Or how about this,

Intelligence spending at record $80.1 billion in first disclosure of overall figure

Thursday, October 28, 2010; 9:06 PM

The government announced Thursday that it had spent $80.1 billion on intelligence activities over the past 12 months, disclosing for the first time not only the amount spent by civilian intelligence agencies but also by the military.

The so-called National Intelligence Program, run by the CIA and other agencies that report to the Director of National Intelligence, cost $53.1 billion in fiscal 2010, which ended Sept. 30, while the Military Intelligence Program cost an additional $27 billion.

Spending on intelligence for 2010 far exceeded the $42.6 billion spent on the Department of Homeland Security and the $48.9 billion spent on the State Department and foreign operations.

washingtonpost com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/28/AR2010102807237.html

Well Congress does what the corporations tell them to do. We the people shouldn’t blame ourselves…because we haven’t been in power for over thirty years.

Our politicians treat the world like they treat us…like ignorant peasants.

What would happen if the US declared Swiss style neutrality, reduced its military spending by 90%, and closed its bases around the world and brought its troops home?

Time to move out of Afghanistan!

The title says it all:

“6 of the 10 richest counties in U.S. are in DC area”

http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/dc/6-10-richest-counties-us-are-dc-area

Not in top 10: the counties that encompass Hollywood, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Chicago, NYC, or the their wealthy suburbs. Not even the Gold Coast area of Connecticut where all the guys who run hedge funds live.

Here is a 6 minute video from the Daily show that is useful background on today’s topic.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-march-2-2011/allison-stanger

Is it too much to ask where organizations acquire their funding? I guess this is to the heart of the Supreme Court’s corporate lobbying ruling. I hope the GAO is a legitimate organization protecting the rights of the average citizen against wasteful overspending. Though I couldn’t tell how they were funded from the website.

Give credit to the conservatives for developing well reasoned arguments to sway the political discussion to the favor of corporate interest. They’ve used their money wisely to recruit and pay citizens to word smith the agenda. They’ve also figure out a way to disguise where the arguments are coming from.

I don’t suggest the GAO is the right arm of a conservative think tank. Even if it was, the problems Americans face should not be blamed on a conservative ideology. The blame belongs to an apathetic citizenry unwilling to incubate their own argument. What it cost to develop an encyclopaedia article for Wikipedia, is the same amount the average citizen could spend to express an intelligent well reasoned argument worthy of higher demographics.

Let’s start the conversation on building a cost effective public incubator allowing Democracy to Rule.

“Targeting austerity”?

Cool! I’m all for it. Austerity has made the sniffles into pneumonia as state and city cuts have pretty much “made up for” the spending segment of the Stimulus.

Tom Coburn [R-OK] argued his math will work in the future if you ignore the past, “Continuing the [Bush] tax cuts isn’t a cost.”

That’s the guy who’s a hero to budget cutters?

Thanks, Tom and Guests, Cuts in the EPA, so Rich Corporations can poison more poor people, Cuts of Consumer Protection Agencies, so Rich Corporations can kill more Children and Working Class people, Cuts to Social Security, so that people that paid into it suffer more, Cuts to Renewable Resource Power, so that Rich Big Oil, and Rich Big Coal, and other polluters get RICHER, while killing more people, Cuts to National HealthCare, so Corporate Hospitals and Big Pharma Death Panels, can deny services paid for by policyholders , and kill more , and a host of more perverse Cuts, seem to be the proposals of the Conservatives. Conservative of WHAT??

It’s very hard to create a budget that will help government work well within the means reasonably available to it when one of your partners claims to hate government, refuses to acknowledge that it _can_ do anything right (defence, outlawing abortion, contraception, and all ‘unnatural’ practices, and subsidies to large firms excepted), and has an unreasonable view of what the means decently available to it might be (taxing the poor is impossible, taxing the middle class [or what's left of it] is unpopular, taxing the wealthy is ‘punishing success’, that is, ‘touching the LORD’s Anointed’ as John Galt and King Charles I put it).

For the current crop of Republicans, government failure is success.

We have spent so much that there is little chance we will ever dig out of the hole. Business Insider has a great article that shows we must grow the economy by 3x the historical average consistently for 5 years and then by 1.5-2x for the next foreseeable future to have a chance to get our debt to GDP down to the historical average.

Dollar for dollar, money spent on the young returns more than at any other point.
Instead of guns or butter, now we have schools or prisons.

If taken seriously, the GAO report could prove the base for both reducing expenses and improving service and outcomes. Reducing duplicative efforts would obviously save dollars. It should also increase speed of action, and reduce the time energy and poor decision making that occurs due to turf protection battles. To properly implement such an effort would require some patience (perhaps a two to three year effort to complete but decisions would come much sooner), cooperation by Democrats and Republicans, and serious leadership by Obama. Unfortunately, we see little evidence of any of the above.

There nothing wrong with investing, but if I hear another academic/ex-gov’t official say “high speed rail”, I will throw up.

I worked briefly for the military, and my husband has worked for two branches of he military, for the Federal Government, as well as a contracted company supporting the war effort. In all of that interaction with the government operations, I am astounded all the time by the wasteful fiscal culture that exists there. Every year in September, the different squadrons or organizations go on a spendig binge, making sure they drain every cent from their allotted budget in order to ensure the renewal of their full allotment in the next budget year. There is no incentive for saving money, for spending less and working more efficiently. regardless of one’s personal feelings about he work the DoD or the whole government is doing, it makes sense to change the government’s culture to one of stewardship and thriftiness. These are values that everyday Americans and their families are being asked to live by during this economic downturn. No less should be expected and demanded of the government that is spending our money.

Why don’t we quit funding the slaughter of horses, bison and all animals on our federal lands out west? Using federal tax payer dollars, the USDA rounds up wild horses, haze the last known truly pure strain of bison in Yellowstone, sets cyanide traps, sets necksnares, sets leghold traps, and kills hundreds of animals all as a subsidy for the livestock industry that pays a pittance to have their personnal animals on my federal property in addtion to privately held lands.

My tax dollars fund the agricultural community with subsidies then my federal tax dollars fund this wholesale slaughter of the naturally occuring animals on the public lands in the states.

This on top of the waste in the military, the waste in FEMA constantly paying for people to build in floodplains, earthquake zones and the like and our legislators accepting “bribes” from big business to pass bills that support one industry over another.

Simplify running the country and the costs should go down.

The comment by Sen. Connie Mack was just a political cheap shot. When Obama walked in, he had to cope with averting a Depression and doing something about military commitments. And he did some other things, too.

The D.O.D. budget is part of the “untouchables.” Elected officials have their hands tied & are unable to vote on budget cuts without the “publics” help. The public sector has to flood all elected offices in congress & senate with requests, emails, letters, etc. until real cut are passed. This will allow the elected representatives to “save face” with the “military powers” and be able to say, “we didn’t want to cut your funding, but the public outcry made us.”

To be fair, three of the top 10 counties are in NJ and relatively close to NYC and Nassau County, NY is number 11 so NYC is still represented wel on this list. Like you, I am surprised that more counties in CT are not included near the top of this list. It is ironic (and somewhat sad) that that DC is so high on this list

Just to be clear, some of the “Entitlements” are debt neutral. Please don’t mislead the public as to the things that are causing the problems.

Has the changing of or tax policy (Progressive to Regressive) really caused this problem?

Well, first I’d like to observe that using disqus is probably very weird if not wrong. Programmers and marketers should not control community interact.

I finally got a chance to listen to this broadcast. Thank you for providing podcasts. The conversation started offf well be seemed to devolve into postition statements on the part of your two guests. Intitially both were willing to get into the question of results based analysis but seemed to loose their way as listener calls presented different aspects.

In all I was disappointed. I found the GAO report thought provoking and would like to see the government take a four year hiatus on the budgets – freeze everything through 2014 – while the implications of the report, and the background work, is evaluated. Wishfull thinking.

I suspect my representative will ignore this, and my senators – Mr. Lieberman is one – will make newspaper space but nothing else.

I hope On Point revisits this with folk who are willing to seriously discuss the GAO reports that have been issued over the years.

“A Pentagon study in January found that it had paid $285 billion in three years to more than 120 contractors accused of fraud or wrongdoing,” according to a Feb 19 article in NYTimes in the link is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/us/politics/20data.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=fraud%20in%20military%20contracts&st=cse

That would be a nice start on the budget.

Really interesting show and good guests. You should pursue this further by checking into one of these duplicate areas and figuring out what all these similar-sounding programs actually do. Like the professor said, we actually have no idea what they all do.

Part three is great as well,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlS4DtlVyew

Chomsky talks about the recent bush/obama tax cuts. He uses the word “Sunset technique ” where you pretend you giving a tax cut to everyone but by the time the sunsets the tax cut is going to the right people (the top %)

by 2010 50% of the 10 year tax cut were going to the top 1%

He talks about the successful P.R. campaign that even when the majority of the population was against such tax cuts even going so far as to raise taxes on federal workers. While the tax cuts for the upper income got passed, Obama has in fact offer to reduced services to the middle-class.

Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBy6Wpn6WkQ

Sunset Technique where he talks about how the it will be used in 2012 for the Payroll taxes and S.S.

So the goal is to de-fund S.S., than we have to fund it, than privatize it towards WS.

With regard to the US budget, I’d like to know where our foreign aid fits into the picture. We borrowed money from China to fund the IMF, and the IMF is giving this money to China, among other foreign entities. We are paying China interest on this money and then giving them the principle also. Our great grandchildren will still be paying China interest on the money we have borrowed from them to give back to them. We are paying them interest on a gift we have given them. This is non-sensical. The IMF has bankrupt our country and still wants more. If we withdraw from the IMF and redirect all our funds currently being sent to the IMF and to all foreign entities back to the USA, we would be able to take care of our American Citizens at home. We would have funds to feed and house our people at home, provide health care for them, refund the social security fund which has been robbed by many entities for generations, to make medicare robust for all Americians of all ages, to rebuild our roads and infrastructure and bring our nation back into the civilized world of the 21st century. Our jobs have been outsourced to foreign countries and with them our resources and our money and our intellectual property. Look at what happened to Great Britain when their lease on Hong Kong expired. Why do we think our industries and businesses will fare any better than they did when their leases for their businesses expire in China. They have invested their money, expertise, etc. building factories and training employees in China. All will be left in China at the expense of our business people when China refuses to renew the leases on the property on which their factories have been built. Our businesses cannot economically compete with the global market because they are required to provide retirement and health care for its employees. Other countries with whom they are competing do not require their businesses to bear this financial burden. Thus their businesses can underbid our businesses in the global market. If our country provided medicare for all US citizens instead of artifically inflating the cost of doing business in this country by requiring our businesses to provide health care for their employees, the playing field would be leveled for them. Then our American businesses could afford to hire US citizens here at home and not be required to outsource our home-grown jobs to foreign countries to be able to compete on a level financial cost field. If you want an incentive for American business and industry to hire American citizens, then provide a level financial cost-based playing field for them to work in. Your current demands on them prevent them from being able to hire us. It would be better to offer all American citizens universal health care and create jobs for our citizens in the process. The illegal aliens are already getting free health care. The only people who do not have health care are those of us who, through no fault of our own, have no health care coverage through our employers because we have no jobs because our businesses have been driven over seas along with all of our tax dollars to build the third world countries. Since our government requires businesses to provide health care for its employees, the health care system and the insurance system have driven the cost of health care out of the reasonable reach of most people, especially those who are unemployed and those who are self-employed. We have American citizens who are going hungry and who have no home to call their own and who have no health care. We need to take care of our own people first. We cannot feed and house and educate and fund the entire world. We are only one nation. We are broke. We need help. Bring our resources of all kinds back home and take care of us. We have been orphaned. We are a pitiful example for the rest of the world to follow. They don’t want our meddling in their business anyway, with a few exceptions though.
File for bankruptcy. Let’s start over again and take care of ourselves for a change.

“Wild” is an adjective. “Wildly” is an adverb.