Larry Bergan2.3 Trillion Dollar Toilet Seats
Remember when Americans were outraged that the military was buying toilet seats and hammers for six hundred dollars and passing the bill onto the taxpayers. Ah, the good old days!
I set my alarm clock to the Diane Rehm show on NPR at 9:00 a.m. every morning. If you live in Utah, it is one of the only partially sane political talk shows you are allowed to hear on a standard radio with FM capability. Diane usually tries to have at least one person on that will defend the views of the reality based community, but always has at least one person from a special interest think tank who is directly or indirectly paid to stretch or break the truth. Their job is to make insane right-wing commentary which makes ridiculous right-wing commentary look liberal.
One or even two times per show, Diane is moved to break into one of these opinions in mid-sentence and delivers a knock-down blow to rescue the integrity of her show, but, for some reason, always invites the perpetrator back for another one. Tony Blakely and a myriad of other liars have been regular panelists for years. The best part of the program, by far, is during the last 40 minutes, when callers are allowed to confront the guests. This is where reality collides with fiction in a delightful display of furious backpedaling or a colorful headlong rush into oblivion by a dishonest guest.
The show from Thursday February 2nd, featured a discussion about the budget and the economy. Noting that a couple of the guests were focusing on the looming entitlement crisis and ignoring another possible reasons for the huge deficits, Diane delivers a knock-down blow to Brian Riedl, senior budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation who tries to minimize the damage:
Riedl: …nobody is really talking about the entitlement issue. It hasn’t become a major concern in the campaign.
Rehm: How can you talk about these other big ticket items when you’ve got the war, when you’ve got the growth of this defense budget that seems to… I understand your point about taking a lesser percentage of GDP, but let us not forget Eisenhower’s comments about the growth of the military industrial complex, and here we have this huge military budget, which is almost off budget, because they’re not telling us the truth about what this whole war is costing.
Riedl: I mean, the war is obviously costing a lot of money, and like I said, since president Bush has taken office, the defense budget has increased by one percentage point of GDP. It’s gone from 3 percent of GDP to 4 percent of GDP, but keep in mind, we still spend a lot more on social security, medicare and medicaid then we do on defense.
Later in the program, Diane, who is usually very well informed, quickly discounts a caller who attempts to bring an astonishing fact into the discussion and makes me want to scream at my radio. The caller compliments Diane on bringing the matter of defense waste into the discussion and said that he believed that Donald Rumsfeld had admitted the pentagon was missing somewhere around 2.7 Trillion dollars.
Diane chimes in with:
Just to correct your statement there. I think Rumsfeld talked about two point something billion in waste, not trillion.
In August of 2006, I was watching C-span when a young girl got a chance to ask Democratic representatives John Murtha and Jim Moran a very serious question at a town meeting which ends in the usual “conspiracy theory” hilarity and laughter.
Murtha: I think you’re talking about billion because…
Girl: trillion
Moran: No, It’s not trillion.
Girl: It’s in the record.
Moran: I’m sorry, but I know it’s not trillion, but thank you for your question.
Girl: I will send you copy
Moran: That’s a lie, I know it can’t be trillion (laughter)
I had to try and find out for myself if this crazy allegation was true, so I hopped on the internet and within minutes found this very authentic looking CBS report, which actually shows Rumsfeld on, of all days, September 10th 2001 saying:
According to some estimates, we cannot track 2.3 trillion dollars in transactions.
The reporter of the news segment then reiterates that Rumsfeld said “2.3 trillion, with a T.” After listening to Diane’s show, I got on the internet again and found a couple of other nuggets.
This YouTube video shows Senator Robert Byrd questioning Rumsfeld about that 2.3 trillion dollars: (try to ignore the menacing cello)
Senator Byrd: How can we seriously consider a fifty billion dollar increase in the defense budget, when DOD’s own auditors say the department cannot account for 2.3 trillion dollars in transactions in one year alone.
This amazing video shows former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney doing a great job, as usual, trying to question Rumsfeld, who throws a pass to his staffer, about the same 2.3 trillion and an additional 1.1 trillion missing dollars which has been blamed on an inability of computer systems to communicate with each other: (edited to exclude unrelated material)
Congresswoman McKinney: There are serious financial management problems at the pentagon, to which Mr. Cooper alluded. Fiscal year 1999, 2.3 trillion missing. Fiscal year 2000, 1.1 trillion missing.
Then McKinney asks the name of the company who has the contracts that make the computer systems communicate and is refused an answer.
A 20 billion dollar computer system employed by the pentagon looses 3.4 trillion total dollars, but is that really so hard to believe when we know pallets filled with tons of US taxpayer money was passed out on the streets of Bagdad . Big Pharma and others are jacking up hospital costs to comical levels, but all you’re going to be hearing about is how the aging Americans are draining the system, social security isn’t working and single payer health care is off the table. I’m just not in the mood to hear it! What about you?
Note: This is obviously a Democrat and Republican problem. I wonder if it had something to do with Al Gore’s idea to give credit cards to people in the military so they could buy things at the hardware store rather then going through the bureaucracy. Perhaps Republicans in the military wanted to embarrass Gore and things got a little out of hand. Maybe somebody needed a little extra cash to prop up the stock market or purchase Americas political system.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:23 am
Excellent post Larry! A great effort and well worth it! THANKS!
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:38 am
The military budget, never a model of sanity, has gone completely off the deep end. Did you know that malfunctioning satellite they just shot down cost taxpayers $10 billion (not including the cost of shooting it down)?
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:22 am
Great rant. I saw the piece on the spy satellite as well. I think most people were imagining some cold-war relic that had expended it’s usefulness, not a 14 month old, $10 billion dollar lemon paid for by wasted taxpayer’s dollars.
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:17 am
My kids need an education and shoes, but by golly, I’m so askeered that I’ll pay any price for the mother of all security budgets. I mean, the children of the CEOs of the military, industrial and communications axis corporations have similar needs if I’m not mistaken. They gotta. Can you imagine crapping through a 20$ toilet seat? Crass.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:55 pm
The mainstream media would probably call this “old news”, but I say if nobody’s heard it before it’s not.
I just get really angry when somebody flatly denies something that there is plenty of evidence for. Why did Diane Rehm feel so confident about discounting the caller? I don’t remember any stories about Rumsfeld saying 2.3 BILLION were missing, which, if true, should have sent heads rolling anyway. And what about Moran and Murtha, are you telling me THEY missed the story, or don’t know that a trillion is bigger then a billion. And what about the media. Why do I have to cover this?
I guess this is one of those stories that is just too big to cover. To paraphrase Stalin, ‘2.3 billion dollars is a tragedy, 2.3 trillion is a statistic.’
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Larry,
I’ve listened to Diane Rehm a few times, and I am very impressed with her. The only other good talk show I know of is The Right Balance with Greg Allen, which airs in the Mountain Time Zone from 8-10 AM.
I’m not sure whether Obama is talking about this issue, but I don’t think Hillary is, and I know McCain and Huckabee aren’t.
Ron Paul is talking about this huge problem, but the Establishment has decided that he is not a worthy candidate. Big mistake. Ron Paul is right on on this one.
When the Heritage Foundation hangs on to the war so tightly that they can’t see the financial truth, it makes me wonder whether to trust them on anything.
February 23rd, 2008 at 1:30 am
Frank:
Diane Rehm is one of the best! No doubt about it. I forgive her for messing up this time, but I’m not sure she wasn’t handed a note to refute the caller right then and there. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t control the lineup of guests that are on the show. Just like Olbermann, she is required to have the usual suspects on, for the most part, and I think she would have other people take over when she’s gone. She’s gone so much, it’s debatable whether the show should carry her name.
February 24th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Let’s do some simple math.
The Pentagon spends $500 billion per year.
So its pretty hard to be missing $2.3 trillion — aka, every single dollar the entire department spent over the past 4-5 years.
That would mean every dollar for military pay, operations, procurement, R&D, military health care, and housing, vanished. Every dollar. For five years.
The entire blog post is comically uninformed.
February 24th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Also, Social Security and Medicare currently cost much more than Defense, and the Congressional Budget Office projects they will grow to *quintuple* the size of Social Security and Medicare. This is widely accepted among economists.
February 24th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Mr. Serious:
So you’re discounting the possibility that billions of taxpayers dollars are being squandered on over priced drugs and medical supplies by our government for health care? Ever since I was a child, I’ve know they were charging 5 bucks for an aspirin in the hospital. Since then, the drug companies have made drug kingpin’s operations look like kindergarten.
How the hell do you know how much the pentagon spends if Rumsfeld doesn’t?
Are you, is a comical first name. Is that from your mother’s of father’s side?
February 25th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
How do I know the Pentagon budget? Because its published in the official US Government Budget Historical Tables. You should look it up.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2009/hist.html
Table 4.1
The entire federal budget is $2.7 trillion. Of which the Defense Department is $530 billion. Lemme guess…the official data is lying right? The career civil service staff at the budget office who wrote it (not to mention Congress, the White House, and 5 million federal employees) are all part of the grand conspiracy?
Right. In a $2.7 trillion budget, $2.3 trillion just vanished. Sure. All that money listed as going to Social Security, Medicare, welfare, justice, education, veterans, homeland, transportation, energy, debt interest (in sum, 20% of the entire nations GNP), its all gone in this major defense scheme. No government benefits left for anyone this year.
And no one noticed but you.
The Pentagon is surely wasteful. But perhaps a bit less than 450% of its budget. Alas, I guess if you are going to have a conspiracy fantasy why not go for the largest financial one in history? Laws of arithmetic, common sense and reality be damned.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
The 2.3 trillion is over a 20 yr period. The missing money has been transferred from one administration to the next. Of course the executive isn’t responsible, it is congress that holds the purse strings and shortcomings should have been detected by congressional oversight. It only came to light recently that to dough is gone. Needless to say, all budgets must be approved with both parties at the table…and boy what a pig out, there is enough pork to piss off the Jews AND the Muslims.
An entirely bi-partisan fiasco, if you are looking for the high ground, you might as well be in Saskatchewan, there isn’t any, apart from the piles of bodies the wars have heaped up. You can all point fingers from there.
Never forget the 30-40 billion a year for “black” projects that do not register on the defense budget tally.
February 26th, 2008 at 1:26 am
So when Cynthia McKinney asked Donald Rumsfeld about the 2.3 trillion dollars, he must have forgot to say he meant 2.3 billion and instead, sat there while his underling, not only didn’t deny the figure, but came up with an excuse that the 20 billion dollar computers were not communicating. I guess nobody was tap dancing very well that day, huh Serious?
As for official government documents after 2000, you can have them. I didn’t read the figures about “food insecurity” either.
February 26th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Needless to say the squandering of taxpayers money is a bipartisan affair.
Follow the development of the V-22 Raptor. It has been sucking cash through the last four misadministrations, beginning in 1986.
February 26th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Besides, squandering money on the military means jobs. Here is where our jobs will go, as if we aren’t having any difficulty creating new decent ones. It not just a suggestion, it’s a promise.
Take note of the mans actual efforts to outsource American jobs. It’s been such a success, he promises to expand it.
February 26th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Yeah pop, but you’re never going to hear a Democrat say “either you’re compliant or you’re against us” that’s a big difference. Your melding of the two parties is very troll-like, as it’s one of the only arguments left to people who would lie is into ruin.
They’re all the same. Give up hope. They all steal elections. Don’t get involved. Isn’t that it glenn (I mean pop.) That’s the kind of argument that would make a Republican who’s feeling a little embarrassed they got had, stay home rather then eat little crow, cross over and vote for someone who might help the country.
I sense a revolution coming. A peaceful revolution where people are “with us” because they want to be, not because they were forced to be. The ONLY thing that can put a damper on it is another stolen election and continued disinformation campaigns by the well lit.
February 26th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
But they are the same Larry.
JFK presided over the Tonkin Gulf incident that was the pretext to the Vietnam War. Remember his knobs spouting domino theory? The WMD of the day. These folks play the game, we all watch. Obama, the new kennedy, that’s rich, no pun intended.
Back then you were a commie, and a target. Same difference if you are the ones getting bombed.
Enjoy the 15 minutes, the rest of reality has been planned in advance. Do you really think the elites leave it to chance? Or for you to help decider it? It isn’t a random happening bush et al. Wakey, wakey, time Larry.
Back to reality and history…Gulf of Tonkin, only problem is that after review, 45 odd years later, we now know…
It never happened.
Oh yeah baby, get involved, but don’t be an idiot about it. Know the truth, so you can see the enemy.
Can’t win if you don’t know what you are shooting at. That’s all I’m about Larry. Nothing more.
You wouldn’t be the first to claim that, I lived through the 60’s, then there is own revolution, then 1789, then 1848, and so on.
Good luck, we’ll need it. Keep your eyes and mind open, and read The Prince, and the the Discourses by Machiavelli. Nothing has changed.
PS: I’m not republican, I’m your homework, day to day. Have you looked into who really fronts obama? Help indeed. God you listening?