Waste at the Pentagon

I understood his point to be that the Republicans were content to leave DoD accounting as a mare's nest, and Democrats eventually tried to do something to fix it. Therefore the Democrats record, though poor, is at least better than the Republicans.

Also, reading the article does not make me see the discrepancies as "waste" necessarily or mainly.

It sounds as though most of the problem involves either appropriations which were entered on the revenue side of more than one system, and which were then mistaken for separate funds existing in series rather than the same funds entered in parallel, thus creating "ghost" credits which cannot be accounted for because they never actually existed; or properly appropriated and probably mostly properly spent funds which were not properly documented as debits and cannot now be proven to have been properly spent.

There is also I concede a strong likelihood of duplicate spending in such a situation, and the articles section on inventories suggests this happened some. And also of course, such conditions might be an invitation to embezzlement -- but the embezzler would have to be either stupid or reckless, as it sounds as though no one understands the way the systems interact well enough to be sure they would not function properly in a given case...

 

I never want to be elected to any office. I want to be a professor.

 

A huge standing military was our 1st mistake. Cuz you have to give all those young men & women tools of war and then you can't never-ever cut defense jobs, ya commie pinko!

 

Since I'm of the belief that our nukes & missile capabilities have been mostly responsible for us not being attacked the last 60 yrs and our bloated military is the very definition of "waste", if I was in charge I would take a chainsaw to this jobs program known as our standing military. Bases closed, brass drastically cut, shutter entire rings of the Pentagon, mothball any weapons that are fighting wars from the mid 20th century. Seriously - when's the last time 2 battleships went at it? GONE!!

 

The "Iowa" and "Wisconsin" were stricken from the register in 2006. They were the last ones.

 

Works for me. Personally, I would prefer a Euro-sized government and budget, meaning higher overall taxes and more services. But if this country opted for a lower-revenue, lower-cost model, I could live with that, too.

But what politician supports this? I don't see anybody out there offering a realistic budget that matches expenditures and revenues. I see people who are giving away candy. Lower taxes, cut a few of the other party's programs, and leave the vast majority of the federal budget essentially unchanged.

I mean, we've been there with Reagan and we've been there with W. I see no evidence that a President who promises to cut the size of government will follow through. But that President *will* cut revenues.

So to me, the Dems are fiscally poor and the Republicans are fiscally worse.

 

why so late?

 

They were already decommissioned and mothballed, which costs very little.

(They were enormously expensive to build back when relevant, but not so expensive to operate as long as they weren't cruising aimlessly.)

They were saved against the possibility of a conflict in which heavy bombardment of shore installations was desirable. Battleships are quite good at that, and cruise missiles and 8 inch guns are not particularly useful against some types of near targets.

However, the "Missouri" had only fired 200 rounds or so in the Gulf War, and that didn't seem very cost effective; plus any 60 year old vessel deteriorates even in mothballs, and no one was going to promote the idea of building new ones...

It just seemed more economical, once the real money had been spent building them, to keep a few around and use them occasionally for anything they were still useful for-- but eventually that economy runs out.

(BTW the last battle between battleships was October 25, 1944, the battle of Surigao Strait. Five of the battleships raised and repaired after Pearl Harbor, along with the "Mississippi," destroyed the "Yamashiro" and "Fuso" and accompanying cruisers and destroyers. Even there, the torpedoes of their accompanying destroyers did more damage than the battleships.)

 

They are great for soaking up hits against the Japanese fleet early on, but it's always better to buy destroyers and subs. Pretty standard play.

 

Lots more complicated than that; without both the numerical advantage and the geographical advantage that the Royal Navy had in 1914 the Germans would never have had to discover the joys of unrestricted submarine warfare.

I suppose the Japanese would have by about 1942 or so-- but it wasn't Allied commerce that was exposed in the Pacific, and it was Pearl Harbor that forced the USN into making the guerre du corse into a major part of the strategy. We had subs, we didn't have battleships for them to scout for anymore.

This and the proficiency of the Japanese at night destroyer tactics forced the US to make its torpedoes actually work and to translate the use of destroyers as an offensive fleet asset as well as a defensive one from theory to practice.

But you know, destroyers and submarines of the time were extremely vulnerable to air attack. At the battle of Coral Sea, a group of American fighters sank a Japanese destroyer with machine gun fire alone.

In the Mediterranean in the forties the prompt action by the British to neutralize the Italian, and then the French capital ships was pretty key to maintaining some access to North Africa and the Suez.

And while the aircraft carrier was the key to the second war, one thing which the popular histories gloss over is quite true. No aircraft carrier accompanied by a battleship was ever destroyed by air action-- after about 1942 the anti-aircraft armament had progressed to that point.

 

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/aa/welcome

 

Not my game. I don't even fight wars in Civ unless they are forced on me. I have more a historian's interest in military history, not a gamers.

 

Yep. You totally figured that on your own. Nobody told you about it before.

https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/...fort-part-deux.1304945/page-189#post-28920267

 

WTF is income security? Is that part of the farm bill?



And why is health not included in medicare?

 

Google says--

"Function 600 consists of a range of income security programs that provide cash or near-cash assistance (e.g., housing, nutrition, and energy assistance) to low-income persons, and benefits to certain retirees, persons with disabilities, and the unemployed. Housing assistance programs account for the largest share of discretionary funding in this function. Major federal entitlement programs in this function include unemployment insurance, trade adjustment assistance income support, food stamps, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, foster care, and Supplemental Security Income. Federal and other retirement and disability programs comprise approximately one third of the funds in this function."

"Function 550 includes most direct health care services programs. Other health programs in this function fund anti-bioterrorism activities, national biomedical research, protecting the health of the general population and workers in their places of employment, providing health services for under-served populations, and promoting training for the health care workforce. Some of the agencies funded in this function include the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Health Resources and Services Administration, and the Food and Drug Administration. The major mandatory programs in this function are Medicaid, the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), federal and retirees' health benefits, and health care for Medicare-eligible military retirees."

Now was that all that hard?

 

fvck that is a lot of money, and here I was thinking those programs were relatively small in terms of over all budget.

I may have to go to the Republican side on this one.

 

So you're Ok with it then (as long as it doesn't ho to welfare queens and urban democrats)?

 

Sounds like one I'd have signed up for.

 

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/ssir/SSI13/C_exec_sum.html

In 2012 $52B went to SSI, which isn't what I typically think of when I think of such programs.

Whether that changes your mind or not, I don't know. I know that $52B lacks context; is that half that segment of the pie chart? 1/4? I dunno.