If you think failing an audit means a penalty for the Pentagon...think again. If you think failing an audit means a penalty for the Pentagon...think again. If you think failing an audit means a penalty for the Pentagon...think again.
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Pentagon's Trillion Dollar Failure
00:02:35
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| Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the weekly report. | |
| Pentagon Fails First Audit. | |
| Neocons demand more spending. | |
| The Pentagon has finally completed its first ever audit and the results are as many of us expected. | |
| After spending nearly a billion dollars to find out what has happened to trillions in unaccounted for spending, the long look through the books has concluded that only 10% of all Pentagon agencies pass muster. | |
| I'm surprised any of them did. | |
| Even the Pentagon is not surprised by the failure of the audit. | |
| We failed the audit, but we never expected to pass it, said Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan. | |
| Can you imagine any large U.S. company subject to the prying eyes of the IRS being so unfazed by the discovery that its books have been so mishandled? | |
| As with all government programs, but especially when it comes to military spending, the failure of a program never leads to calls for funding reductions. | |
| The Pentagon's failure to properly account for the trillions of dollars of taxpayers' money shoveled in year after year only means, they say, that we need to send more money. | |
| Already they are claiming that with more resources, meaning money, they can fix some of the problems identified by the audit. | |
| If you subsidize something, you get much more of it, and in this case, we are subsidizing Pentagon incompetence. | |
| Expect much more of it. | |
| Outgoing chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Mac Thornberry, warned against concluding that mishandling trillions of dollars should make us hesitant to continue sending trillions more to the Pentagon. | |
| The failed audit should not be used as an excuse for arbitrary cuts that reverse the progress we have begun on rebuilding our strength and readiness, he said. | |
| The neocons concur. | |
| Writing in the Free Beacon, editor Matthew Contanetti, who happens to be Bill Crystal's son-in-law, warns that now is the wrong time to cut defense. | |
| But I agree with the young neoconservative Continetti. | |
| I would never support cutting a penny of defense. | |
| However, the Pentagon's lost trillions have nothing to do with defense. | |
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Pentagon's Hidden Costs
00:01:24
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| That is money propping up the high lifestyles of those connected to the military-industrial complex. | |
| Continenti and the neocons love to throw out boogeymans like China and Russia as excuses for more military spending. | |
| But in fact, they are hardly objective observers. | |
| Look at how much the military contractors spend finding the neocon pudgetations and neocon think tanks, telling us that we need more military spending. | |
| All this money is stolen from the productive economy and diverted to enrich neocon cheerleaders at our expense. | |
| Of course, the real problem with the Pentagon and military spending in general is not waste, fraud, and abuse. | |
| It's not $10,000 toilet seats or coffee mugs. | |
| The problem with military spending is the philosophy that drives it. | |
| If the U.S. strategy is to maintain a global military empire, there is never enough spending that will be enough. | |
| Because there is never enough to completely control every corner of the globe. | |
| But if we are to return to a well-defended republic, military spending could easily be reduced by 75% while keeping us completely safe. | |