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Here's something I didn't know (from Wikipedia):
Forced labor of German civilians in the Soviet Union was considered by that country to be part of their war reparations for the damage inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union during World War II. Poland was the only other country to claim this form of reparation.
Information about this was suppressed in the Soviet Bloc until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Before that, however, it was known in the West through statistics and recollections of the internees.
The use of German labor was analyzed by the Soviet government since 1943, and the issue is present in the paperwork of the Yalta Conference, but the Potsdam Conference did not discuss it. In fact, the USSR began forcing labor from Germans in 1944.
How do you like that? The German government starts a war which staggers the German people by its immense cost and THEN the people themselves have to pay AGAIN in slave labor! Meanwhile, Hitler himself took the coward's way out.
Meanwhile, my children have already been committed to indentured servitude to pay off W's rising war debt. Some things never change.
Q: How is someone making $100,000 in NYC similar to someone making $0 in New Orleans?
A: They're both screwed by the State!
"But, Joe, how is this true?"
Well, both of them placed a substantial portion of their lives under State control. The people of New Orleans chose to live in an area 18 feet below sea level with the assurance of the gu'ment that it will provide levies to hold back the entire Gulf of Mexico and flood insurance for any slipups in the great plan. We all know how that ended up.
The people of New York chose to live and work in that city in large part because the city magnanimously provided transit services at below-market prices. And when that transit system went on the blink (as it has due to a transit worker's strike), those same people were left high and dry (pun intended). And because of armed enforcement of what amounts to a "no compete" clause between the transit workers union and anyone else who owns a car or van and might be able to help out, poor folks just trying to make a living in NYC must suffer.
There is no way Mayor Bloomberg or the unions can permanently fix the transit problem. The Big Apple's subsidized transportation program is rotten to the core (yet another pun!). Sovietism rears its ugly head once again.
The latest scientific advance - laboratory-grown meat - predicted by your humble correspondents!;
(Ah crap - I can't find it).
But I predicted it, along with some other miracles of science yet to come.
As a public service, and in the spirit of the "holiday" season, we here at Libertyguys are providing, free of charge, a comprehensive Kwanzaa resource list;
An article on the origins of Kwanzaa by William Benetta of The Textbook League;
http://www.textbookleague.org/114kwanz.htm
A Wikipedia citation on the founder (1968) of Kwanzaa, convicted violent felon and founder of "United Slaves", Maulana "Ron" Karenga (aka, Ron N. Everett);
http://www.answers.com/topic/ron-karenga
A highly nonpartisan article by the estimable Ann Coulter on Karenga's co-optation of the Black Power Movement on behalf of the FBI;
http://www.yaf.org/speakers/op-ed/coulter_kwanzaa.html
Finally, one-stop shopping for all of your Kwanzaa tm supplies (Ron Karenga's totally legitimate "University of Sankore Press" / United Slaves bookstore);
http://www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org/book-sankore.html
So come on folks - show your solidarity with your opressed brethren by celebrating an imaginary holiday, and put a few bucks into ol' Ron Karenga's pocket!
...let's get an early start on debunking Black History Month with the help of our old pal, Morgan Freeman.
Freeman notes there is no "white history month," and says the only way to get rid of racism is to "stop talking about it."
Freeman calls Black History Month ‘ridiculous’
I'd like to take this time just before one of the holiest days on the Christian calendar to completely debunk the notion that Kwanzaa is anything other than a lame attempt to create an alternative to Christmas strictly for the sake of creating an alternative. And I would like to stress the term alternative.
It's not just the fraud that bothers me. I've already deprogrammed my kindergartener who just came home and sang me the newly-butchered version of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" to include homage to Kwanzaa (a 7-day holiday invented in 1966). It just bothers me that now there's yet another "tradition" that I am expected to respect for fear of being ostracized by society. By the way, here's what passes for mainstream society nowadays.
Like many couples, Slaughter and his wife, Olivia Morehead-Slaughter, a psychologist, began to incorporate Kwanzaa into their life in earnest after they had children, though they had known about the principles of Kwanzaa for years. As an educator Dennis Slaughter has taught the principles to young children, and when he had his own children (now ages 5 and 9), decided to teach them as well. "I wanted to give them the cultural connection. They learned about the principles in school, but I wanted to take those principles and give them more life."
For example, Slaughter said, he talks with his kids about ujima (collective work and responsibility) and how they can apply it at school. He asks them, "How can we make our brothers' and sisters' problems our own?" and encourages them to help fellow students with their schoolwork.
So now Kwanzaa is about socialism? Division of labor has been debunked? Self-reliance has been debunked. Want to learn more about Kwanzaa? Try this new audio book of traditional (since 1966, at least) Kwanzaa stories. Check the list of well-known African-American intellectuals (my comments in bold):
Jonelle Allen: A native of Harlem, Jonelle Allen is best known for her role as Grace, the entrepreneurial post-Civil War frontier cafe owner in CBS TV's Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. (did we mention she's from Harlem? Talk about credentials!)
Angela Bassett: Academy Award-nominee Angela Bassett's film credits include Mr. And Mrs. Smith, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, What's Love Got To Do With It?, Boyz In The Hood, and Malcolm X. (again, creds!)
Chuck D: Founder of the pioneer rap group Public Enemy, Chuck D is also a community activist whose efforts continually help to educate and aid inner-city families. (No one knows more about being a typical black in American than Chuck D.)
Many others in the list have appeared on The Cosby Show although Cosby himself is conspicuously absent from the list. Hmm...
The Delaware County Times can't say enough good things about the truest example of Soviet-style economy to ever hot these shores, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.
MEDIA -- If Liquor Control Board Chairman Jonathan Newman could have handpicked a customer to talk about the new Media store, it might have been Thomas Sweitzer. The Swarthmore resident didn’t have enough good things to say about the store, selection and location.
"Handpicked" is probably an appropriate term since by the looks of the accompanying photo in the dead tree version of the paper, no one came to subject themselves to the statecraft which is the PLCB. However, this next paragraph floored me.
‘‘The state stores have become competitive and the great chairman’s (empasis mine) selection is the best bargain around,’’ said an unscripted Sweitzer. ‘‘It’s like any wine or spirit store with good prices. The staff is more helpful and enthusiastic. This wouldn’t have happened five years ago.’’
Whaaa?! The "great chairman?" Is this the guy's real title or is there a grammatical slip-up here? I did a Google on the term and this topped the list.
All [North Korean Communist] party members have to...Dedicate ourselves to struggle to arouse the whole society in pursuing the revolutionary thought of the great Chairman, Comrade Kim Il Sung.
Couldn't have said it any better myself. Actually, in all fairness, I looked up the term at the PLCB site and came up with a more Western-style definition. However, I would no sooner allow this true socialist relic to pick my booze than I'd have them take care of my kids.
The senate, thanks to Democrats like Russ Feingold and Republicans with a scrap of integrity like Larry Craig have voted down the attempted railroad-reauthorization of the heinous Patriot Act.
A great day, and a victorious battle in the war for liberty!
(thanks to BoingBoing, painting by Werner Horvath )
At least as we learn it in the public schools and popular media anyway. Jesse Walker's review of the middle period (1910 - 1930) Ku Klux Klan shows not only that it adapted its methods and message to surprisingly disaparate regional concerns, and that it was a popular rather than a fringe movement, but that it also enjoyed tremendous influence in both the Progressive Movement and the Federal government.
The image we were all exposed to in school, of the Klan as a bunch of Southern crackers performing midnight rides and lynchings of blacks was certainly accurate enough in some unfortunate parts of the Deep South, but a surprising number of Klansmen spent their energies opposing parochial (Catholic) schools and enforcing their morality on others (Prohibition being a notable Klan kause).
In many cities the Klan didn't take all that much interest in blacks or hispanics, but instead directed its virulence toward Southern european immigrants (read; Greeks and Italians) and Catholics.
I never learned this in any history class throughout high school or college, but it squares with reports I have heard of some of my long-dead (protestant) ancestors being involved in cross-burnings and other acts of intimidation against Catholics here in the Northeast, ironic since most of my family is both immigrant (2nd & 3rd generation) and Catholic!
Anyway, a really good article (link from LewRockwell.com).
Previously we have had to swallow our pride to give kudos to such paragons of freedom as
Maxine Waters and
John Conyers for standing up to our overlords and defending our civil rights against depredation. Now another enemy of capitalism and freedom joins the (losing) cause in the House to
defend our freedom;
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said during the House debate: "We're not protecting ourselves, but we are endangering our liberties."
I've been waiting for this: a steady stream of Jim Bovard!
For those of you who don't know him, Mr. Bovard writes extremely detailed, well-researched books and articles on political topics the news has since forgotten about but need follow-up. Jim has an excellent memory and constantly reminds us that the facts we learn when news breaks are often the ones that slide down the memory hole later on (such as the fact that Saudis had much more to do with the 9/11 attacks than did Iraq).
...Vonage's new WiFi phone will spread like wildfire, overloading the system and seriously hurting the cell phone companies;
...it will NOT be free, despite the city's claims (since redacted, big suprise), and;
...it will draw resources away from where they are needed to duplicate something that the private sector has largely provided already.
BoingBoing recently ran a series of stories about internet / mail order photo equipment dealers "based" in Brooklyn. Turns out that many of these outfits are run by crooks.
(Really? I had no idea!).
The standard scam is to offer an item like a high-end digital camera at an unbelievably low price, then after you place an order, they call you back and high-pressure you into buying overpriced accessories, cancelling your order when you refuse. Standard scam stuff.
What isn't standard is that some of these crooks have threatened people who expose their scams. In addition to launching denial-of-service (DOS) attacks on their websites, some of these cretins have threatened bodily harm to people just for honestly recounting their stories of being taken by these scamsters.
One of those threatened, Don Wiss, had simply put up photos of the listed physical Brooklyn addresses for a bunch of these sites, with no editorial comment on their legitimacy whatsoever. He was both DOS-ed and threatened over the phone.
As it turns out, most of them are either mail drops, seemingly unrelated businesses, or abandoned buildings (big surprise#2).
The lessons?
1) If a price is too good to be true, it probably is;
2) Don't make big purchases from unknown dealers without getting feedback from other shoppers;
3) As always, "caveat emptor".
Personally, I would just stay away from online photo equipment dealers allegedly "based" in Brooklyn.
(photo from www.donwiss.com )
We discounted many of the allegations floating around the 2004 elections that electronic voting-machine providers rigged results in Ohio and Georgia as standard Democratic Party propaganda, preferring to believe that the results simply reflected Americans voting for their own perceived (and against their own actual) self-interest, as usual.
This morning however, Raw Story informs us that Wally O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, Inc.(makers of ATMs and electronic voting systems) has resigned for "personal" reasons, one week after an insider alleged anonymously to Raw Story that the company deliberately mishandled voting results.
We were of the opinion that the veracity of Raw Story's stories is about on par with those of Capital Hill Blue - some good, some gossip. But this recent development may lead us to give Raw Story another look.
(link from FARK)
St Bernard LA Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez was interviewed on CNN today about the progress of cleaning up and returning residents to the parish after Hurricane Katrina, and it was quite an interesting interview.
Rodriguez was blunt, criticizing the massive wastefulness of the "effort" FEMA and its 'national' contractors were putting toward cleaning up the area and making provision for temporary housing, arguing that local contractors could do the job cheaper and better (duh) and pointing out that, for instance, FEMA had purchased thousands of RV trailers (at roughly $13,000 each) to use as temporary living quarters for residents, but instead of being sent to the parish to provide needed housing, they were sitting in a storage yard in Alabama, unused.
(Note - I saw those trailers being shipped by rail to that storage yard. If the feds really are paying $13,000 each, they (we) are getting ripped off).
The newsbabe who was interviewing Rodriguez looked like she had just ingested a large insect, and sputtered to her colleague after the hastily-concluded interview that "we'll have to get to the bottom of this", of some such nonsense, eager to move on to something more important, like Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' unborn baby (I could editorialize here too).
Full disclosure: my employer is one of those 'national' contractors. I have no comment, except to say that my employer is nearly as disappointed in FEMA as Mr. Rodriguez, because from what I hear, there is no one in charge who has a stake in any kind of successful solution to the actual problems, but rather simply 'succeed' by spending as much of the budgeted funds as possible.
...and so are not at risk of mercury poisoning.
My professional opinion on this is that fears of mercury in fish are overblown for most people, although by how much I can't really discern. The EPA is notoriously conservative in their risk estimates for exposure to chemicals, and that's where the FDA got its information from when setting their risk levels.
What's disturbing to me, however, is that politics controls the process to the point where consumers are not warned about a risk that the government's own research considers "significant", since the warning would have a negative impact on the US fishing industry;
Levy acknowledged that the agency's mercury limit in fish--since relaxed from 0.5 to 1 part per million--was not low enough to protect fetuses. But a stricter standard, he said, would "put the availability of certain kinds of fish in question," according to the transcripts. "We would lose some fish."
"Like king mackerel, shark, and swordfish?" the moderator asked.
"Well, those in particular," he responded, "but also tuna."
One group firmly opposed any FDA warning on tuna: the U.S. fishing industry. Industry leaders met privately with FDA officials five times in late 2000 when the agency was crafting its mercury warning, FDA records show. During one meeting, the U.S. Tuna Foundation argued that if consumers were warned about tuna, the market for canned tuna would shrink about 20 percent, the U.S. tuna fleet would default on loans, and the seafood industry could face numerous class action lawsuits "at substantial cost and adverse publicity," a copy of the industry presentation shows.
In the end, the FDA rewrote the draft and released the final version of the warning to the public in January 2001. It recommended that at-risk groups not eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish. Tuna was not mentioned.
A month later, the FDA issued a statement explaining the warning. It said canned tuna was not included because consumers did not eat enough to cause a significant risk.Yet the federal government's own data showed canned tuna was then the nation's No.1 consumed seafood.
What is really going on here? Back during the early Industrial Revolution, because of pressure from industry, pollution came to be treated as an issue of policy rather than (correctly) an issue of trespass on private property. This travesty has become enshrined in law up to the present day, and it is why we will never have a clean environment as long as government is responsible for it rather than private citizens.
(link to Newsday article; illustration from In These Times article.
And they didn't have to kill anyone! At least this guy will have a chance to give his side of the story in a court of law before a jury of his peers. The TSA denied Rigoberto Alpizar of ever having that chance.
See KGMB9 in Hawaii for more details.
I predict that the word "bomb" will soon be lifted from the American lexicon and any trace of it eradicated frmo what I just read at Time.com concerning the yahoo federales plugging an unarmed, mentally-ill man in Miami yesterday.
"I never heard the word 'bomb' on the plane," McAlhany told TIME in a telephone interview. "I never heard the word bomb until the FBI asked me did you hear the word bomb. That is ridiculous." Even the authorities didn't come out and say bomb, McAlhany says. "They asked, 'Did you hear anything about the b-word?'" he says. "That's what they called it."
Thanks to William L Anderson at the LRC blog.
Biased, paid-for pseudoscience, basically. "The Center For Science In The Public Interest" (only one of those words is true) is pimping an Institute Of Medicine "report" as proof positive that the Federal government must force "fast-food" companies to stop "targeting" children.
So what is this "new research"?;
The report provides the most comprehensive review to date of the scientific evidence on the influence of food marketing on diets and diet-related health of children and youth.
We have exposed the "meta-analysis" scam here before. Basically, it consists of comparing apples to oranges, as well as pears, peaches, pineapples, guavas, and alligators, and piling them onto the scale, believing that when it comes to scientific research, if quality doesn't do it, there's always quantity. Feh.
So who paid for this "study", which the Institute is selling on their website?;
The study was requested by Congress and sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
I see - the impetus and funding for a study that finds evidence supporting legislative and regulatory looting of an entire industry comes from...legislators and regulators!
Gee, do you think there's a conflict of interest here?
And all of these studies ignore the number-one cause of obesity in children;
Oh, it already has?
Shots were fired on board an American Airlines flight that is parked at Miami International Airport, possibly leaving one man dead, officials said. Police, SWAT teams and federal agents responded to the scene.
It couldn't immediately be confirmed if anyone was hurt or who fired the shots on American Airlines Flight 924. But Herald news partner WFOR-CBS4, citing anonymous federal sources, reported that a U.S. air Marshal shot and killed a man acting aggressively either within the airplane's cabin or on a jetway connecting the plane to the terminal.
Miami Herald
UPDATE: The man was killed. Also, according to another passenger, the man was bi-polar. Hitler wanted to kill the mentally ill, too.
From
PA Clean Sweep;
"
PACleanSweep today responded to an alleged internal Senate memo leaked by Drew Crompton, General Counsel to Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Jubelirer, to Allentown Morning Call reporter John Micek. The memo alleges PACleanSweep founder Russ Diamond and other individuals involved in the public outcry over the unconstitutional pay raise of July 7 should have registered as lobbyists under Senate rules.
"We don't lobby Senators - we seek to unseat them," said Diamond."
Whoever authored that memo needs to be defeated. Don't forget.
We are used to seeing the left routinely use charges of racism,sexism, anti-environmentalism, and any other -ism they can think of to smear targets of choice, usually people who dare to voice opinions other than the orthodox views of the Regular Democratic Party. Increasingly, however, they can be seen and heard in public actually using the same arguments they rail against as hateful one minute to support their position in favor of the same minority group the next.
Witness, for one example, the incredibly vicious smear of UNLV professor (and Mises Institute scholar) Hans-Herman Hoppe, for simply using as an example to illustrate the concept of "time preference" a general truism that most gay people, being single with no children, have a higher “time preference” (preference for spending money on current goods versus future goods) than married people with children. A gay student in the lecture got so angry about the remarks, he tried to get Hoppe fired.
Luckily sanity prevailed,and Professor Hoppe kept his job, for now. It seems that leftists don’t like Austrian economics because it refutes the viability of socialism. They seem to believe the idea” Hey, let’s not let inconvenient facts get in the way of our favored method of coercion here”. So Professor Hoppe was officially rebukedby the university, just to remind him that his career there is hanging by the proverbial spit-thread. So much for academic freedom if the exercise of it conflicts with anyone’s delicate sensibilities.
So I was stunned when today while driving, I heard (audio) a piece on NPR (I know, I know) about gay groups’ anger at Ford Motor Company. Allegedly, Ford made a homophobic decision to discontinue advertising for two of its car lines in gay-oriented media. This decision was allegedly motivated by a proposed boycott of Ford products over the ads by the Family Research Council. Standard NPR fare, accompanied by the usual mellow, mellow-toned worrying aloud about the import of blah, blah, blah. Yawn.
But check this out – in an interview segment, Gary Gates, who researches gay trends in advertising, spoke approvingly of targeting advertizing at gays (and obliquely criticizing Ford's decision) by pointing out a general truism (I’m paraphrasing) - that since gays in general are single and have no children, they have more money that can be spent on expensive items like new cars.
Professor Hoppe, please call your office!
He somehow stayed out of all this while Ron WHite did his bidding. If not for govt corruption, maybe Penn's landing would be a showplace. Give it to the developers no strings attached I say!
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/13337915.htm
I normally don't read CapitolHillBlue.com since it tends to be lots of gossip with no names attached...except in the case of Doug Thompson. Here he gives a blow-by-blow account of an encounter with Tom DeLay.
“Listen you cocksucker,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “I’m tired of mealy-mouthed assholes like you kowtowing to the Democrats. We’re keeping a list and you’re on it. Either start supporting Republicans or you’ll find yourself out in the cold.”
My point is that no matter how experienced you think your congressman is, this is what it all boils down to. DeLay is not a special case. Neither Tom DeLay nor anyone else in Washington is thinking about you. These guys deserve no more credit than any other organized crime syndicate. So, until airliners start falling out of the sky on top of the Capitol Rotunda*, we've got to use our one vote to fire these guys.
*Note: I am not advocating dropping airliners onto Capitol Hill since there are lots of innocent people that are there to work their simple jobs and go home. But if I had to choose between the World Trade Center and congress...
...for money, basically.
In this editorial article from Neuros, makers of a new digital video recording device, they remind potential customers that when Sony was a company focused on electronics, it defended (Sony vs. Universal Studios) the right of purchasers of content to record it and use it (legally) as they saw fit.
Now that Sony is the copyright holder of a major amount of content however, it has completely changed its tune, and is working the government hard to guarantee that you will not be allowed to use your lawfully-purchased content in a lawful way, and will have to buy multiple copies of it.
Thus Sony transformed from an entrepreneurial company fighting against corporations that enjoy government-granted monopoly power, into a statist enterprise using the muscle of the federal government against its own customers.
On Mises today is a
reprint of an old interview that the New Banner did with Murray Rothbard in 1971 or so. One of the many gems in the interview;
"NEW BANNER: Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns said recently that he would expand the money supply at a rate that would insure a "vigorous" expansion of the U.S. economy, At the same time. the Price Commission will be permitting only limited price increases. What do you think the net result of these policies will be?
ROTHBARD: The net result will be further inflation, with black
markets and with people losing out. Those people who haven't got the political muscle at the Price Commission or Pay Board won't get their increases, while those who do have that muscle will.
All sorts of monstrous situations wlll occur. Declines in quality, for example. We will find that there will be more air in the Baby Ruth - you can't find the Baby Ruth anymore anyway. There will be less chocolate in the chocolate. There's no way the state can police this, of course And it's very harmful to the public."
Of course, those of us old enough to remember the 70's know how eerily accurate Murray's prediction was;
Ma Bell and her trigger man, the FCC, of course!
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vonage Holdings Corp., the nation's largest non-cable provider of Internet phone service, could be barred from signing up new customers in many markets because it failed to meet the deadline to provide reliable emergency 911 service to all subscribers.
CNN.com
And it's a cheap investment at that. The top 20 defense contractors spent a little less than $500M lobbying various representatives of the federal government over the period 1997 - 2004. In return, those same top 20 Pentagon contractors received over $550BN in new contracts. Add in the thousands of smaller contractors, and political contributions start to look like very profitable investments!
Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, (R, San Diego) pleaded guilty yesterday to tax evasion and bribery charges stemming from his very profitable relationship with defense contractors in his San Diego district.
"Duke" announced his"retirement" in July of this year after the FBI raided his $2.5M Rancho SantaFe home, and the yacht belonging to a constituent, MZM Corp, on which he resided in Washington D.C.
Here's what got Duke in trouble;
(Defense contractor Mitchell)Wade invited the congressman to live rent-free on the Duke-Stir. Since it's a crime for members of congress to live rent free on someone else's property, Cunningham has evaded this troublesome legality by paying $13,000 a year in dock fees, far below the going rent in the more habitable quadrants of the Washington metro area.
Wade and his company also helped to finance Cunningham's political campaigns. According to records from the Center for Responsive Politics, MZM's political action committee donated $17,000 to Cunningham's coffers from 2000 through 2004. Wade personally twisted the arms of his employees to extract donations for Cunningham. "By the spring of '02, Mitch was twisting employees' arms to donate to his MZM PAC," one former MZM employee told the San Diego Union-Tribune. "We were called in and told basically either donate to the MZM PAC or we would be fired."
Cunningham discounts the allegation that he was doing any special favors for Wade or MZM. "The way it works here is: I support a lot of credible defense programs for the Air Force, Navy, ship building, ship repair or intelligence," Cunningham explained. " And they say, you know, 'Duke, these are good programs. This is what I want you to do.'"
Far from being atypical, his story reads remarkably like that of another Republican congressman close to a major defense contractor we know. This cesspool of corruption has resulted in a bloated "defense" budget that exceeds the largest Reagan ones that "ended" the Cold War;
As such, the Duke's travails serve as an edifying symbol for how completely Congress has been captured, from top to bottom and left to right, by the coterie munitions makers and weapons merchants that underwrite and direct the American political system. Some veterans of the Hill simply refer to incessant feeding of the Pentagon beast as "the Enterprise", the axiomatic function of their existence in Washington.
The Enterprise pivots on the annual disbursement of the $500 billion defense budget. In an era of shriveling federal spending on domestic social programs, the defense budget remains the most reliable pork barrel in town. Even the thawing of the Cold War and the death of the Soviet Union did little to inhibit the pace of Pentagon spending.
But that isn't even all of it - the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aren't even in the "budget"! ;
Unlike most agencies, the Pentagon is not bound by its budget. The more it spends, the more it gets. For example, the Pentagon told congress that the Iraq war would cost about $1.5 billion a month. It ended up costing between $5 and $8 billion a month, with no end in sight. The Pentagon has an apt catch-phrase for this bloody flood of spending. It's accountants call it the "burn rate."
So, we have a "defense" department whose "on-budget" expenditures total almost $600BN per year!
While $500BN was supposedly enough to bring down the entire Soviet system, this same level of expenditure left us completely helpless against 19 Saudi nitwits on 9/11.
It currently leaves our military completely exposed in an unwinnable, useless war in Iraq.
And it leaves our actual borders virtually undefended.
Is it too much to ask for the American People to wake up already?
Just saw this on the LRC blog.
MIAMI - Miami police announced Monday they will stage random shows of force at hotels, banks and other public places to keep terrorists guessing and remind people to be vigilant.
Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said officers might, for example, surround a bank building, check the IDs of everyone going in and out and hand out leaflets about terror threats.
“This is an in-your-face type of strategy. It’s letting the terrorists know we are out there,” Fernandez said.
[...]
“People are definitely going to notice it,” Fernandez said. “We want that shock. We want that awe. But at the same time, we don’t want people to feel their rights are being threatened. We need them to be our eyes and ears.”
So, Shock and Awe comes stateside just as I (and a lot of others) predicted. I guess the American people were becoming a little too leary of government after Katrina so they feel the need to soften us up a little to show us who's boss. Please send this to anyone you know who still doesn't believe we live in a police state.
