Why is the Most Wasteful Government Agency Not Part of the Deficit Discussion?

Published on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 by On the Commons

Republicans ignore incompetence, bloat and corruption at the Pentagon
by David Morris

In all the talk about the federal deficit, why is the single largest culprit left out of the conversation? Why is the one part of government that best epitomizes everything conservatives say they hate about government—- waste, incompetence, and corruption—all but exempt from conservative criticism?

Of course, I’m talking about the Pentagon. Any serious battle plan to reduce the deficit must take on the Pentagon. In 2011 military spending accounted for more than 58 percent of all federal discretionary spending and even more if the interest on the federal debt that is related to military spending were added. In the last ten years we have spent more than $7.6 trillion on military and homeland security according to the National Priorities Project.

In the last decade military spending has soared from $300 billion to $700 billion.

When debt ceilings and deficits seem to be the only two items on Washington’s agenda, it is both revealing and tragic that both parties give a free pass to military spending. Representative Paul Ryan’s much discussed Tea Party budget accepted Obama’s proposal for a pathetic $78 billion reduction in military spending over 5 years, a recommendation that would only modestly slow the rate of growth of military spending.

Indeed, the Republican government battering ram appears to have stopped at the Pentagon door. This was evident early on. As soon as they took over the House of Representatives, Republicans changed the rules so that military spending does not have to be offset by reduced spending somewhere else, unlike any other kind of government spending. It is the only activity of government they believe does not have to be paid for. Which brings to mind a bit of wisdom from one of their heroes, Adam Smith. “Were the expense of war to be defrayed always by revenue raised within the year … wars would in general be more speedily concluded, and less wantonly undertaken.”

The Tea Party revolution has only strengthened the Republican Party’s resolve that the Pentagon’s budget is untouchable. An analysis by the Heritage Foundation of Republican votes on defense spending found that Tea Party freshmen were even more likely than their Republican elders to vote against cutting any part of the military budget.

What makes the hypocrisy even more revealing is that the Pentagon turns out to be the poster child for government waste and incompetence.

In 2009 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found “staggering” cost overruns of almost $300 billion in nearly 70 percent of the Pentagon’s 96 major weapons. What’s more, the programs were running, on average, 21 months behind schedule. And when they were completed, they provided less than they promised.

The Defense Logistics Agency had no use for parts worth more than half of the $13.7 billion in equipment stacked up in DOD warehouses in 2006 to 2008.

And these are only the tips of the military’s misspending iceberg. We really don’t know how much the Pentagon wastes because, believe it or not, there hasn’t been a complete audit of the Pentagon in more than 15 years.

In 1994, the Government Management Reform Act required the Inspector General of each federal agency to audit and publish the financial statements of their agency. The Department of Defense was the only agency that has been unable to comply. In fiscal 1998 the Department of Defense used $1.7 trillion of undocumentable adjustments to balance the books. In 2002 the situation was even worse. CBS News reported that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted, “we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.”

Imagine that a school district were to reveal that it didn’t know where it spent its money. Now imagine the Republican response. Perhaps, “Off with their desktops!”

How did Congress’ respond to DOD’s delinquency? It gave it absolution and allowed it to opt out of its legal requirement. But as a sop to outraged public opinion Congress required DOD to set a date when it would have its book sufficiently in order to be audited. Which the Pentagon dutiful did, and missed every one of the target dates. The latest is 2017 and DOD has already announced it will be unable to meet that deadline.

Adding insult to injury, last September, the GAO found that the new computer systems intended to improve the Pentagon’s financial oversight are themselves nearly 100 percent or $7 billion over budget and as much as 12 years behind schedule!

The Pentagon is not just incompetent. It is corrupt. In November 2009 the Pentagon’s Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), the federal watchdog responsible for auditing oversight of military contractors, raised the question of criminal wrongdoing when it found that the audits that did occur were riddled with serious breaches of auditor independence. One Pentagon auditor admitted he did not perform detailed tests because, “The contractor would not appreciate it.”

Why would the Pentagon allow its contractors to get away with fraud? To answer that question we need to understand the incestuous relationship between the Pentagon and its contractors that has been going on for years, and is getting worse. From 2004 to 2008, 80 percent of retiring three and four star officers went to work as consultants or defense industry executives. Thirty-four out of 39 three- and four-star generals and admirals who retired in 2007 are now working in defense industry roles — nearly 90 percent.

retired general working for defense
Generals are recruited for private sector jobs well before they retire. Once employed by the military contractor the general maintains a Pentagon advisory role.

“In almost any other realm it would seem a clear conflict of interest. But this is the Pentagon where…such apparent conflicts are a routine fact of life”, an in-depth investigation by the Boston Globe concluded.

U.S. military spending now exceeds the spending of all other countries combined. Knowledge military experts argue that we can cut at least $1 trillion from the Pentagon budget without changing its currently expressed mission. But a growing number believe that the mission itself is suspect. Economic competitors like India and China certainly approve of our willingness to undermine our economic competitiveness by diverting trillions of dollars into war and weapons production. Some argue that all this spending has made us more secure but all the evidence points in the opposite direction. Certainly our $2 trillion and counting military adventures in the Middle East and Afghanistan and Pakistan have won us few friends and multiplied our enemies.

Defense experts Gordon Adams and Matthew Leatherman, writing in the Washington Post offer another argument against unrestrained military spending.

“Countries feel threatened when rivals ramp up their defenses; this was true in the Cold War, and now it may happen with China. It’s how arms races are born. We spend more, inspiring competitors to do the same — thus inflating defense budgets without making anyone safer. For example, Gates observed in May that no other country has a single ship comparable to our 11 aircraft carriers. Based on the perceived threat that this fleet poses, the Chinese are pursuing an anti-ship ballistic missile program. U.S. military officials have decried this “carrier-killer’‘ effort, and in response we are diversifying our capabilities to strike China, including a new long-range bomber program, and modernizing our carrier fleet at a cost of about $10 billion per ship.”

For tens of millions of Americans real security comes not from fighting wars on foreign soil but from not having to worry losing their house or their job or their medical care. As Joshua Holland, columnist for Alternet points out 46 states faced combined budget shortfalls this year of $130 billion, leading them to fire tens of thousands of workers and cut off assistance to millions of families. Just the supplemental requests for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan this year were $170 billion.

What is perhaps most astonishing of all is that cutting the military budget is wildly popular. Even back in 1995, when military spending was only a fraction of its present size, a poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes reported that 42 percent of the US public feeling that defense spending is too high and a majority of Americans were convinced that defense spending “has weakened the US economy and given some allies an economic edge.”

This March Reuters released a new poll that found the majority of Americans support reducing defense spending.

The next time you hear Republicans insist they want to ferret out government waste and reduce spending and stamp out incompetence ask them why the one part of government that exemplifies everything they say is wrong with government is the one part of government they embrace most heartily.

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/12

Iran is Not The Threat. Israel is The Threat, American Imperialism is The Threat

A Powerful revolutionary Interview..."Governments should fear their people.!"
RT never posted this on YouTube for some reason??

Ken O'Keefe, [real living hero] an activist based in Gaza, said the uprising in Egypt is no surprise, taking into consideration the situation in the country.

"Wherever you oppress people, wherever you deny them basic human rights, wherever the inequity in the distribution of wealth is as perverse as it is in North Africa, the people will eventually rise up and it's promising to see that people have started the process of shedding off the brutal and corrupt dictate of Mubarak," he said.

As for the diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks, O'Keefe said he wouldn't doubt that the US had been involved, but the blame should still be laid on the Egyptian leadership. He also added that he is not going to give credence to all WikiLeaks cables.

"WikiLeaks has perpetuated all sorts of illusions, including the illusion that Iran is the threat. Iran is not the threat. Israel is the threat, American imperialism is the threat, British complicity and support for those institutions is the threat, not Iran, and WikiLeaks has been instrumental in perpetuating that threat," O'Keefe said. "Also, the so-called leader of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has marginalized and attempted to ridicule those of us who can see the truth of 9/11. So, I am not going to buy everything that WikiLeaks produces."

Sharia Law Threat: Right-Wing Boogeyman

Frank Gaffney and his friends can relax: Sneaky Muslims aren't going to impose Sharia Law on the US and take away their bacon cheeseburgers. It's impossible.

But you'd never know that from what's pouring out of outfits like Gaffney's Center for Security Policy, from Fox News or from right-wing bloggers across the land, all of whom say the threat is real -- real enough to spawn 15 proposed state and federal laws against it.

Here's how Gaffney described what he calls the threat to the New York Senate's Homeland Security and Military Affairs Committee on April 8th: ."The threat...is best described, I believe, as a politico-legal-military threat whose express purpose is to have it imposed world-wide, subject to a theocratic ruler called a Caliph. That is of course a program that is completely at odds with our Constitution, our form of government, our way of life, our freedoms."

I'll admit that sounds pretty grim. Even if it does seem a lot like the threat of Global Communism I used to hear about as a kid.

The truth? Sharia is religious law, and no religious law can be imposed on the US without amending the Constitution -- twice -- to repeal both the opening clause of the First Amendment, and the Supremacy Clause in Article 6.

So how can Sharia Law be imposed on the US? No one seems to know. Or at least, nobody who's pushing the claim would talk to me about it, though they seemed eager to tell me how bad it would be.

These non-talkers included Gaffney's COO, Christina Brim, who even came to the phone to tell me she wouldn't talk to me; Rex Duncan, who sponsored an Oklahoma law last year forbidding Sharia Law from being used in the state; Newt Gingrich (famously afraid of "Islamic atheists"); the Thomas More Center; and NewsMax, Town Hall, and The National Review magazines, all of which have been vocal about the so-called danger but wouldn't explain why there's anything to it..

Meanwhile, the so-called examples of how Sharia Law is already being used in American courts are frauds. Take a look at them and you find out what they're talking about are arbitrations -- not trials under civil or criminal law. And two parties in an arbitration can agree to be bound by Star Fleet regulations without crossing the Constitution.

This includes the most recent so-called example of Sharia law being imposed on America, in Tampa, where in late March a judge ruled that Sharia could be applied in an arbitration over money between two parties--from the same mosque--only to be overruled the next day by a higher court. That event triggered a frenzy in the right wing blogosphere -- all, oddly, written almost exactly the same way.

The same goes for the so-called 85 Sharia Courts in England that are often raised as an example of how bad things already are: These are arbitration panels, conducted under the authority of the British courts -- not Sharia law courts.

And in fact, similar arrangements are a long-standing commonplace in America jurisprudence -- all of them operating under the authority of state and federal laws.

Until the 1920s, for instance, the legal system of the entire state of Utah was largely conducted in Bishop's Courts, operating under the authority of the Church of Latter Day Saints -- courts that are still in use in more limited ways. Native American reservations -- actually, sovereign nations -- govern themselves. So do religious communities like Kiryas Joel in Orange County, N.Y., a home to the Satmar sect of Hasidic Jews.

So what are Gaffney and friends talking about? No one knows, really. But that hasn't stopped 15 laws forbidding international laws, including Sharia Law, from being put before state legislatures and the US House of Representatives.

That count includes Duncan's Oklahoma law, which he called "...a first strike" to prevent something he admitted had never happened. That law was approved by 72 percent of Oklahoma voters in a referendum last November, but was then ruled unconstitutional under the First Amendment. It's now on appeal.

In response to that objection the anti-Sharia folks merely edited their language to forbid international law from being considered in US courts and dropping the Sharia reference. This includes one before the US House of Representatives, H.R. 973, proposed by Florida's Sandy Adams, whose office didn't return calls requesting comment.

There's only one problem here: Modern business is international, the parties to a contract can choose which laws govern their contract, and typically in any international deal, the laws that govern a contract include foreign laws.

So if, say, an Oklahoma company wanted to sell something to a company in Kuwait, Kuwati law could apply--and be honored in American courts, All these laws would do, says Avery Katz, who teaches contract law at Columbia Law School, is force the parties to conduct their business elsewhere--probably London, where the problem wouldn't exist. But, he adds, this could add extra costs to the deal, which could kill it altogether.

So, what's up here? You have to assume these lawmakers are smart guys. Certainly, Frank Gaffney and his ilk are smart guys. They have to know that as far as this issue goes, there's no there there. So why are they bothering?

Well, ginning up an empty issue like this does several things for them.

One is the reality of the news business. Even in the 24-hour news cycle, there's only 24 hours in a day, and every minute or column inch spent covering this is a minute or column inch not spent covering, say, how lobbyists are gutting the Dodds-Frank Bill and leaving the American financial system vulnerable to another disaster like 2007-2008.

Then there's the politics. "It's clearly an effort to stir the pot and keep the noise level up," says Matt Duss, a policy analyst with the Center for American Progress. "They just have to keep people freaked out about this even though they know it can never happen, and the Democrats have to respond."

And then, there's the money. Right wing politics is a business with a simple business plan: Sell people the idea they're under imminent threat, tell them you're fighting to stop it, and ask them for money. It's worked like a charm for the National Rifle Association.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-reinbach/sharia-law-threat-just-th_b_848975.html

US public supports Palestine statehood

It becomes clearer every day that Binyamin Netanyahu's government is terrified by the prospect that the Palestinians are planning to unilaterally declare a state later this year. In fact, it is safe to say that no other proposed Palestinian action has ever shaken up any Israeli government the way that the idea of a unilateral declaration has.

According to Haaretz, Prime Minister Netanyahu is so frightened at the prospect of a Palestinian declaration that he is considering withdrawing Israeli forces (not settlers, of course) from the West Bank as an inducement to prevent the Palestinians from acting:
Netanyahu is weighing a withdrawal of Israel Defence Forces troops from the West Bank and a series of other measures to block the "diplomatic tsunami" that may follow international recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

Netanyahu's fear is well-placed. Here is Haaretz newspaper columnist Ari Shavit describing what would follow a unilateral Palestinian declaration:
At that moment, every Israeli apartment in Jerusalem's French Hill neighbourhood will become illegal. Every military base in the West Bank will be contravening the sovereignty of an independent UN member state. The Palestinians will not be obligated to accept demilitarisation and peace and to recognise the occupation.

That is true. But it is also true that an internationally recognised Palestinian state, with a flag flying at the United Nations, would level the playing field for negotiations.

Ever since Israeli-Palestinian negotiations began in 1993, they have been fundamentally unbalanced. On one side is the most powerful military force in the Middle East, backed to the hilt by the United States. On the other is a stateless people who control no territory, have no military, and are barely surviving economically.

That would change once a Palestinian state is declared. Of course, that new state would be weak and vulnerable, but it would have international law on its side, just as Israel does within the pre-1967 borders.

Diplomatically, the two sides would finally be equal; negotiations between the two sides would be government-to-government, not between a powerful state and a supplicant.

Negotiations would have to take place simply because a Palestinian declaration does not, in and of itself, resolve such issues as mutual security, refugees, Jerusalem, and the rest. It simply ensures that such negotiations would, at long last, be serious.

Of course, a September declaration is no done deal. The Palestinians will first need to achieve unity so that the Palestinian state includes both the West Bank and Gaza.

Although the International Monetary Fund now says that the West Bank alone already could constitute a viable Palestinian state, that is true only economically and not politically. A viable Palestinian state must include Gaza and be contiguous.

Palestinian unity will be difficult to achieve for many reasons, including the deep personal animosity between the leaders of Hamas and Fatah, the two rival Palestinian factions.

An important first step toward unity would be for Hamas to adhere to a full cease-fire with Israel starting now (the last thing the Palestinian Authority wants is to declare a state that is at war with Israel).

In fact, during the past week Hamas has been sending feelers to Israel about ending the violence between the two sides, which Israel has ignored.

It is not that Israel wants the strikes and counter-strikes to continue, it is that Netanyahu and company understand that a permanent cease-fire will foster the Palestinian unity necessary for a declaration of statehood.

In fact, it is beginning to appear that preventing a unilateral declaration is Israel's primary diplomatic goal, one that informs all its policies relating to Palestinians. (For their part, Palestinians view Israel's nervousness about the prospect of a declaration as confirmation that it is precisely the right strategy to achieve a state and peace with Israel.)

Of course, the Obama administration is likely to do everything it can to thwart the Palestinians' plans. AIPAC is already working on congressional letters calling on Obama to stop the declaration and, no doubt, an overwhelming majority of the House and Senate will sign on. (The 2012 election is looming and candidates and incumbents are highly focused on fundraising.)

The good news is that the United States cannot use its veto to prevent Palestinian recognition by the United Nations. For Palestine, as for Israel in 1947, it is the General Assembly that confers statehood and not the Security Council. The administration would have to use the other tools in its kit to thwart the declaration; it has no veto.

On the other hand, maybe, just maybe, the administration will recognise that a unilateral declaration of statehood could be the one device that would achieve its oft-stated goal in the Middle East: "two states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security".

American support for Palestinian state

The American people seem to be getting it. According to a poll released on Monday by the right-wing Israel Project, only 51 per cent of Americans oppose a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence. Fifty four per cent favour a Palestinian state achieved through negotiations.

For those familiar with polling on matters relating to Israelis and Palestinians, the results are startling. The percentage of support for the Israeli position is usually in the high 70s, while support for the Palestinians is in the teens. Suddenly there is a major shift, and this in a poll sponsored by an organisation that clearly did not want to see findings like these.

Perhaps the Obama administration will come around too.

The United States should support the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, followed by serious negotiations. The alternative has been tried over and over again and it always fails.

Why not try something that may actually achieve peace and security for two peoples who, like everyone else, are entitled to it?

It is time for President Obama to deliver on the promise he made in Cairo to use his authority not to defend the deadly status quo but to end it.

MJ Rosenberg is a Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network. The above article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media Matters Action Network.

You can follow MJ on twitter @MJayRosenberg.

This article was first published by Foreign Policy Matters.

Becoming A Leader- The Right Leader

Contrary to what most people believe, leadership is not about power. It is not about harassing people or driving them using fear. It is about encouraging others towards the goal of the organization. It is putting everyone on the same page and helping him or her see the big picture of the organization. You must be a leader not a boss.

People follow others when they see a clear sense of purpose. People will only follow you if they see that you know where you are going. If you yourself do not know where you're headed to, chances are people will not follow you.

Being a leader is not about what you make others do. It's about who you are, what you know, and what you do. You are a reflection of what you're subordinates must be.

Studies have shown that one other bases of good leadership are the trust and confidence your subordinates have of you. Trust and confidence is built on good relationships, trustworthiness, and high ethics.

Once you have their trust and confidence, you may now proceed to communicate the goals and objectives you are to undertake.

Communication is a very important key to good leadership. The knowledge and technical expertise you have must be clearly imparted to other people. You must be able to assess situations, weigh the pros and cons of any decision, and actively seek out a solution.

Leaders are not do-it-all heroes. You should not claim to know everything, and you should not rely upon your skills alone. You should recognize the skills and talents your subordinates have. Only when you come to this realization will you be able to work as one cohesive unit.

Remember being a leader takes a good deal of work and time. It is not learned overnight.
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Battle Against Poverty In Bangladesh

It was this vision of change that spurred Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, to set up Grameen Bank in Bangladesh during the 1970s. Yunus had two major drives for his vision of the future: “to make credit a human right so that each individual human being will have the opportunity to take loans and implement his or her ideas so that self exploration becomes possible. And second: that it will lead to a world where nobody has to suffer from poverty – a world completely free from poverty.”

The Bank’s philosophy was simple: to lend out small loans, averaging under $400 per person, to those who had no access to credit facilities, creating growth opportunities for entrepreneurship. To date, the Bank has lent out almost $9 billion in microcredit loans, making a difference to over 8 million of Bangladesh’s poor.

Meeting life’s needs

Emergencies, weddings, funerals, theft or injury are often definitive events for the poor in developing countries. In “The Poor and their Money,” Stuart Rutherford cites several needs such as lifecycle needs, personal emergencies and disasters. These are all events that can devastate a family already mired in poverty and struggling to make a living, like that of Ibu Samsariah from Indonesia.

A canal fisherwoman and oyster gatherer in the village of Ruko, Ibu Samsariah’s husband worked as a mini van driver. Her two sons worked as day labourers when there were jobs to be found. Their four combined incomes allowed them to meet their basic needs until the 2004 tsunami hit the shores of Ruko, sweeping Ibu Samsariah’s husband, their home and all their possessions out to sea. With no husband, no father, no home, no fishing tools and no income, Samsariah struggled to survive.

In 2006 she formed a borrowers group and received a $100 loan from Yayasan Mirtra Dhuafa (YAMIDA). Using this loan, she bought fishing equipment to re-start her business. She found buyers for her oysters at the local market, repaid her loan and is now looking to apply for a larger amount to open her own stall.

Without access to microcredit, Samsariah’s fate would have been far different. With no means to regain a source of income after the tsunami disaster, it seems likely that she would have spent the rest of her life struggling to make ends meet. Now, Samsariah has big plans and dreams; profits from her oyster stall will allow her to hire an assistant to fish and shell the produce, thereby increasing both profit and employment in her small community.

A leg up

Almost by definition, the poor have very little money and therefore little chance of investing in opportunities or of improving their circumstances. Without credit, they are unable to expand their business, improve their housing or buy assets. Kofi Annan, erstwhile leader of the United Nations, believes that “poor people are remarkable reservoirs of energy and knowledge,” and that microcredit is a way to “bring people in from the margins and give them the tools with which to help themselves.”

Small loans can transform the lives of the poor, give them social mobility, secure the future of their children and improve their social standing. In male-dominated societies, the practice of lending money predominantly to women also helps to drive equality and social change.

Charity Kulola, from Kenya, does not dispute the power of microcredit to change lives. Married off at 16 into a polygamous marriage, then expelled for not bearing a son, Charity had no income and no way of supporting herself or her daughters. An initial loan of $64 given by the Yehu Microfinance Trust was used to open a coconut stall in the seaside village of Charareli. As sales took off, Charity took out a second loan, then a third to invest in a retail shop and to diversify her business. Instead of merely being the third wife to a man not of her own choosing, Charity is now a successful entrepreneur, intent on sending her daughters to school so that they can have a better future.

Alleviating poverty

Although micro lending is not the definitive answer to ending poverty, it is an effective tool for breaking the poverty cycle. Micro finance is “not a charity. This is business; business with a social objective, which is to help people get out of poverty” (Muhammad Yunus). Unlike handouts or charity, microcredit helps to empower the poor and encourages them to lift themselves out of poverty.

In rural Haiti, Dieula Calixte worked as a servant, sometimes starving for days when she couldn’t find work. Often ill and unable to hold down a steady job, Dieula applied for a $68 loan from Esperanza International and started her own business selling snacks. Within six months, she had paid off her loan in full and increased her capital to $69. She now earns almost $2 a day and is financing a second loan to expand her business. The income from her work allows Dieula to obtain the medications she requires and puts food on the table each day. She is enthusiastic about the role of microfinance in her community, acknowledging that without the initial loan, she would still be hungry, poor and ill, condemned to the cycle of poverty. Source