Russia Today: The Alyonya Show- Alyona Minkovski: 'State vs. Defense: The Cost of Militarization'

Source:Russia Today- author Stephen Glain, talking about the U.S. Military.

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RT operates as a multilingual service with conventional channels in five languages: the original English-language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic-language channel in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America (since 2010),[7] RT UK (since 2014) and other regional channels also offer some locally based content." 

From Wikipedia 

"After a two year inquiry, the Commission on Wartime Contracting released its final report today and found that more than $30 billion has been wasted from U.S. funded contracts for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report also predicted that unless the government brings significant changes to the ways it plans, awards and oversees those contracts, the number could grow to 60 billion in waste. Stephen Glain author of "State vs. Defense, the Battle to Define America's Empire" joins the show to explain." 

From The Alyonya Show

Here's another reason why the Congressional Join Committee on Deficit Reduction (the long way of saying The Joint Committee on Doing Nothing)  because groups on the Far-Left, just look at this video have already bought the Democratic members of this committee not to do a damn thing to reform the Federal Government in general, because they know that would come with spending reductions. Especially in the areas of entitlements and other social insurance programs, where of course they believe there is no waste. Either they actually believe that or just want to believe that, but that represents a big enough problem to entitlement reform to kill it. 

And then of course you have groups on the Right who've already bought the Republican members of the Joint Committee, to not consider any tax hikes especially on the wealthy who can afford but no one in general. Including in areas of tax reform, including doing such common sense things like closing wasteful tax loopholes and corporate welfare. This won't work because the Far-Left believes that even if there's such a thing as government waste, that everyone else on the political spectrum believes is obvious and the only question is where and how much. 

But the Far-Left are Socialists, so they won't be seen as putting down government as much as possible. Except for in the areas of national security, law enforcement, and tax subsidy's, anything that takes money away from their social insurance programs. 

And then of course you have people on the Right, Neoconservatives who don't believe there's such a thing as defense waste or law enforcement waste, won't even acknowledge terms like corporate welfare or tax loopholes, except for tax credits that help the working poor, to keep them working and not collecting more public assistance. 

This is not possible at least in this political climate: the Democratic Party still has to deal with Socialists in their party. And the Republican Party still has to deal with Neoconservatives and theocrats in their party. And the two fringes of American politics, the Far-Left and Far-Right will kill whatever possible deal that could come from the Joint Committee. 

But if it somehow started snowing somehow in South Florida tomorrow during one of their heat waves and you were to get some reasonable Democrats and Republicans together, people who understand that a 14T$ National Debt and 1.8T$ Deficit is too high and that everyone in the Federal Government who deserves to be punched in the face and take a hit should do so because there's plenty of waste all over the Federal Government but this problem, you could probably get a real, balanced solution, to a real problem. 

We need to essentially transform our entitlement system into a Welfare system that would only be for people who need it. And demand that people who can afford to pay more into it. 

We need tax reform, tax hikes on the wealthy in the short-term, but long term close most if not all tax loopholes and tax more but at lower tax rates on everyone in the long-term. 

Our debt and deficit problem as far as I'm concern is fairly simple to solve: you go where the money is and get more out of what you are spending by doing less. But the problem is thats not possible because the adults aren't in the room of the Joint Committee. Except for John Kerry and Max Baucus. And the fringes are in charged instead.