Santa cannot Cure the Depravity of Man
World Situation Today
2021 USA Defense Expenditures, Projections toward 2023
The U.S. military budget is poised to surge above $800 billion.
Committee Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, is reported saying that “the FY23 budget would be ‘bigger than we thought,’ as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ... complicated the U.S. security posture and impressed a greater sense of urgency for funding defense priorities.”
Yet the figures tell another story
- United States of America spending $828 Billion
- NATO (i.e., USA spending) $324 Billion
- Russian Federation spending: $65.9 Billion
Follow the Money
OpenSecrets reports on Congressman Smith
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Smith’s 2018
Estimated Net worth:
$393,006
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Donors to Congressman Smith 2021-2022
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TOP INDUSTRY: Defense Electronics $110,500
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TOP CONTRIBUTOR Kratos Defense & Security Solutions: $70,000
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Bio Brief
Politician, former private practice attorney (JD University of Washington School of Law), Washington
State prosecutor and senator, Washington, D.C.-native (raised in
Seattle, Washington Metropolitan), David Adam Smith has been a member of
the U.S. Congress since 1997 and chairman of the Arms Services Committee
since 2019.
Congressman Smith is on record voting in 2008 for the FISA Amendment Act of 2008 (FAA) “reauthorizing unconstitutional provisions in the expired Protect America Act,” significantly modifying the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act granting expansive new monitoring powers to the executive branch with very little court oversight; and ensuring the dismissal of all pending cases against telecommunication companies for their previous illegal spying on American citizens on behalf of the Executive Branch.
Smith also voted for the 2001 USA Patriot Act and to extend the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.
U.S. military spending has long surpassed military spending of Russia; and, in the post-9/11 era, U.S. military spending has escalated dramatically (military strategy expert Lyle Goldstein in a new study from the Costs of War Project)
The Russian military budget amounts to
less than one-tenth of the U.S. military budget; just one-fifth of non-U.S. NATO spending; and six percent of the NATO defense spending aggregate.
U.S. Navy- has more than 10 times the number of aircraft carriers as Russia (Russia has just 37 percent of the total U.S. combat aircraft);
- has more than five times the number of large surface combatants; and
- has more than double the number of amphibious attack ships and nuclear submarines.
Hidden in Plain Sight: War-Making Waste Fraud Abuse
Wartime Contract Spending in Afghanistan Since 2001
“UNDISCLOSED”—“Over one-third of the $108 billion in contract work performed in Afghanistan from 201-2021 for the U.S. Department of Defense went to undisclosed recipients.”
“Over the 20-year period of the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, the U.S. Department of Defense paid various companies about $108 billion in contracts for work performed in the country, according to our latest research.
“This is in addition to the trillions of dollars spent on Department of Defense contracts performed in the U.S. over that period – and does not include other goods and services produced in the U.S. and used in the war in Afghanistan, such as weapons.
“What’s more, this figure is just a fraction of the over $14 trillion in Pentagon spending since the start of the war in Afghanistan in total, with one-third to one-half of the total going to military contractors.
“Over one-third of the contract spending went to “undisclosed” recipients – domestic and foreign businesses who are not uniquely identifiable in the publicly available contracting databases – USASpending.gov and the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS).”
FY2002-2022
“Of the $108 billion spent in Afghanistan from fiscal years 2002-2022, over 40 percent went to the 14 largest companies, which each received over one billion dollars in total contract spending, with the largest receiving over $13.5 billion. There were also thousands of smaller contracts.
2001-2022 WASTE, FRAUD, ABUSE: $14 TRILLION
In the period since starting the latest war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon has plundered the US Treasury for one-third of an estimated 14 trillion U.S. dollars to “defense contractors” (i.e., militarists, military industrialists, mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, and sundry shady and shadowy nongovernmental entities)
“Weapons makers have spent $2.5 billion on lobbying (in the most recent 5-year period employing and deploying “more than 700 lobbyists”—more than one for each member of the U.S. Congress!)
Paymaster calls the Law and Policy
Recent years’ record of all Pentagon-issued contracts
One-fourth to one-third of contracts to Big Five (their total assets estimate 2021)
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Lockheed Martin: $50.87 billion
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General Dynamics: $50.07
billion
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Boeing:
$138.5 billion
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Raytheon: $161.40 billion
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Northrop Grumman: $42.58
billion
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(Lockheed Martin’s Pentagon extortion in contracts for FY2020 was a whopping “$75 billion”—“well over one and one-half times” FT2020’s “entire budget for the State Department and Agency for International Development.”)
As “wartime” conditions allow laxity in oversight and haste in delivery, many companies exploit the situation to make exorbitant double-edged killings in “overcharging” the U.S. government, or engaging “in outright fraud.”
A documentary estimate of Waste, Fraud and Abuse found in 2011 by the “Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan” totaled “$31 billion to $60 billion.”
Reductions in U.S. adventures in one set of countries morph into ramped-up U.S. special or self interested rages against another set of countries or regions (Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Horn of Africa, China, Russia, Iran)—name the flavor or rationale of convenience—and up spikes the War Department’s budget to unheard of highs.
Government officials in service to their paymasters, lobbyists, and revolving door riders, their incestuous militarists and mercenaries inflate spending by legislation or decree—and the whole cabal breaks out in laughter all the way to those private (or quasi-public) national, international and off-shore exchanges and havens.
At the end of 2021 Business Insider reported on “At least 15
lawmakers who shape US defense policy have investments in military contractors”
by Warren Rojas, Camila DeChalus, Kimberly Leonard, and Dave Levinthal, December13,
2021
https://www.businessinsider.com/congress-members-are-trading-defense-stocks-while-shaping-military-policy-2021-12
Months earlier The Intercept reported “Joe Biden Filling Top
Pentagon Positions With Defense Contractors: Some of the top Defense Department
officials — including Defense Secretary nominee Lloyd Austin — have deep ties
to the private sector” by Sara Sirota and Lee Fang May 6, 2021 https://theintercept.com/2021/05/28/biden-pentagon-defense-contractors/
Lloyd Austin (Biden administration’s incumbent United States
Secretary of Defense January 22, 2021-) and before him Mark Esper (Trump
administration’s United States Secretary of Defense July 23, 2019 – November 9, 2020) had deep ties to multibillion-dollar
defense contractor that Raytheon;
Patrick Shanahan (Acting United States
Secretary of Defense January 1, 2019 – June 23, 2019) and James Mattis (United
States Secretary of Defense January 20, 2017 – January 1, 2019), respectively,
had been senior vice president at Boeing and board member of General Dynamics.
Ellen
Lord (Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment February 1,
2018 – January 20, 2021), the former president and CEO of Textron Systems,
oversaw the Pentagon’s weapon acquisitions.
Biden’s pick for Under Secretary of
Defense for Intelligence and Security, Ronald Moultrie (Under Secretary of
Defense for Intelligence and Security Incumbent June 1, 2021 –present), “comes
from at least a dozen consulting firms and contractors, which he joined after
holding positions in the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency,
and Navy.”
Biden’s nomination to lead the Air Force, Frank Kendall (United
States Secretary of the Air Force Incumbent July 28, 2021 –present), was a vice
president at Raytheon.
WANT USA
United States of America
Sectors of Hunger (“food insecurity”)
Every U.S. state, county, and congressional district- United States Hungry (“food insecure”) Americans: one in eight
- United States of America’s households 2020 experiencing Hunger (“food insecurity”): one in four
- United States of America’s children uncertain about their next meal: 12 Million
- United States of America’s poor or low-income population: 140 million (estimated 40 percent of total)
- United States of America’s people in Poverty (2020) 37 million
- United States Homelessness stretches across every state and territory and affects every grouping of people.
Homelessness
During the pandemic no data were taken.
The latest figures as of January 2020 show “580,466 people” on the streets or in shelters in the United States of America because they have no homes.
Poverty:World Population Review
“Poverty is a state of being in which a person lacks the income (or other means of support) to reliably meet their basic personal needs, such as food, shelter, and clothing.”
“The poverty rate is the number of people (usually expressed as a percentage) in a given demographic group whose income falls below the poverty line.” https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/poverty-rate-by-country
Conditions in the USA parallel Conditions across the World.
War making and the waste fraud and abuse that accompanies and compounds it impoverishes all nations and peoples
2022 finds “828 million” of the world’s people are languishing in hunger. Forty-nine million people in 49 countries are on the edge of famine.” Acute hunger or starvation euphemistically termed “food insecurity” has risen, in a three-year period, “from 135 million to 345 million.”
The World Food program in early December reports emergencies in these sovereign nations—all of which are suffering U.S. officials’ decreed weapons transfers and mercenary deployment, plunder, on-the-ground violence, meddling, destabilization, or hostile occupation
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Afghanistan
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Sahel
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Democratic
Republic of the Congo
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Somalia
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Ethiopia
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Southern
Madagascar
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Haiti
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South Sudan
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Kenya
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Sudan
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Myanmar
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Syria
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North
Eastern Nigeria
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Ukraine
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Northern
Mozambique
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Yemen
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“The World Food Programme” is the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.
Neither Santa Claus nor deities can cure what man has done.
War, aggression, conflict, major climate events, rising global recession, plunder and disproportionate taking, use and misuse of farmlands, agriculture, and resources—have resulted in food crises of “unprecedented proportions.” Mendacious and militarist men (and women) persist taking more than their share. With impunity, they rape and waste, plunder and decimate the world's human, natural and material resources. Corrupt to the core, their waste, fraud and abuse is routinely covered up by their cohorts and funders, equally sharing in the taking.
The depravity of man is man's doing. Therefore, man must undo it: cure his sickness and rein in the manifestations of his depravity.
URL sources
World Population Review https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/poverty-rate-by-country
Move for Hunger https://moveforhunger.org/hunger-and-homelessness
World Food Program “2022: a year of unprecedented hunger,” https://www.wfp.org/global-hunger-crisis; https://www.wfp.org/who-we-are
Costs of War Project
“Profits of War: Corporate Beneficiaries of the
Post-9/11 Pentagon Spending Surge”
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/ProfitsOfWar
“Why the United
States should not exaggerate the threat posed by Russia or raise
military spending as a result”
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2022/220819%20Goldstein%20One%20Pager-2.pdf
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2022/ThreatInflation
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2022/WartimeContractSpending
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/ProfitsOfWar
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2022/220819%20Goldstein%20One%20Pager-2.pdf
https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/S000510
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith_(Washington_politician)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act
OpenSecrets “All the numbers are for the 2021 - 2022 election cycle and based on Federal Election Commission data released electronically on 12/09/22 for Fundraising totals, Source of Funds and Total Raised vs Average, and on 10/28/22 for Top Contributors and Industries.”
https://www.opensecrets.org/personal-finances/adam-smith/net-worth?cid=N00007833
National Alliance to End Homelessness,
https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/
Composition and Commentary excluding quoted material and individual images
Copyright © Carolyn LaDelle Bennett
Author’s links: www.BennettsAmericanEpitaph.com; https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett; https://insightbeyondtodaysnews.blogspot.com/; https://www.xlibris.com/en/search?query=Carolyn+LaDelle+Bennett;
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