Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation

A video inspiring thoughts and action

Face Book 06.02.2018 Bernie Sanders, Senatore USA Translated by: Jpic-jp.org

It blatantly states that the United States federal military budget goes towards lobbyists and corporations, not troops. Best way to bless troops is demanding the Department of Defense pay their due. Instead of pouring a trillion dollars into nuclear weapons let's pour that trillions of dollars into our communities. 300,000 views so far. Jpic-jp.org transcription.

Each year, the United States spends half of its discretionary budget on the department of defense. The truth is, when we speak about discretionary spending, the money is in the defense department. That is more than a half of our discretionary spending. Well it's in the range of $700 billion, if you include both the Pentagon's main budget, the war budget and the nuclear warheads, which are done at the department of energy. The US military accounts for 37% of military spending in the entire world, even though the US only has less than 5% of the world's population. We spend three times as much on our military as China, nine time as much as Russia, and 48 times as much as Iran. One interesting thing about the Pentagon budget is most people don't realize that about $300 billion a year goes to corporations like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics and other private service contractors. So, there's this notion that it's all focused on the troops. But a lot of this is arms producers, private military companies, people who carry out bureaucratic tasks. Take the country's single biggest military contractor, Lockheed Martin. In 2016, Lockheed Martin cashed in on $43 billion in federal spending. Federal tax dollars going into this only corporation, Lockheed Martin, amounted to more than the total budget for the State Department and all of federal foreign aid combined. Since 1995, Lockheed Martin has been fined overt $600 million for misconduct. The situation has become so absurd that the Pentagon is unable to even account for how it spends its money. The weapons industry spends about $90 million a year on lobbying. And in any given year they can employ 700 to 1,000 registered lobbyists, which, at the high end, is almost two for every member of Congress. And that doesn't tell the whole story, because of course they've got board members and others who are not registered as lobbyists who also weigh in on their behalf. That includes people like retired generals, people who used to run recruitment programs in the Pentagon, who have very good relations with their former colleagues and government and can help give a boost to their company. The military spending increase that Trump and Congress have asked for would be enough to send almost 1 million students to four-year public universities for free. We have got to make college education affordable. We have got to make sure that every qualified American in this country who want to go to college, who has the ability and the desire to go to college is able to go to college regardless of the income of his or her family. The Pentagon wants to spend $1,7 trillion over the next 30 years upgrading America's nuclear arsenal, despite the fact that these weapons were designed to fight a Cold War with the Soviet Union. Why spend $1,7 trillion on upgrading the entire nuclear arsenal when a small fraction of it is enough to deter any country from attacking the US? That's mainly pork barrel politics and in addition a kind of a hangover from the Cold War in terms of nuclear thinking. A study by the University of Massachusetts found that if you spend on infrastructure or alternative energy, you get about one and a half times as many jobs per dollar spent as spending on weapons. Or even up to two times as many jobs for spending on education. What the economists tell us over and over again is that if you are serious about creating jobs, the fastest way, the most effective way to do it is through rebuilding infrastructure. Instead of pouring a trillion dollars into nuclear weapons, let's pour that trillions of dollars into our communities. Let's pay for more education, more health care, and more opportunities for people like you and me. That would make America pretty great. On behalf of 5 million children who are hungry, on behalf of 9 million American workers who are unemployed, on behalf of 2 million homeless Americans, on behalf of school districts all over this country which lack the funds to provide a decent education for their kids, on behalf of 80 million Americans who either have no health insurance or are only partially insured, I ask that we reject this grossly inflated military budget and use the savings to reinvest in America and protect the interests of our people. See the video here

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