This is what happens when bloated “defense” spending as well as mismanaged defense contracts both for new construction and maintenance go south. Your assets get blown out of the hanger and into the neighborhoods.
Here we have the situation in Florida where out of 55 F-22 stealth fighters, only 33 could be flown to safety in Ohio as articulated by the New York Times article:
Tyndall is home to 55 F-22 stealth fighters, which cost a dizzying $339 million each. Before the storm, the Air Force sent at least 33 of the fighters to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
Air Force officials have not disclosed the whereabouts of the remaining 22 planes, other than to say that a number of aircraft were left at the base because of maintenance or safety reasons.
An Air Force spokeswoman, Maj. Malinda Singleton, would not confirm that any of the aircraft left behind were F-22s.
Well, those in the air can account for some of those F-22s still in hangers on the base according to this Zero Hedge article:
F-22s are notoriously finicky and, as the Times puts it “not always flight-worthy.” The Air Force reported earlier this year that just 49% of F-22s were mission ready at any given time – the lowest rate of any fighter in the Air Force. The total value of the unaccounted-for fighters is around $7.5 billion.
My guess is, just like the trillions of American tax dollars “lost” on 9/11 when the accounting office was hit at the Pentagon by that “757” (i.e. cruise missile) .. this $7.5B can just be “written off”:
If the US were truly a republic, it would be much more responsible with the money that taxpayers trust Washington DC with and be purely defensive in it’s military vision and mission.
As an example, when Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers after he successfully manipulated the Confederate States of America and South Carolina into firing first at Fort Sumter, there were only just over 16,000 men in the US Army. By the war’s end over two MILLION would have served.
How different would the attempt for secession could have been if there had been no standing army but state/republic militias.
Fact is those, we are in an empire and we will continue to see the blatant disregard for all the taxpayer money and debt that has been squandered on this empire’s non-honoring policing of the globe.
The US government has a website JUST for addressing bullies. It reads:
When adults respond quickly and consistently to bullying behavior they send the message that it is not acceptable. Research shows this can stop bullying behavior over time.
Well I want to turn in Bolton and Pence man, they are out of control on the world’s playground man.
Here is a Bolton example from 2002 before the Iraq Invasion:
“I got a phone call from John Bolton – it was first time I had contact with him – and he said he had instructions to tell me that I have to resign from the organization, and I asked him why,” Bustani told RT. “He said “Cheney wants you out,” Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice president of the United States. that [my] management style was not agreeable to Washington.” …
… Bustani said he “owed nothing” to the US, pointing out that he was appointed by all OPCW member states. Striking a more sinister tone, Bolton said: “OK, so there will be retaliation. Prepare to accept the consequences. We know where your kids are.”
According to Bustani, two of his children were in New York at the time, and his daughter was in London.
Believe me, this is not the only data point. Bolton is known in DC as a “madman,” the “serial abuser,” the “bully” who happens to also be pretty effective at getting things done.
Why I bring this up now is the uptick on the rants against Russia and China now that the circus in town (all things Kavanaugh) is done. In this Moon of Alabama article, it is detailed to what extent the effort is to deflect once again from internal US issues to a world full of villains. Personally, I think with the impending demise of the prime proxy of US / Israel / UK / Saudi Arabia (ISIS) in the Middle East, there needs to be a “boogieman” bridge to keep the public sheep scared enough to let the US government and Deep State do what they want to do.
The United States enlists (delegates to) NATO countries to spread the s**t in global media in return for guaranteed safety given by the empire’s military. So Britian punts first at Russia:
The anti-Russian campaign is about alleged Russian spying, hacking and influence operations. .. Britain accused Russia’s military intelligence service (GRU) of spying attempts against the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague and Switzerland, of spying attempts against the British Foreign Office, of influence campaigns related to European and the U.S. elections, and of hacking the international doping agency WADA. British media willingly helped to exaggerate the claims:
“The Foreign Office attributed six specific attacks to GRU-backed hackers and identified 12 hacking group code names as fronts for the GRU – Fancy Bear, Voodoo Bear, APT28, Sofacy, Pawnstorm, Sednit, CyberCaliphate, Cyber Berku, BlackEnergy Actors, STRONTIUM, Tsar Team and Sandworm.”
The “hacking group code names” the Guardian tries to sell to its readers do not refer to hacking groups but to certain cyberattack methods. Once such a method is known it can be used by any competent group and individual. Attributing such an attack is nearly impossible. Moreover Fancybear, ATP28, Pawn Storm, Sofacy Group, Sednit and Strontium are just different names for one and the same well known method.
S**T = propaganda
So we have yet another show on the heels of over a year of Russia’s “meddling” in US elections (proven to be accomplished by the DNC itself as well as Israel’s Zionist organizations, both deep state and not so deep state) and after the Kavanaugh “Halftime Show”.
About the same time a few days ago, The Netherlands also did it’s part also targeting Russia:
The Netherland for its part released a flurry of information about the alleged spying attempts against the OPCW in The Hague. It claims that four GRU agents traveled to The Hague on official Russian diplomatic passports to sniff out the WiFi network of the OPCW. (WiFi networks are notoriously easy to hack. If the OPCW is indeed using such it should not be trusted with any security relevant issues.) The Russian officials were allegedly very secretive, even cleaning out their own hotel trash, while they, at the same, time carried laptops with private data and even taxi receipts showing their travel from a GRU headquarter in Moscow to the airport. Like in the Skripal/Novichok saga the Russian spies are, at the same time, portrayed as supervillains and hapless amateurs. Real spies are neither.
More s**t = More propaganda
95%+ of Americans soak all this up and believe it to be fact. It doesn’t matter if they align with Democrats or Republicans or even many times Libertarians, they still believe the statist BS.
What remains hidden to Americans is actions their own government and deep state have accomplished over the years and decades. Psychologically, it is usually people who would do atrocious things to others who are the first to project this kind of behavior on other people. These psychopaths and sociopaths are deeply embedded in our government and deep state and they don’t realize that this very behavior is what gives them away (to those who can see these red flags).
Think about the past 5 years alone where it was revealed the grand scale of U.S. and British spying (courtesy of Edward Snowden) and thanks to the Wikileaks Vault 7 leak of various CIA hacking tools was publicized. You have to know by now that the Pentagon runs large social media manipulation campaigns, right? You have to also know by now that the British GHCQ hacked Belgium’s main telecom network to spy on various international organizations in Brussels, like the OPCW mentioned at the top of this post. In fact, one of the NSA’s first mandates was to hack into the OPCW as early as September 2000 according to this article:
According to last week’s Shadow Brokers leak, the NSA compromised a DNS server of the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in September 2000, two years after the Iraq Liberation Act and Operation Desert Fox, but before the Bush election.
On the Chinese front, VP Pence took aim with the following bogus claim:
Vice President Mike Pence accused China on Thursday of trying to undermine President Donald Trump as the administration deploys tough new rhetoric over Chinese trade, economic and foreign policies. … Sounding the alarm, Pence warned other nations to be wary of doing business with China, condemning the Asian country’s “debt diplomacy” that allows it to draw developing nations into its orbit…
And then the Pentagon chimed in with it’s claims:
China represents a “significant and growing risk” to the supply of materials vital to the U.S. military, according to a new Pentagon-led report that seeks to mend weaknesses in core U.S. industries vital to national security. The nearly 150-page report, seen by Reuters on Thursday ahead of its formal release Friday, concluded there are nearly 300 vulnerabilities that could affect critical materials and components essential to the U.S. military.
Nothing is said about the times the US has done the same starting as early as 1982 according to this article:
A CIA operation to sabotage Soviet industry by duping Moscow into stealing booby-trapped software was spectacularly successful when it triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian gas pipeline, it emerged yesterday. … Mr Reed writes that the software “was programmed to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds”.
Since then Wikileaks resources lists > 25 cases of US “supply chain manipulation” of either computer hardware or software. Another search for “supply chain” in the Snowden archives shows 18 documents describing such ‘projects’.
Again, the US psychopaths are projecting their behavior on other nations.
Along these lines, I am personally going to learn about “5 Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life” as not only do our government leadership, Deep State, etc. all are filled with people like Bolton and Pence, but corporations who are wedded tightly to this highly dysfunctional government have similar issues inside of them. I believe that being able to see these “red-flags” is most important in these days where it seems like everything is in the political arena (Diversity in the Workplace, etc)
Y’all remember not that long ago when there was bragging going on about how the US was transforming itself into an oil exporter (and therefore self-sufficient so we would never again feel the effects of an oil embargo like OPEC did in October 1973)? Well, who told you that “fact”? What if I told you it was “Fake News”?
I guess it is one thing to get shale oil refined to the degree where the US would be secure in its oil production, but to do so in a way that was financially irresponsible is another. As Bill Bonner pointed out in this article, the recent peak of domestic oil production at the right was only one piece of the picture:
… The shale oil boom was even credited with having scuttled the oil market, which dropped from a high of around $130 a barrel in mid-2008 to under $30 in late 2016, thanks to so much new supply.
But guess what? The whole boom was fake. It didn’t add to wealth; it subtracted from it. Accumulated losses over the last five years tote to more than $200 billion, with $36 billion lost in the Bakken shale fields in North Dakota alone…
Not fake in that there was not oil produced, but that it was produced irresponsibly, but not just poor management or poor corporate decision-making but it was the Federal Reserve’s twisting of economic reality that fed this huge financial mistake:
Had credit been priced properly, it never would have happened. From The New York Times:
“The 60 biggest exploration and production firms are not generating enough cash from their operations to cover their operating and capital expenses. In aggregate, from mid-2012 to mid-2017, they had negative free cash flow of $9 billion per quarter.
While this effect that the FED has on corporations across this land with cheap credit (ZIRP) is not limited to the shale oil industry, Bill goes on to list a few more entities that will no longer be sustainable in their current form:
Of course, the same thing could be said of the trillion-dollar companies, Amazon and Apple, whose market capitalizations are largely the result of cheap credit.
And it could be said of the whole tech sector – with its outrageous inputs of capital into companies that have never made a dime.
Or it could be said of emerging markets, which have managed to suck up the loose change spilling out of the financial industry. They promised slightly higher yields, and now, they owe far more than they can pay…
.. “When the wind blows hard enough,” say the old-timers, “even turkeys fly.”
The wind never blew as hard as it did from 2009 to 2018. And overhead now are so many plump, money-losing birds that we suggest you take cover.
From the taxpayer bailouts ten years ago to today, we have quite a “bubble-rich” environment. Printing even more money is probably the only option left for the FED, we will see how far down the road they are able to kick this can. Rough sledding ahead .. prepare well and hang on!
Suspicious could be the first thing on your mind when you hear the media repeat verbatim what the government states as if it is truth. I have always doubted government statistics due to the spin that can be applied to “snow” the average American who understands very little about economics.
So when I saw the Burning Platform article and the quote below, I knew I had to dig deeper:
As you can see, the “civilian labor force”declined by 469,000 people in August from July. The number of “employed” dropped 423,000. The “not in labor force” increased by nearly 700,000. With these facts in mind (“facts” at least as far as the BLS numbers contain any shards of credibility), how can the Government claim that 201,000 “jobs were created” in August? How can CNBC say the “economy created more jobs than expected?” Based on the numbers in the details of the BLS report, it looks like, between the decline in the number of people employed and the decline in those not counted as part of the labor force, the economy shed over 1 million jobs.
PFM* is what the government uses to come up with these numbers. To really understand, one has to read AROUND the headline and dig for the truth.
[ * PFM is a nautical term we used in the US Navy ]
You can look at the monthly government stats, but know that “unemployment” is only when one has ACTIVELY searched for a job in the last 4 WEEKS! Do know that the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has a second measure of unemployment that includes workers who have been discouraged and out of the labor force for less than one year (below):
While the US government no longer tracks unemployment among discouraged workers who have been out of the work force for more than one year, John Williams of http://shadowstats.com continues to estimate this rate and places it at about 20%:
Courtesy of ShadowStats.com
I highly recommend this site as an excellent antidote to government statistics to get a more accurate view into the US economic environment whether it be unemployment, money supply or other critical statistics that show the true health of the US economy!
The bottom line is, how many people over 16 in this country have the opportunity to create value which generates wealth that sustains families and communities domestically (for this measure) for the health of all who call the US home? The US Government has a statistic that shows this, but these days they don’t publish it on the front page of major media outlets:
Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate 1980-2018
THIS is not good, too many people have given up on creating wealth for them, their kids and grandkids ..
… OR they have gone “underground” in their “business” of choice
… OR if they have chosen to leave the workforce behind, then that is fine. Maybe people have downsized, simplified and live a more self-sustaining lifestyle outside of the “rat-race”, well that is fine too.
Just please do your own research and be suspicious when the government / major media reports something .. anything!
Hundreds of years after the American Colonies united in a stand against tyranny, we have yet again experienced tyranny in this land first hand. This trend should be of no surprise as ever since the mid 1780s this nation’s government has gotten increasingly intrusive and abusive of the people.
This week, in the House of Representatives voting almost unanamously along party lines (with all but 4 GOP house members in favor) passed a bill [Community Safety and Security Act of 2018, H.R. 6691] that as Reason reports in this article:
… the bill “would label seemingly nonviolent offenses such as burglary of an unoccupied home and fleeing as violent offenses.”
“The bill would also label as violent conspiracy to commit any of the listed offenses, even when no violent acts have occurred,”
Yes, the government loves to ratchet up the number of people that could come under their NET of “violent offenders”. This is especially helpful when the FEMA buses (i.e. Redcoats – just doing their jobs) show up in your neighborhood and people flee .. yes, THOSE people can then be shot on sight because they committed a VIOLENT act of running away.
You can’t make this up!
The bill passed 247 to 152 … WITH 4 Republicans and 148 Democrats voting Nay.
The timing of this with almost total GOP approval along with the FEMA comms test to the nation coming up later this month is indeed interesting:
This is an awesome “opportunity” for the police state, prison revenue and overall tyranny taken to the next level. This administration is not about wanting to diffuse the power struggles in our culture but almost desires to ratchet it up a notch to see if it can get something started under “their” watch.
Now don’t be surprised that the Democrats did not vote FOR this .. they only didn’t because the other “flavor” sponsored the bill .. if their president had been behind this you can believe they would have loved this too. More power to the government, what can go wrong with that?
Just remember, the annual renewal of the NDAA means that anyone “seen” as having terrorist ties can be taken far from society with no judicial recourse. This bill is just another way to open up the net even wider, especially when communities protest EVEN PEACEFULLY, that those what flee will be consider violent and will now be treated as such.
Holly Harris, the executive director of the U.S. Justice Action Network, said in a statement to Reason. “At a time when we have bipartisan support for criminal justice reforms that will safely reduce incarceration and better prioritize public safety, passing a bill that does just the opposite makes no sense at all.”
Yes it does make sense Holly. What politicians SAY they are doing is rarely correlated to WHAT they are doing. Know that police, FBI, ATF, FEMA, the Prison-Industrial-Complex and all their cousins will use this bill to their advantage.
