Rotten Chunks in the Budget Blender 💫

Our humanity being snuffed out by stupidity and corruption 💀 ♞♘

“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.”

― George Orwell, 1984

As a kid born in the military, growing up in the US war machine on military bases, this quote from Orwell really illuminated my milieu of vast, almost incomprehensible, massive over-kill of armed forces & war technology. Elementary school in Japan only a generation removed from the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombings posed a moral quandary I've never been able to resolve, which still festers beneath American culture like a demonic infestation. While the population is propagandized and brain-washed from the time we can hold a game controller and pay taxes, programmed to kill, enjoy killing, justify killing on a massive scale, surrounded by perceived enemies, foreign and domestic.

Here we are on the edge of totalitarian madness, watching what absolute corruption can do to an entire continent once again, mobsters Putin and Trump, the terrorist tag team, launching threats and missiles on civilian populations once again. Notice how the coverage of main stream media no longer even challenges the unsustainable and grossly hungry "defense spending" or compare the cost of redundant weapons to the cost of social and health programs. Most Americans, including media folks, have no real idea how vast, complex, gigantic, costly the US war machine is, really quite impossible to inventory, due to "national security" and "black budgets"… all supported and integrated into a vast, monstrous military contractor complex, which Eisenhower warned us about even before 1984.

As a kid, even today as an idealist, I wondered how paradisiacal and filled with hope and genius the world would be without the demonic persistence of war. The killing of millions, the corruption and embezzlement of our social trust and capital. Here in the Pacific NW we are almost daily subject to hazing by Growler jets "training" and spewing fumes, at the cost of about $20,000 per hour and $120M each. These jets are training to disrupt the electronics of an enemy in a war, and daily are disrupting the lives and environment of their own population, all at exorbitant cost funneled to weapon corporations and petro-barons.

Try this impossible mental exercise: try to grasp what the number $1 trillion dollars actually means. One million millions. It's beyond practical grasp, being tossed around DC like otherworldly fiscal sorcery. What would you do with it? Well, our "divided" government has given us the F-35 Lightning II jet, with a lifetime cost estimate of $1.6 trillion, which turned out to be a "franken-plane" a boondoggle system the Air Force wants to replace. And we haven't even touched the stealth jets, the most expensive aircraft (outside NASA) ever built:

"B-2’s original unit cost was $737m, making it the most expensive aircraft ever built. However, due to retrofitting and adjustments in 1997, its overall cost now stands at $2.1bn. It costs $135,000/hr to operate." https://www.airforce-technology.com/features/most-expensive-military-aircraft/

One aircraft carrier is costing $1.5 M per day and $90K per launch of aircraft. The US operates 11 aircraft carriers and 8 helo carriers. And by the way, the engines are powered by nuclear reactors, nukes on nukes on oceans. The Pentagon's new Columbia-class nuclear armed submarines are estimated to cost $128 billion, and that's only the Pentagon's third most-costly weapons system. Each of the 12 killer subs will cost millions to operate. https://time.com/5566107/navy-nuclear-missile-cost/

As Orwell said, like dumping humanity's resources in the ocean, so that we end up fighting over scraps of leftovers just to stay healthy, or eat, or support our elderly. Oh and try not to worry too much about all those nukes in silos roaming all over and under the planet.

Don't even get started with education in America, now under attack, our one most practical social investment in a sustainable future. All of our children are relegated to only 3% of the budget, while defense eats up 18%, about as much as Medicare and Medicaid combined. Interesting in this pie chart, social security and defense are equal and opposite each other, unlike every other advanced nation in the world. https://federalsafetynet.com/entitlement-programs/entitlement-spending/

Among industrialized nations, the US falls far behind in health care, social programs, education, welfare. Among all of America's allies and enemies, we are the only country not to have universal health care, forcing many citizens to go without, live with debilitating conditions, or go bankrupt on the private medical market. Russia has universal health care. Mexico has universal health care. Canada has universal health care. China has universal health care. But somehow, through our long Orwellian indoctrination/ "war is peace" mentality, universal health care is completely beyond discussion or consideration. Now fascistic MAGA cultists are trying to gut even Medicaid, the only scrap of benefit most poor people have. Because cruelty is the point behind Trump and followers of his crime klan.

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/press-release/2021/new-international-study-us-health-system-ranks-last-among-11-countries-many

The United States spends more on militarization and weapons of war than the next ten nations spend combined. Which is possible because the budget system is so immense and corrupted by lobbyists and contractors, and our population at this point are so sadly under-educated they could not even tell you what war we are fighting or why or where. Indoctrinated daily by first-person shooter video games, an onslaught of war films and tv shows, macho chest-pounding rhetoric and extremism, now melting down into mass shootings for no reason except assault weapons being handed out like umbrellas. Generations programmed to kill. What was the body count on the last show you watched?

The "defense industry" spends 100s of millions every year just on lobbying in DC, employing more lobbyists than there are members of Congress. Gun manufacturers also spend 100s of millions lobbying in Washington and in state capitols, millions of dollars to funnel weapons all around the world, into every community, weapons made to slaughter people, to blow gaping holes through bone and flesh, even to penetrate armor.

If umbrella manufacturers suddenly had 10s of 1000s of innocent bystanders being sliced down by their umbrellas, sliced in half by random strangers, do you think we would expect law enforcement and lawmakers to do something to hold them accountable and stop the bloodbath? Not in this land of the NRA cult of AR-15 and Trump/MAGA-q-anon lunatic psychopaths. While they scream and threaten doom for those fellow citizens who are too "woke."

As for for “conservative spending” and "cutting expenses", let the "cruelty caucus" and other Trump co-conspirators address the societal cost of Trump. In the extremely odd case of the Trump Org occupying the White House, thanks to the family’s financial backer and ideological mentor Vlad Putin, the American taxpayers for the first time in US history began paying Secret Service and travel expenses directly to the Executive's own financial business accounts. This mafioso grift and ideological subversion of America was planned years ago.

Just the vacations to Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster cost $100s of millions, $3.4 million for just the first 4 trips, during which the Secret Service was billed $60K. Note the Trump Org does not have to charge the Secret Service at his own resorts and hotels, it is entirely a ruthless grift of tax dollars. The Trump kids also were/are running up $100s of 1000s in Secret Service bills, Donald Jr. & Eric costing $400K in just 2 months for example, traveling to promote Trump businesses around the globe. https://www.npr.org/2019/02/05/691684859/government-watchdog-trumps-trips-to-florida-costing-taxpayers-millions/

As CREW points out, Trump crime family took 12 times the number of protected trips as the Obamas, more in one year than the Obamas took the entire 2 administrations. Nearly every trip involved charging the government for Secret Service hospitality at Trump Org owned properties. In fact, much of the Trump kids travel paid for by taxpayers was their jetting around the world promoting Trump properties and their money-laundering real estate bread and butter mafioso mainstay. $26.8 million just to protect Trump Tower, where the Russian mob all had their offices and base of operations. Trump and crime family jacked their protected travel budget by $60 million, nearly doubling it, largely in a scheme to benefit themselves. https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/trump-family-travel-12x-obama-family/

Recent CREW reports the Secret Service has spent $2 million at Trump properties (the amount going into Trump Org coffers) while taxpayers have been financing the crime family's protection and travel expenses for promoting the Trump "brand" of corruption and ruthlessness. It's like a horrific mutant twilight zone/Sopranos episode that invaded our reality via a rip in the sanity continuum, now having bloated to where, along with sponsor Putin, threaten to snuff out any possible sane or survivable future at all.

All of this crime circus being charged to the federal credit card, which his cult followers in Congress now refuse to pay. Talk about "protection racket" and RICO, how did the justice system let this shitshow go so far, still letting it go? Meanwhile, now the self-styled tantrum-tyrant is taking down a blacklist of everyone who testifies, tells the truth, or resists, promising retribution. https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/the-secret-service-spent-nearly-2-million-at-trump-properties/

Oh by the way, as we pointed out some time ago, Donald Trump is an evil sack of shit. Sadly, this brand of psychopathic fascism is a contagious mind-virus. Hate spreads like wildfire, so every Trump media event ripples out evil tendrils in the reptile brainstems of disturbed folk, along with his brain-tweaking barrage of lies and narcissism, now a personality cult. We are facing extinction by stupidity, because of corruption.

Put that in your budget blender, lawmakers, law enforcers, and see if you can come up with a survivable solution.

💎 ❤ ✨ 🐉 🐙 ᵉᵛᵉʳʸᵗʰⁱⁿᵍ ᶠᵉᵉˡˢ ˡⁱᵏᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ᵐᵒᵛⁱᵉˢ ♛ 💥 👦 👧 💕 💗 🐳 🌊 🌎 💜