Reducing the wasteful spending, not so much.
Hard facts ought to prevail where American security is concerned. This applies equally whether the issue at hand is the geopolitical consequences of ill-advised defense cuts or the possibility that waste and fraud in military procurement might result in the deaths of American soldiers. It is in that spirit that we view President Obama’s announcement last week at the Pentagon of his new national defense doctrine. While there will be much more to say here in the future, two points stand out for now.
First, Obama claimed that “even as our troops continue to fight in Afghanistan, the tide of war is receding.” What logically should have followed such an assertion was something about the surrender of an enemy and assurance that his defeat was so total and comprehensive that decades, if not centuries, will pass before he might again threaten the safety and security of the American people.Obama could say nothing like that because no such surrender has been tendered, and it is clear to anybody with open eyes that the aggressors in the War on Terror are — Osama bin Laden’s death notwithstanding — planning lethal new attacks on Americans here at home and American interests around the world.
……(Obama) wants to give federal civil servants a half-percent pay raise. The absurdity of this proposal is clear in light of the excellent reporting of USA Today’s Dennis Cauchon. In a series of stories in 2010 that drew emotional criticism from federal employee union leaders but no factual refutations, Cauchon used the government’s own data to show that civil servants’ compensation has far outstripped that of private-sector workers. “The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade,” Cauchon found. “Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009, while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.” If anything, Obama should freeze federal pay indefinitely so private-sector employees can catch up with the bureaucrats.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/2012/01/obama-guts-military-gives-raises-bureaucrats/2074876
“The tide of war is receding”? Obama is without a doubt, one of the biggest assclowns on the political stage. America’s enemies didn’t get the memo on that. The Chinese have increased their threat by leaps and bounds. Pakistan is still a safehaven for terrorists. The so-called “Arab Spring” is exploding into a muzzie fundamentalist wet dream. The war with Islamofascism is far from over, yet this sorry fucking excuse for a “commander-in-chief” wants to slash the Army and Marine Corps from 565,000 Soldiers and 201,000 Marines, to a loss of between 76,000 and 114,000 troops. ‘Leaner’ is one thing, but if we are expected to fight an all-out war on more than one front, cutting the number of personnel and funding is flat out suicidal.
Using the military budget as a scapegoat is the usual Dem tack. As is ignoring the real out-of-control spending that lead to the current $15 trillion+ debt. Obama’s enormous waste of $814 billion in “stimulus” and $787 billion dollars in taxpayer funded bailouts, the government takeover of 2/3rds of the auto industry, insurance corporations, and health care, and the engineered collapse of the housing and banking industry, (the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Ponzi scheme) threw America’s economic infrastructure into the toilet.
Any U.S. President and Congress who are serious about getting the budget under control can start by cutting shit like THIS, and THIS, and THIS, and THIS.
Billions of tax dollars going to outrageously stupid projects from $5 million to create a geothermal energy system for a shopping mall in Tennessee that’s half empty and has had falling shopper attendance for years, to a federal grant of $71,623 to the Winston-Salem college to “study how monkeys react under cocaine.”
That’s the kind of irresponsible, bat-shit crazy waste of our money that makes me want to hunt down and bitch-slap the politicians who thought of doing that in the first place. They have no business being in office let alone in charge of spending.
Especially the SCOAMF.
Related articles
- 500,000 Military Layoffs Planned As Obama Proposes Raise for Federal Workers (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
- Obama: You Know Who Deserves A Rise? Civilian Federal Workers (minx.cc)
- Surprise. Obama defense cuts still won’t “cut it” (hotair.com)
- http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/federal-workers-pay-raise/2012/01/06/id/423287
- http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/03/obamas-2012-budget-higher-taxes-slower-growth
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/documents/gop-budget-2012.html
- http://weaselzippers.us/2012/01/07/obama-seeks-pay-hike-for-federal-workers-while-gutting-hundreds-of-thousands-from-u-s-military/
- http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/obama-defense-plan-ability-fight-conventional-wars-article-1.1001371