Cutting the military budget
Now for some squeals from the right: Why we must never, ever cut the military budget!
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Now for some squeals from the right: Why we must never, ever cut the military budget!
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Certainly Stephanie Gutmann’s ideas were lame. Realistically there’s been bipartisan agreement that the military has been underfunded for years. Hence why we lost troups deployed with no body armor, or deployed ni unarmored HumVees.
Worse then that though is we’ve been putting off replacing old equipment. Gates has made that worse by:
– Dropping replacement programs in work,
– Continuously pushing the military to stop worrying about later – just focus on now;
– and reassuring Congress that we’re so superior to everyone else in the world our current decades old equipment will be nearly invulnerable to (or at least far superior to) anything, anyone else could field for decades.
The last bit was laughable and quickly proven false by what other nations started fielding – and so insulting to China that when Gate arrived for a visit recently, they announced a new generation fighter not only superior to our decades old ones – but to the new F-22 fighter Gates discontinued as unnecessary; as well as announced and displayed their new anti aircraft carrier missiles, whose only real target would be our aircraft carriers.
Gates will leave his successor a huge “bow wave” of equipment needing immediate, simultaneous, replacement. Just like how after Jimmy Carter left office congress and the White House went on massive rushed programs to refit the “hollow military force”, expect the same to start in a year or two.
The idea of cleaning the militaries bureaucratic inefficiency is a appealing and a good idea, but given we can’t even shut down bureaucracies like the Departments of agriculture and Education – even though they do virtually nothing at all – what chance have we have to do it with something like the far more complex DOD that really does do things were desperately want and need?
Worse – for all the talk of military bloat, the vast bulk of the militaries budget is salaries and care of solders. Yes the US spends about as much no its military as the rest of the worlds militaries combined – but most of that goes to grossly underpaying, poorly housing, and giving decent medical care to its comparatively small numbers of troupes. Most of the rest of the worlds militaries “greatly economize” or eliminate, such costs.
For example a new aircraft carrier and its planes and equipment cost about $10-$15 Billion, but the crews on them easily cost a billion a year in salary and support.