The Sage Observer

Our Defense Budget

As I have commented in the past relative to our Department of Defense, their immense responsibility to the security of our country and the American people notwithstanding, they do not have an accounting system, i.e. a set of books, integrated with our national system of accounting that are auditable. In short, their books don't balance.

 When Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense during the administration of George W. Bush (You remember Dubya) entered office, he promised to correct this problem. We soon entered the war in Iraq, and his promise was forgotten.

I think this condition is a disgrace to the people of our country. We have huge transnational corporations in this country (they may be even bigger than our whole government), and their accounts are integrated, they are able to balance their books, and they can account for every dollar they receive and every dollar they spend. There is no reason our government can't do the same except they don't want to.

 Solving this problem they won’t be able to lie, cheat, and steal and/or hide what they do from the American people without getting caught. In conjunction with this think the Military Industrial Complex. As long as they can hide the truth, the American people are uninformed and unable to fulfill their Constitutional responsibilities in the electoral process.

Our country has the largest military budget in the whole world and, yet, they want more. As I speak, their requested budget this year is approximately $700 billion, just over three quarter of a trillion dollars, and they still claim they don't have enough money. They want more and they want to take it out of our Social Security and Medicare. If you don't believe me, just listen to Representative Paul Ryan, our illustrious Speaker of the House of Representatives, on the evening news. As usual, we fiddle as Rome burns. This phenomena is what economists term “guns vs. butter”. I submit to you that if a government doesn’t provide for the needs of its people, they may not have a people to defend.

So as not to overburden you with my thoughts, let me refer you to those of others. For your convenience, listed below are a few articles relating to this subject:

Pentagon’s Failure to Audit Contracts Wastes Billions

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/05/21/Pentagons-Failure-to-Audit-Contracts-Wastes-Billions

Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic …

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-buries-evidence-of-125-billion-in-bureaucratic-waste/2016/12/05/e0668c76-9af6-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html?utm_term=.5a1f121743ed

Audit: Pentagon Cannot Account for $6.5 Trillion Dollars Is Taxpayer Money
ttps://www.mintpressnews.com/audit-pentagon-cannot-account-6-5-trillion-dollars-taxpayer-money/219246/

Fake News? I don’t think so. There is much more. It’s easy to Google. Study for yourself and see what a sick state our nation is in; and, you know? There’s absolutely no sense in it.

I’ll be back. In the meantime, this is Ronald Miller. www.sageobserver.blogspot.com.