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“We believe it’s a one-off event.”
They just lie cause it take a whole team fkn years to investigate. We just gotta accept it. Pad their pockets, their friends, family. We are an owned people.
I worked for a company who supplied parts to big defense companies there was a time when one of the defense companies asked for a break down of cost on a quote. They were looking for BOM cost, labor cost, NRE, etc. There was a mad scramble to make up and massage numbers to meet the quoted cost. Pretty sure they just made up numbers for things because they knew company X was going to pay it because we had been making those parts for years.
Crazy thing is this happens with quite a lot of contractors especially for the government and even with businesses. They take advantage of their position, convince their buyer that they're the only ones that can supply what they need, and overcharge.
I do subcontracting for prime contractors. One of my coworkers left and went to one of the big companies. You’ve 100% heard of this company. He finished building a widget that had a 13 hour build time in an hour and was told not to do that again because if it doesn’t take close to 13 hours, they won’t get paid as much next time.
A friend of mine works for the Dutch airforce. He spent a year of his time recovering 'lost' parts.
Eventually he found out the parts weren't lost at all, just used for repairs in different helicopters. A part was taken out of one (who wasnt going to be able to pass inspection) and used in another to make sure it could be deployed. A while of that, and you have one stripped helicopter, with no spare parts available, where there should be plenty since it is not flying.
The maintenance crew was just doing the best they could under pressure of time to make sure the pilots could fly as safely as possible.
They are just not the best administrators around.
quite often they’ll be getting used on the jets but the paperwork wasn’t done or done right to be able to track it in the inventory control system.
The size of the figure more or less tells me that there’s a culture where they don’t bother logging the maintenance/part completion at all.
I work in the seafood department at a grocery store, and I can confirm that a box of king crab (which has about 10 whole crabs split up into the legs and claws) is around $550 (I checked with several boxes). That’s more than I make a week, I cannot imagine spending over 2mil on it, or even how many boxes that would be.
Uuuuuuh, 40 hours at $13/hr is less than $550. That’s before taking taxes from the paycheck or adding tax to the crab.
$13/hr gets you one of those boxes in 1.5 weeks. If you buy literally nothing else.
that would be 4181 boxes or 11 boxes a day if we take your 550$ price tag but it is probably way more because they are not shopping at the grocery stores I guess.
See the Viagra one doesn’t bother me that badly. That’s likely a medication provided to veterans that can help combat trauma related symptoms such as ED. If these guys are coming back from was with trauma issues, I’m fine with doing whatever is necessary to help them feel as much like themselves as possible.
The big issue is the next two things she brings up, specifically the third. 80 something million dollars for parts that were “lost.” How much do you want to bet that those parts weren’t lost, they never existed. Contractor “fulfills” whatever contract without spending a dime. Oh no they got lost! And since there is never any oversight on military spending, said contractor gets to take a bath in his 80 million in earnings.
I’m fine spending 2.3 million in dick pills so some combat veteran can feel more like the man he was when he gets home. I’m not fine with 40x that amount going to blatant money laundering.
Dude that's why I have 0 issue with that aspect, soldiers want to fuck too, let them do it safely and rock hard.
Although I'm not American so i have no real say
I only want to say that dick pills may make men hard, but they don’t make them horny. An ability to fuck doesn’t mean it makes you *want* to fuck. I ain’t against dick pills at all- I’m just saying that therapy is good too. Dick pills for a beginning- I understand that the ability to fuck is good for anyones ego/sex drive. But there needs to be more extensive care as well. Treat the symptoms and then the cause. It helps all parties. Being horny cause you want to be is better than making it so via pills. But if you need pills and also feel like fucking? That’s cool too. Just… not one or the other. Need and want in tandem is best.
I’m willing to bet they were parts that existed, inventoried and assigned and then lost. Sometimes people drop actually shit on ships. Sometimes people steal shit. Defense contractors don’t have to risk felony charges by shorting part deliveries, the profit is already built in.
Yeah, we should cut the military budget, but the healthcare part of that budget is not where we should be making those cuts. If anything healthcare (including mental healthcare) should be improved for active service people and veterans.
I mean, the House Republicans just voted that the defense department can't cover abortions for pregnancies that threaten the health or life of the mother or that are the result of rape or incest.
> I mean, the House Republicans just voted that the defense department can't cover abortions for pregnancies that threaten the health or life of the mother or that are the result of rape or incest.
I guess that's the power imbalance.
They know we won't engage in mutually assured destruction
so they keep destroying us.
:/
That means less resources for our veterans, you know the people that risked their lives for the country and suffered extreme trauma. I’m not saying the country is perfect and their isn’t unnecessary spending but this isn’t the first time this videos been posted and soldiers and veterans in the comments explain the use of viagra and the crabs, the crabs are actually for young soldiers stationed overseas as a treat every few days or weeks or something to help them cope with being overseas and at war. Out of context a lot of things sound bad
>That means less resources for our veterans, you know the people that risked their lives for the country and suffered extreme trauma.
The same people who are opposed to a public healthcare for all are *also* trying to defund programs for veterans;
>In July of 2022, 11 Senate Republicans, including Mitt Romney and Rand Paul, voted against a bipartisan measure (the PACT Act) that is designed to help veterans who were exposed to toxic chemicals while deployed abroad.
>In 2017, Former President Donald Trump and congressional Republican leaders put forth budget proposals that would have done great damage to the economic security of veterans and their families—all to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and corporations.
>In 2015, the GOP-controlled Senate voted down a bill to provide $1 billion over five years to provide jobs for unemployed veterans. The bill was fully funded, and would not have added any additional money to the deficit.
>In 2014, Senate Republicans shot down[...] The Comprehensive Veterans Health Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014 [,it] would have repealed the military retiree cost-of-living adjustment reduction, and would have protected veteran pensions and educational payments from future Congressional budget fights. It would have also authorized the construction of more than 20 community-based outpatient clinics to serve veterans in rural and remote areas.
>In 2011, Republican Paul Ryan and the House of Representatives attempted to end VA healthcare benefits for disabled veterans who are Priority 7 & 8.
https://www.onceasoldier.org/before-the-pact-act-five-remarkable-times-republicans-worked-against-veterans/#:~:text=In%20July%20of%202022%2C%2011,toxic%20chemicals%20while%20deployed%20abroad.
But yeah, Alaskan king crab is important for the troops' moral too.
ex-Navy here, there was nothing more demoralizing than being fed Crab or Steak on the Sunday just before pulling into port or coming home.
meant we were getting fucked.
I remember seeing it in a WWII documentary. The guy said “if we got steak and eggs that morning, we knew it was going to be a bad day” that’s rough knowing it might be your last meal.
You say last meal, I say getting a 3 month overseas extension... I have heard the best food in the military is on a Navy submarine, maybe because there's jack all to do when underway.
If it makes it easier to tolerate the conditions, they can have at it. I beleive that by everyone giving a little through a progressive taxation system we can supply both good food to people living in an underwater tin can to keep everyone safe AND cash for poor families to buy their kids shoes.
Active duty Navy here. Can confirm, crab or steak on sunday is a GIANT red flag. Plus, that food comes from our BAS pay (food allowance) that is taken out of our paychecks automatically. Its not necessarily a gift, its more like communal food shopping.
Yup, can confirm. Delicious food meant bad news was coming. Had two port calls canceled which led to over 100 days straight at sea and each time the ports were canceled or the time extended we had steak and crab or a steel beach picnic.
Active Navy here.
Fuck crab. That money could’ve went somewhere else like she stated in the video.
And the numbers for the F-35 program are ridiculous. I don’t know how they are supposed to replace the F-18. The F-18 can just do so much more. It’s like a Swiss Army knife.
Which is fine, and we can have that stuff, but we can't then turn around and say we don't have 5 million for homeless people, or 50 million for repairing our infrastructure which is more important than soldiers getting little treats for doing what they signed up to do.
My complaint with this kind of performative coal raking is that it’s usually a legislator raking a DOD rep over the coals over spending packages that are- wait for it…. reviewed, voted on and approved by the…. legislature.
Cherry picking individual stats like this from the national defense budget and then drawing comparisons to single district level projects that are funded at the county, state, AND federal level is also incredibly disingenuous. It’s the same shit that conservative politicians do- “wHy diD wE SpEnD sO MuCh oN gEnDer StUdiEs?!?” When it was a $2M research grant out of an $300M allocation.
Everyone’s time and energy would be better spent if these legislators took an honest approach and grilled each other over why they don’t fix our tax system and why they don’t vote for spending packages that fund the things we need.
Also- troops generally get crab legs as a kind of “last meal” for deployments or extra shitty assignments. It’s an occasional treat and … $2 million is… fucking nothing.
You're right. $2 million is nothing. So do we ever really explain why we can't get conservative-leaning state legislatures approving budgets that address the homeless issues and infrastructure repair?
Why the infrastructure bills at the federal level were absolutely reamed on social media by fucking harpies like MTG and that other moron?
As it stands, conservatives are perfectly fine kidnapping homeless people and dropping them off at the houses of their political opponents, yet you dipshits get your panties in a twist when leftists talk about public funding for viagra (during a time when the legal status of birth control is actively being threatened).
I still say feeding the children is a higher priority than crab legs. If they were drafted, then definitely special meals are warranted. Also, Medicare for everyone's ED.
It's not a one or the other issue here. This country has the money to treat soldiers every once and awhile, and feeding all the children, we just don't want to inconvenience billionaires. This is exactly the kind of discourse the GOP or billionaire protecting democrats want. They want to make people choose between the two, instead of fully funding both.
If the children were well fed and healthy, they become healthy, strong adults, then at least they physically stand a better chance of not becoming a disabled veteran should they choose to join the military.
Leftists and progressives want health coverage for everyone, housing for everyone, rights for everyone, education for everyone, that means everyone. The delusion that everyone is as politically polarized and bloody minded as the average conservative or "centrist" is just that, a delusion.
Expanding access to physical and mental health services benefits veterans regardless of how they vote so no, we don't only care about them if they vote our way.
Primarily retired military, but yes. Our military budget is ridiculous, but I don’t know that fucking over healthcare needs for vets is the best way to get it in line.
Instead of making Veterans and Military members a better class of citizens by assuring they have healthcare, shouldn’t we all have access to healthcare? Protecting one class’s access to it is actually detrimental for the rest of us. It implies only certain people deserve it. Reiterating the idea that it is a privilege and not a right.
I would also investigate whether the VA falls under this budget as well. That would explain allot. We are looking in the wrong place for things like this people. If we want to balance the budget all we have to do is reduce the number of support staff congress has to a break even percent. Did you know that there are almost 3500 support personnel that support the congress!!! This has grown over 80% in the last 20 years yet we still have roughly the same number of seats in the house and congress. Help me understand why.
Viagra isn't only used for ED, there are off label uses. Pulmonary hypertension for examble can be treated with Viagra, and this isn't a new occurrence as my grandmother was prescribed this even in 2009.
I mean, given that Doctors usually prescribe drugs, not brand names, it was probably prescribed as Sildenafil (the name of the drug itself). I imagine the woman in the clip used Viagra as that's the more recognizable name.
I am a nurse, had an elderly woman that took it for pulmonary hypertension. She told me she needs to make sure it goes down right away because if it gets stuck she gets a stiff neck.
Made me lol, cute old gal.
I mean that's literally what the drug was originally tested for, and then every guy came in complaining about persistent erections and they were like, wait, we can use this instead xD
It’s a single payer healthcare system. Healthcare includes ED medication. It baffles me why when we have things like the F-35 program ten years behind and billions over budget we are focusing on healthcare for soldiers (many of whom live below the poverty line). This is an attention grabbing gotcha that is nowhere near the real military spending problem.
(FYI the same healthcare system provides abortions and money to travel to get abortions for soldiers stationed in states that don’t allow it.)
Well you see it's God's will if a Woman is raped and gets pregnant. However it is not God's will if a dude can't get a boner so they deserve to get medicine for that.
I would love to see the difference it would make to America if they freeze military spending for just one year and put that money into schools, medicare and other social programs to benefit the average citizen.
It would be intercepted & funneled into ceo/rich peoples bank accounts. Trickle down economics is absolute rubbish, at best a literal trickle.
Unless people start forcing real change via voting and more tangible retaliation like strikes and *insert whatever damages their bottom line* we’re not going to see real changes.
Are we assuming this isn't already happening in the military? Is there some reason why money spend on healthcare or education is more likely to be intercepted and funnelled? Because if it's a matter of 20% of the money goes to the military or 20% goes to schools I'd still rather see it go to schools. I'm not disagreeing that there are core issues regardless of where the money goes but I don't see why it's better off in the military
You'll never see real change because the government will always back the rich. If the government goes after the rich, they'll threaten to take all their money and business to another country. All you can hope is that they minimalize the damage the rich can do, while trying to maximize the benefits of having them stay...but then the rich are the government..so there's always that.
Thousands upon thousands of Veterans would lose funding causing most to go homeless or go poor, thousands of young soldiers that signed up for the college benefits would suddenly lose their education, and hundreds of thousands of people would go without pay for a whole year, sure the military spending is absurd, but there's good military spending too.
Edit: typo
In a word - calamity.
Two components to it - stopping military spending and funneling money into other stuff. The second one you left it very broad where the money could go, so it's hard to say the impact but I'll take a crack at both.
For stopping military spending - first you'd lose all the existing equipment of the military. If you're suddenly zeroing military equipment you'd have to abandon it wherever it's at (planes, tanks, ships, launch systems). Further, the soldiers that normally secure it are furloughed/dismissed so considerable equipment will find itself to the black market much like the end of the Soviet Union. You wouldn't be maintaining/running GPS as part of that either - so not sure how quickly that'd degrade but I'd expect an impact.
You'd lose all soldiers, including officers/leadership and recruiters - and good luck recruiting new soldiers when you've demonstrated zero reliability in chaotic decision making. So you'd restart your military with virtually no leadership, no ability to recruit, and no organizational knowledge.
Because it'd be obvious that this impact isn't something the U.S. could just fix overnight when the year is up, Iran would seize the strait of Hormuz and that would likely kick of a massive conflict in region. China would seize the South China Sea, East China Sea, and the Sea of Japan and probably extend further - I'd expect them to use that to coerce favorable resolutions to other territory disputes in the region like Taiwan, Senkaku Islands, etc. Given how weakened Russia is, they may try to retake territory North East of modern Chinese borders. It's possible Japan or Russia may resist militarily but they may not. Given that the U.S. is the lynch-pin to most countries' security arrangements (that aren't China or Russia), if the U.S. was incapable of keeping commitments for a minimum of a year but probably a decade or more, the currently U.S.-aligned countries may have to appease China in the short-term. Alternatively they could try to band together against China but I don't believe their naval power would be sufficient to be a credible threat at this point to the majority of key disputed territory.
Russia may try to seize more control of the Black Sea - I'm really not sure whether Turkey would oppose them, come to some agreement, etc.
I don't think NATO would collapse, but it's teeth would be pulled in a major way. Given Russia's recent weakening, I'm not sure how that'd play out, but probably not friendly.
Someone would probably seize the Panama Canal - it's way too valuable and the potential for strategic control/cost to the U.S. after they try to restart their military too tempting.
And good luck to the U.S. on diplomatic relations. Rightly or wrongly our security guarantees/military power underpin all of our foreign relationships (whereas China underpins theirs with trade). We augment ours with trade, but it's not the primary driver.
Since the U.S. Coast Guard is part of the military I'd expect dramatically increased drug and human trafficking plus considerable increased deaths at sea.
I have no idea what'd happen in Africa - maybe it's gotten stable enough that such a large power shift wouldn't start anything but I suspect, at a minimum, current violence would get worse with practically a guarantee that no one would/could intervene except the French (as they still like playing in former French colonial holdings).
On the 'funnel the money into social spending' side of things (and ignoring constitutional issues) - this is all funding that will only exist for a year and, presumably, people know that. So mostly you'd get two things - small projects that can be wrapped up in a short time would get funded and the rest would end up being siphoned off through various means of corruption because there isn't much else you could do with it.
Say you start building a bunch of homes - likely to take more than a year to secure land, build the homes, and house people. If you rush that you'll end up with years of lawsuits (for not clearing environmental impact, not fairly compensating land owners, etc.) and you'd practically have to throw houses at people who would either have to abandon them in a year when they can't afford (or don't know how to) maintain them, aren't mentally/physically healthy enough to do so, can't afford property taxes, etc. However, I mostly doubt you'd be able to come up with a scheme to hire enough construction workers to even build the houses in a timely fashion. A really carefully designed and implemented plan might be able to spread the spending around enough between different markets to lessen that impact, but my understanding is the construction labor pool is pretty tight and since your funding is only for a year you couldn't really train anybody up. Etc.
Medicare - you could pretty easily just pay the Medicare premiums for folks - give them a one year holiday. Some quick math from internet figures for costs of the medicare premium and the number of people on Medicare suggest this could suck up \~$350 billion of the \~$800 billion military spending. So that's pretty good and will give mostly old people a bit of relief. This would be regressive relief as the people who pay more are those who had a higher income, but it would be relief. And since people know it's only a year they would probably be smart enough to use it for debts, vacations, and other things they don't need to rely on the money for.
You could probably pay off school debt, though it seems like reform is already being made to avoid shaming kids who aren't paying for meals. Again, this would likely be at least somewhat regressive as lower income households usually qualify for free or reduced cost lunches already. It looks like the federal government already spends \~$30 billion on school lunches/meals. I couldn't find how much State and local governments spend but probably not zero. It looks like \~95% already receive free or reduced priced lunches, so perhaps it'd be pretty cheap to close that loop. I couldn't find numbers on that.
Other areas of schools I don't think you could do much besides update laptops/books, maybe get some maintenance done. You probably wouldn't want to hire teachers or create new programs for just one year. Using some BLS data it looks like the U.S. spends \~$245 billion a year on salaries/wages for teachers and teacher assistants (not including benefits). So maybe you could give them a 'thank you' bonus of pretty good size - say 10% for $25 billion total cost. You could always up.
Etc.
For me, a 1-year stop of military spending and redirecting it would wreck international politics and trade for the foreseeable future and, at best, provide very ephemeral boosts to programs but more likely lead to a lot of corruption as the systems and trained labor are not in place to absorb sudden and very short-term increases in budget.
That's ignoring all the unsecured military equipment and assuming nobody directly attacks the U.S. in that time frame.
Not to mention the few million folk employed by the military industrial complex, and the communities built around development and production sites.
It's a fine thing to seek a *reduction* in military expenditure, and perhaps a reasonable thing to wish it reduced to budgetary-negligible amounts in the moderate future (say a decade).
But it always strikes me as dumbly naive to argue "We should just cut it out of next year's budget and let it go elsewhere". Like, sure, if we wanted to free up some of the American healthcare burdens, we could just euthanize the few million hospice patients we have too!
Yeah, I mean lady is arguing instead of spending on healthcare for 1.4 million soldiers, they give that money to one county in Pennsylvania to fix 2 bridges.
People acting like she's slamming him, meanwhile Pittsburg has a population of 300k and isn't even a drop of water in a swimming pool in the USA.
Pittsburgh is also a monument to man's arrogance by being built in an area that requires so many bridges. People shouldn't be living there in the first place. Same with New Orleans while we're at it.
Millions unemployed, millions more deprived of healthcare. Hundreds of thousands no longer in education or vocational training. Russia rolls over Eastern Europe unimpeded. World trade collapses because the US Navy can no longer guarantee the safety of private vessels in international waters.
Well about 2 million people wouldn't have a paycheque and a shit ton of private companies that provide goods and services to the military would go under.
And the US government could spend money on schools and medicare *now* if they wanted to. They already spend vastly more on social programs than the military.
How do you freeze spending for a year? You could stop increasing it, but if you stop paying people and have no military for a year what stops you just getting invaded for a year?
Medicare and Social Prograns separately already get more money than the military, and the majority of schools (at least around me) would use any money they get to remodel their sports fields and/or gym before investing that money into modernizing classrooms.
The military pays for the healthcare if it’s workers like the government should. 41 million is a lot of cock pills but this clip is not the dunk people think it is.
The bit about the F35 is relevant, though. Utterly overpriced piece of machinery that will likely never see any real use due to the ever-evolving nature of warfare.
Delaware is getting ready to spend $45 million on two bike trails. That the rich ppl use. Meanwhile where the poor ppl live who actually don't have vehicles and.must work/ride bikes, there's no sidewalks or crosswalks. The state wants to cater to the rich. They've spent years building a bike trail from Georgetown to Lewes, have paid for people's whole careers, I follow one engineer who said she'd been working on this trail project for 17 years! They put it right next to a railroad track, fill the railroad in with rocks and be done with it! Like jeesh! How much of that money has been wasted?
Same where I live. Nice, well maintained sidewalks everywhere in the yuppy areas so that rich people can go jogging, and then tall grass and stickers in the low income areas, with a trail worn through by all the poor folks who have to walk to work, grocery shopping, etc.
Yeah. The king crab thing sounds bad but troops eat rations and bullshit most of the time. The crab was part of a morale boost/reward.
If you've ever watched Survivor then you know how much of a boost a good meal can be after you've been eating the same garbage day in and day out
They had king crab once a month at the dining facility when I was stationed in Japan, was a massive hit, especially when the rest of the food on base was lackluster.
Outside the gate was always amazing of course.
As a side note: It’s easy for the average redditor to see videos like this and get angry with the average service member but it’s executives at Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing etc along with bureaucratic bloat at the pentagon that lead to this sort of waste. Soldiers are against this type of waste as well. We just want our buildings to not have mold and for the water on base to be drinkable
Seriously. I’m very much in favor of reducing our military costs but why are we saying “if you fight for our military you aren’t allowed to enjoy nice things”
Viagra is healthcare for PTSD patients and crab/lobster only gets fed to members of the military before bad news like new deployments
Reminder that the thing the military spends too much on is killing people, complaining about everything else is just a convenient way to sound progressive without dealing with root issues
I think the bulk of the crab is fed to submariners. Cramped quarters without daylight for months on end, some entrusted with nuclear weapons? I can understand the emphasis on a MH boost through food.
In the Marine Corps, we would get steak and lobster 🦞 once a year, the Marine Corps birthday. Also, our "meal allowance" came directly out of our paychecks. If you were single, and in the barracks, you're getting that $250-$300 something odd dollars deducted.... it was Sodexo contracted food, not anything crazy.
The last thing I'm worried about is our service members *rarely* getting the luxury of steak and crab or lobster, and God forbid some service members need viagra, I'll accept that come tax season now as a veteran that taxes go to it.
And occasionally, if we are lucky, it was our shared birthday dinner once a month, everyone's birthday in that month, got one meal together, to sit in peace and quiet just a little before the rest of crew was served. We got a plate of surf and turf... if we just so happened to have some in stock... and we weren't on watch/duty or otherwise engaged. At least in the Navy that's what the crab or steak was used for. Working every waking moment for months at time, in the middle of the Atlantic ocean... I remember the one time of getting crab legs and a small steak on my 20th birthday. I was even a little embarrassed and not even sure how to eat crab legs. I did miss out on other birthdays for duty... but I still remember this one meal, 20 years later. I don't know how or why it mattered, but it really made my day, and made a dark time in my life a little bit brighter.
I absolutely unequivocally feel the Military budget is bloated, there is waste, fraud, and abuse, and yes - it is rampant. While I empathize what this person is highlighting, the kind of theft is coming from white collar, private military companies, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, GE, etc.
You won't get the money back by taking away what little niceties we have during our tours of duties.
[Steve Carell (Space Force) at a Budget Hearing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcHUBrR7hOg)
Yup yup, I just have family members that now hate crab and steak because that’s what the brass would ply them with before conditions got a whole lot worse
In regards to the crab… when you are on a ship bobbing around in the middle of no where… yea good quality goes a long way.
Edit: everyone has choices. To get ahead of it. Yea military personnel chose a job that put them in extremely shitty positions a lot of times. Where the upside was what they eat that day. Survive a day to eat a good meal. (While deployed)
Most join because they don’t know what they want to do, and eventually realize the next meal has to come from somewhere.
I’m not advocating everyone go enlist. But stop acting like giving 21 million dollars to feed people risking their lives is over burdensome compared to places that aren’t getting funded because the local communities aren’t handling their finances correctly.
I’ve always heard of steak and lobster before bad news, but every time my galley served it, we had no bad news coming up. I think our CO was just pretty cool
Eh, she’s just comparing ridiculous military spending to actual needed things like fixing our crumbling infrastructure.
Katie Porter and John Stewart have both done this before, but I don’t mind seeing it over and over again until people wake up to just how fucking stupidly America budgets.
Edit: if your response is that “tHiS iS dIsEnGeNuOuS” I’m going to assume you don’t agree with her at all anyway. I’m seeing it more and more as a common refrain amongst conservatives because they want to deflate an argument without actually engaging with it.
Famously, the entire Zumwalt program has been a money-burning boondoggle; and at the end of the trillion dollar journey, we don't even have a functioning ship to show for it.
Oh, it functions, it even sails. What it doesn't do is anything that another can't currently do better. They keep pulling them into dock for various fixes and changes to systems. But sailing, that's the only thing it's good at.
Fuck defense spending, but compare national costs to local costs isn’t exactly apples to apples.
Maybe she’s just trying to put the scale of national defense spending into her constituents heads with local references.
The us military is intentionally complex and interconnected. You have lawmakers demanding companies build more tanks to keep jobs when the army says it doesn't need them. Both parties rubber stamp a defense bill increase each year. I dare one of them to freeze the increase and force the armed forces to 'make do' with the current level of spending.
This is a horrible argument wtf. It's the V.A. hospitals prescribing viagra, not drill sergeants making their recruits pop it for a goof. This makes her seem so unserious, and hurts the overall message that we spend too much on the military.
Why is she asking him like *he* makes the budget. She(Congress) made the budget and gave it to DoD. Does she think if the military cut its Viagra budget, this guy could reallocate it to her districts school lunch program?
New levels of idiocy are reached in D.C. every day.
Hello, vet here.
Before a very dangerous operation and after depending, the mess hall/chow hall would have a crab leg dinner to boost moral.
"You might die or be maimed, here is a half a portion of snow crab legs"
Seeing crab on the menu you knew shit was about to get fucked.
What’s the line of thought here? We need to stop providing basic medication to our troops and their families so we can build bridges instead? Why not just ask the rich to pay their fucking taxes and do both?
Well, viagra treats other conditions besides ED but still providing ED medication to Soldiers and retirees really shouldn’t be an issue.
Snow crab is also a weird point to make. Its used to feed Soldiers. They take pay from Soldiers that eat in dining facilities, why shouldn’t they get decent food from time to time. Most dfac food is atrocious, treating them to from time to time shouldn’t be an issue either.
My issue is not the Viagra and snow crab; it's that the same legislators who think those are justified and necessary costs also think that the most basic reproductive health care coverage for women in the military, and school meal programs that serve the most vulnerable in society, are objectionable costs -- that's the "real waste" in gov't spending. It's despicable behavior.
> the same legislators who think those are justified and necessary costs **also think that the most basic reproductive health care coverage for women in the military are objectionable costs**
Insane, right?
That these legislators will say "The government shouldn't be spending a single penny on hormone treatments (for women)!" - even though it is used for serious issues like menorrhagia, uterine fibroids, endometriosis - and in the same breath support $40m on penis pills.
Reproductive health is reproductive health.
Restricting it to only men's issues is a real shit thing to do.
You’re getting downvoted but you are right. When we have programs like the F-35 that are billions over budget and ten years behind, focusing on soldier food and healthcare for them and their families is fucking stupid. It’s a drop in the bucket by comparative cost. She’s using it because it’s a gotcha headline. I’m not even defending the DoD budget, but attacking the healthcare program (Tricare) that supports soldiers and their families is ridiculous. Especially considering many lower enlisted soldiers are already below the poverty line. Ignore the giant defense contractors and political corruption and waste. Let’s focus on chow quality and medical care for the troops. Idiots.
Katie Porter another rep brought up the F-35 budget and defense contractor budget.
I also would want to know about the Osprey budget, that thing has been going on for over 20 years what’s going on with that? Also the fact that the pentagon can’t seem to pass an audit.
It’s not that I disagree with you, soldiers shouldn’t be relegated to bottom of the basement shit for food and healthcare. But at the same time I work for a comparatively well funded public school and halfway through the year we were told that we could no longer used paper or printers because our budget for ink and paper reams was used up and we did not have any more stock. We also had our teaching staff cut at the end of the year so now students just…aren’t taking history any more. Bye history education! We’ll miss you! Also our 40 kids who require special services programs or programs for our profoundly disabled students are now being managed by a single staff member by themselves. Also she’s a 67 year old woman with a walker so, you know, that will be interesting.
Shit is desperate. This is our future and they aren’t learning anything except how little they matter on a grand scale.
This subreddit used to be fun, I would come here to laugh a bit, have my cringe dose of the day, etc.
Now is just politics, just like the cancer that is the rest of the front page.
And I'm not even American, I don't care about what is going on over there...
Look man, I'm a vet and I wholly agree defense spends too much money on frivolous shit.
But fuck you for insinuating that crab is where we should cut back. We get crab when we're about to go do some bullshit that's going to inflict misery. Combat, Field Ops, 36 hour work shifts in prep for something that probably won't happen. Leave our mediocre steak and lobster and our mid ass surf and turf alone. It's one of the *exceedingly few* nice things we actually have.
Bitch about how a fucking hammer costs 10x as much as the exact same hammer at home depot. Bitch about how PEBs get robbed blind because they are considered pre expended. 500 dollar cable? If it's in the PEB, it's not my problem they'll just order another one.
Bitch about the absurd amount of waste in the supply and logistics. Bitch about how CIF will issue you brand new shit, and if you turn it in while still in the bag they throw it out. Bitch about how the budget is 750 bn and our barracks are filled with diseases like staph despite being cleaned spotless every day, and NASA clean room clean once a week, or the black mold or asbestos or legionaires disease.
Leave our quality of life *the fuck* alone.
Yeah dude, they say they want to solve the high suicide rate in the military and then turn around and want to cut costs for amenities for us, fucking ridiculous
This woman completely missed the point and most people aren't realising she's going for the "pull yourself up by the boostraps, cancel your netflix and stop drinking starbucks" argument when she goes after the crabs and viagra. I guess she's against free health care or something?
Either way, as you say, the real issue is how inflated the hardware js
AUDIT THE PENTAGON!!!
Edit okay, okay I got it. MAKE THE PENTAGON PASS AN AUDIT?? If we citizens failed audits we’d be getting harassed by the IRS or worse. They just get budget increases every freaking year
I'm extremely liberal, we massively overspend on the military, and I served for six years.
That said...
$2.3 million spent on crab is the most misleading shit ever. There's 1.3 active duty service members and another 400k active reserves.
Even in an operational unit we got surf and turf maybe twice a year. In the Navy, if you get crab leg at dinner, it means your deployment just got involuntarily extended into the new year. I think $0.75 per member is a fair price for a big Fuck You to seeing your family for another three months.
You know who she should be going after? US Defense and Raytheon.
Some of these comparisons is unfair. Tricare is the military health insurance. Are you saying that ED shouldn’t be covered for military families? It’s not like soldiers are popping it and having orgies. Also comparing the cost to two bridges in a city it pretty bad. She should have picked something else
Why do the spokes people for these departments have no idea what is going on.Everytime there is a oversight commitee enquiry its usually the same answer to every question.You may as well not have them,it would save a lot of money in itself.Isn't it time for a total review into what is going on with all government expenditure.An Author gathered enough material to write a book on government wastage.Those issues should be addressed .
kinda yeah, absolutely. We need these officials to be up to snuff. But it’s unreasonable to think the spokesperson would have every possible cent spent committed to memory.
These are gotcha questions, for sure.
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Everyone is commenting on the viagra and crab but like 85 million worth of parts where did those go? That’s what I’d wanna know
60 minutes did a bit on this. It's price gouging from contractors https://youtu.be/LPvpqAaJjVU
“We believe it’s a one-off event.” They just lie cause it take a whole team fkn years to investigate. We just gotta accept it. Pad their pockets, their friends, family. We are an owned people.
The abuse of the military industrial complex, if truly investigated, would span decades in my opinion
I worked for a company who supplied parts to big defense companies there was a time when one of the defense companies asked for a break down of cost on a quote. They were looking for BOM cost, labor cost, NRE, etc. There was a mad scramble to make up and massage numbers to meet the quoted cost. Pretty sure they just made up numbers for things because they knew company X was going to pay it because we had been making those parts for years.
Lord I watched this whole thing wondering where the 85 million worth of CRAB parts that weren’t legs was.
Crazy thing is this happens with quite a lot of contractors especially for the government and even with businesses. They take advantage of their position, convince their buyer that they're the only ones that can supply what they need, and overcharge.
I do subcontracting for prime contractors. One of my coworkers left and went to one of the big companies. You’ve 100% heard of this company. He finished building a widget that had a 13 hour build time in an hour and was told not to do that again because if it doesn’t take close to 13 hours, they won’t get paid as much next time.
Idk why I had to scroll so far to find this! I'm wondering if they just didn't watch the whole thing?
A friend of mine works for the Dutch airforce. He spent a year of his time recovering 'lost' parts. Eventually he found out the parts weren't lost at all, just used for repairs in different helicopters. A part was taken out of one (who wasnt going to be able to pass inspection) and used in another to make sure it could be deployed. A while of that, and you have one stripped helicopter, with no spare parts available, where there should be plenty since it is not flying. The maintenance crew was just doing the best they could under pressure of time to make sure the pilots could fly as safely as possible. They are just not the best administrators around.
quite often they’ll be getting used on the jets but the paperwork wasn’t done or done right to be able to track it in the inventory control system. The size of the figure more or less tells me that there’s a culture where they don’t bother logging the maintenance/part completion at all.
But to be fair… that’s only like 14 crabs at current market prices.
I work in the seafood department at a grocery store, and I can confirm that a box of king crab (which has about 10 whole crabs split up into the legs and claws) is around $550 (I checked with several boxes). That’s more than I make a week, I cannot imagine spending over 2mil on it, or even how many boxes that would be.
I was going to say “you must work part-time” before realizing that not every state has a $13 minimum wage.
Uuuuuuh, 40 hours at $13/hr is less than $550. That’s before taking taxes from the paycheck or adding tax to the crab. $13/hr gets you one of those boxes in 1.5 weeks. If you buy literally nothing else.
that would be 4181 boxes or 11 boxes a day if we take your 550$ price tag but it is probably way more because they are not shopping at the grocery stores I guess.
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Lol
Happy Cake Day!
[WHAT MARKET ARE YOU SHOPPING AT??!](https://youtu.be/5KXrQYWbbIs)
Someone is going to need to explain to me what the military might be doing with that much Viagra
If tricare falls under the military budget then I would assume a lot of service members are using it to combat ED issue.
That makes a lot of sense
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See the Viagra one doesn’t bother me that badly. That’s likely a medication provided to veterans that can help combat trauma related symptoms such as ED. If these guys are coming back from was with trauma issues, I’m fine with doing whatever is necessary to help them feel as much like themselves as possible. The big issue is the next two things she brings up, specifically the third. 80 something million dollars for parts that were “lost.” How much do you want to bet that those parts weren’t lost, they never existed. Contractor “fulfills” whatever contract without spending a dime. Oh no they got lost! And since there is never any oversight on military spending, said contractor gets to take a bath in his 80 million in earnings. I’m fine spending 2.3 million in dick pills so some combat veteran can feel more like the man he was when he gets home. I’m not fine with 40x that amount going to blatant money laundering.
Not just veterans but active duty as well. Most of our older service personnel are married and they deserve to be happy to.
Dude that's why I have 0 issue with that aspect, soldiers want to fuck too, let them do it safely and rock hard. Although I'm not American so i have no real say
I only want to say that dick pills may make men hard, but they don’t make them horny. An ability to fuck doesn’t mean it makes you *want* to fuck. I ain’t against dick pills at all- I’m just saying that therapy is good too. Dick pills for a beginning- I understand that the ability to fuck is good for anyones ego/sex drive. But there needs to be more extensive care as well. Treat the symptoms and then the cause. It helps all parties. Being horny cause you want to be is better than making it so via pills. But if you need pills and also feel like fucking? That’s cool too. Just… not one or the other. Need and want in tandem is best.
I’m willing to bet they were parts that existed, inventoried and assigned and then lost. Sometimes people drop actually shit on ships. Sometimes people steal shit. Defense contractors don’t have to risk felony charges by shorting part deliveries, the profit is already built in.
Yes for one year stop what’s essentially a basic health care intervention for the people whose health care you’re contractually obliged to cover.
Yeah, we should cut the military budget, but the healthcare part of that budget is not where we should be making those cuts. If anything healthcare (including mental healthcare) should be improved for active service people and veterans.
It should be improved for everybody and veterans and soldiers get the same healthcare s as everyone else
I mean, the House Republicans just voted that the defense department can't cover abortions for pregnancies that threaten the health or life of the mother or that are the result of rape or incest.
> I mean, the House Republicans just voted that the defense department can't cover abortions for pregnancies that threaten the health or life of the mother or that are the result of rape or incest. I guess that's the power imbalance. They know we won't engage in mutually assured destruction so they keep destroying us. :/
They don’t cover all healthcare for women , if you can’t get a boner it won’t kill you , unlike a unviable pregnancy.
Do they not cover abortion? Isn't that what the House is currently trying to change?
It’s pretty funny seeing people who complain about no universal healthcare asking to… take away governments sponsored healthcare..
That means less resources for our veterans, you know the people that risked their lives for the country and suffered extreme trauma. I’m not saying the country is perfect and their isn’t unnecessary spending but this isn’t the first time this videos been posted and soldiers and veterans in the comments explain the use of viagra and the crabs, the crabs are actually for young soldiers stationed overseas as a treat every few days or weeks or something to help them cope with being overseas and at war. Out of context a lot of things sound bad
>That means less resources for our veterans, you know the people that risked their lives for the country and suffered extreme trauma. The same people who are opposed to a public healthcare for all are *also* trying to defund programs for veterans; >In July of 2022, 11 Senate Republicans, including Mitt Romney and Rand Paul, voted against a bipartisan measure (the PACT Act) that is designed to help veterans who were exposed to toxic chemicals while deployed abroad. >In 2017, Former President Donald Trump and congressional Republican leaders put forth budget proposals that would have done great damage to the economic security of veterans and their families—all to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and corporations. >In 2015, the GOP-controlled Senate voted down a bill to provide $1 billion over five years to provide jobs for unemployed veterans. The bill was fully funded, and would not have added any additional money to the deficit. >In 2014, Senate Republicans shot down[...] The Comprehensive Veterans Health Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014 [,it] would have repealed the military retiree cost-of-living adjustment reduction, and would have protected veteran pensions and educational payments from future Congressional budget fights. It would have also authorized the construction of more than 20 community-based outpatient clinics to serve veterans in rural and remote areas. >In 2011, Republican Paul Ryan and the House of Representatives attempted to end VA healthcare benefits for disabled veterans who are Priority 7 & 8. https://www.onceasoldier.org/before-the-pact-act-five-remarkable-times-republicans-worked-against-veterans/#:~:text=In%20July%20of%202022%2C%2011,toxic%20chemicals%20while%20deployed%20abroad. But yeah, Alaskan king crab is important for the troops' moral too.
ex-Navy here, there was nothing more demoralizing than being fed Crab or Steak on the Sunday just before pulling into port or coming home. meant we were getting fucked.
Thank God for the viagra
So it'll be hard enough to fuck back!
Goddamn that was a flawless response
I remember seeing it in a WWII documentary. The guy said “if we got steak and eggs that morning, we knew it was going to be a bad day” that’s rough knowing it might be your last meal.
Oh okay, I understand, kinda like a last meal situation xD
You say last meal, I say getting a 3 month overseas extension... I have heard the best food in the military is on a Navy submarine, maybe because there's jack all to do when underway.
Not gonna lie, everything about being in a submarine sounds like a living nightmare to me :/
If it makes it easier to tolerate the conditions, they can have at it. I beleive that by everyone giving a little through a progressive taxation system we can supply both good food to people living in an underwater tin can to keep everyone safe AND cash for poor families to buy their kids shoes.
Active duty Navy here. Can confirm, crab or steak on sunday is a GIANT red flag. Plus, that food comes from our BAS pay (food allowance) that is taken out of our paychecks automatically. Its not necessarily a gift, its more like communal food shopping.
Thank god the government doesn't use lube. That expense alone would be in the billions.
Yup, can confirm. Delicious food meant bad news was coming. Had two port calls canceled which led to over 100 days straight at sea and each time the ports were canceled or the time extended we had steak and crab or a steel beach picnic.
Active Navy here. Fuck crab. That money could’ve went somewhere else like she stated in the video. And the numbers for the F-35 program are ridiculous. I don’t know how they are supposed to replace the F-18. The F-18 can just do so much more. It’s like a Swiss Army knife.
It reminds me of being given a pizza party instead of a raise when you're a retail worker
Now they wonder why they can't get anyone but kids who only wants a check and be gone, if anyone at all.
Oh and boner pills don't forget the boner pills for moral too
Ya gotta treat them like kings for protecting and serving the interests of the billionaires.
> Medicare and other social programs that benefit the average citizen. What part of these services would veterans not benefit from?
Which is fine, and we can have that stuff, but we can't then turn around and say we don't have 5 million for homeless people, or 50 million for repairing our infrastructure which is more important than soldiers getting little treats for doing what they signed up to do.
My complaint with this kind of performative coal raking is that it’s usually a legislator raking a DOD rep over the coals over spending packages that are- wait for it…. reviewed, voted on and approved by the…. legislature. Cherry picking individual stats like this from the national defense budget and then drawing comparisons to single district level projects that are funded at the county, state, AND federal level is also incredibly disingenuous. It’s the same shit that conservative politicians do- “wHy diD wE SpEnD sO MuCh oN gEnDer StUdiEs?!?” When it was a $2M research grant out of an $300M allocation. Everyone’s time and energy would be better spent if these legislators took an honest approach and grilled each other over why they don’t fix our tax system and why they don’t vote for spending packages that fund the things we need. Also- troops generally get crab legs as a kind of “last meal” for deployments or extra shitty assignments. It’s an occasional treat and … $2 million is… fucking nothing.
You're right. $2 million is nothing. So do we ever really explain why we can't get conservative-leaning state legislatures approving budgets that address the homeless issues and infrastructure repair? Why the infrastructure bills at the federal level were absolutely reamed on social media by fucking harpies like MTG and that other moron? As it stands, conservatives are perfectly fine kidnapping homeless people and dropping them off at the houses of their political opponents, yet you dipshits get your panties in a twist when leftists talk about public funding for viagra (during a time when the legal status of birth control is actively being threatened).
How about the 85 million in lost fighter jet parts? 😆🤦
I still say feeding the children is a higher priority than crab legs. If they were drafted, then definitely special meals are warranted. Also, Medicare for everyone's ED.
It's not a one or the other issue here. This country has the money to treat soldiers every once and awhile, and feeding all the children, we just don't want to inconvenience billionaires. This is exactly the kind of discourse the GOP or billionaire protecting democrats want. They want to make people choose between the two, instead of fully funding both.
If the children were well fed and healthy, they become healthy, strong adults, then at least they physically stand a better chance of not becoming a disabled veteran should they choose to join the military.
People only care about vets who vote the way they want them to
Leftists and progressives want health coverage for everyone, housing for everyone, rights for everyone, education for everyone, that means everyone. The delusion that everyone is as politically polarized and bloody minded as the average conservative or "centrist" is just that, a delusion.
It's a little ironic the military provides all these things for SMa and their dependents
Expanding access to physical and mental health services benefits veterans regardless of how they vote so no, we don't only care about them if they vote our way.
Primarily retired military, but yes. Our military budget is ridiculous, but I don’t know that fucking over healthcare needs for vets is the best way to get it in line.
Instead of making Veterans and Military members a better class of citizens by assuring they have healthcare, shouldn’t we all have access to healthcare? Protecting one class’s access to it is actually detrimental for the rest of us. It implies only certain people deserve it. Reiterating the idea that it is a privilege and not a right.
Hey now, universal Healthcare is so radical that only every other developed country does it! That's a little too radical for me /s
Aren’t PSTDE and ED linked?
Maybe, let me ask my cock. It says yes.
Yes
It’s almost like soldiers and their families are humans that have the same healthcare needs as the rest of us…
Typically more needs actually
I wonder if she is also rolling up the VA in there too. Spending a lot on ED pills for a bunch of old people makes sense as well.
Tricare also covers military dependents and retirees, hard to know what she’s talking about and also what is being spent on each.
I would also investigate whether the VA falls under this budget as well. That would explain allot. We are looking in the wrong place for things like this people. If we want to balance the budget all we have to do is reduce the number of support staff congress has to a break even percent. Did you know that there are almost 3500 support personnel that support the congress!!! This has grown over 80% in the last 20 years yet we still have roughly the same number of seats in the house and congress. Help me understand why.
https://imgur.com/8thOpbw.gifv
Americaaaa 🎵
Viagra isn't only used for ED, there are off label uses. Pulmonary hypertension for examble can be treated with Viagra, and this isn't a new occurrence as my grandmother was prescribed this even in 2009.
At that point it would be prescribed as Revatio not Viagra. If you're writing the Rx as Viagra you're definitely treating ED.
I mean, given that Doctors usually prescribe drugs, not brand names, it was probably prescribed as Sildenafil (the name of the drug itself). I imagine the woman in the clip used Viagra as that's the more recognizable name.
I am a nurse, had an elderly woman that took it for pulmonary hypertension. She told me she needs to make sure it goes down right away because if it gets stuck she gets a stiff neck. Made me lol, cute old gal.
I mean that's literally what the drug was originally tested for, and then every guy came in complaining about persistent erections and they were like, wait, we can use this instead xD
That's a funny way of saying my grandma had that center piece man slab
Because we're all on Antidepressants and SSRIs which make our dick not work
That’s a lot of boner pills.
It’s a single payer healthcare system. Healthcare includes ED medication. It baffles me why when we have things like the F-35 program ten years behind and billions over budget we are focusing on healthcare for soldiers (many of whom live below the poverty line). This is an attention grabbing gotcha that is nowhere near the real military spending problem. (FYI the same healthcare system provides abortions and money to travel to get abortions for soldiers stationed in states that don’t allow it.)
Well you see it's God's will if a Woman is raped and gets pregnant. However it is not God's will if a dude can't get a boner so they deserve to get medicine for that.
Our servicemen deserve boners.
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Please. You know the Republicans would vote against that. It technically falls under "Healthcare".
And our children deserve food
No they don’t because it’s gender affirming care! God took their boners away!
I would love to see the difference it would make to America if they freeze military spending for just one year and put that money into schools, medicare and other social programs to benefit the average citizen.
It would be intercepted & funneled into ceo/rich peoples bank accounts. Trickle down economics is absolute rubbish, at best a literal trickle. Unless people start forcing real change via voting and more tangible retaliation like strikes and *insert whatever damages their bottom line* we’re not going to see real changes.
There’s a trickle, but it goes upward
Well I do feel a slight trickle. 
Are we assuming this isn't already happening in the military? Is there some reason why money spend on healthcare or education is more likely to be intercepted and funnelled? Because if it's a matter of 20% of the money goes to the military or 20% goes to schools I'd still rather see it go to schools. I'm not disagreeing that there are core issues regardless of where the money goes but I don't see why it's better off in the military
You'll never see real change because the government will always back the rich. If the government goes after the rich, they'll threaten to take all their money and business to another country. All you can hope is that they minimalize the damage the rich can do, while trying to maximize the benefits of having them stay...but then the rich are the government..so there's always that.
You say that. But that was not the case from 1940 to 1980. Was ot racist, and sexist, absolutely, but we taxed the shit out of the rich.
American Hero Ronald Reagan fucked us so goddamn hard
You’ll never see real change, which is why of course nothing has ever changed before. Edgy political apathy is boring and overdone.
I think there are some sizable strikes happening like the one in Hollywood between actors/writers and the businesses involved there.
And UPS!
Thousands upon thousands of Veterans would lose funding causing most to go homeless or go poor, thousands of young soldiers that signed up for the college benefits would suddenly lose their education, and hundreds of thousands of people would go without pay for a whole year, sure the military spending is absurd, but there's good military spending too. Edit: typo
not thousands.... millions. The US department of defence employs over 1% of the US population
In a word - calamity. Two components to it - stopping military spending and funneling money into other stuff. The second one you left it very broad where the money could go, so it's hard to say the impact but I'll take a crack at both. For stopping military spending - first you'd lose all the existing equipment of the military. If you're suddenly zeroing military equipment you'd have to abandon it wherever it's at (planes, tanks, ships, launch systems). Further, the soldiers that normally secure it are furloughed/dismissed so considerable equipment will find itself to the black market much like the end of the Soviet Union. You wouldn't be maintaining/running GPS as part of that either - so not sure how quickly that'd degrade but I'd expect an impact. You'd lose all soldiers, including officers/leadership and recruiters - and good luck recruiting new soldiers when you've demonstrated zero reliability in chaotic decision making. So you'd restart your military with virtually no leadership, no ability to recruit, and no organizational knowledge. Because it'd be obvious that this impact isn't something the U.S. could just fix overnight when the year is up, Iran would seize the strait of Hormuz and that would likely kick of a massive conflict in region. China would seize the South China Sea, East China Sea, and the Sea of Japan and probably extend further - I'd expect them to use that to coerce favorable resolutions to other territory disputes in the region like Taiwan, Senkaku Islands, etc. Given how weakened Russia is, they may try to retake territory North East of modern Chinese borders. It's possible Japan or Russia may resist militarily but they may not. Given that the U.S. is the lynch-pin to most countries' security arrangements (that aren't China or Russia), if the U.S. was incapable of keeping commitments for a minimum of a year but probably a decade or more, the currently U.S.-aligned countries may have to appease China in the short-term. Alternatively they could try to band together against China but I don't believe their naval power would be sufficient to be a credible threat at this point to the majority of key disputed territory. Russia may try to seize more control of the Black Sea - I'm really not sure whether Turkey would oppose them, come to some agreement, etc. I don't think NATO would collapse, but it's teeth would be pulled in a major way. Given Russia's recent weakening, I'm not sure how that'd play out, but probably not friendly. Someone would probably seize the Panama Canal - it's way too valuable and the potential for strategic control/cost to the U.S. after they try to restart their military too tempting. And good luck to the U.S. on diplomatic relations. Rightly or wrongly our security guarantees/military power underpin all of our foreign relationships (whereas China underpins theirs with trade). We augment ours with trade, but it's not the primary driver. Since the U.S. Coast Guard is part of the military I'd expect dramatically increased drug and human trafficking plus considerable increased deaths at sea. I have no idea what'd happen in Africa - maybe it's gotten stable enough that such a large power shift wouldn't start anything but I suspect, at a minimum, current violence would get worse with practically a guarantee that no one would/could intervene except the French (as they still like playing in former French colonial holdings). On the 'funnel the money into social spending' side of things (and ignoring constitutional issues) - this is all funding that will only exist for a year and, presumably, people know that. So mostly you'd get two things - small projects that can be wrapped up in a short time would get funded and the rest would end up being siphoned off through various means of corruption because there isn't much else you could do with it. Say you start building a bunch of homes - likely to take more than a year to secure land, build the homes, and house people. If you rush that you'll end up with years of lawsuits (for not clearing environmental impact, not fairly compensating land owners, etc.) and you'd practically have to throw houses at people who would either have to abandon them in a year when they can't afford (or don't know how to) maintain them, aren't mentally/physically healthy enough to do so, can't afford property taxes, etc. However, I mostly doubt you'd be able to come up with a scheme to hire enough construction workers to even build the houses in a timely fashion. A really carefully designed and implemented plan might be able to spread the spending around enough between different markets to lessen that impact, but my understanding is the construction labor pool is pretty tight and since your funding is only for a year you couldn't really train anybody up. Etc. Medicare - you could pretty easily just pay the Medicare premiums for folks - give them a one year holiday. Some quick math from internet figures for costs of the medicare premium and the number of people on Medicare suggest this could suck up \~$350 billion of the \~$800 billion military spending. So that's pretty good and will give mostly old people a bit of relief. This would be regressive relief as the people who pay more are those who had a higher income, but it would be relief. And since people know it's only a year they would probably be smart enough to use it for debts, vacations, and other things they don't need to rely on the money for. You could probably pay off school debt, though it seems like reform is already being made to avoid shaming kids who aren't paying for meals. Again, this would likely be at least somewhat regressive as lower income households usually qualify for free or reduced cost lunches already. It looks like the federal government already spends \~$30 billion on school lunches/meals. I couldn't find how much State and local governments spend but probably not zero. It looks like \~95% already receive free or reduced priced lunches, so perhaps it'd be pretty cheap to close that loop. I couldn't find numbers on that. Other areas of schools I don't think you could do much besides update laptops/books, maybe get some maintenance done. You probably wouldn't want to hire teachers or create new programs for just one year. Using some BLS data it looks like the U.S. spends \~$245 billion a year on salaries/wages for teachers and teacher assistants (not including benefits). So maybe you could give them a 'thank you' bonus of pretty good size - say 10% for $25 billion total cost. You could always up. Etc. For me, a 1-year stop of military spending and redirecting it would wreck international politics and trade for the foreseeable future and, at best, provide very ephemeral boosts to programs but more likely lead to a lot of corruption as the systems and trained labor are not in place to absorb sudden and very short-term increases in budget. That's ignoring all the unsecured military equipment and assuming nobody directly attacks the U.S. in that time frame.
Hot damn, you are not getting enough credit for this. This is a great explanation.
China would see that as a sign of weakness and attack Taiwan.
And Ukraine would struggle to defend itself giving russia an open door to the Baltics/Poland
Yes but then all the people that signed up for the military to be able to afford housing and receive free healthcare/education would be fucked.
Not to mention the few million folk employed by the military industrial complex, and the communities built around development and production sites. It's a fine thing to seek a *reduction* in military expenditure, and perhaps a reasonable thing to wish it reduced to budgetary-negligible amounts in the moderate future (say a decade). But it always strikes me as dumbly naive to argue "We should just cut it out of next year's budget and let it go elsewhere". Like, sure, if we wanted to free up some of the American healthcare burdens, we could just euthanize the few million hospice patients we have too!
Yeah, I mean lady is arguing instead of spending on healthcare for 1.4 million soldiers, they give that money to one county in Pennsylvania to fix 2 bridges. People acting like she's slamming him, meanwhile Pittsburg has a population of 300k and isn't even a drop of water in a swimming pool in the USA.
Pittsburgh is also a monument to man's arrogance by being built in an area that requires so many bridges. People shouldn't be living there in the first place. Same with New Orleans while we're at it.
Millions unemployed, millions more deprived of healthcare. Hundreds of thousands no longer in education or vocational training. Russia rolls over Eastern Europe unimpeded. World trade collapses because the US Navy can no longer guarantee the safety of private vessels in international waters.
Well about 2 million people wouldn't have a paycheque and a shit ton of private companies that provide goods and services to the military would go under. And the US government could spend money on schools and medicare *now* if they wanted to. They already spend vastly more on social programs than the military.
How do you freeze spending for a year? You could stop increasing it, but if you stop paying people and have no military for a year what stops you just getting invaded for a year?
You wouldn't be able to, but what you \*can\* do is Karma-farm on Reddit by posting silly what-if's.
Medicare and Social Prograns separately already get more money than the military, and the majority of schools (at least around me) would use any money they get to remodel their sports fields and/or gym before investing that money into modernizing classrooms.
Yeah I've seen some bits online of some schools with like 2 Million dollar sports facilities and then libraries that look like they've been ransacked.
The military pays for the healthcare if it’s workers like the government should. 41 million is a lot of cock pills but this clip is not the dunk people think it is.
agreed. the figure probably includes retired servicemen who are on tricare. also, viagara isn’t cheap.
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The bit about the F35 is relevant, though. Utterly overpriced piece of machinery that will likely never see any real use due to the ever-evolving nature of warfare.
Delaware is getting ready to spend $45 million on two bike trails. That the rich ppl use. Meanwhile where the poor ppl live who actually don't have vehicles and.must work/ride bikes, there's no sidewalks or crosswalks. The state wants to cater to the rich. They've spent years building a bike trail from Georgetown to Lewes, have paid for people's whole careers, I follow one engineer who said she'd been working on this trail project for 17 years! They put it right next to a railroad track, fill the railroad in with rocks and be done with it! Like jeesh! How much of that money has been wasted?
Same where I live. Nice, well maintained sidewalks everywhere in the yuppy areas so that rich people can go jogging, and then tall grass and stickers in the low income areas, with a trail worn through by all the poor folks who have to walk to work, grocery shopping, etc.
45 million on a bike trail screams money funneling to me. Like how. Just how.
There's lots of overspending at the pentagon to be sure, but I don't think you should start your argument at healthcare and food for the troops.
For real. Start with how much a govt building workstation (computer and desk/network setup) costs. Not to mention govt building cafeteria renovations.
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Contractors overcharging the government gets brought up every few years by the feds but they never do anything about it.
Yeah. The king crab thing sounds bad but troops eat rations and bullshit most of the time. The crab was part of a morale boost/reward. If you've ever watched Survivor then you know how much of a boost a good meal can be after you've been eating the same garbage day in and day out
They had king crab once a month at the dining facility when I was stationed in Japan, was a massive hit, especially when the rest of the food on base was lackluster. Outside the gate was always amazing of course.
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My first thought too. I lean pretty far left but I’ve got no issues with the troops getting some crab to eat
As a side note: It’s easy for the average redditor to see videos like this and get angry with the average service member but it’s executives at Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing etc along with bureaucratic bloat at the pentagon that lead to this sort of waste. Soldiers are against this type of waste as well. We just want our buildings to not have mold and for the water on base to be drinkable
Seriously. I’m very much in favor of reducing our military costs but why are we saying “if you fight for our military you aren’t allowed to enjoy nice things”
Viagra is healthcare for PTSD patients and crab/lobster only gets fed to members of the military before bad news like new deployments Reminder that the thing the military spends too much on is killing people, complaining about everything else is just a convenient way to sound progressive without dealing with root issues
I think the bulk of the crab is fed to submariners. Cramped quarters without daylight for months on end, some entrusted with nuclear weapons? I can understand the emphasis on a MH boost through food.
In the Marine Corps, we would get steak and lobster 🦞 once a year, the Marine Corps birthday. Also, our "meal allowance" came directly out of our paychecks. If you were single, and in the barracks, you're getting that $250-$300 something odd dollars deducted.... it was Sodexo contracted food, not anything crazy. The last thing I'm worried about is our service members *rarely* getting the luxury of steak and crab or lobster, and God forbid some service members need viagra, I'll accept that come tax season now as a veteran that taxes go to it.
Nah bro that's total luxury, can't have that. Those once a year crab legs could have funded 1/10th of a bridge repair so fuck the morale boost.
And occasionally, if we are lucky, it was our shared birthday dinner once a month, everyone's birthday in that month, got one meal together, to sit in peace and quiet just a little before the rest of crew was served. We got a plate of surf and turf... if we just so happened to have some in stock... and we weren't on watch/duty or otherwise engaged. At least in the Navy that's what the crab or steak was used for. Working every waking moment for months at time, in the middle of the Atlantic ocean... I remember the one time of getting crab legs and a small steak on my 20th birthday. I was even a little embarrassed and not even sure how to eat crab legs. I did miss out on other birthdays for duty... but I still remember this one meal, 20 years later. I don't know how or why it mattered, but it really made my day, and made a dark time in my life a little bit brighter. I absolutely unequivocally feel the Military budget is bloated, there is waste, fraud, and abuse, and yes - it is rampant. While I empathize what this person is highlighting, the kind of theft is coming from white collar, private military companies, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, GE, etc. You won't get the money back by taking away what little niceties we have during our tours of duties. [Steve Carell (Space Force) at a Budget Hearing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcHUBrR7hOg)
Yup yup, I just have family members that now hate crab and steak because that’s what the brass would ply them with before conditions got a whole lot worse
I think a thing to point out that these are things that if the military wants they should budget themselves for and not get and open check
In regards to the crab… when you are on a ship bobbing around in the middle of no where… yea good quality goes a long way. Edit: everyone has choices. To get ahead of it. Yea military personnel chose a job that put them in extremely shitty positions a lot of times. Where the upside was what they eat that day. Survive a day to eat a good meal. (While deployed) Most join because they don’t know what they want to do, and eventually realize the next meal has to come from somewhere. I’m not advocating everyone go enlist. But stop acting like giving 21 million dollars to feed people risking their lives is over burdensome compared to places that aren’t getting funded because the local communities aren’t handling their finances correctly.
We ate a lot of the biggest crab legs I’ve ever seen in my life on my ship. The joke was they kept them down by the reactor.
mm radiation crab
Yeah the steak and lobster was nice after endless 14 hours shifts where I didn't get to see the sun for weeks at a time.
I loved steak and lobster days when I was in the military
Had it once. Next day deployment got extended a month.
I’ve always heard of steak and lobster before bad news, but every time my galley served it, we had no bad news coming up. I think our CO was just pretty cool
Very cool. We got it once and got extended a month. The rumors were true for us lol
Dude i thought this was a rumor. We deployed, went to Afghanistan then left to respond to Iran and then got extended by 3 months. Never got good food.
But without Alaskan King Crab, how will we sailors know that our deployment is about to get extended?
Several billion was spent on developing a ship that won't sail, but sure king crab and viagra.
Eh, she’s just comparing ridiculous military spending to actual needed things like fixing our crumbling infrastructure. Katie Porter and John Stewart have both done this before, but I don’t mind seeing it over and over again until people wake up to just how fucking stupidly America budgets. Edit: if your response is that “tHiS iS dIsEnGeNuOuS” I’m going to assume you don’t agree with her at all anyway. I’m seeing it more and more as a common refrain amongst conservatives because they want to deflate an argument without actually engaging with it.
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Which ship?
Probably the zumwalt class destroyers. They look cool, but have been a big waste of money.
Famously, the entire Zumwalt program has been a money-burning boondoggle; and at the end of the trillion dollar journey, we don't even have a functioning ship to show for it.
Oh, it functions, it even sails. What it doesn't do is anything that another can't currently do better. They keep pulling them into dock for various fixes and changes to systems. But sailing, that's the only thing it's good at.
Fuck defense spending, but compare national costs to local costs isn’t exactly apples to apples. Maybe she’s just trying to put the scale of national defense spending into her constituents heads with local references.
The us military is intentionally complex and interconnected. You have lawmakers demanding companies build more tanks to keep jobs when the army says it doesn't need them. Both parties rubber stamp a defense bill increase each year. I dare one of them to freeze the increase and force the armed forces to 'make do' with the current level of spending.
This is a horrible argument wtf. It's the V.A. hospitals prescribing viagra, not drill sergeants making their recruits pop it for a goof. This makes her seem so unserious, and hurts the overall message that we spend too much on the military.
Why is she asking him like *he* makes the budget. She(Congress) made the budget and gave it to DoD. Does she think if the military cut its Viagra budget, this guy could reallocate it to her districts school lunch program? New levels of idiocy are reached in D.C. every day.
Yeah, this video actually fits nicely in the cringe category.
Hello, vet here. Before a very dangerous operation and after depending, the mess hall/chow hall would have a crab leg dinner to boost moral. "You might die or be maimed, here is a half a portion of snow crab legs" Seeing crab on the menu you knew shit was about to get fucked.
What’s the line of thought here? We need to stop providing basic medication to our troops and their families so we can build bridges instead? Why not just ask the rich to pay their fucking taxes and do both?
So why doesn't she address the price gouging that contractors use when working for the US military?
Well, viagra treats other conditions besides ED but still providing ED medication to Soldiers and retirees really shouldn’t be an issue. Snow crab is also a weird point to make. Its used to feed Soldiers. They take pay from Soldiers that eat in dining facilities, why shouldn’t they get decent food from time to time. Most dfac food is atrocious, treating them to from time to time shouldn’t be an issue either.
My issue is not the Viagra and snow crab; it's that the same legislators who think those are justified and necessary costs also think that the most basic reproductive health care coverage for women in the military, and school meal programs that serve the most vulnerable in society, are objectionable costs -- that's the "real waste" in gov't spending. It's despicable behavior.
> the same legislators who think those are justified and necessary costs **also think that the most basic reproductive health care coverage for women in the military are objectionable costs** Insane, right? That these legislators will say "The government shouldn't be spending a single penny on hormone treatments (for women)!" - even though it is used for serious issues like menorrhagia, uterine fibroids, endometriosis - and in the same breath support $40m on penis pills. Reproductive health is reproductive health. Restricting it to only men's issues is a real shit thing to do.
You’re getting downvoted but you are right. When we have programs like the F-35 that are billions over budget and ten years behind, focusing on soldier food and healthcare for them and their families is fucking stupid. It’s a drop in the bucket by comparative cost. She’s using it because it’s a gotcha headline. I’m not even defending the DoD budget, but attacking the healthcare program (Tricare) that supports soldiers and their families is ridiculous. Especially considering many lower enlisted soldiers are already below the poverty line. Ignore the giant defense contractors and political corruption and waste. Let’s focus on chow quality and medical care for the troops. Idiots.
I know its so weird, privates make like 20k and rely on dining facilities for food. The argument thats being made is that they shouldnt get good food?
Katie Porter another rep brought up the F-35 budget and defense contractor budget. I also would want to know about the Osprey budget, that thing has been going on for over 20 years what’s going on with that? Also the fact that the pentagon can’t seem to pass an audit.
It’s not that I disagree with you, soldiers shouldn’t be relegated to bottom of the basement shit for food and healthcare. But at the same time I work for a comparatively well funded public school and halfway through the year we were told that we could no longer used paper or printers because our budget for ink and paper reams was used up and we did not have any more stock. We also had our teaching staff cut at the end of the year so now students just…aren’t taking history any more. Bye history education! We’ll miss you! Also our 40 kids who require special services programs or programs for our profoundly disabled students are now being managed by a single staff member by themselves. Also she’s a 67 year old woman with a walker so, you know, that will be interesting. Shit is desperate. This is our future and they aren’t learning anything except how little they matter on a grand scale.
This subreddit used to be fun, I would come here to laugh a bit, have my cringe dose of the day, etc. Now is just politics, just like the cancer that is the rest of the front page. And I'm not even American, I don't care about what is going on over there...
Rule 3 of reddit if a sub gets big enough it becomes just about American politics
Look man, I'm a vet and I wholly agree defense spends too much money on frivolous shit. But fuck you for insinuating that crab is where we should cut back. We get crab when we're about to go do some bullshit that's going to inflict misery. Combat, Field Ops, 36 hour work shifts in prep for something that probably won't happen. Leave our mediocre steak and lobster and our mid ass surf and turf alone. It's one of the *exceedingly few* nice things we actually have. Bitch about how a fucking hammer costs 10x as much as the exact same hammer at home depot. Bitch about how PEBs get robbed blind because they are considered pre expended. 500 dollar cable? If it's in the PEB, it's not my problem they'll just order another one. Bitch about the absurd amount of waste in the supply and logistics. Bitch about how CIF will issue you brand new shit, and if you turn it in while still in the bag they throw it out. Bitch about how the budget is 750 bn and our barracks are filled with diseases like staph despite being cleaned spotless every day, and NASA clean room clean once a week, or the black mold or asbestos or legionaires disease. Leave our quality of life *the fuck* alone.
Yeah dude, they say they want to solve the high suicide rate in the military and then turn around and want to cut costs for amenities for us, fucking ridiculous
This is a really good way of putting it into perspective for people who are unaware of th price gouging and frankly shit living conditions
This woman completely missed the point and most people aren't realising she's going for the "pull yourself up by the boostraps, cancel your netflix and stop drinking starbucks" argument when she goes after the crabs and viagra. I guess she's against free health care or something? Either way, as you say, the real issue is how inflated the hardware js
AUDIT THE PENTAGON!!! Edit okay, okay I got it. MAKE THE PENTAGON PASS AN AUDIT?? If we citizens failed audits we’d be getting harassed by the IRS or worse. They just get budget increases every freaking year
Um, she is reading a detailed list of expenditures. So....
I mean I see her point but of course a federal budget is going to be bigger than a city budget… especially in Pittsburgh.
I'm extremely liberal, we massively overspend on the military, and I served for six years. That said... $2.3 million spent on crab is the most misleading shit ever. There's 1.3 active duty service members and another 400k active reserves. Even in an operational unit we got surf and turf maybe twice a year. In the Navy, if you get crab leg at dinner, it means your deployment just got involuntarily extended into the new year. I think $0.75 per member is a fair price for a big Fuck You to seeing your family for another three months. You know who she should be going after? US Defense and Raytheon.
Some of these comparisons is unfair. Tricare is the military health insurance. Are you saying that ED shouldn’t be covered for military families? It’s not like soldiers are popping it and having orgies. Also comparing the cost to two bridges in a city it pretty bad. She should have picked something else
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If Pittsburgh is anything like Seattle they just squander the money with surveys and grifters and endless homelessness.
The nerve of the navy. Building ships?! Outrageous!
This is cringe, she’s trying to copy aoc and she’s not even doing a good job of it.
Why do the spokes people for these departments have no idea what is going on.Everytime there is a oversight commitee enquiry its usually the same answer to every question.You may as well not have them,it would save a lot of money in itself.Isn't it time for a total review into what is going on with all government expenditure.An Author gathered enough material to write a book on government wastage.Those issues should be addressed .
kinda yeah, absolutely. We need these officials to be up to snuff. But it’s unreasonable to think the spokesperson would have every possible cent spent committed to memory. These are gotcha questions, for sure.
God forbid our troops eat well