Bleeding America Dry

 

 

This is why we can’t have nice things like medicine, education or clean water.

Trump’s Generals Fatten the Pentagon

 

Buying the Presidency

Political Ad Spending to Hit $11.4B in 2016

Bribery

Corruption

Plutocracy

Oligarchy

Malfeasance

Betrayal

Fraud

Kakistocracy

Organized Crime

Political advertising is expected to reach a record $11.4 billion in 2016, up 20% from the previous presidential election year, according to a new report from Borrell Associates.

US Empire: 800 Bases Around the World

Why does the US have 800 military bases around the world?

This is according to American University professor David Vine in his forthcoming book Base Nation, in which he seeks to quantify the financial, environmental, and human costs of keeping these bases open.

Vanity Spending

“Vanity capital” is the new metric for narcissism, and analysts say its value worldwide is greater than Germany’s GDP

Whether $4.5 trillion is an accurate measure of how much people spend on purchases motivated in some way by vanity is debatable. But in the age of the selfie, it seems a safe bet that the number, whatever it may be, is growing.

$8.5 Trillion Unaccounted for at Pentagon

These nickels and dimes add up. Can anyone look at that number and just go on with their lives of servitude without comment?

$8,500,000,000,000

Missing. Stolen. Unaccounted. Disappeared. Gone.

$8.5 Trillion Unaccounted for, Why Should Congress Increase the Defense Budget?

Rethug House Targets Elderly and Sick

Republican budget plan slashes Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps

Republican-controlled House of Representatives and US Senate went on record this week approving budget resolutions that would eviscerate basic social programs on which tens of millions of elderly, poor and sick Americans depend.

…the cuts proposed are far beyond anything ever enacted by an American government: $5.5 trillion over 10 years in the House budget, $5.1 trillion over 10 years in the Senate budget. Pell grants, job training and housing programs are all targeted. But the biggest cuts come in so-called entitlement programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps.

They’ve opted for a strategy of open evil. Cuts to the infinite war budgets are nowhere in sight. The collapse of America seems assured at this rate, a society of ignorant, hate-filled, mindless, sick and desperate imperial killers.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

…And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

–Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., (killed for his activism)

Shit’s fucked up.

Corrupting Your Mind

See what big business spends to win American minds

One ad at a time…

Of $3.4 billion in contracts reported by the 144 trade groups from 2008 through 2012, more than $1.2 billion, or 37 percent, went toward advertising, public relations and marketing services, more than any other category. The second-highest total, $682.2 million, or 20 percent of the total, was directed toward legal, lobbying and government affairs.