{"id":28862,"date":"2017-12-14T20:18:12","date_gmt":"2017-12-15T01:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28862"},"modified":"2017-12-14T20:18:12","modified_gmt":"2017-12-15T01:18:12","slug":"lavishing-money-on-the-pentagon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28862","title":{"rendered":"Lavishing Money on the Pentagon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Lavishing Money on the Pentagon<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
\n

Exclusive:<\/strong> It seems like it\u2019s always Christmastime at the Pentagon where the stockings are full and budget-cutting is for those domestic social-program guys, as Jonathan Marshall explains.<\/p>\n

\n

Wise parents who celebrate Christmas advise their young children not to make unreasonably grandiose requests of Santa. After all, he has to squeeze down a rather narrow chimney to deliver their presents.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

President Trump announces the signing of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2018 on Dec. 12, 2017, at the White House. (Screen shot from whitehouse.gov)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

But as Christmas approaches this year, leaders of Congress, the Pentagon, and the Trump White House seem to have forgotten that lesson. Their wish list for the U.S. military, if taken seriously, will bust the federal budget at the very time Republicans are ramming through tax legislation that will shrink Uncle Sam\u2019s savings account by more than a trillion dollars over the next decade.<\/p>\n

President Trump this week signed into law a $700 billion blueprint for military spending in the current fiscal year. The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act includes funding for more troops, more weapons, more interventions abroad, and more active wars, with Trump\u2019s enthusiastic blessing. \u201cWe need our military,\u201d he declared<\/a> at a White House signing ceremony.<\/p>\n

In addition to lavish spending on new weapons \u2014 like $10 billion for purchases of the\u00a0disastrous F-35 Joint Strike Fighter<\/a> \u2014 this Christmas legislation for the military includes all sorts of smaller presents, including billions of dollars to fund NATO\u2019s European Deterrence Initiative (whatever happened to Trump\u2019s demand that our allies pay for their own defense?), missile defense systems of\u00a0doubtful efficacy<\/a>, and development of a new cruise missile that would violate the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia.<\/p>\n

The bill also earmarks $350 million for military aid to Ukraine, including lethal weaponry \u2014 a highly provocative measure that Arizona Senator John McCain has long promoted.\u00a0Independent analysts<\/a>, including prominent conservative foreign policy experts, warn that such lethal aid would be destabilizing, provocative, and \u201cextraordinarily foolish<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lavishing Money on the Pentagon Exclusive: It seems like it\u2019s always Christmastime at the Pentagon where the stockings are full and budget-cutting is for those domestic social-program guys, as Jonathan Marshall explains. Wise parents who celebrate Christmas advise their young children not to make unreasonably grandiose requests of Santa. After all, he has to squeeze […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6963,7844,7430,529,536,553,13841,620,827],"class_list":["post-28862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-consortium-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-jonathan-marshall","tag-military-spending","tag-money","tag-nato","tag-ndaa","tag-pentagon","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28862"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28863,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28862\/revisions\/28863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}