The Tea-bagger and Repuke brigade are on the warpath! They want their minimal $61 billion budget cuts (never mind the assholes would have had that and MORE had they simply disallowed $140b in two years' Bush tax cuts extensions to the wealthiest in December) and are prepared to carve it out of the hides of poor seniors, malnourished children (aren't these the people that supposedly defend the 'right to life'?) and carve back food, environmental and safety regulations. So just be sure you know that the next violent bout of Salmonella you get from that mayo, or PB & J sandwich likely is compliments of these ignorant pigs.
According to today's Financial Times ('Republicans Reject Budget Cuts', p. 2), Republican Senate leader, turned down President Barack Obama's latest $6.5 billion in additional budget cuts declaring "it was unacceptable". Bonehead John Boehner, not to be left out, put in his two cents as well, which (according to the FT piece) said: "This indicates a lack of seriousness on the part of the administration".
You have got to be effing kidding me! If these boneheaded barbarians wanted to they could easily find $61 billion in cuts and more! The problem is that THEY aren't serious! They'd rather make grandstanding moves that actually mean little or nothing, while they kiss the asses of the Tea Bagger clowns spurring them on.
Therefore, let's see if we can help these turkeys find their budget bearings and easily make $200 billion of cuts or more (depending how really serious they are) without taking food out of the mouths of poor school kids who depend on school nutrition programs, or make 80 year-old grandpas and grandmas freeze to death for lack of the federal home heating oil subsidy. If they won't look to these cuts, then we can only conclude they're the mean-spirited, Confederate driven asswipes most of us believe they are, beholden to revived Confederate values (keep 'em poor, keep 'em dumb but let 'em have the bible and guns).
None of these are even so harsh on their ideology as forcing an immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. It's more in the ball park of simple, basic cost accounting!
Here are some of the steps then which could be taken to get those cuts and more:
1) Force the Pentagon to stay within its cost estimates for weapons or else CUT the god damned weapons systems if cost overruns become the norm!
A GAO report raised a case in point: Last year alone, the DOD's portfolio of weapons programs went $295 billion over original cost estimates. What's more, the programs were running, on average, 21 months behind schedule. And when they were completed, they provided less than they promised.
This shows the Pentagon has way too many weapons "irons" in the fire, and really needs to be cutting back on some of its toys, maybe to the tune of at least $100 billion a year.
My suggestion, since we already know the Pentagon lost track of $1.1 trillion since 2000, is to carve out $110 billion from its budget each year as 'payback' - until (after 10 years) the total amount "lost" is recovered. Just doing it this year delivers the Repukes nearly twice as much as what they want to take out of the mouths of kids, or deny oldsters in heating oil.
Hell, we won't even charge interest on the payback (which rightfully belongs to the tax payers) and we won't peg the payback to changing dollar value (noting it is being debased each year).
2) Closing 90% of U.S. bases in Europe (most of which fulfill no useful function) would easily save $9 billion a year, about what the Repukes want to deny federal agencies that oversee food quality and protect us from food poisoning, or toxins in the environment (like potassium perchlorate, aka rocket fuel, in water.)
3) On lesser scales, another $8-9 billlion could be saved by paring down existing U.S. bases on the mainland U.S., in anticipation of the pullout from Afghanistan by 2014. (Since by then, the European nations won't be helping - due to their costs and imposed austerity measures- and we won't be able to keep plowing $100 billion a year in supplementals through the door, by borrowing from Chinese bankers).
For example, both Fort Hood in Texas, and Fort Carson in Colorado could easily see their operations and staffing cut by half, and nixing a "helicopter brigade" scheduled to be put at Carson. This is just nonsense and waste. All this sort of base spending, wherever it occurs, is merely a slick form of PORK- contrived and decked out in the language of "defense and protecting our freedoms" so most lamebrains in the populace blindly support it. But we don't need it!
The U.S. already spends more on military bases, accoutrements than the next twenty nations combined. It is a national disgrace and is destroying us from within - since all the money squandered on this miltiary BS then isn't used to repair our crumbling infrastructure. In addition, the wasteful militarism is one reason that the Repukes are going after trade unions! Since the more they can save on labor costs, the more can be plowed into military bases, personnel.
The exact opposite ought to be happening: drawing down on military bases and personnel and increasing union support, and certainly not taking away collective bargaining. One case that stands out to me which was of a Superior, WI National Guardsman who returned home from 2 tours in Iraq to find no job waiting for him. Faced with extended unemployment and hopelessness, the guy took out his wife, 2 year old child and his soon to be born son, along with the 3 family dogs. Cops were so shaken they could barely describe the horrors but it was amply described in a recent issue of TIME.
Had strong unions been part of his past work life, those safeguards and collective bargaining measures might have insured the guy would've had a job on his return, and his family might be alive today.
But repugs don't see any of this, they are only about taking an axe to the programs people need.
What I've shown here, is that it's the Repugs and their Tea Party cohort who aren't the serious adults, because I know they'd rather reject military cuts in any fashion than to give up their intended cuts to the poor and disenfranchised. Then these assholes have the temerity to call themselves "Christians". HA!
According to today's Financial Times ('Republicans Reject Budget Cuts', p. 2), Republican Senate leader, turned down President Barack Obama's latest $6.5 billion in additional budget cuts declaring "it was unacceptable". Bonehead John Boehner, not to be left out, put in his two cents as well, which (according to the FT piece) said: "This indicates a lack of seriousness on the part of the administration".
You have got to be effing kidding me! If these boneheaded barbarians wanted to they could easily find $61 billion in cuts and more! The problem is that THEY aren't serious! They'd rather make grandstanding moves that actually mean little or nothing, while they kiss the asses of the Tea Bagger clowns spurring them on.
Therefore, let's see if we can help these turkeys find their budget bearings and easily make $200 billion of cuts or more (depending how really serious they are) without taking food out of the mouths of poor school kids who depend on school nutrition programs, or make 80 year-old grandpas and grandmas freeze to death for lack of the federal home heating oil subsidy. If they won't look to these cuts, then we can only conclude they're the mean-spirited, Confederate driven asswipes most of us believe they are, beholden to revived Confederate values (keep 'em poor, keep 'em dumb but let 'em have the bible and guns).
None of these are even so harsh on their ideology as forcing an immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. It's more in the ball park of simple, basic cost accounting!
Here are some of the steps then which could be taken to get those cuts and more:
1) Force the Pentagon to stay within its cost estimates for weapons or else CUT the god damned weapons systems if cost overruns become the norm!
A GAO report raised a case in point: Last year alone, the DOD's portfolio of weapons programs went $295 billion over original cost estimates. What's more, the programs were running, on average, 21 months behind schedule. And when they were completed, they provided less than they promised.
This shows the Pentagon has way too many weapons "irons" in the fire, and really needs to be cutting back on some of its toys, maybe to the tune of at least $100 billion a year.
My suggestion, since we already know the Pentagon lost track of $1.1 trillion since 2000, is to carve out $110 billion from its budget each year as 'payback' - until (after 10 years) the total amount "lost" is recovered. Just doing it this year delivers the Repukes nearly twice as much as what they want to take out of the mouths of kids, or deny oldsters in heating oil.
Hell, we won't even charge interest on the payback (which rightfully belongs to the tax payers) and we won't peg the payback to changing dollar value (noting it is being debased each year).
2) Closing 90% of U.S. bases in Europe (most of which fulfill no useful function) would easily save $9 billion a year, about what the Repukes want to deny federal agencies that oversee food quality and protect us from food poisoning, or toxins in the environment (like potassium perchlorate, aka rocket fuel, in water.)
3) On lesser scales, another $8-9 billlion could be saved by paring down existing U.S. bases on the mainland U.S., in anticipation of the pullout from Afghanistan by 2014. (Since by then, the European nations won't be helping - due to their costs and imposed austerity measures- and we won't be able to keep plowing $100 billion a year in supplementals through the door, by borrowing from Chinese bankers).
For example, both Fort Hood in Texas, and Fort Carson in Colorado could easily see their operations and staffing cut by half, and nixing a "helicopter brigade" scheduled to be put at Carson. This is just nonsense and waste. All this sort of base spending, wherever it occurs, is merely a slick form of PORK- contrived and decked out in the language of "defense and protecting our freedoms" so most lamebrains in the populace blindly support it. But we don't need it!
The U.S. already spends more on military bases, accoutrements than the next twenty nations combined. It is a national disgrace and is destroying us from within - since all the money squandered on this miltiary BS then isn't used to repair our crumbling infrastructure. In addition, the wasteful militarism is one reason that the Repukes are going after trade unions! Since the more they can save on labor costs, the more can be plowed into military bases, personnel.
The exact opposite ought to be happening: drawing down on military bases and personnel and increasing union support, and certainly not taking away collective bargaining. One case that stands out to me which was of a Superior, WI National Guardsman who returned home from 2 tours in Iraq to find no job waiting for him. Faced with extended unemployment and hopelessness, the guy took out his wife, 2 year old child and his soon to be born son, along with the 3 family dogs. Cops were so shaken they could barely describe the horrors but it was amply described in a recent issue of TIME.
Had strong unions been part of his past work life, those safeguards and collective bargaining measures might have insured the guy would've had a job on his return, and his family might be alive today.
But repugs don't see any of this, they are only about taking an axe to the programs people need.
What I've shown here, is that it's the Repugs and their Tea Party cohort who aren't the serious adults, because I know they'd rather reject military cuts in any fashion than to give up their intended cuts to the poor and disenfranchised. Then these assholes have the temerity to call themselves "Christians". HA!
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