Friday, March 3, 2017

Trump pledges huge increase in DOD budget amid bogus allegations of Trump/Putin election collusion


"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws" — Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild



In Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of congress he announced that he would ask congress for the largest increase in military spending in history.  The military industrial complex and Wall Street banking behemoths appear to have neutered the Trump Administration after the media driven witch hunt that took the scalp of Trump’s national security advisor, General Flynn.  From Paul Craig Roberts:

Excerpt:

The Resurrection of Armageddon

“The U.S. intelligence community’s extraordinary campaign of leaks claiming improper ties between President Trump’s team and Russia seeks to ensure a lucrative New Cold War by blocking detente.” — Gareth Porter

It only required 24 days for the Deep State to castrate President Donald Trump and terminate the promise that the high tensions with Russia created during the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes would be terminated by Trump’s presidency. As Gareth Porter shows conclusively, the case against General Flynn, Trump’s 24-day National Security Adviser, and by implication against Trump himself, is a fake news creation.

Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, planted fake reports, none of which contained any evidence whatsoever, on the CIA-compliant media whores known as “presstitutes.” The CIA’s media whores knew that the reports were a CIA response to the threat to the $1,000 billion annual budget of the military/security complex that desperately needs “the Russian threat” for its justification. But the media whores—-principally the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC—-and all the rest as well are more dedicated to serving their CIA master than they are to serving peace between nuclear powers…

Trump’s presidency is effectively over. Even if he is permitted to remain in office, he will be a figurehead for the Deep State’s presidency. President Trump has already fallen into line with the military/security complex…  

After one month in office the goal has changed from reduced tensions with Russia to greater tensions. Greater tensions might soon be upon us. There are plans to occupy part of Syria with US troops in order to prevent Syria with Russia’s help from reuniting the country. Part of Syria is to go to Turkey, part to the Kurds, and Washington will keep a chunk. This way Washington can keep the turmoil going forever

It is bizarre to see the liberal-progressive-left allied with the warmongers against Trump. As the neoconservatives pull nuclear Armageddon out of the grave that Reagan and Gorbachev put it in, the American left demands the impeachment of the president whose goal was better relations with Russia… Where then is the opposition to the neoconservative ideology that is driving US foreign policy toward world hegemony?....

The last three US presidents, and now apparently Trump also, worked overtime to increase tensions between the two nuclear powers...  The ongoing vicious lies about the Russian connections of Trump and his associates are so obviously false as to be laughable, but the Russians are seeing that the falsity of the charges notwithstanding, Trump’s National Security Adviser has fallen and Trump himself might be next.

Dr. Roberts is right, sadly the Trump Administration that brought such high hopes for a restoration of sanity for the world has imploded.  When Trump abandoned General Flynn for “lying to Vice President Mike Pence” a neocon whose job it is to keep Trump in line, it was over, there was now blood in the water.  The sharks weren’t going to stop their feeding frenzy until one by one Trump’s lieutenants were eliminated until Trump himself is gone.

What is particularly frightening is that since the overthrow of the American government in 2000 untold trillions of dollars have been stolen from the American treasury and funneled into an unelected shadow government in the Pentagon and State Department.  It has been reported that $6.5 trillion is missing, and that’s just from the Pentagon.  From The Fiscal Times:

Excerpt:

Pentagon’s Sloppy Bookkeeping Means $6.5 Trillion Can’t Pass an Audit

The Defense Department over the years has been notorious for its lax accounting practices…  An increasingly impatient Congress has demanded that the Army achieve “audit readiness” for the first time by Sept. 30, 2017, so that lawmakers can get a better handle on military spending. But Pentagon watchdogs think that may be mission impossible, and for good reason.

A Department of Defense inspector general’s report released last week offered a jaw-dropping insight into just how bad the military’s auditing system is.  The Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the behemoth Indianapolis-based agency that provides finance and accounting services for the Pentagon’s civilian and military members, could not provide adequate documentation for $6.5 trillion worth of year-end adjustments to Army general fund transactions and data…

Army and Defense Finance and Accounting Service Indianapolis personnel did not adequately support $2.8 trillion in third quarter adjustments and $6.5 trillion in year-end adjustments made to Army General Fund data during FY 2015 financial statement compilation,” wrote Lorin T. Venable, the assistant inspector general for financial management and reporting. “We conducted this audit in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.”

The DFAS has THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY for paying all DOD military and personnel, retirees and annuitants, along with Pentagon contractors and vendors. The agency is also in charge of electronic government initiatives, including within the Executive Office of the President, the Department of Energy and the Departing of Veterans Affairs.

A further mystery is what happened to thousands of documents that should be on file but aren’t. The IG study found that DFAS “did not document or support why the Defense Departmental Reporting System . . . removed at least 16,513 of 1.3 million records during Q3 FY 2015. As a result, the data used to prepare the FY 2015 AGF third quarter and year-end financial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit trail,” the IG’s report stated.

Hmm, interesting that the Army and Defense Finance Accounting Service that has “the sole responsibility for paying all DOD military and personnel, retirees and annuitants, along with Pentagon contractors and vendors” is located in Indiana, the state where Vice President Mike Pence was governor before becoming Trump’s running mate.  Pence was chosen by the GOP for a reason, I guess we know why now.  Think about that, if Trump is ejected from the White House Mike Pence is President.

Is it any wonder that Wall Street soared after Trump’s announcement of the largest Department of Defense increase in history?  And, what about congress?  Year after year they plow another half trillion into the DOD budget while slashing food stamps, stagnating Social Security and slashing Medicare and Medicaid.  You would think with all the trillions spent on defense that America would have the most sophisticated war machine in the world, but you’d be wrong.  From Bloomberg:

Excerpt:

F-35's $1 Trillion Support Cost Ticks Up as More Flights Seen

The trillion-dollar cost to operate and support Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 jet through decades of flight has increased by about $107 billion from last year, according to Pentagon officials. 

The latest estimate -- $1.12 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars -- reflects new assumptions by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps that their versions of the fighter will fly more and last longer, according to Air Force Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan, the F-35 program’s manager. The cost was originally estimated at $900 million in 2009…

The revised estimate was included Friday in the Pentagon’s annual report on costs of major weapons systems. It came as F-35s continue to experience cracks of varying severity in ground-based stress testing and are hobbled by unstable mission systems software. Even as the planes continue to be built, they are at least two years away from the start of year-long combat tests to assess whether they’ll deliver their full promised capability…

Overall, the 79 major programs included in the Pentagon’s annual report increased by $7 billion to $1.6 trillion, primarily because of increased quantities of missiles, submarines and jets.

The cost of Raytheon Co.’s troubled ground station for new GPS III satellites has increased $586 million to $4.19 billion to cover new overruns caused by shortcomings that have delayed fielding the system’s full capability by five years, to July 2021. The Air Force must pay for the overrun under the program’s “cost-plus” contract.

Trillions for a boondoggle that doesn’t even work and won’t work.  Just look at that piece of crap.


Tragically the F35 is an abject failure and the DOD along with congress keeps plowing more money into the F35 trough.  While the DOD dishes out contracts on a “cost plus” basis, meaning the longer it takes to manufacture the F35 the more money the contractors make.  While America has been paying for the F35 for 15 years and counting, Russia has developed a far superior fighter jet.  Take a look at this:


Congress needs an enemy in order to justify the continued rape and pillage of the American treasury.  Donald Trump has threatened to pull money from the F35 program and in retaliation the American intelligence community has manufactured and leaked bogus claims about Russia interfering in the American presidential election.  From No Quarter:

Excerpt:

The silliness over Russia is, obviously, part of the Establishment’s drive to get rid of Trump. Yes, the man is erratic, contradictory, shoots before he aims, backs off much of what he has promised, and may be unqualified as President–but that is not why Washington and New York want to get rid of him. It is about money and power, as is everything in the United States. Wall Street, the Pentagon, the Neocons, and the Empire run America. Trump has threatened their rice bowls.

He has threatened to cut the F-35, a huge blow to Lockheed-Martin and hundreds of subcontractors; to pull US troops out of South Korea, a blow to the Empire; to end the wars, a blow both to the Empire and the military industry getting rich from them; to pull troops out of Okinawa, crippling the Empire in the Pacific; to start a trade war with China with a forty-five percent tariff of Chinese goods, threatening American corporations with factories there; and to chase out illegal immigrants, an important source of cheap labor to businesses. He has called NATO “obsolete,” when leaving it would be the death knell of the Empire; and threatened to establish good relations with Russia, when the lack of a European enemy would leave NATO even more obviously unnecessary.

Thus New York and its branch operation in Washington resuscitate Russia as a bugbear to terrify the rubes, meaning most of the public. Money. Power. Empire.

I want to strongly reiterate a point I have made in previous posts–there is a covert action campaign, i.e. an information operation, being run against the American people. It is a pure propaganda campaign and is designed to portray Russia as the greatest threat to the world.

Larry Johnson is absolutely spot on.  Donald Trump is a threat to the Empire and for that the corrupt members of the Democratic Party and the Never Trump wing of the Republican Party will use every means available to manufacture the “Russia/Trump” crisis.  With a media controlled by the military industrial complex the drums of war against Trump will continue until the American people, stupefied by a lack of a free press, will eventually call for the impeachment of Donald Trump. 

One of the only honest members of congress is Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, who is currently under investigation by congress after having traveled to Syria on a “fact finding” mission.  Facts be damned.  From TheAnti-Media:

Excerpt:

Tulsi Gabbard: To Solve Refugee Crisis, Stop Funding Terrorism

 (ANTIMEDIA) Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, the politician who previously accused the U.S. of arming ISIS, is still calling on the U.S. government to stop its disastrous regime change policies in the Middle East.

According to a press release made public on Tuesday, Gabbard has again called for the U.S. to stop aiding terrorists like al-Qaeda and ISIS. Gabbard’s guest at the presidential address to Congress, a Kurdish refugee activist, also called for an end to the U.S. policy of “regime change in Syria.”

“In the face of unimaginable heartbreak, Tima has been a voice for the voiceless, a champion for refugees worldwide, and a strong advocate for ending the regime change war in Syria. I am honored to welcome her to Washington tonight as we raise our voices to call on our nation’s leaders to end the counterproductive regime change war in Syria that has caused great human suffering, refugees, loss of life, and devastation.

We urge leaders in Congress to pass the Stop Arming Terrorists Act and end our destructive policy of using American taxpayer dollars to provide direct and indirect support to armed militants allied with terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, who are fighting to overthrow the Syrian government.”

The war in Syria that was started by the CIA through a phony color revolution has not been paid for through the DOD budget.  In addition to the $6.5 trillion missing at the DOD, congress has set up a secret slush fund designed to fund misadventures like the Syrian war.  It’s called the Overseas Contingency Fund and there is no oversight.  From Salon:

Excerpt:

“Crack cocaine for the Pentagon”: Meet the secret slush fund that’s getting hawks high

“It’s basically crack cocaine for the Pentagon,” said Gordon Adams, a professor at American University who worked on defense budgets at the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration. “It gives you a flexibility that most domestic discretionary agencies would kill for…”

The development of OCO represents a new mechanism for funding American wars since 9/11, another gift handed out by the George W. Bush Administration. “There’s no prior instance of such a thing in American military practice,” said Gordon Adams.

Previous wars were funded first with a supplemental spending bill, outside of the budget cycle, usually for 1-2 years. Congress could put restrictions on the supplemental, like the scope of the spending, or reporting requirements. If the war continued, the Defense Department would fold the cost of maintaining operations into the overall budget…

Afghanistan and Iraq changed all that…  Over time, the Pentagon started to include things in supplemental requests like ordering an F-15, when no F-15s were shot down in Iraq or Afghanistan. All the money was fungible, able to be moved inside or outside the supplemental budget. You could call it a slush fund or an off-balance-sheet vehicle, but it enabled regular military spending to grow without scrutiny…

As OCO became more of what Gordon Adams calls “magic money,” the White House got in on the act. They created a $5 billion counterterrorism account and stuck it in OCO, keeping the fund alive even after Iraq and Afghanistan end. The $1 billion “European Reassurance” fund to support Ukraine came out of OCO. Three thousand troops to West Africa to handle Ebola? OCO. $500 million to train the Syrian opposition? OCO. Even State Department funding has gone in OCO, as much as $7 billion, over 15 percent of their total expenditures.

While congress cuts tons of basic services, here's the secret slush fund the military doesn't want you to discover.   While America is in a steep decline with Wall Street chosen politicians running the country, it seems Putin has learned a valuable lesson from this American “exceptionalism.”  The result of that lesson was seen in the Russian annexation of Crimea.  Russia’s investment in their military, as in people, has paid off big time.

According to a New York Times article called “Crimea Offers Showcase for Russia’s Rebooted Military”:


PEREVALNOYE, Crimea — The soldiers guarding the entrances to the surrounded Ukrainian military base here just south of the capital, Simferopol, had little in common with their predecessors from past Russian military actions.  Lean and fit, few if any seemed to be conscripts. Their uniforms were crisp and neat, and their new helmets were bedecked with tinted safety goggles. They were sober…

Past Russian military actions have often showcased an army suffering from a poor state of discipline and supply, its ranks filled mostly with the conscripts who had not managed to buy deferments or otherwise evade military service. Public drunkenness was common, as were tactical indecisiveness and soldiers who often looked as if they could not run a mile, much less swiftly. 

Yes, five years ago Russia’s army was a mess, with broken, outdated equipment, low pay, improper training and low morale.  Putin recognized you can’t have a strong military if you don’t value your military personnel.

The transformation of the armed forces has been a personal priority of Mr. Putin, who as prime minister from 2009 to 2012 and more recently in his return to the presidency has overseen billions of dollars in new military expenditures

Since the start of 2012, salaries for most military personnel have roughly tripled, to between $700 and $1,150 a month for privates and sergeants — a respectable amount in Russian terms. The Kremlin has also expanded housing and education benefits.


Putin has increased the salaries, expanded housing and education benefits for military personnel in stark contrast to America.  In the meantime, American military personnel have had pay cuts, cuts in education benefits and slashed pensions in order to funnel those funds directly to Wall Street in the form of contracts to build outdated, unnecessary equipment that generates Wall Street profits.  According to Investors.com:

The Obama administration plans to cut the military pensions of those who served their country while giving public employees a break by exempting their ObamaCare subsidies from sequestration.  On the heels of announcing that Army troop levels will be cut below pre-World War II levels, the Military Times has reported that the Obama administration is planning to reduce military pension costs by 10% by converting part of their retirement to 401(k)-like defined-contribution plans from defined-benefit plans…

The Military Officers Association of America has calculated that the typical Army sergeant, as a result of pension and other benefit changes, stands to lose up to $5,000 in annual benefits under the administration's fiscal 2015 budget.  The budget also calls for slashing subsidies for base commissaries, a 5% increase in the cost of military housing and a 1% cap on annual active-duty pay increases…

And who can forget that when George W. Bush sent our troops into Iraq with a fleet of Hummers, our soldiers had to rummage through trash heaps to retrofit the Hummers to protect against IEDs. 

Looking an Army soldier who was pleading for better protection against improvised explosive devices (IEDs) straight in the eye, Rumsfeld coldly, clinically and callously replied, “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”


  
Yes, according to Rumsfeld, a big “F” you to our soldiers.  That has been our Wall Street politicians’ answer to our army since 2000.  Spending on adequate equipment and safety measures cuts into Wall Street profits.

So now President Trump has called for the largest increase in DOD spending in history.  From Zero Hedge:

Excerpt:

Trump Seeks Sharp Increases In Military Spending, "Drastic Cuts" To State Department, EPA

As part of his proposed budget, President Trump will instruct federal agencies on Monday to assemble a spending plan for the coming fiscal year that includes sharp increases in Defense Department spending and "drastic cuts" to domestic agencies such as the State Department, the EPA and other non-defense programs, so that he can keep his promise to leave Social Security and Medicare alone, according to four senior administration officials cited by the NYT. The budget outline will be the first move in a campaign this week to reset the narrative of Mr. Trump’s turmoil-tossed White House.

Coming one day before delivering his high-stakes "State of the Union" address on Tuesday to a joint session of Congress, Trump will demand a budget with tens of billions of dollars in reductions to the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department, administration officials reported. The NYT adds that social safety net programs, aside from the big entitlement programs for retirees, would also be hit hard. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, speaking on Fox News earlier on Sunday, said Trump's budget would not seek cuts in federal social programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

It appears Donald Trump’s new administration has been neutered by a corrupt intelligence community, the DOD and the most corrupt congress in the history of America.  While Trump spoke, America was treated to a show of disdain for the American people by Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker Paul Ryan who sat snickering in the background.  It was a big “F” you to the American people by congress. 

Hopefully I am wrong and Donald Trump will take the reins away from congress and lead the nation into a new era of peace and prosperity.  But if what we saw in Trump’s address is any indication, it is a sad day in America.  Please Mr. Trump resist this congressional “Russian witch hunt” and push through the sanity agenda you promised.  Please Mr. Trump, no more war memorials.



By Patricia Baeten

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