Defending My Position

Like so many others I made the Citizens United decision my #1 political priority for the last year. The unregulated influence of money on politics is simply unacceptable in a representative democracy. Lately I have begun to realize that this focus may well be distracting us from larger issues. One might even think we are being duped by some enormous supreme court bait-and-switch tactic. So today I going back to my #1 political concern, the same one that has been my personal #1 for nearly forty years - the defense budget.

In 2010 the DoD budget was $664 Billion, that's the number represented in the graphic above. This number does not include those military related items outside of DoD accounting, such as: pensions to military retirees and families, the debt on previous wars, Homeland Security, Veteran's Affairs, counter-terrorism by the FBI, military intelligence gathering at NASA, nuclear weapons research, maintenance, production and clean-up and all foreign aid that is military related.

When all of those items are correctly added to the defense budget the number balloons to $1.3 Trillion for 2010. These numbers are unaudited because the Government Accountability Office was unable to provide an audit because of 'widespread material internal control weaknesses' arising from 'serious financial management problems' at the DoD. 

We spend more on defense than the next 12 countries combined. Let me say that again - the 2012 Defense Budget for the United States of America is more than the combined defense budgets of: China, Russia, United Kingdom, France, Japan, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Brazil, Italy, South Korea and Australia.

What threat is it exactly that requires such a huge drain on our national resources? How many of the threats we fear arise only in opposition to our monstrous defense budget? Why do we have twenty times more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world combined, enough to destroy the earth several times over?

Money in politics is a problem but money to wage war has only led to war and more war. Name a time in your lifetime when this country was not at war. We must stop.