740 Billion Reasons Not To Trust Government

     Why must our military budget be the highest it's been since World War II? How during a pandemic that's nearly a year old and still killing people at the same rate then at it's original peak our Senate still sells it soul to the Pentagon? In 2019 the US defense budget was three times larger than China and a shockingly ten times the size of Russia. This years budget is filled with billions marked up for one air force jets massively overpriced program, the immaculate, invisible, yet grossly 1.3 trillion dollar F35 that still hasn't been thrust into any combat to date. Modernizing our nuclear program, which is another red herring, considering after years of mutually assured destruction, nuclear weapons will certainly never be used by our government barring North Korea finally flying of the deep end and it launching a nuke at Japan.

     This despicable use of taxpayer dollars spent on the defense budget is nothing new. According to numbers compiled by Scientific America.com, from 2000-2019 with adjusted inflation the US taxpayers spent 13.38 trillion dollars on military budgets. This during a great recession from 2007-2009, the Iraq and Afghanistan debacles notwithstanding those prices are astronomical and in this writers opinion immensely insulting. It's especially egregious in the current times and the many issues that should take precedence over spending on death weapons. Income inequality, climate change, a desperately needed second stimulus and money for the burgeoning homeless crisis are all more important than military machines to sell to Gulf monarchies and Israel. What sickens me the most is that the bill passed 84 13 which just goes to show you democrats are no better, or no more conscientious than their republican counterparts. I've never agreed much with Rand Paul, but at least he had the gumption to speak out against this bloated budget. Pramila Jayapal, a true progressive in the house of Representatives also spoke up about the outlandish cost of this bill.

     I'm not ignorant to the fact our veterans deserve the best of care and the ability to survive after their brave service. Also I am in favor of removing confederate names off military bases but in my opinion this just gave center left democrats and especially Nancy Pelosi the perfect reason to pass this outrageous piece of legislation and still consider it a win for liberals. Well, pardon my French but that is the biggest bunch of horse shit reasoning to all of a sudden go bi partisan. What a joke, do they think the general public or at least progressives like myself are dumb enough to fall for that? The days of sticking it to Trump should be over. I know Trump wants to veto this bill for all the wrong reasons. Like the changing of the base names and some ridiculous inclusion involving some social media clause, which should have nothing to do with defense funding. 

     What does the Future Combat Systems Program, Camanche Helicopter, and the unfortunately named, Crusader Artillery Gun all have in common? They cost taxpayers 46 billion dollars over 20 years and none of the three made it past the prototype phase. This means not only did they never make the battlefield, they never made it off the production line. Yes friends this is what the Pentagon, and your legislators are throwing your hard earned tax money away at, flushing it down the proverbial toilet. If that doesn't get your blood boiling, how bout the 67 billion dollars the Pentagon set fire to on a missle defense system that never bothered to work, a remnant of the Reagen era Star Wars missle defense fantasy. How could we allow this military charade to go on all these years? Is it fear of China? The cold war has been over for 30 years. Who or what are we so afraid of, Terrorism? ISIS was defeated mostly on the ground by Kurdish allies with mostly ak 47s and the occasional US airstrike. Cyber attacks, well evidently the massive amounts of funding hasn't helped put a real stop to it. Just this week our cyber security was embarrassingly breached again. Some foreign entity, more than likely funded by Putin's government hacked into the US Treasury, commerce department and amazingly the agency meant to stop these attacks, the department of homeland security.

    We've reached a conclusive argument here, I hope anyway. What more can be said? The military industrial complex is alive and well, it continues to baffle many intellectuals. The many problems this country and the world currently facing that has nothing to do with any arms race. The environment is being destroyed at a speed even the most apocalyptic scientist couldn't have predicted twenty years ago. Pandemics aren't just going to disappear and only a miniscule amount of the 740 billion will be used to fight covid and possible future pandemics. Lines of cars in the thousands waiting for free food, do you think they are worried about us not having enough F35 fighter jets? Do you think healthcare workers exposed to covid every day care about building another goddamn aircraft carrier? This is an issue very personal to me. Being lower middle class, not able to attend college or job training programs, having to see your government ignore your plights to spend hundreds of billions on weapons. Oh and to make sure some base in North Carolina gets a damn name change. Sorry to everyone waiting for a stimulus check, you may have to wait or not get any at all. Thanks to your spineless legislators and Pentagon which always needs more and more useless steel.