Many people if they thought about it would want to know just why we are involved in so many conflicts around the planet.
Here’s a hint….Money!
You see war and such are supposed to be decided by the Congress but after 9/11 they took a back seat to the president who decides which proxy war we will fund.
The Congress is content to sit on the sidelines and invest in the companies that supply these wars.
Just take a look at who along with their family members are profiting from our involvement in these conflicts….
This page writes frequently about Congress’s unofficial but all-too-real mandate of making money for its friends in the defense sector. While this is absolutely true, it is also crucial to remember that these lawmakers also use the weapons industry to enrich themselves.
According to a comprehensive breakdown compiled by Sludge, more than 50 members of Congress hold as much as $10.9 million in defense contractor stocks. The publication calculated the figure by using a variety of financial disclosures currently required by law. As the article notes, these securities are held either by the lawmakers, their spouses or children, or via a qualified blind trust.
The halls of American power ooze with all kinds of unsavory activity, but this is undoubtedly one of the system’s most egregious forms of corruption. Members of Congress who sit on influential bodies that control the flow of federal dollars to some of the nation’s largest weapons manufacturers are directly invested in these same companies, to the tune of hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of dollars.
“In the Senate, several lawmakers with investments in defense contractors sit on committees that set and approve defense spending: three are on the Committee on Armed Services (SASC), and five are members of the Committee on Appropriations, including two who sit on the key Defense Appropriations subcommittee. This body has jurisdiction over drafting legislation to allocate funds to government agencies including the Department of Defense, as well as supplemental spending bills,” writes Sludge. “On the House side, at least five lawmakers with household stakes in defense contractors sit on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), which has jurisdiction over defense policy, headlined by the mammoth annual NDAA. Three of the representatives sit on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee.”
https://issuechronicle.substack.com/p/the-house-and-senate-members-personally
If you do as advised and ‘follow the money’ you will see the true reason why so many wars.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
I always appreciate your posts for their honesty and common sense. I wish there was a way to ensure that no-one who sits on a committee can profit from investments in that which it actions. Hugs
I am pleased that you like my stuff and that is a question that I have been asking for decades….this is not the only incident there are many others. chuq
i agree, mankind has a capacity for finding a way to fill it’s own pockets at the expense of others.Hugs
It is always about the cash in politics….flowery speeches just hide the contempt most have for the people. chuq
Money certainly plays a huge role. Wisconsin has two huge military contractors, Oshkosh Truck an Marinette shipbuilding, both of which rake in billions in Pentagon money. And both of which have a history of building equipment that the military doesn’t actually want or need because Congress forced the military to develop the equipment in order to funnel money to both facilities. In some cases the equipment didn’t even work, like the navy’s littoral ships built in Marinette, which were so badly designed that almost as soon as they floated out of the shipyard they were mothballed. The navy blew hundreds of millions of dollars on that fiasco. To be fair to Marinette it wasn’t the shipbuilder’s fault. Those ships were fatally flawed already in the design phase.
The Air Force is still flying B-52s, some of which are so old that they are literally being flown the grandchildren of their original pilots, because they actually work while the modern and insanely expensive bombers that have been developed since then to replace them are so expensive and so fragile they can’t risk actually using them.
Sidenote: Congressional pork is also one of the reasons why NASA is so f**ked up. Certain powerful politicians control not only what NASA can do but also where and how the equipment can be made because they control the purse strings. So money is pushed out to contractors that are, frankly, utterly incompetent just so some congress creature can point to the manufacturer and say “see? I got you those jobs!” come election time.
Don’t forget the ‘Flying Brick’, the F-35, a complete waste of money. We have a huge shipbuilder as well and then there is the NASA testing facility….so plenty of pork here in Mississippi as well chuq
Oh lord yes! The F-35 is turning out to be the Air Force version of the navy’s littoral ships. Years behind schedule, billions over budget, and even though it’s now being deployed it is so fragile and they have so much trouble trying to maintain them that the few they have based here in Wisconsin at the Air National Guard base in Madison are out of service waiting for parts more often than they’re flying.
And it was suppose to replace the A-10….which is still flying while the F-35 sits. chuq
Money indeed. Zelensky was back in London with his begging bowl to see the new Prime Minister. He has been told he will be given £3 BILLION a year in aid from the UK, for ‘as long as it takes’. Yes, it’s the money.
Best wishes, Pete.
It is always about the money….never fails. chuq