What adds salt to the wound is that the money was taken from the IRS who would've used it to hire more auditors so they can audit more wealthy people who've been cheating on their taxes.For every $1 spent for auditors, they return an average of $12.
So we really lost $168bn in federal income that could've helped the public.
They don't want people knowing where their money goes.
The Pentagon can't/won't account for trillions of dollars that they've been given, which adds more salt to the wound.
I’m pretty sure that bill only passed the house then the companion bill stalled out in Senate committee. Neither Senate Dems or Biden fell for that bait.
Well that's great news. Thank you
Source? I thought only the house bill, which was DOA in the senate, included that. Don't mean to sound confrontational, I'd just like to know and haven't been able to find anything myself.
You've got more information than me, I wasn't aware it died in the Senate. I just assumed the figure in the post was referring to that same House Bill.
Brought to by the "if you didn't do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear" crowd.
I've posted this a few times but it fits here:
This country spent $8 Trillion on two wars over 20 years! That's $400 billion each year.
This country could have paid for all the chemotherapy 80 times over
OR we could have paid for rebuilding/fixing this countries infrastructure for a 1/3 of that cost.
OR America could have built out a National high speed rail
Or many many other things.
instead we killed thousands of people and got what in return???
Hey now, for a beautiful moment we created value for the rayethon shareholder. And thays all thay matters
With a national healthcare payor negotiating the cost of care you could possibly pay for all of it with that money.
My only issue is that your estimate of the number of people killed is missing 3 zeroes. It's more like millions.
still quite a bit away from "millions" the HIGHEST (by a significant margin) for Iraq is 1.033 million, and that is total excess death, not casualties and for Afghanistan it barely reaches 200,000 in 20 years
so no, Hundreds of thousands is correct, Millions is Soviet territory
My only problem with this image is the money is being fed to a soldier, not a general or military political advisor, the people who end up with the real money.
He's wearing a gold cuirass
I think the “soldier” in the image represents exactly that, the MIC/War Machine, not just a soldier. I’ve seen this cartoon many times and always assumed the intent was the military soaking up tons of money.
I will leave this quote from Eisenhower’s “A Chance For Peace” speech.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
It's not mystery money, it's Modern Monetary Theory. Republicans are invested in hiding that fact that we can afford to do all the good stuff and fund the military at the same time
My fiscally conservative friend made a point to bring up Biden spending his children's legacy on Ukraine aid every time conversations would turn political. Then the Isreal bombing happened, and he won't touch it. His wife is Jewish.
Lmao rules for thee but not for mee
When the federal government spends it is creating money with the press of a keystroke. It is essentially putting money into circulation. And that money is going to American businesses that make weapons and technology which is then sent to Ukraine. Those American businesses employ American workers.
Government spending creates money, it doesn't create debt. Too much government spending could create inflation though.
Any amount of money printing in this context adds to inflation. Every dollar printed devalues the rest
It's important to be clear about "they" here. Most of the Democrats in Congress and President Biden tried to pass money for education and health care, but they were blocked by all the Republicans and a couple Democrats. If John Fetterman had been elected in 2020 instead of 2022, there's a decent chance we could've gotten it. Not a sure thing, but decent.
On the other hand, almost everyone in Congress supports military spending because it almost always benefits their constituents directly because military contractors have shrewdly built production facilities in nearly every state.
If we can give Biden another term (moderately difficult against Trump, hard against anyone else), expand the Democratic lead in the Senate (difficult), and flip the house (probably easy), we can probably get some education and health care spending. Maybe even a minimum wage increase and a permanent expansion of the child tax credit. Maybe a small UBI. Lots of things!!
(And yes the lavish spending on the military will certainly continue.)
Even with a majority in both chambers Biden and Democrats will not pass any of that.
If you look at elections you will see the Democrats like having only a slim margin in control and they always have someone who will fall on the sword and vote against things if it looks like something progressive will pass.
Hell they put money into Republicans to beat progressive Democratic candidates.
Only way you going get any of that is when we get rid of the two party system. Like with rank style voting.
100%
Real change requires real change
This is why I vote single issue for voting reform. If a Democrat supports IRV, I'll vote Democrat. If not, I vote third party.
"But Explodicle, you're effectively just voting for Republicans! This is the most important election ever, past and future."
No. I'm not voting Republican either. People who do vote Republican have not voted twice. We've been voting lesser evil for decades and it does not work. "Buying time" for nothing to change does not work. Giving Democrats the house, senate, and presidency does not work. They refuse to even try to expand the Supreme Court. We're being played.
The Democrats need to go and we need an actual leftist major party. Each candidate can either get on board with that, or wait for revolution to become our only choice.
I agree lets start a third progressive party and start taking over towns and city elections. Hell we can probably get Congress if we try hard enough.
Democrats have no support in red states like here In Oklahoma. They can't win but a good third party could.
They only had a majority on paper thanks to Manchin and Sinema. But sure, let's blame them for falling to squeeze blood from a stone.
Israel needs that help! There are still some living children in the land they're about to steal.
Just for a little context, keep in mind that "military aid" be it to Ukraine or Israel is almost entirely spent in the US. We ship missiles and bombs from stockpiles, and pay Raytheon to make some more.
So this money is being spent to the benefit of Americans, just the military industrial folks and their shareholders.
It's still resources that could be spent towards something else, something ultimately more productive.
Building a house takes a lot of work, so why spend that effort into building a bomb that destroys many such houses, instead? What does this achieve for humanity?
Because building houses lowers the value of all the real estate the wealthy already own.
How dare you criticize the US giving weapons to our allies. You must want to kill the Jews, you dirty Hamas lover.
/s
Yeah. It drives me nuts when the media talks about misinformation as if they didn't help lie us into a war that's lasted most of my life. Clearly none of the bad things that we all see happening daily are the reason we're all sad and angry right?
Old men keep dreaming of battles for young men to fight.
-The Chariot, Daggers
You can't expect billionaires to pay taxes or risk anything of their own, right? That would be silly.
Why should the richest people to ever live on this planet have to pay taxes so that the rest of us can have medicare for all and a UBI equivalent to a living wage? Or to pay their workers an equal share of the profits from the companies they own?
Eat the rich
Sponsored by Lockheed Martin™️
But China is eating your pankake
The education system has a much higher overall ROI, but it's unfortunately spread across all of society and takes a generation to actually pay out.
By contrast, putting money into the Military Industrial Congressional Complex pays off consistently, predictably, and in a manner that channels the returns straight back into the investors' accounts.
It's just simple economics.
The thing that keeps that happening is people themselves. Best we can do is bitch and moan on social media. Of course they will continue doing nothing for us.
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