It's insane to me that any American citizen would casually accept this. The only reason I can think of that any U.S. Citizen would not be disgusted by this (other than those in the club who directly benefit from how that *800 billion* is spent) is ignorance. It's one of the greatest travesties of modern times, and the very institution who should be asking questions about *why* The Pentagon continues failing these audits, doesn't even mention it, let alone discuss it.
I agree. Unless people are willing and able to spend the time necessary to seek out independent news sources like, well, you, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, etc, it is unlikely they will learn that so much of the income they earned, that the government then proceeded to take from them, is so poorly accounted for.
People are told that death and taxes are inevitable. That may be true. However, ignoring how tax dollars are spent is kind of like ignoring one's physical and mental health. The more an individual turns away, the greater the potential for harm to occur that, over time, grows from something small to something monumental.
The logical conclusion is that facing things "now" (whenever a person becomes aware of the abdication) is the best possible time to do so... otherwise, you risk the very likely outcome of facing the problem only when it has grown so big as to be an existential priority in which the stakes are commensurate with the amount of time the problem has been ignored.
That sequence of events back in 2001 when a major discrepancy was revealed and an audit was threatened on September 10th- And on the 11th, some kind of large flying object hit the Pentagon pretty much exactly where the records & auditors were located, destroying records & killing many of the staff? Strong disincentive.
I guess if dysfunctional didn't have serious downsides, we (some of us) wouldn't care so much. This issue is not prime news anywhere. The NYT, and other mainstream outlets have no use for this. Much in our world with true consequences are shunted off to the side or buried completely. Thanks for bringing up the bodies.
Why would they care ,who said they can’t keep losing wars or more simply put starting them. Our congress critters are either compromised or greedy pigs. Saddest part of this is the complete lack of morality and accountability.
Do what the very rich are doing. Trade "cash" which onl exists as ones & zeroes in some computer memory for real world assets. Real estate, businesses, equipment, supplies, physical items that can be used or bartered. Can't eat paper. Gold either...
I get calls regularly from hedge fund people who want to buy our business, not because we're so wonderful but because anything real is better to be holding on to than something that exists only in a computer memory when the bottom falls out.
Fiat currency...worth whatever someone will trade you for it. It can be turned off instantaniously...and will someday. I believe we're being played like childbrained adults
I forgot to include the casinos of the rich...stock markets...they are constantly manipulated and act as a money laundering system for our politicians daily.
You have to keep s[?e cash for capitalistic trade but I'm all for returning to a barter system for goods and services...I was raised by people that understood the barter systems value
Credit unions are independent...I put some of my "vast treasure" into metal...we don't have our own currency anymore. The Treasury borrows currency from the "Federal Reserve" which is a branch bank of the Bank for International Settlements in Zurich Switzerland. The FED isn't a US financial entity like you've been led to believe...I bet there's alot of stuff you believe that's not really true.
Serfs aren't respected in this country...we have 4% of Earth's population but 25% of Earth's prison population...shameful abuse of the wage slaves that do all the labor and pay most of the taxes...
We need to connect taxes more to expenditures, in people’s minds. IE. ‘Do you support the war in Ukraine?’ ‘You bet I do’’. ‘Excellent. Thank you for your support. Your share of the costs per month for you and your family are.....let’s see....$437 a month. We will be deducting that from your digital currency wallet this year. Have a nice day Sir!’ (Government agent walks toward his black SUV singing softly ‘Own nothing, Be happy’.).
DoS, DoD and CIA are run by the same Intl Central Banking System that owns Earth's Central banks in ever nation where US has atleast one military base(179)...Since 1945 those muscle forces have done most of the evil on Earth...mostly without any Serfs knowing anything about anything.
Politicians aren't allowed to affect !nothing they do...they let them fiddle with meaningless(to them) social issues as divisive distraction only...
We are Russia in 1905. The Dumas was totally ineffective, a do-nothing group with anointed leadership but no power. Russia limped along another 12+ years until overthrown, I can hope we last at least that much.
Or the USSR about the of K.U. Chernenko. A sclerotic bureaucracy nominally run by a dotard. The security services still have fearsome powers of repression, but nobody still believes the slogans that they must chant, and those in charge are stealing everything not nailed down and jockeying for position.
DoD audits are overblown, we should concerned more about performance. The fact that we care more about counting beans than winning wars is a blessing and hopefully not a temporary one.
If there is money or equipment missing that would be concerning - but what these auditors are looking for is records, i.e. paperwork. This is the ultimate result of taking 18-19 y/o's, giving them a gun and expecting them to kill and die for their country. "Oh but make sure you file this paperwork properly."
Our military is mission oriented, as it should be it imo, and so commanders are concerned with accomplishing it and making sure their boys return home alive. With the recruiting crisis we are already overworked, tasking everyone with more paperwork to pass an audit is not the answer here.
What are we trying to accomplish here anyway? Ensuring we have all the records for the billions in equipment we donated to the taliban? We are missing the forest while inspecting trees here. If we are trying to improve readiness, we should measure that. If we are trying to save money, we should measure that via cost for performance. Right now we are trying to measure how good private johnson is at counting beans. Spoiler alert - he's not good at it.
The completely unaudited part prior to 2017 is partially true. The services have internal audit agencies and DoD has an inspector General and of course there’s GAO, the Government Accountability Office Office. They have all done financial audits in some for/fashion since the CFO Act of 1990. I only mention that to say it’s much worse than the 6 years they claim they’ve been audited, it’s more like 33 years. And they won’t care until their budget starts being seriously reduced until they are compliant. They could be auditable and ultimately clean if they’d contract their accounting out to an Amazon and Lockheed (for aircraft maintenance) joint venture reporting to GAO since they work for Congress. Congress would have to get smarter and more mature to pull this off. In the meantime this is one of main reasons why the DoD books are so unclean, virtually everyone in the accounting chain including the auditors are this guy
Kindly put, the product baseline for all or most weapon systems procured since the 1960's is different than the documentation. This means readiness is not achieved in budgeted funds, see tactical aircraft the past 10 or 11 years.
If your asset descriptions are fiction you cannot invite auditors who look only for facts!
It's insane to me that any American citizen would casually accept this. The only reason I can think of that any U.S. Citizen would not be disgusted by this (other than those in the club who directly benefit from how that *800 billion* is spent) is ignorance. It's one of the greatest travesties of modern times, and the very institution who should be asking questions about *why* The Pentagon continues failing these audits, doesn't even mention it, let alone discuss it.
Agreed. I’m guessing people just don’t know
I agree. Unless people are willing and able to spend the time necessary to seek out independent news sources like, well, you, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, etc, it is unlikely they will learn that so much of the income they earned, that the government then proceeded to take from them, is so poorly accounted for.
People are told that death and taxes are inevitable. That may be true. However, ignoring how tax dollars are spent is kind of like ignoring one's physical and mental health. The more an individual turns away, the greater the potential for harm to occur that, over time, grows from something small to something monumental.
The logical conclusion is that facing things "now" (whenever a person becomes aware of the abdication) is the best possible time to do so... otherwise, you risk the very likely outcome of facing the problem only when it has grown so big as to be an existential priority in which the stakes are commensurate with the amount of time the problem has been ignored.
...or they are derailed, in the only 'legitimate' avenue by fraud.
So much corruptions to hide...trillions went missing and still no audits?
@Alan Tan
That sequence of events back in 2001 when a major discrepancy was revealed and an audit was threatened on September 10th- And on the 11th, some kind of large flying object hit the Pentagon pretty much exactly where the records & auditors were located, destroying records & killing many of the staff? Strong disincentive.
You mean that 3rd building, miraculously droped like a planned demolition? And how pentagon was hit exactly where those files are stored too...
I guess if dysfunctional didn't have serious downsides, we (some of us) wouldn't care so much. This issue is not prime news anywhere. The NYT, and other mainstream outlets have no use for this. Much in our world with true consequences are shunted off to the side or buried completely. Thanks for bringing up the bodies.
Why would they care ,who said they can’t keep losing wars or more simply put starting them. Our congress critters are either compromised or greedy pigs. Saddest part of this is the complete lack of morality and accountability.
...replace or with and...
compromised AND greedy pigs
Thanks. I didn’t mean to leave wiggle room for them.
I wonder what would happen of 90% of Americans decided to stop paying federal income tax. Just a thought.
Or removed their treasure from any FDIC insured entity...including the s/ock markets.
Serfs are treasure harvested by greedy capitalists and the Central Banking System in Zurich Switzerland...
removed in what form?
paper....gold....?
@Brenton Talcott
Do what the very rich are doing. Trade "cash" which onl exists as ones & zeroes in some computer memory for real world assets. Real estate, businesses, equipment, supplies, physical items that can be used or bartered. Can't eat paper. Gold either...
I get calls regularly from hedge fund people who want to buy our business, not because we're so wonderful but because anything real is better to be holding on to than something that exists only in a computer memory when the bottom falls out.
Some cash
Cash is just scratchy toilet paper if nobody believes otherwise.
Fiat currency...worth whatever someone will trade you for it. It can be turned off instantaniously...and will someday. I believe we're being played like childbrained adults
I forgot to include the casinos of the rich...stock markets...they are constantly manipulated and act as a money laundering system for our politicians daily.
You have to keep s[?e cash for capitalistic trade but I'm all for returning to a barter system for goods and services...I was raised by people that understood the barter systems value
Credit unions are independent...I put some of my "vast treasure" into metal...we don't have our own currency anymore. The Treasury borrows currency from the "Federal Reserve" which is a branch bank of the Bank for International Settlements in Zurich Switzerland. The FED isn't a US financial entity like you've been led to believe...I bet there's alot of stuff you believe that's not really true.
Serfs aren't respected in this country...we have 4% of Earth's population but 25% of Earth's prison population...shameful abuse of the wage slaves that do all the labor and pay most of the taxes...
We need to connect taxes more to expenditures, in people’s minds. IE. ‘Do you support the war in Ukraine?’ ‘You bet I do’’. ‘Excellent. Thank you for your support. Your share of the costs per month for you and your family are.....let’s see....$437 a month. We will be deducting that from your digital currency wallet this year. Have a nice day Sir!’ (Government agent walks toward his black SUV singing softly ‘Own nothing, Be happy’.).
DoS, DoD and CIA are run by the same Intl Central Banking System that owns Earth's Central banks in ever nation where US has atleast one military base(179)...Since 1945 those muscle forces have done most of the evil on Earth...mostly without any Serfs knowing anything about anything.
Politicians aren't allowed to affect !nothing they do...they let them fiddle with meaningless(to them) social issues as divisive distraction only...
We are Russia in 1905. The Dumas was totally ineffective, a do-nothing group with anointed leadership but no power. Russia limped along another 12+ years until overthrown, I can hope we last at least that much.
Or the USSR about the of K.U. Chernenko. A sclerotic bureaucracy nominally run by a dotard. The security services still have fearsome powers of repression, but nobody still believes the slogans that they must chant, and those in charge are stealing everything not nailed down and jockeying for position.
DoD audits are overblown, we should concerned more about performance. The fact that we care more about counting beans than winning wars is a blessing and hopefully not a temporary one.
If there is money or equipment missing that would be concerning - but what these auditors are looking for is records, i.e. paperwork. This is the ultimate result of taking 18-19 y/o's, giving them a gun and expecting them to kill and die for their country. "Oh but make sure you file this paperwork properly."
Our military is mission oriented, as it should be it imo, and so commanders are concerned with accomplishing it and making sure their boys return home alive. With the recruiting crisis we are already overworked, tasking everyone with more paperwork to pass an audit is not the answer here.
What are we trying to accomplish here anyway? Ensuring we have all the records for the billions in equipment we donated to the taliban? We are missing the forest while inspecting trees here. If we are trying to improve readiness, we should measure that. If we are trying to save money, we should measure that via cost for performance. Right now we are trying to measure how good private johnson is at counting beans. Spoiler alert - he's not good at it.
The completely unaudited part prior to 2017 is partially true. The services have internal audit agencies and DoD has an inspector General and of course there’s GAO, the Government Accountability Office Office. They have all done financial audits in some for/fashion since the CFO Act of 1990. I only mention that to say it’s much worse than the 6 years they claim they’ve been audited, it’s more like 33 years. And they won’t care until their budget starts being seriously reduced until they are compliant. They could be auditable and ultimately clean if they’d contract their accounting out to an Amazon and Lockheed (for aircraft maintenance) joint venture reporting to GAO since they work for Congress. Congress would have to get smarter and more mature to pull this off. In the meantime this is one of main reasons why the DoD books are so unclean, virtually everyone in the accounting chain including the auditors are this guy
https://youtu.be/JC_tLelvCN0?si=2hk2PEMnZwyAEaWq
Kindly put, the product baseline for all or most weapon systems procured since the 1960's is different than the documentation. This means readiness is not achieved in budgeted funds, see tactical aircraft the past 10 or 11 years.
If your asset descriptions are fiction you cannot invite auditors who look only for facts!