MUST READ before you pick a candidate: Chuck Spinney

[barbaraann]

Especially now that Gen. Clark is in the race, we MUST be informed about the MIC, or as Chuck Spinney says, the Military Industrial Congressional Complex.

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_spinney.html

Excerpt:
...
MOYERS: Is this $400 billion Congressionally approved budget a scandal in your mind?

SPINNEY: Yes. It isn't gonna fix our problems. It's certainly unnecessary. And you can't look at this budget in isolation. This budget is being put into place, and it's gonna generate an enormous tail in the out years because we're politically engineering all these programs and building up all this support in the Congressional districts. It's gonna be very difficult to turn this spending off.

MOYERS: This strikes me as somewhat mad.

SPINNEY: It is. We're in Versailles on the Potomac. It's Ver… we basically exist for ourselves. And we live in a hall of mirrors. It's a good metaphor.

MOYERS: Like Versailles.

SPINNEY: Like Versailles. And you have to remember, our decisions basically are to spend other people's money, and ultimately to spill other people's blood. We don't pay the price for these decisions. There's an asymmetric burden of risk.

[Julien Sorel]

1. Clark isn't mentioned once in the transcript...

[barbaraann]

2. True. But he has been involved with the MIC.

Would you like a candidate that doesn't pursue business-as-usual with the military contractors? I think that is an important question because they are on the verge (or possibly over the verge) of bankrupting our country.

[SWPAdem]

9. Where do we find this paragon of virtue?

n/t

[barbaraann]

10. Well, here's one possibility.

DENNIS KUCINICH: THE PROGRESSIVE CHOICE
As a candidate for President, I offer a different vision for America, one which separates me from the other candidates. I am the only candidate who will take this country away from fear and war and tax giveaways...

http://www.kucinich.us/

[greyl]

4. No matter who our nominee is, we can use our knowledge to influence

them on this incredibly important and underreported issue.

[Tinoire]

3. They're WAIVING Pentagon audits??!!!!!!!!!!

SPINNEY: It's to enforce the accountability clause of the Constitution. Which means that you can't spend money unless Congress specifically appropriates it. Well, the Pentagon has never passed an audit. They have 13 or 15, I forget the exact number, of major accounting categories. That each one has it's own audit. The only one of those categories that's ever been passed is the retirement account.

Now under the CFO Act of 1990 they have to do this audit annually. Well, every year they do an audit and the inspector general would issue a report saying we have to waive the audit requirements, because we can't balance the books. We can't tell you how the money got spent.

Now what they do is try to track transactions. And in one of the last audits that was done the transactions were like… there were like $7 trillion in transactions. And they couldn't account for about four trillion of those transactions. Two trillion were unaccountable and two trillion they didn't do, and they accounted for two trillion.

MOYERS: So, you mean, they're…

SPINNEY: They don't know where the money's going.

Well, guess what the Senate Armed Services and the House Armed Services agree to do in their infinite wisdom? They decided to

waive the Pentagon's requirement for these annual audits

in their authorization bills. So the Pentagon no longer has to do it.

Now the rationale was that we all know that this is a problem, we don't need to be told every year. Of course the one good thing about these audits was it would generate a small burst of news stories every April or May when the audits were due saying the Pentagon can't follow it's money. You know, there's a trillion dollars unaccounted for.

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_spinney.html

[barbaraann]

5. Do you suppose Gen. Clark will address this?

It's just beyond belief, isn't it?

[LittleApple81]

6. I seem to remember to have read somewhere that one

of the most conservative spenders on military items (and I mean that he examined expenditures very carefully and disapproved a lot of them) was Eisenhower because he knew how the military operated. Anybody knows if that is true?

[greyl]

7. Farewell address link here:

http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html

snip> This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. <snip


And

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/06/23_briody.html

snip> BRIODY: The book opens up with a mention of Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell speech, in which he warned the country against the formation of this military-industrial complex. And I think that that is exactly what we’re seeing today. We’re seeing a very tight-knit group of companies and private military contractors that are virtually indistinguishable from various administrations and the political infrastructure of Washington, D.C. – so much so that it’s not clear whose interests we’re acting on when we go to war. <snip

[barbaraann]

8. I wish it had been in his Inaugural address instead of his

farewell address.