"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
34th U.S. President
The only military president other than George Washington.
@rbreich I’ve been on the contractor side of things and had the military rep ask us to increase* the cost of our proposal. It was too low and they needed to spend more money by end of year so they get *more money next year. Waste on top of waste on top of corruption
@rbreich monopolies selling to monopsonies means there is almost no market to determine pricing, and the barriers to entry mean that there are few supply alternatives. One could deduce the average pricing favors the contractor from this condition. Although there are enough programs where the opposite is true that the example can be waved by the supplier as justification for gouging on the majority of programs.
@rbreich The really odd thing about spending all this money is that military members are treated like dirt, left to suffer and die, and have to rely on other social services to find housing. Housing should be automatic for veterans for the rest of their lives. None of this jumble of spending almost a trillion dollars on machines while a veteran huddles up into a blanket on a street corner for the night.
@rbreich I don’t expect you to respond to this, Dr. Reich, but I just don’t understand why there aren’t more candidates talking about these egregious inequalities and these obvious solutions to some of our most pressing problems. But I do appreciate you and what you have to say
@rbreich If one cannot alter a government contract (read: a guess about how much $ each pocket of the contract might need) unless one renegotiates the whole thing, waste happens even if contractors want to make better use of $. Every dime must be spent. but not necessarily efficiently. Where are the after-audits? In some areas, old methodologies cost $. We're eternally in an audit-free zone. I was once a contractor working under a contractor for a contractor & had 5 managers for a demo. Preach!
@rbreich can anyone say private contractors DO NOT stalk Americans definitively? Somehow, everyone's hands are clean if it's a private contractor. But who saves regular Americans from terror, then?
@rbreich
Speaking from 37 years programming for the #DoD (retired 2005), I will testify that 20% of the employees on any given contract do 95% of the work. The primary qualification for work on a DoD contract is to be able to pass an FBI background investigation and get your "tickets". With your tickets in hand, your job is to show up and fill out your time card every week. (In the early 70s, it was even worse. You could "work" 40 hours a week on multiple contracts simultaneously!)
That radical Republican Eisenhower warned US about the ‘Military Industrial Complex’ Jan. 17, 1961. Now there are probably enough Christo-Fascist White Nationalist mercenary armies to prove an end to our democracy.
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