Have things really gotten that bad? → U.S. government is cruel, despotic, a threat to people → robbing the public and spending irresponsibly → bloated military budget → money spent on big-ticket porkish items

A while back I noted that the U.S. is by far the biggest arms producer in the world, with a military budget just about as big as that of the rest of the world combined and with the lion’s share of the international arms market.

But, go figure, we’re not making enough bullets fast enough to replace the ones we’re firing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Domestic production isn’t keeping up with demand, so the U.S. is going shopping in, among other places, Canada to make up the shortfall.

A Vast Arms Buildup, Yet Not Enough for Wars, in today’s New York Times shows how the $500 billion Arms Manufacturer Enrichment Fund is allocated. Would it surprise you to find out that funds to supply the troops currently at war are hard to find, while the money tap for the next futuristic superweapon (manufactured in many important Congressional districts) never runs dry?

Amid one of the greatest military spending increases in history, the Pentagon is starved for cash.

The United States will spend more than $500 billion on national security in the year beginning today. That represents a high-water mark, and it is creating boom times in the armaments industry.

Yet the military says it has run $1 billion a month short over the last year paying for the basics of war fighting in Iraq: troops, equipment, spare parts and training.

The disparity between spending on the arsenals of the future and the armies of today is great, and growing.

The Pentagon will spend $144 billion in the coming year researching and building weapons for future wars, another record and twice the annual costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by most independent estimates.

The Pentagon says it has 77 major weapons programs under development. They include the $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter project, a fleet of next-generation aircraft; a $112 billion Army program to create networks of weapons and communications systems; and an experimental Navy destroyer, the world’s first $10 billion warship.

Those 77 arms systems have a collective price tag of $1.3 trillion. That is nearly twice what they were supposed to cost, and 11 times the yearly bill for operating and maintaining the American military.

The spike in weapons spending is a bonanza for the nation’s armaments contractors, almost all of which report surging profits and soaring stock prices.…

Since the beginning of 2001, prime Pentagon contracts awarded to the top 10 arms makers have nearly doubled, to $82.3 billion in 2003. Lockheed’s sales have risen over that period to $31.8 billion from $24 billion; Northrop’s are up to $26.2 billion from $13 billion.…

The accelerating pace of arms spending is unlikely to slow noticeably no matter who wins the election on Nov. 2. President Bush supports all 77 major weapons systems now under development; Senator John Kerry has said he would cut back on one, missile defense, which costs $10 billion a year, and use the money for more troops.…

The Pentagon’s budget, in actual outlays, is now nearly 10 times as great as any other nation’s.

Today’s collection of links:

• Bankrate.com gives us a little more detail about the new federal income tax deduction for state and local sales taxes. According to them, you do have to choose between the deduction for state sales taxes and state income tax, and you can take either the actual sales tax you paid (save those receipts) or a guesstimate from an IRS-supplied table.
• Washington Post columnist David Ignatius looks at the budget and the budget deficit and sees that something has to give. He asks: Why not the military budget? “[T]he United States is still spending billions for weapons systems that were conceived to fight an adversary that has already been defeated — the Soviet Union.” My advice: Don’t hold your breath, David.
• “The prisoner was taken away in the middle of the night 19 months ago. He was hooded and brought to an undisclosed location. He has not been heard of since. Interrogators reportedly used graduated levels of force on the prisoner, including the “water boarding” technique — known in Latin America as the “submarino” — in which the detainee is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown. His 7- and 9- year-old sons were also picked up, presumably to induce him to talk.” It doesn’t seem that long ago that I had the hope that I might never read a description of my country that began in such a way, but there it is in yesterday’s International Herald-Tribune.
• A couple of days ago I mentioned that Craig Murray, Britain’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, had written a report condemning the intelligence services of the United States and of Britain for winking at torture in Uzbekistan in exchange for intelligence extracted from the torture chambers. Suspecting, I’m guessing, that Murray leaked this report to the press himself, the government yesterday pulled out the stops to smear Murray’s reputation and is making moves to withdraw his security clearance, which would also remove him as ambassador. I marvelled at the time when I read how forthrightly Murray condemned torture, and I wondered why we don’t hear more such straight talk. I guess now I know.
• Seymour Hersh — he broke the My Lai story, and he had the straightest scoop on the manipulation of intelligence by the Dubya Squad before the war in Iraq (and he had it at the time, while it was happening, and the rest of the media is still just catching up). If any other journalist were telling this story I’d be a lot more skeptical.
• And because reckless killing of innocents in the service of endless wars isn’t just for foreigners, Jonathan Magbie, a man who had been paralyzed from the neck down since he was four years old, who required around-the-clock nursing care, who moved his wheelchair by pushing a lever with his chin, who was about five feet tall and weighed about 120 pounds, was sent to prison last week as a first-time offender after being convicted of marijuana possession. He died there because he was unable to breathe on his own and his mother was unable to convince his jailors to let him have his ventilator.

Jonathan Magbie meeting President Reagan in 1982 during the proclamation of National Respiratory Therapy Week

• “Our prison system is both a devastating moral blight on our society and an overwhelming economic burden on our tax dollars, taking away much needed resources from schools, health care and affordable housing. The prison system is corrupting our society and making us more threatened, rather than protecting us as its proponents claim. It is a system built on fear, racism, and the exploitation of poverty. Our current prison system has no place in a society that aspires to liberty, justice, and equality for all.” So says Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility, which is asking professionals to pledge “to not participate in the design, construction, or renovation of prisons.”

And more of what we’re paying for…

[I]f the Soviet Union ever springs back to life, restarts the cold war and designs a new MIG fighter more advanced than anything now in the skies, the United States Air Force is ready. Unfortunately, when it comes to fighting today’s war in Iraq, the Pentagon is still struggling to get enough armor into the field to protect its exhausted and badly stretched troops and rebuild their battle-damaged equipment.

There are few more telling symbols of the Pentagon’s disastrously misplaced priorities than this week’s debut of the F/A-22 Raptor, the most expensive fighter ever built. This gold-plated cold war plane enters service some 23 years after it was first designed and at four times its originally projected price, even after adjusting for inflation. Every F-22 will cost taxpayers more than a quarter of a billion dollars. The Air Force plans to buy 277.

Fred Kaplan at Slate takes a look at the Defense Department’s budget and writes a “Dog Bites Man” story about how much money is chasing how much superfluous high-tech weapons bloat.

And the folks at Defense Tech take note of some Pentagon Budget Blackmail:

Give us more money, or soldiers aren’t going to get paid. That’s the cynical game the Pentagon’s leadership has been playing with the Army’s budget in recent months. And now, it’s crunch time.

Since the fall, Rumsfeld & Co. have been dipping into the Army’s day-to-day funds — like money for soldiers’ paychecks — and then daring Congress not to make up the difference with a second, “supplemental” pile of cash.

They’re playing the same game with that extra “death benefit” that Bush promised a little while back. You may remember how with showy generosity, Dubya promised that “[i]f a soldier was killed in war… his loved ones would get a $100,000 lump sum — up from just $12,420 — plus an extra $150,000 in life insurance payouts.”

But then, something curious happened. Or rather, didn’t happen. The Pentagon never included the money for a bigger death benefit in its budget. So now, the Army has gone to Congress, asking for an extra $348 million to keep the administration’s word.

The money is part is a larger, $4.8 billion package of Army “FY06 Shortfalls and Requested Legislative Authorities” — programs that the service’s chiefs felt should have received more money from the Pentagon budgeteers. Every year, the Army, Navy, and Air Force appeal directly to Congress to infuse these programs with more cash. This year’s Army list also includes $443 million for more M16s and other small arms and $227 million for night vision equipment…