Community | April 23, 2011 | 15 comments

YOUR MONEY & THE MILITARY !

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REDUCING MILITARY SPENDING ALONE WILL ELIMINATE THE LONG TERM DEFICIT.

Per the MilitaryIndustrialComplex.com, you contributed to $246,876,+ billion dollars of military contracts for the year of 2010, ALONE!. You contributed to $70,601, billion dollars of military contracts in the first three months of 2011, ALONE! And this only represents contracts reported, not all of the other military spending not related to corporate contracts! Is it any wonder we're broke now?

( A great tool for counting the money being made by corporations off of your military budget money. ): http://www.militaryindustrialcomplex.com/2011-totals.asp

"if all we were to do was to bring the military budget back down to the Clinton-era level, that alone would essentially solve the long-term deficit problem. That alone.", states U. of Mass., at Amherst, professor Robert Pollin, in an interview with Paul Jay of theREALnews network.

"In the year 2000, it ( the military budget ) was 3 percent of GDP. And now it's 4.8 percent." " If we say the problem, again, the long-term problem, is that we project out a deficit at 5 percent of GDP, and we need to get it in the range of 2 to 3 percent, at least you could pull half of that out of the military budget, and you'd still be way beyond where the military budget was at the end of the Clinton administration.
JAY: And still be the country that spends more on weapons [crosstalk]
POLLIN: Than all the other countries of the world, yes.
JAY: --rest of the world put together, yeah."

Once we recognize that our military currently functions as a money making business for already rich corporations, creating foreign threats to our nation in order to justify military action and supporting budgets; which in turn feed the industrial war machine, we can intelligently pare it down to a level only necessary to TRULY insure our national security.

"people say, well, you can't do that, because we'd lose jobs if we cut the military. But that's also false, because the military per dollar of expenditure creates far fewer jobs than, for example, putting the money in education or putting the money in clean energy. We create more jobs. If we moved it out of the public military and just incentivized private green investors, we would create about 50 percent more jobs."

CONCLUSION? Reduce military spending and create more jobs! Just the facts, if you please!

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&a...

And here is a terrific tool for keeping track of it yourself:

2010 Military-Industrial Complex Totals

Total Contracts Recorded: 3,834
Total Contracts Dollar Value: $246,876,980,742

A visual representation of Defense Spending growth and decrease by month throughout 2010.

Total Contracts Recorded by Month:

January: 168
February: 171
March: 330
April: 374
May: 272
June: 330
July: 306
August: 327
September: 704
October: 273
November: 224
December: 355

Total Contracts Dollar Value by Month:

January: $8,107,922,646
February: $11,540,170,777
March: $13,677,787,653
April: $20,284,801,491
May: $25,567,713,470
June: $22,596,147,257
July: $19,415,424,453
August: $16,792,242,962
September: $46,498,184,935
October: $9,565,043,473
November: $28,206,122,771
December: $24,625,418,854

http://www.militaryindustrialcomplex.com/2011-totals.asp
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15 comments // YOUR MONEY & THE MILITARY !

  • Paratus
  • NickerBocker09
    • +1
      NickerBocker09  
    • Paratus:

      If we do that then we might as well cut off all trade and relations. Leaving the UN is the worst idea ever. The neo-con media likes to dumb it down as a worthless institution but it is one of the most important ever in history. If we had listened to it then we wouldnt have been in Iraq.

    • 1 year ago
  • COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM
  • Jonathan_Sokolnicki
  • oppressed1
    • +2
      oppressed1  
    • Can you imagine the effect on the economy if we stopped these contracts? WE are talking about the eilminiation of millions of jobs. IT takes a lot of people to keep the MIC running strong.

    • 1 year ago
  • COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM
    • +3
      COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM  
    • oppressed1:

      You apparently didn't read the entire post, nor peruse the links. Independent studies have shown that the same money directed to the private sector, would create 50% more jobs than are created by the military.

      So yes, I can imagine a 50 % increase in job creation. It should just about eliminate unemployment. Thanks for bringing up the subject of my post's fifth paragraph. It deserves restating...

    • 1 year ago
  • tlbuffin
  • COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM
  • NickerBocker09
    • 0
      NickerBocker09  
    • COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM:

      pork barreling is a widely overused term that only accounts for a tiny percentage of our budget problem. Its so small its not even worth noting. There is a difference between pork barreling and working for your constituents by the way. Getting thousands of jobs to your district is not pork barreling, its working for your constituents and doing your job as a rep. The main problem is we arent working for the country as a whole enough.

    • 1 year ago
  • ptr23
  • COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM
  • Chukarhunter
    • +2
      Chukarhunter  
    • My personal opinion is that we could bring home ALL of our troops, and I mean the ones in places like Europe and Asia, and still be the world Super Power. Remember we have the most powerful Nuclear arsenal in the world. Now just imagine if we did that. How much money would we be saving a year? I would bet we could really start taking care of our own a whole lot better. And I bet we could create jobs for everyone. But we as a nation would want that kind of nation. But all you have to do is watch Fox news to know it will never happen.

    • 1 year ago
  • NickerBocker09
  • Chukarhunter
    • 0
      Chukarhunter  
    • NickerBocker09:

      I disagree with you on two points. 1. We would still have a Navy, it just wouldn't be in Japan or other asian nations. So we could still do humanitarian work. 2. The Navy's main roll is to kill people in the defense of our nation.

    • 1 year ago
  • dreamsenvoy
    • +2
      dreamsenvoy  
    • Would America's collective ego handle not being "#1" in this time, considering how nastalgic for the last millenium they are at being perceived that way.....However,it is time now

    • 1 year ago
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