Monday, April 19, 2010

How About Directing Some of That "Wasteful Spending" Anger in a Proper Direction (Say Defense Contractors)?

Maybe I should have abandoned history to go for a life in defense contracting. The largest of these organizations seem to have the best of both worlds: high government payouts and lack government of oversight. Check this out from Friday:

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As is probably the case with any rational American, I think that what this clip shows is an example of government waste. In the case of the defense contracts for both the Afghan and Iraqi wars, we have spent billions of dollars for crap results.

Where is the outcry regarding the wasteful government spending on this issue? I would rather that we'd spent less money by simply hiring government workers (military or civilian) to do those jobs. At least we could have oversight and accountability. However, I suspect that because this issue is tied to national security, those who normally are quickest to scream about wasteful spending are almost as silent as the grave.

We appear to have reached the point where national security now means ignoring both prudent fiscal responsibility and substantive governmental oversight. Maybe if we treated defense contractors like we did ACORN....

By the way, Eisenhower totally called it.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Free, don't you know that if you call for any cuts in military spending or government oversight of defense contractors then you want the (terrorists, communists, socialists, or people from Massachusetts) to win? Only social programs for poor people create deficits. Defense spending creates jobs.

Rhen said...

I'd be more impressed with Eisenhower's prescience if he hadn't also signed Executive Order 10450 barring "sexual perversion" from holding government jobs.