

To reiterate a point from last week, the political world seems to have moved on, and it's fashionable to suggest the sequester is meaningless, but these cuts continue to take a real toll on real people. Congress has the ability to end this pain and turn off the deliberately damaging policy, but for now, it's not even an option being considered in Washington.

To add insult to injury, the sequester cuts not only add hundreds of thousands of people to the unemployment rolls, they also deny those people the unemployment compensation they have earned.

Cut Contractor Pay, Not Government Jobs

If I could mandate one federal budget change that would save billions of dollars, slash the unemployment rate and goose the economy, it would be this: cancel all federal contracts, turn the necessary staff into public employees and tell the overpaid corporate executives to Galt themselves right to Somalia.

Under the Mountain Bunker:

The Washington Post reports that defense contractors aren’t very concerned about sequestration:

“In call after call with investors, officials at some of the area’s largest contracting firms refused to guess how much it would cost them if Congress allows the “sequester” to kick in on March 1. Even as their lobbyists keep warning how much the cuts would hurt the industry, the executives are projecting confidence that the sequester will not happen. Northrop Grumman chief executive Wes Bush said Wednesday that his company’s outlook for the year projects “the sequestration is not triggered” and that Congress barely touches federal contract spending levels for 2013. General Dynamics …too, assumes no sequestration. Their confidence defies the emerging consensus on Capitol Hill that Congress will not find an agreement in time to cancel or delay the cuts… If the sequester cuts take effect in full, economists estimate they will destroy about 1 million jobs nationwide, including hundreds of thousands in the Washington area. The executives do not appear to believe that will come to pass. It may be because Congress keeps averting fiscal crises at the very last minute, and because the Obama administration asked contractors last year not to issue layoff notices in preparation for cuts that were originally scheduled to begin this month. It may also be because contracting firms appear confident in their ability to lobby for sequester relief.”

Meanwhile, federal labor unions are asking Congress (*cough* Republicans *cough*) to quit playing favorites with their defense contractor buddies if they really want to balance the budget:

“The NTEU has called on Congress to focus its attention on contractors for cost savings. During the last session of Congress, the union lobbied for a stalled measure that would limit reimbursements for contractor executive pay. Gilman said the legislation could save the government up to $50 billion over 10 years. “Some folks are just adamant that their number one goal is to prevent these guys that are making $45,000 a year from getting a half-percent raise as opposed to limiting folks that are being reimbursed $760,000 a year,” Gilman said. “We can’t get some of the people who are screaming loudest about cutting the budget to look at the total dollars as opposed to just looking at the federal workforce.””

$45,000 to $760,000 is quite a discrepancy between the average federal salary and the average pay for a defense contractor executive. The Bush Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are over now, right? Why is the war machine not winding down?

The enormous salaries paid by the taxpayer to defense contractor executives are just another form of corporate welfare. How is this not “big government?” It’s ridiculous that federal workers could be doing the same work for less money, but the conservative talking point is that by the government hiring contractors at enormous wages we’re “drowning government in a bathtub.” Bullshit. Defense contractors are banking massive amounts of tax payer money and WE’RE the ones who are drowning.

Replace the Austerity Sequester With Reality-Based Budgeting

Of course there's an alternative beyond the false choice of defense cuts vs. entitlements, and of course the Congressional Progressive Caucus has it.
 
Down with Tyranny:

Today, the other kind of Democrat-- 10 of the smartest, most fearless and most dedicated progressives in Congress, Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Ed Markey (D-MA), Judy Chu (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Jim McDermott (D-WA), John Conyers (D-MI), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Yvette Clarke (D-NY)-- proposed The Balancing Act a plan to repeal sequester while achieving balance in long-term deficit reduction between revenue and cuts while investing in job creation-- and paying for the whole thing with savings from balancing defense and non-defense cuts. It's a serious answr to Ryan's unserious demand for failed European-style Austerity.

    THE MATH:

•  Round 1: $1.7 trillion in cuts
•  Round 2: $737 billion in revenue
•  Round 3: The Balancing Act

     * Achieves 1:1 Revenue and Cuts-- by replacing srquester ($948 billion) with revenue

         * Achieves 1:1 Defense and Non-Defense Cuts- by eliminating $278 billion in wasteful         Pentagon spending and investing it in job creation
         * Job investment provisions would create over 1 million jobs

•  Long-term deficit reduction from the three rounds of over $3.3 trillion

REPLACE SEQUESTER WITH REVENUE:

•  28 percent limitation on certain deductions and exclusions ($428 billion)
•  Close carried interest loophole ($17 billion)
•  Close loopholes for jets and yachts ($4 billion)
•  Close international tax system loopholes ($161 billion)
•  End fossil fuel subsidies ($94 billion)
•  Close exclusion of foreign-earned income loophole ($71 billion)
•  Close corporate deduction for stock options loophole ($25 billion)
•  Close Estate Tax loopholes ($23 billion)
•  Close S Corporation loophole ($13 billion)
•  Reduce corporate meal and entertainment deduction to 25% ($70 billion)

INVEST IN JOB CREATION:

•  Making Work Pay extension for one year ($61 billion)
•  Support for teachers and school modernization ($55 billion)
•  Transportation infrastructure investments ($160 billion)

CUT PENTAGON WASTE:

•  Rep. Markey's Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures ($106 billion)
•  Limiting excessive contractor compensation ($50 billion)
•  Relocate troops from Europe to the U.S. ($3 billion)
•  Reduce troops levels 4% by attrition ($48 billion)
•  Limiting the purchase of Virginia-class nuclear subs to one per year ($22 billion)
•  Replacing F-35s with F-18s ($23 billion)
•  Eliminate one Ford-class carrier ($14 billion)
•  End production of the V-22 Osprey ($9 billion)
•  Limit military bands ($2 billion)
•  Reduce General and Flag officers to Cold War standard ($1 billion)

Finally, a serious response to Paul Ryan's very unserious Austerity Agenda. I only have two quibbles. Can we just reduce military bands by $1.5 billion and... well if we reduce corporate meal and entertainment deductions to 25% does that mean there will be no more strip joints and high-priced hookers? And what happens to Spago, Alain Ducasse, Alinea, Joe's Stone Crab and Katsu Ya?

Yet More Polls Showing Most Americans Are Redistributive Socialists

Think you're in the smart minority for wanting higher taxes on the rich, less military spending and more social spending? Sorry, you're not that special. Most of your fellow Americans agree. Travis Waldron at Think Progress:

Nearly 70 percent of Americans now say that cutting the deficit is an important goal for 2012, with 84 percent of Republicans, 66 percent of Democrats, and 64 percent of Independents rating it as their top priority. There’s a major problem, though: when asked about specific programs, wide majorities almost always favor either increasing spending or maintaining the current level, according to the Pew Research Center.

On education, for instance, 62 percent favor increases and 25 percent favor maintaining the current level. More than 90 percent favor either an increased level or the current level of spending on veteran’s benefits; and more than 80 percent favor increasing levels or maintaining the current level on college financial aid, public school spending, Medicare, and Social Security. The only program that even gains a plurality of support for reduced spending levels is aid to the world’s needy, as the chart from Pew shows.

Of course, cutting aid to the world’s needy would do virtually nothing to reduce the deficit. Though Americans think it represents anywhere from 10 percent to one-third of the federal budget, in reality, it makes up less than one percent of federal spending.

By contrast, Americans actually do support one way to reduce the federal deficit: raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. (HT: Sarah Kliff)

Yes, you are not just surrounded by dirty fucking hippie commies. You are one of them.

Because War Profiteering Does Not Support the Troops

Tomorrow is the perfect time to step back from the flag and think clearly about what is real national defense and what is merely feeding the Permanent War Beast.

Robert Reich:

We can best honor those who have given their lives for this nation in combat by making sure our military might is proportional to what America needs.

The United States spends more on our military than do China, Russia, Britain, France, Japan, and Germany put together.

With the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the cost of fighting wars is projected to drop – but the “base” defense budget (the annual cost of paying troops and buying planes, ships, and tanks – not including the costs of actually fighting wars) is scheduled to rise. The base budget is already about 25 percent higher than it was a decade ago, adjusted for inflation.

One big reason: It’s almost impossible to terminate large defense contracts. Defense contractors have cultivated sponsors on Capitol Hill and located their plants and facilities in politically important congressional districts. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and others have made spending on national defense into America’s biggest jobs program.

So we keep spending billions on Cold War weapons systems like nuclear attack submarines, aircraft carriers, and manned combat fighters that pump up the bottom lines of defense contractors but have nothing to do with 21st-century combat.

SNIP

At a time when Medicare, Medicaid, and non-defense discretionary spending (including most programs for the poor, as well as infrastructure and basic R&D) are in serious jeopardy, Obama and the Democrats should be calling for even more defense cuts.

A reasonable and rational defense budget would be a fitting memorial to those who have given their lives so we may remain free.

Read the whole thing.

If the NDAA Is So Essential, Then Use It Right

Barack Obama is the most grown-up president we've had since Eisenhower. Yet even he cannot turn down unconstitutional power handed to him on a platter.

Adam Serwer at Mother Jones:

... there's a bipartisan group of Senators who want to protect the president's authority to imprison American citizens without proving they're guilty of anything at all. Barack Obama, for his part, hasn't weighed in on either side—but given that the president has promised never to attempt to use this power, it's a mystery why he wouldn't vocally oppose it. If Obama and his advisers believe this kind of indefinite detention is an anathema to due process, why not support a bipartisan effort to ensure that Americans' constitutional rights aren't dependent on the whim of whichever president is in office?

At least the battle lines here are clearly drawn in a way they weren't over last year's defense bill. One group of legislators thinks Americans can be deprived of their liberty in their own home country without a trial. The other thinks the government has to actually prove you're guilty of something first.

Or as Wonkette commenter Wile E. Quixote put it:

It's too bad that President Obama doesn't have my finely developed sense of irony. If Wile E. Quixote were in the Oval Office and was handed an Enabling Act like the NDAA by a bunch of teabaggers and craven Democratic dipshits like Carl Levin the first thing that President Quixote would do with his shiny new NDAA powers would be to declare everyone who voted for the NDAA a terrorist and have them sent to Gitmo. Just to be sure he'd also find all of the people who contirbuted to their campaigns, and everyone at Fox News, and send them there as well. Think of how much fun that would be.

Strip Clubs, Dumb Weapons, Dumber Repugs and a Smart Budget Idea

So two weeks ago Kirsten Boyd Johnson at Wonkette came up with a brilliant federal budget idea that was inexplicably left out of President Obama's FY2013 budget.

Oh how thoughtful, House Republicans are bringing to the floor today a bill to close some kind of sexy-sounding “strip-club loophole” in what, campaign spending disclosure rules or something? No? NO. Oh right, it’s a bill meant to stop all the silly misbehaving poors from spending their welfare money at strip clubs. No wonder they aren’t out getting jobs! Please, bill sponsor Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., tell us more about this terrifying epidemic of taxpayer waste!

From The Hill:

“It’s pretty rampant around the country,” Boustany said of the abuses. “This has really eroded the credibility of the TANF program in the eyes of the American taxpayer — a program that has been successful, by and large.

Is that really what American taxpayers think about when they consider their support for welfare programs? Strip clubs? Only if you are a Republican, maybe, because everything in that case somehow relates to (gay) strip clubs.

Boustany’s office cited reports of welfare abuses in eight states, totaling millions of dollars. His legislation would not reduce spending directly, but would restrict how taxpayer funds can be used.

In one well-publicized example, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2010 that California welfare recipients were able to withdraw cash from their state-issued debit cards at more than half of the casinos in the state.

“We have an obligation to make sure taxpayer dollars are spent appropriately,” Boustany said.

Hahahaha, don’t you always love that one, “we need to make sure taxpayer dollars are being spent appropriately?” Because of “millions of dollars” being wasted by poor people! Wait, hang on…

Okay, let’s see, here we go, after four seconds of Google searching, here is this article about taxpayer waste that we remember reading in Forbes last year:

The Army’s biggest budgetary mis-step was a family of networked air and ground vehicles collectively called the Future Combat System. Although prime contractor Boeing managed to keep the program on schedule and on budget through a series of restructures, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates decided in 2009 that the project wasn’t ready for prime-time and canceled it after a staggering $19 billion had already been spent. Bloomberg Business News subsequently reported that the service had wasted $32 billion on doomed weapons projects since 1995.

OOOH but POINT: the billions of dollars invested in the defense industry create so many JOBS! JOBS EVERYWHERE! Counterpoint: strip clubs ALSO provide jobs — jobs that don’t build giant terror machines used for killing people all over the world, which is true no matter how you feel about strip clubs.

So here’s a modest proposal: maybe instead we should actually expand our taxpayer-sponsored program for strip club visits and allocate $19 billion to give the millions of poors and the six or so middle-class workers still left all the chances they want to go see a mostly-naked person writhe around in front of them LIVE instead of having to sit through all the godawful commercials on TEEVEE to watch the same thing and there might even be ten or so dollars left over to send an Afghan kid to school for a year instead of murdering her. God.

How Would You Cut the Defense Budget?

Yesterday President Obama outlined his plan for a "leaner military."

The Obama administration has said it plans to cut $487 billion from the defense budget over the next decade, but the president, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other officials didn't offer details of where reductions would be made other than to say they'd shrink the size of ground forces. The details, they said, would be outlined during next month's budget session.

As bloated as the defense budget is, cutting it significantly yet safely is trickier than it looks. And of course there's a widget for trying it yourself.

Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Grover Cleveland and Chris Preble point out the nifty DoD budget cost cutting tool at the NYT.

It’s not terribly hard to get to $450 billion, especially if you cut back on ground forces. I managed to get to $459 without cutting much from naval forces (1 carrier down), from benefits, or even from missile defense. I do kill the new stealth bomber and the bomber leg of the nuclear triad. That’s a pretty modest set of cuts; it’s also not terribly difficult to get to $1 trillion, but you have to start cutting back on benefits, and drop the USMC and USA by roughly 35%. I’m not convinced that some of the options would actually save money; replacing military personnel who perform commercial activities and cutting back on the civilian Pentagon work force, for example, would leave many DoD functions at the mercy of private contractors.

One thing to remember; cutting back on the defense budget, especially personnel costs, is anti-stimulus in the short term. Dropping the Army and Marine Corps by 100000 puts that many people back into the civilian workforce, with all the attendant disruptions that would cause.

Want something new about which to argue with your repug friends and relatives? Play Cut the Defense Budget at home.

The Fraudsters Are Pentagon Contractors, Not Hungry Children

By @KYYellowDog

You don't even have to do your own research on public policy anymore. Whatever congressional repugs are condemning is brilliant policy and an effective program that should be expanded, and whatever they are protecting and defending is a fraudulent, super-wasteful boondoggle that should be eliminated.

From Think Progress:

It’s shockingly ignorant at best and dishonest at worst for Sessions — the ranking GOP member of the Senate Budget Committee — to completely ignore the role the economy has played on food stamp usage. The cost of the program has jumped because more Americans are out of work and wages are down, thus more people need assistance.

Food prices have also gone up, adding additional costs. But the cost of the program will come down on its own as the economy recovers and more people can afford to feed themselves.

In fact, the food stamp program has been critical for reducing poverty and pumping money into local economies during the down economy, so cutting it now would not only take food out of peoples’ mouths, but could slow down the recovery. No one is trying to “double the program every three years” as Sessions claims. (Currently, nearly one in five Alabamians is on Food Stamps.)

And while the senator suggests the program has grown due to fraud, in fact, errors in the food stamp program — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) –are currently at an all-time low, accounting for less than three percent of the program’s cost. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities:

To ensure that benefits are provided only to eligible households and in the proper amounts, SNAP has one of the most rigorous quality control systems of any public benefit program and, in recent years, has achieved its lowest error rates on record.

In fiscal year 2009, even as caseloads were rising, states set new record lows for error rates. The net loss due to errors equaled only 2.7 percent of program costs in 2009. There is no evidence that program errors are driving up SNAP spending.

It’s worth noting that while Sessions claims the country can’t afford to feed the hungry, he has fought to preserve the Bush tax cuts for wealthy, subsides for big oil companies, and demanded new tax cuts for corporations, all of which also contribute to the deficit.

Meanwhile Sessions and his fellow scorched-earthers are defending to the death the right of defense contractors to rob the taxpayers blind.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

This report comes out while members of the congressional supercommittee are pissing and moaning about how we can't possibly cut any more money from the Defense department. These numbers seem to indicate otherwise:

How often does the Pentagon award contracts to defense companies that have already been proven to be defrauding taxpayers? A report the Department of Defense did at the request of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) reveals an answer that should make Washington very uncomfortable.

The report, released today, showed that hundreds of defense contractors found guilty of civil fraud received more than $1.1 trillion in defense contracts since 2001. The study took into account only companies that were found to have defrauded taxpayers of more than $1 million dollars.

More than $573 billion went directly to companies that were guilty of defrauding taxpayers, and when you factor in the awards that went to the parent companies of those contractors, the total is $1.1 trillion. Of that $573 billion, more than two-thirds—$398 billion—went to companies after they had been found guilty of fraud.
Companies convicted of “hard-core criminal fraud” received $255 million in contracts, $33 million of it after conviction.

Some of the country’s biggest defense contractors were implicated. “The ugly truth is that virtually all of the major defense contractors in this country for years have been engaged in systemic fraudulent behavior, while receiving hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money,” said Sanders. According to the report:

Lockheed Martin in 2008 paid $10.5 million to settle charges that it defrauded the government by submitting false invoices on a multi-billion dollar contract connected to the Titan IV space launch vehicle program. That didn’t seem to sour the relationship between Lockheed and the Defense Department, which gave Lockheed $30.2 billion in contracts in fiscal year 2009, more than ever before.

In another case, Northrop Grumman paid $62 million in 2005 to settle charges that it “engaged in a fraud scheme by routinely submitting false contract proposals,” and “concealed basic problems in its handling of inventory, scrap and attrition.”
Despite the serious charges of pervasive and repeated fraud, Northrop Grumman received $12.9 billion in contracts the next year, 16 percent more than the year before.

The Catfood Commission is Dead; Long Live a Real Deficit Debate

In the same sense that the only way to understand why corporations do what they do is to remember that their only goal is "increase profits," the only way to understand the budget/deficit/debt/taxes/entitlements/spending debate is to remember that the only goal of Washington power brokers is:

"take money away from the middle class and give it to the already obscenely wealthy."

Everything else is lies and misdirection.

Krugman:

It’s no mystery what has happened on the deficit commission: as so often happens in modern Washington, a process meant to deal with real problems has been hijacked on behalf of an ideological agenda. Under the guise of facing our fiscal problems, Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson are trying to smuggle in the same old, same old — tax cuts for the rich and erosion of the social safety net.

Can anything be salvaged from this wreck? I doubt it. The deficit commission should be told to fold its tents and go away.

No, the deficit commission should get its own reality TV show, seven nights a week, so we can all get a daily reminder of precisely what is going on here.

The host will be someone deeply familiar with the lies told by the money men, and experienced in launching attacks on the liars. Someone who is leaving a job soon. Someone entertaining. Someone like Alan Grayson.

When the commission's apologists for obscene wealth start bleating about high tax rates and disappearing social security and deficit danger, Grayson will beat them back with giant barbed dildos of Fact:

• Social Security is stable and secure for at least the next century. If you really want to make it more perfect, remove the cap on income, so millionaires have to pay the same social security taxes that real working Americans do.
• Tax rates absolutely are an abomination - the obscenely wealthy pay far, far too little. Let's have another 10-year rate change: we'll add five new brackets to the top, where now everyone who makes more than $250,000 pays the same rate of 36%. For the next decade, $500K to $1 million will pay 40 percent, up to $10 million will pay 50 percent, up to $100 million will pay 60 percent, up to $500 million will pay 70 percent, and those raking in more than $500 million per year will pay 80 percent.*
• The inheritance tax is the only way to prevent obscenely wealthy parasites from over-breeding and replicating themselves. Restore the estate tax of 50 percent on estates larger than $1 million. If your children can't make it on $1 million, they're fucked-up wastes of oxygen anyway and don't deserve more money.
• The most effective and efficent spending in the federal budget - the spending that immediately stimulates the economy, that creates more economic activity than it costs, that benefits families and communities in both the long term and the short-term - is direct payments to struggling individuals: food stamps, unemployment and welfare. This economy needs massive economic stimulus, so: triple food stamps (currently about $10 per person per week), double welfare payments, restore the TANF jobs program and extend unemployment payments until the unemployment rate falls below 5 percent.
• Medicare really is a financial mess, but not for the reasons the deficit vultures claim. The only way to actually fix Medicare - and the broken healthcare system in this country - is to establish single-payer healthcare. The easiest way to do that is extend Medicare to everybody in the country. Premiums paid by younger people will more than cover the high costs of caring for the elderly that are currently breaking the system. Medicare For All. Problem solved.
• Taxes paid by working families struggling to make ends meet - and NOT paid by obscenely wealthy parasites - go to bloat the Defense Budget out of all effectiveness. More than double what the rest of the world budgets for defense - combined? That's crazier than Sharron Angle. So, let's impose a little discipline on the Pentagon (whose leaders, by the way, mostly agree its budget is stupid.) Cut the defense budget in half. Let the Pentagon budget boys decide how to divide it up. If they know for sure they can't get any more through any congressional back door, they'll cut the REAL fat and waste and buy only what's necessary. This will require the same system used to close redundant military bases: Congress gets a straight up-or-down vote on the budget the Pentagon presents. No adding wasteful weapons systems so everybody get a factory in her district. This 50 percent budget or nothing.

There is lots, lots more to talk about: farm subsidies that go to giant agribusiness, fossil fuel subsidies that kill us with terrorism and pollution, outdated transportation systems and electrical grids, needed support for renewable energy and universal broadband - both of which will create hundreds of thousands if not millions of new, highly-paid manufacturing jobs - adding staff and authority and power to regulatory agencies, multiplying Pell Grants by a factor of 10 ...

I'm sure Alan Grayson has many, many more ideas to keep the members of the Catfood Commission sweating under the kleig lights for a long, long time.

This would be fun.


*Everybody understands marginal rates, right? Even if you make $1 billion, you, like everybody else, pay 33 percent on the first $250K, and 36 percent on the next $999,750,000. Under my plan, the billionaire would pay 36 percent on the NEXT $250K, 40 percent on the NEXT $500K, 50 percent on the NEXT $9 million, 60 percent on the NEXT $90 million, 70 percent on the NEXT $400 million, and 80 percent ONLY on what you rake in ABOVE $500 million. If you make $50,000, you are paying the same tax rate on your TOTAL of $50,000 as the billionaire is paying on his FIRST $50,000.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Republicans Blocked Funding for the Troops

You want DADT repealed and the DREAM Act passed? Then start telling everybody you know the truth about the defense bill republicans killed yesterday.

karoli at Crooks and Liars:

When John McCain led the filibuster of the Defense Appropriations Act yesterday, he blocked far more than the DREAM Act and repeal of DADT. Here are just a few of the other blocked provisions, courtesy of Mother Jones.

* No permanent military bases in Afghanistan.
* Report identifying hybrid or electric propulsion systems and other fuel-saving technologies for incorporation into tactical motor vehicles.
* Protection of child custody arrangements for parents who are members of the Armed Forces deployed in support of a contingency operation.
* Improvements to Department of Defense domestic violence programs.
* Department of Defense recognition of spouses of members of the Armed Forces.
* Department of Defense recognition of children of members of the Armed Forces.
* Enhancements to the Troops-to-Teachers Program.
* Fiscal year 2011 increase in military basic pay.

SNIP

What did they gain with their filibuster? Traction with so-called values voters? They didn't have any problem with them anyway. Denying the Democrats a victory over a 17-year old self-inflicted wound? Making a stand against children of immigrants? What big, brave people they are. Do they seriously think there are no gay Republicans? As one of my Twitter friends remarked earlier, if Ken Mehlman couldn't convince them, no one could.

This was a mean-spirited, cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face exercise in homophobic politics and it's ugly, especially with John McCain leading the charge. The same John McCain, by the way, who said all he needed was for the leadership of the military to come and say the policy should change. And so, they did. Even after testimony from the joint chiefs of staff, McCain didn't adhere to his own conditions for cynical, self-serving political reasons.

Read the whole thing.

Not so long ago, legislators who voted against defense bills - even for good, substantial reasons rather than closet-queen fear and petulance - got run out of Congress on a rail.

Republicans blocked funding for the troops. Repeat it every time the conversation turns to the election:

Republicans blocked funding for the troops. Vote Democratic.

Quote of the Day

From Noah Shactman at Wired, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates:

"[I]t is important to remember that every defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing risk -- or, in effect, to 'run up the score' in a capability where the United States is already dominant -- is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in, and improve capabilities in areas where we are underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk I will not take."

Blue Girl has a good analysis of how we got here and the obstacles Gates faces.