This week, the three military contractors that do the most business with the Pentagon announced their quarterly profits for 2012. Their profits continue to grow while they push Washington, D.C. to protect their budgets at the expense of the rest of us.
Here’s the breakdown so far for this year:
This week's announcement raises a fundamental question: Should people and companies be allowed to make huge profits from war? Even raising this question in today’s environment may seem trite, but we used to have different answers than those that prevail in modern-day Washington, D.C.
“I don’t want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster.”-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, May 22, 1940.
“Worse than traitors in arms are the men who pretend loyalty to the flag, feast and fatten on the misfortunes of the Nation while patriotic blood is crimsoning the plains of the South and their countrymen mouldering the dust.”-- President Abraham Lincoln.
This last quote is particularly relevant to this week’s profit announcements. Lincoln referred to war profiteers making money by cheating the Union Army. Outrage at war profiteering during this period led to the passage of “Lincoln’s Law,” officially known as the False Claims Act. The False Claims Act is the very same law that two of the companies listed above, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, allegedly violated through price-fixing and double-billing the taxpayer, leading to their having to pay roughly $20 million in the first quarter of 2012 to settle suits brought by the U.S. government.
During Roosevelt’s time, the idea of a single contractor company making almost a billion dollars worth of profit in three months would have received short shrift. As Roosevelt’s quote above shows, the idea of people profiting from war’s “disaster” disgusted him, and during his presidency the Truman Committee relentlessly investigated and exposed war profiteers. The closest analogy in our time would be the Committee on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which found that up to $60 billion (as of September 2011) was lost to waste and fraud in military contracting in those conflicts.
And yet, despite this historical lack of patience for war profiteering, and despite the current record showing gross misconduct and waste, the U.S. government keeps shoveling taxpayer money at these huge corporations. Could it be that the more than $5 million in campaign donations and $33 million in lobbying dollars so far this election cycle from the military contractors keep Congress intentionally ignorant of the problem?
President George Washington knew a few things about war profiteers, and he didn’t mince words:
“There is such a thirst for gain [among military suppliers]... ;that it is enough to make one curse their own Species, for possessing so little virtue and patriotism.”
As long as we continue to allow the profit motive to play a role in America’s war, virtue and patriotism -- to say nothing of peace -- will continue to be in short supply.
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Your article is why the US needs "unafraid" and unbeholding to corporations leaders and law makers. So long as Presidents don't see they're required to ensure the constitution's faithful execution (Article 2, Section 3) and our congressman are greedy rather than patriots to the Constitution, we'll never put an end to such wast of "THE PEOPLE'S" money.
We've allow congress be careers rather than "Public Trustees" (Article 6) allowing them to believe themselves above the Constitution and laws they make. There's no place in the constitution where presidents are to have retirement and protection upon leaving office, nor congress lifetime income after a few terms in office when they are all only "Public Trustees" chosen by the people, which haven't happened from this nation foundation. For that cause I seek help in eliminating the conditions you spoke of by only signing http://signon.org/sign/eliminate-capitalistic?source=c.fwd.in&r_by=4033819 which it how the constitution allow for us to overthrow the corrupt government not governing as intended by the Constitution.
Meanwhile, truckloads of crystal meth come across our border everyday destroying the lives of a lot of Americans. If our border is that wide open, what will stop another bin Laden from attacking??
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/09/mexico-meth-bust_n_1266251.html
I spent close to a year homeless and crashed at a gay bathhouse whenever I could afford it (the cheapest place in town). I learned a hell of a lot about tina...where it comes from, smoking, snorting, booty bumping, slamming, etc. Our weed is locally grown in basements but the meth is not produced locally.
This is from an article in the Seattle Times -
"OLYMPIA — The small meth lab — a toxic, dangerous and squalid symbol of the methamphetamine problem — is becoming a rarity in Washington and around the country, but the drug itself remains.
The number of meth labs found in Washington dropped by more than 50 percent last year — a decrease credited in part to tough new laws that include restricting over-the-counter sales of everyday cold and allergy medications used to make methamphetamine.
But into the void stepped Mexican-based drug organizations that ship a purer, more addictive form of the drug — crystal meth, also known as "ice." Officials now say 75 percent of the state's meth comes from outside its borders, compared to an estimated 50 percent in 2001."
As far throwing them under the bus, I think the GOP and Boeing have plans for a combine-sized shredder to do that job. Halliburton will get the contract for the driver.