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Title: The Military Industrial Complex is Bankrupting the USA!
Published: 2019-02-07
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_iqaaeMrF0
Title: The Military Industrial Complex is Bankrupting the USA!
Published: 2019-02-07
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_iqaaeMrF0
1/37
mark my words America's war spending will bankrupt this country for that matter America's war spending has already bankrupted the nation to the tune of more than 20 trillion dollars now the Trump administration is pushing for a four point four trillion dollar budget for the fiscal year 2019 that would add another seven tree into the already unsustainable federal deficit in order to sustain America's military empire abroad2/37
and dramatically expand the police state here at home Trump also wants American taxpayers to cover the cost of building that infamous border wall truly Trump made sure not to be as policy analyst Stan : Durr warned and I'm quoting the biggest deficit and debt increasing president of all time for those in need of a quick reminder a budget deficit is the difference between what the federal3/37
government is spins and what it takes in the national debt also known as the public debt is the result of the federal government borrowing money to cover years and years of budget deficits right now this country the US government is operating in the negative on every fund its spending far more than what it makes and takes from the American taxpayers we the people and it is4/37
borrowing heavily from foreign governments and Social Security to keep the government operating and keep funding it's endless wars abroad this is how military empires fall and fail by spreading themselves too thin and spending themselves to death it happened in Rome it's happening again now not content to merely police the globe in recent decades America has gradually transformed its homeland into a battlefield with militarized police and5/37
weapons better suited to our war zone since taking office Donald Trump much like his predecessors has marched in lockstep with the military now Trump wants 716 billion dollars to expand American military empire abroad and billions more to hire cops build more prisons and ways more profit-driven war on drugs war on terrorism war on crime programs that eat away at the Fourth Amendment while failing to make6/37
America any safer even the funds requested for infrastructure will do little to shore up the nation's crumbling roads bridges railways highways power grids and dams no matter how you break it down this is not a budget aimed at perfecting the Union establishing justice ensuring domestic tranquility providing for the common defense promoting the general welfare or securing the blessings of liberty for the American people no this7/37
is a budget aimed at pandering to the powerful money interest the military corporate and security and that run the deep state and hold the government in its clutches so much for Trump's campaign promises to balance the budget and drain the swamps of corruption the glaring economic truth is that at the end of the day it's the military-industrial complex and not the sick the elderly or the8/37
poor that is pushing America's toward bankruptcy as investigative journalist URI Friedman puts it for more than 15 years now the United States has been fighting terrorism with a credit card I'm quoting here essentially bankrolling the wars with debt in the form of purchases of US Treasury bonds by us-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments and by countries like China and Japan folks this9/37
is an illicit merger of the armaments industry and the Pentagon that President Dwight d Eisenhower warned us against more than 50 years ago and now it's come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation's fragile infrastructure having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors corrupt politicians and there are a lot of those and incompetent government officials America's expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at10/37
a rate of more than 15 billion dollars a month or 20 million dollars an hour and that's just what the government spends on Foreign Wars that does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the 1000 plus US military bases spread across the earth incredibly although the u.s. constitutes only 5% of the world's population America both almost 50% of the world's total military expenditure spending more11/37
on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nation's combined in fact the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health education welfare and safety clearly war is not cheap although the federal government obscures so much about its defense spending that accurate figures are very difficult to procure we do know that since 2001 the US government has been more than 1.812/37
trillion dollars in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that's eight point three million dollars per hour that doesn't include wars a military exercises waged around the globe which are expected to push the total bill upwards of twelve trillion dollars by 2050 three mind you these ongoing wars riddled by corruption graft and bumbling incompetence have done little to keep America safe while enriching the military-industrial complex and13/37
the private defense contractors at taxpayer expense just recently for example a leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagon's largest agencies and I'm quoting here can account for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of spending unquote just consider the fact that it cost American taxpayers 2.1 million dollars per year for each soldier deployed in Afghanistan did you know that imagine what you could do with14/37
that money if it were spent on domestic needs here at home unfortunately that's not going to happen any time soon not as long as the money interest in Washington DC keep calling the shots and profiting from the spoils of war war has become a huge money-making venture in America with its vast military empire is one of its biggest buyers and sellers not only does the United15/37
States have the largest defense budget it also ranks highest as the world's largest arms exporter the American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth for example while erecting a security surveillance state here at home in the United States the military-industrial complex has perpetuated a worldwide military empire with American troops stationed16/37
in 177 countries over 70% of the countries worldwide in the process billions have been spent on erecting luxury military installations throughout the world the US Embassy built in Iraq dub fortress Baghdad covers 104 acres and boasts a city within a city that includes six apartment buildings a Marine barracks swimming pool shops and 15 foot thick walls camp anaconda in Iraq like many US military bases scattered17/37
across the globe was structured believe it or not to resemble a mini city with pools fast-food restaurants miniature golf courses and movie theaters while most Americans can barely or scarcely afford the cost of heating and cooling their own homes the American government spends 20 billion dollars a year just to provide air conditioning from military installations in Iraq and Afghanistan believe it or not in essence what18/37
we're doing is air conditioning the desert over in Afghanistan Iraq and other places think about that for a minute and think carefully there's a good reason why bloated corrupt in an inefficient are among the words most commonly applied to the government especially the Department of Defense and its contractors for instance a study by the Government Accountability Office found that seventy billion dollars worth of cost overruns19/37
by the Pentagon was caused by management failure if you put that in perspective that equates to one and a half times the state department's entire 47 billion dollar annual budget folks fraud is rampant in government it's a government audit for example that found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending as the report20/37
noted the American taxpayer paid a listen to this 71 dollars for a metal pin that should cost just four cents over $600 for a small gear a small smaller than a dime that sells for $12 more than 50 100 percent increase in price over sixteen hundred dollars for another tiny part also smaller than a dime they could have been bought within the Department of Defense for21/37
seven dollars and 71 cents a twenty one hundred percent increase seventy one dollars for a straight thin metal pen that the Department of Defense had on hand unused by the tens of thousands for four cents and increase over 177 thousand percent ladies and gentlemen price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the military Empire in America if you think gas prices at home can22/37
get high just consider what the American taxpayer is being forced to shell out overseas once all the expenses of delivering gas to troops in the field are factored in we the taxpayer paying between eighteen to thirty dollars per gallon for gas in Iraq and Afghanistan incredibly despite reports of corruption abuse and lace the mega corporations behind much of this ineptitude and corruption continue to be awarded23/37
military contracts worth billions of dollars the rationale may keep changing for why American military forces are in Afghanistan Iraq and elsewhere but the one that remains constant if that is that those who run the government are feeding the appetite of the military-industrial complex what began in 2001 is part of the ledge effort to root out al-qaeda has turned into a gold mine for the military-industrial complex24/37
and its army of private contractors just consider this the Pentagon in 2008 spent more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earned in a year yet Congress and the White House want taxpayers to accept that the only way to reduce the nation's ballooning deficit is by cutting programs such as Social Security and Medicare as Martin Luther King jr. recognized under a military empire25/37
war and it's profiteering will always take precedence over the people's basic human needs simply put we cannot afford to maintain our overextended military Empire as one commentator noted I'm quoting here foreclosing the future of our country should not be confused with defending it unquote inevitably military empires collapse is colum Murphy throughout the book our we roam rights and I'm quoting here a millennium hence America will26/37
be hard to recognize it may not exist as a nation-state in the form it does now or even exist at all well the transitions ahead be gradual and peaceful or abrupt and catastrophic well our descendants be living productive lives in society better than the one we inhabit now whatever happens will valuable aspects of America's legacy we through the fabric of civilizations to come well historian some27/37
day have reason to ask did America really fall the problem we wrestle with is none other than a distorted American Empire complete with mega-corporations security industrial complexes and a burgeoning military and it has its sights set on absolute domination evincing however all military empires fall at the height of its power even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a large growing28/37
military prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise as historian Chalmers Johnson predicts the fate of previous Democratic Empire suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let it go of its empire intensely or not29/37
the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic Empire folks I would suggest that what we have is a confluence of factors and influences that go beyond mere comparisons to Rome it is a union of George Orwell's 1984 with its shadowy totalitarian government that's fascism the union of government and corporate powers and a total surveillance state with and military empire30/37
extended throughout the world as if we have seen with the militarizing of police in this country the growth of and reliance on militarism as the solution for our problems both domestically and abroad affects the basic principles upon which Americans society should operate we must keep in mind that a military Empire will be ruled not by lofty ideals of equality and justice but by the power of31/37
the sword and the gun those in the military are primarily trained to conduct warfare not preserve the peace if the American Empire Falls and the American economy collapses and with it the last vestiges of our constitutional republic it will be the government and it's trillion dollar war budgets that are to blame of course the government has already anticipated this breakdown that's why the government has transformed32/37
America into a war zone turn the nation into a surveillance state and labeled we the people as enemy combatants for years now the government has worked with the military to prepare for widespread civil unrest brought about by an economic collapse loss of functioning political and legal order per plus for domestic resistance or insurgency pervasive public health emergencies in catastrophic natural and human disasters having spent more33/37
than a half a century exporting war to foreign lands profiting from war and creating a national economy seemingly dependent on the spoils of war the war hawks long ago turn their profit driven appetites on us we the people bringing home the spoils of war the military tanks the grenade launchers the kelp our helmets assault rifles gas mass ammunition battering rams night-vision goggles and so on and34/37
handing them over to local police thereby turning America into a battlefield more than 50 years ago President Dwight Eisenhower warned us not to let the profit-driven war machine endanger our liberties or democratic processes our government we have failed to heed his warning as the Eisenhower recognized in the speech given to the American Society of newspaper editors on April 16 1953 the consequences of allowing the military-industrial35/37
complex to wage war exhaust our resources and dictate our national priorities are beyond grave and here's what he to say every gun that is made every warship lost every rocket fired signifies in the final sense of theft from those who hunger and are not fed those who are cold and are not clothed this world in arms is not spending money alone it is spending the sweat36/37
of its laborers the genius of its scientists the hope of its children the cost of one modern heavy bomber is this a modern brick school in more than 30 cities it is to electric power plants each serving a town of 60,000 people it is too fine full e equipped hospitals it is some 50 miles of concrete payment we pay for a single fighter plane with a37/37
half a million bushels of wheat we pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people this is not a way of life at all in the true sense under the cloud a threatening war it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron this is how the police state lands and we the people lose
