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Bernie Sanders: Audit The Department Of Defense - RCP
Bernie Sanders: Audit The Department Of Defense, Contractors Wasting Money While Soldiers Are On Food StampsRCP
Posted on December 29, 2015
<snip>
At an event Monday night in Storm Lake, Iowa, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says that, "when we talk about making government more cost effective, it doesn't simply mean cutting Medicaid and food stamps."
"What it does mean is taking a hard look at an agency which recieves $600 billion per year where there is an immense amount of waste and fraud," Sanders said. "We have massive cost overruns with defense contractors, we've got deployment after deployment for our soldiers, and we've got military families on food stamps."
BERNIE SANDERS: The day before 9/11 -- September 10, 2001, this guy that I have nothing to do with, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he gave a speech and he said that there are trillions of dollars in the Dept. of Defense that we can't account for.
That was Rumsfeld the day before 9/11 -- the speech never got a lot of attention.
The Department of Defense is the only agency of government, to my knowledge, that cannot sustain an independent audit.
You go to them and ask how many private contractors we have. Well, they really don't know. It;s so complicated, a huge comlicated system.
I believe when we talk about making government more cost effective, it doesn't simply mean cutting Medicaid and food stamps.
What it does mean is...
That was Rumsfeld the day before 9/11 -- the speech never got a lot of attention.
The Department of Defense is the only agency of government, to my knowledge, that cannot sustain an independent audit.
You go to them and ask how many private contractors we have. Well, they really don't know. It;s so complicated, a huge comlicated system.
I believe when we talk about making government more cost effective, it doesn't simply mean cutting Medicaid and food stamps.
What it does mean is...
Link: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/12/29/bernie_sanders_audit_the_department_of_defense.html
28 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
I might have to eat my hat!
Go Bernie!
Classified information would have to be revealed to do so, so it will never happen.
So we have another ridiculous pie in the sky policy proposal from the Great and Powerful Oz.
"Dear Colonel Holmes,
I am sorry to be so long in writing. I know I promised to let you hear from me at least once a month, and from now on you will, but I have had to have some time to think about this first letter. Almost daily since my return to England I have thought about writing, about what I want to and ought to say. First, I want to thank you, not just for saving me from the draft, but for being so kind and decent to me last summer, when I was as low as I have ever been. One thing which made the bond we struck in good faith somewhat palatable to me was my high regard for you personally. In retrospect, it seems that the admiration might not have been mutual had you known a little more about me, about my political beliefs and activities. At least you might have thought me more fit for the draft than for ROTC. Let me try to explain.
As you know, I worked for two years in a very minor position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I did it for the experience and the salary, but also for the opportunity, however small, of working every day against a war I opposed and despised with a depth of feeling I had reserved solely for racism in America before Vietnam. I did not take the matter lightly, but studied it carefully, and there was a time when not many people had more information about Vietnam at hand than I did. I have written and spoken and marched against the war. One of the national organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium is a close friend of mine. After I left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington to work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium, then to England to organize the Americans here for demonstrations here October 15th and November 16th.
Interlocked with the war is the draft issue, which I did not begin to consider separately until early 1968. For a law seminar at Georgetown I wrote a paper on the legal arguments for and against allowing, within the Selective Service System, the classification of selective conscientious objection, for those opposed to participation in a particular war, not simply to, quote, participation in war in any form, end quote. From my work I came to believe that the draft system itself is illegitimate. No government really rooted in limited, parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong, a war which, in any case, does not involve immediately the peace and freedom of the nation.
The draft was justified in World War II because the life of the people collectively was at stake. Individuals had to fight if the nation was to survive, for the lives of their countrymen and their way of life. Vietnam is no such case. Nor was Korea, an example where, in my opinion, certain military action was justified but the draft was not, for the reasons stated above.
Because of my opposition to the draft and the war, I am in great sympathy with those who are not willing to fight, kill, and maybe die for their country, that is, the particular policy of a particular government, right or wrong. Two of my friends at Oxford are conscientious objectors. I wrote a letter of recommendation for one of them to his Mississippi draft board, a letter which I am more proud of than anything else I wrote at Oxford last year. One of my roommates is a draft resister...
I am sorry to be so long in writing. I know I promised to let you hear from me at least once a month, and from now on you will, but I have had to have some time to think about this first letter. Almost daily since my return to England I have thought about writing, about what I want to and ought to say. First, I want to thank you, not just for saving me from the draft, but for being so kind and decent to me last summer, when I was as low as I have ever been. One thing which made the bond we struck in good faith somewhat palatable to me was my high regard for you personally. In retrospect, it seems that the admiration might not have been mutual had you known a little more about me, about my political beliefs and activities. At least you might have thought me more fit for the draft than for ROTC. Let me try to explain.
As you know, I worked for two years in a very minor position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I did it for the experience and the salary, but also for the opportunity, however small, of working every day against a war I opposed and despised with a depth of feeling I had reserved solely for racism in America before Vietnam. I did not take the matter lightly, but studied it carefully, and there was a time when not many people had more information about Vietnam at hand than I did. I have written and spoken and marched against the war. One of the national organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium is a close friend of mine. After I left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington to work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium, then to England to organize the Americans here for demonstrations here October 15th and November 16th.
Interlocked with the war is the draft issue, which I did not begin to consider separately until early 1968. For a law seminar at Georgetown I wrote a paper on the legal arguments for and against allowing, within the Selective Service System, the classification of selective conscientious objection, for those opposed to participation in a particular war, not simply to, quote, participation in war in any form, end quote. From my work I came to believe that the draft system itself is illegitimate. No government really rooted in limited, parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong, a war which, in any case, does not involve immediately the peace and freedom of the nation.
The draft was justified in World War II because the life of the people collectively was at stake. Individuals had to fight if the nation was to survive, for the lives of their countrymen and their way of life. Vietnam is no such case. Nor was Korea, an example where, in my opinion, certain military action was justified but the draft was not, for the reasons stated above.
Because of my opposition to the draft and the war, I am in great sympathy with those who are not willing to fight, kill, and maybe die for their country, that is, the particular policy of a particular government, right or wrong. Two of my friends at Oxford are conscientious objectors. I wrote a letter of recommendation for one of them to his Mississippi draft board, a letter which I am more proud of than anything else I wrote at Oxford last year. One of my roommates is a draft resister...
<snip>
More: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/clinton/etc/draftletter.html
leads to a huge waste of taxpayer money.
Why is there no accountability in these glaring cases of conflict of interest? Make public all the Halliburton ilk situations and make the bastards pay it all back on the basis of fraud, gross accounting negligence, whatever. Dig it up, shine the bright lights on it and publicize it all.
How many of us have this as a huge, grating pet peeve about our govt?!
It's not just Wall St that needs authentically enforced accounting standards.
