Cut DOD Spending In Half

[ThomWV]

You realize that if we cut our military spending in half we'd still be spending far more than any other country one earth for that purpose, and in fact might still be spending more than every other country one earth. So why not?

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[Kolesar]

2. Cato Institute's Pena said we could cut it to $300 Billion

His essay is somewhere on their website.

[Bill McBlueState]

3. $200 billion

That would free up $200 billion a year to do the most ambitious things humanity has ever imagined. Think of the problems we could solve. Think of what we could learn about the universe with even a portion of that money available to basic science.

Nominated.

[whistle]

4. The military spending for 2006 budget will be $498 billion....

...plus supplements of over $82 billion bringing that total to over $580 billion as disclosed. But, aren't there numerous other military related expenditures that are in the budget as well, under different departments not DOD that could be as much as $200 billion which are traceable back to national security and defense. So the military industrial complex easily has over $780 billion annually under it's control and discretion.

[ThomWV]

5. Look at DOE's Budget Too

The DOE budget is mostly to maintain the nuclear stockpile, and if that's not military spending I do not know what is. So add it to the mess too.

Immagine this, take $100 billion out of the DOD budget and simply distribute $2 Billion to each state to use as it sees fit. How much difference would that make in: infrastructure, eductation, social programs, assistance to the elderly, and on and on.

[MisterP]

6. bloated DoD: $500 billion

assassinations and despots: $300 billion
black-bag operations: $200 billion
nukes and nuclear power: $100 billion
MIC and making the rich richer? priceless

[whistle]

8. Keeping a running tab on military spending....

DOD 2006 budget $580 billion
DOE 2006 budget $100 billion (Energy-nuclear stock piles)
DOT 2006 budget $100 billion (military transport development)
DOE 2006 budget $75 billion (Education-military oriented training and recruiting)
DoHLS 2006 budget $60 billion

That's $915 billion already. Add any others you can think of.

[mopinko]

10. don't forget nasa

and other departments that are being hijacked for the military. jim hightower says more than 50% of all tax dollars goes to the pentagon. do you wonder who is really in charge here? but who wants to stand up to the guys with all the weapons?

[Roland99]

12. Don't forget the supplementals

I wonder how much the new Star Wars boondoggle will cost?

Amazing the way the military-industrial complex keeps creating markets for itself.

[MisterP]

13. just look at Carlyle Group and other arms merchants:

their very presence inflames local tensions by selling some weaponry to the right group. Then there is a further demand for weapons. And remember that this is on top of the ordinary plundering and slavery and smuggling.
Then comes the political takeover by the arms merchants and they get to use an entire country to further their dirty work.

[mike_c]

7. kicked and recommended!

If I were in charge, this would be one of my first official acts.

[rndmprsn]

9. great ideas...

i still like kucinich's idea creating a dept of peace from DOD funds.

[driver8]

11. Very good ideas, except that you would be taking money out ot

the Shrub's cronies' pockets. C'mon, how could you think of such a thing? These people need to eat, too.

[Lone_Wolf]

14. Just imagine if we invested that money into society... education

new infrastructure, heatlhcare, poverty reduction, etc... America would have a standard of living ten times better than any other country in the world.

[understandinglife]

15. 25 % of current budget would still be over-spending. The consequences....

....of using that 75 % for deficit reduction, health care, major overhaul in education systems and support for humanitarian activities throughout the world would do so much more to sustain our 'security.'

Peace.


Let's RAP!

[bvar22]

16. "Reforming the Defense Budget" needs to be out there.

the conversation needs to be started. People need to be talking about this. It is TABOO in the Democratic party except for the very brave and very moral, the career politicians RUN AWAY whenever it is mentioned.

CUT At LEAST 50% initially. Rumsfeld is actually making discussion of this easier with his base closings.

I would like to see a legislative mandate that for every dollar spent on DEFENSE, a matching dollar MUST be spent on Gobal Humanitarian Programs....World Health, World Hunger, World Education, World Infrastructure.

We need to find a good frame to put this in. "Cutting Defense" will be hard to sell in Peoria. We need to find a frame like "Saving Our Troops", "Saving America", "The Healthy Military Initiative". (something like that).


Our current expendatures on "Defense" are obscene and immoral.
We are spending OVER $1.25BILLION DOLLARS per DAY on killing and maiming people.

[eridani]

17. How about spending it on inventing the post-oil economy?

[oscar111]

18. Add vet care, add paying loans that financed past wars

and i recall that 2O years ago, the full cost of our military was half of the fed budget.

PLUS, i say, ==== add in lost man-years of future production due to killed soldiers, ... and also lost, they embodied the cost of about 14 yrs of education and 19 yrs of food... all lost.

PLUS, half our scietists and engineers do war work, not productive domestic gadget work. That means their diverted labor is mostly a waste. Spin-offs are lots faster to develop when scentists try to invent them directly, not as rare accidents.
War is much more costly than at first it seems.

[jmowreader]

19. Many of our best inventions were "accidents"

Radio-frequency heating (which begat the microwave oven, which begat the convenience store) was invented when an engineer who was working on radar projects for Raytheon wondered why his lunch, which he stored next to the radar he was designing, was always nice and warm.

Teflon was discovered when a DuPont scientist attempting to use tetraflouroethane gas for refrigeration opened the valve on his TFE cylinder and nothing came out. He cut the cylinder in half with an angle grinder and found that it was full of polymerized TFE.

Otto Bayer invented polyurethane on purpose, but polyurethane foam invented itself--one day he was making a batch of polyurethane but he didn't know water had contaminated his stock of one of the chemicals he was using. It turns out that when water is added to curing polyurethane, the reaction causes carbon dioxide to form, which foams up the polymer.

I can support some war work, but not all--Star Wars I definitely don't support.

What I'd really support would be nationalizing any company that only does war work. If you took the profit margin out of General Dynamics by turning it into a government entity, you could get the per-unit cost down by about half and STILL pay the CEO (now "Operating Manager") the same bloated salary he makes now.