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Corrupt Government Title: The Pentagon Can't Account for $21 Trillion (That's Not a Typo) Twenty-one trillion dollars. The Pentagons own numbers show that it cant account for $21 trillion. Yes, I mean trillion with a T. And this could change everything. But Ill get back to that in a moment. There are certain things the human mind is not meant to do. Our complex brains cannot view the world in infrared, cannot spell words backward during orgasm and cannot really grasp numbers over a few thousand. A few thousand, we can feel and conceptualize. Weve all been in stadiums with several thousand people. We have an idea of what that looks like (and how sticky the floor gets). But when we get into the millions, we lose it. It becomes a fog of nonsense. Visualizing it feels like trying to hug a memory. We may know what $1 million can buy (and we may want that thing), but you probably dont know how tall a stack of a million $1 bills is. You probably dont know how long it takes a minimum-wage employee to make $1 million. Thats why trying to understandtruly understandthat the Pentagon spent 21 trillion unaccounted-for dollars between 1998 and 2015 washes over us like your mother telling you that your third cousin you met twice is getting divorced. It seems upsetting, but you forget about it 15 seconds later because
what else is there to do? Twenty-one trillion. But lets get back to the beginning. A couple of years ago, Mark Skidmore, an economics professor, heard Catherine Austin Fitts, former assistant secretary in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, say that the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General had found $6.5 trillion worth of unaccounted-for spending in 2015. Skidmore, being an economics professor, thought something like, She means $6.5 billion. Not trillion. Because trillion would mean the Pentagon couldnt account for more money than the gross domestic product of the whole United Kingdom. But still, $6.5 billion of unaccounted-for money is a crazy amount. So he went and looked at the inspector generals report, and he found something interesting: It was trillion! It was fucking $6.5 trillion in 2015 of unaccounted-for spending! And Im sorry for the cursing, but the word trillion is legally obligated to be prefaced with fucking. It is indeed way more than the U.K.s GDP. Skidmore did a little more digging. As Forbes reported in December 2017, [He] and Catherine Austin Fitts
conducted a search of government websites and found similar reports dating back to 1998. While the documents are incomplete, original government sources indicate $21 trillion in unsupported adjustments have been reported for the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015. Lets stop and take a second to conceive how much $21 trillion is (which you cant because our brains short-circuit, but well try anyway). The human brain is not meant to think about a trillion dollars. And its definitely not meant to think about the $21 trillion our Department of Defense cant account for. These numbers sound bananas. They sound like something Alex Jones found tattooed on his backside by extraterrestrials. But the 21 trillion number comes from the Department of Defense Office of Inspector Generalthe OIG. Although, as Forbes pointed out, after Mark Skidmore began inquiring about OIG-reported unsubstantiated adjustments, the OIGs webpage, which documented, albeit in a highly incomplete manner, these unsupported accounting adjustments, was mysteriously taken down. Luckily, people had already grabbed copies of the report, whichfor nowyou can view here. Heres something else important from that Forbes articlewhich is one of the only mainstream media articles you can find on the largest theft in American history: Given that the entire Army budget in fiscal year 2015 was $120 billion, unsupported adjustments were 54 times the level of spending authorized by Congress. Thats right. The expenses with no explanation were 54 times the actual budget allotted by Congress. Well, its good to see Congress is doing 1/54th of its job of overseeing military spending (thats actually more than I thought Congress was doing). This would seem to mean that 98 percent of every dollar spent by the Army in 2015 was unconstitutional. So, pray tell, what did the OIG say caused all this unaccounted-for spending that makes Jeff Bezos net worth look like that of a guy jingling a tin can on the street corner? [The July 2016 inspector general] report indicates that unsupported adjustments are the result of the Defense Departments failure to correct system deficiencies.' They blame trillions of dollars of mysterious spending on a failure to correct system deficiencies? Thats like me saying I had sex with 100,000 wild hairless aardvarks because I wasnt looking where I was walking. Twenty-one trillion. Say it slowly to yourself. At the end of the day, there are no justifiable explanations for this amount of unaccounted-for, unconstitutional spending. Right now, the Pentagon is being audited for the first time ever, and its taking 2,400 auditors to do it. Im not holding my breath that theyll actually be allowed to get to the bottom of this. But if the American people truly understood this number, it would change both the country and the world. It means that the dollar is sprinting down a path toward worthless. If the Pentagon is hiding spending that dwarfs the amount of tax dollars coming in to the federal government, then its clear the government is printing however much they want and thinking there are no consequences. Once these trillions are considered, our fiat currency has even less meaning than it already does, and its only a matter of time before inflation runs wild. It also means that any time our government says it doesnt have money for a project, its laughable. It can clearly create as much as it wants for bombing and death. This would explain how Donald Trumps military can drop well over 100 bombs a day that cost well north of $1 million each. So why cant our government also create endless money for health care, education, the homeless, veterans benefits and the elderly, to make all parking free and to pay the Rolling Stones to play stoop-front shows in my neighborhood? (Im sure the Rolling Stones are expensive, but surely a trillion dollars could cover a couple of songs.) Obviously, our government could do those things, but it chooses not to. Earlier this month, Louisiana sent eviction notices to 30,000 elderly people on Medicaid to kick them out of their nursing homes. Yes, a country that can vomit trillions of dollars down a black hole marked Military cant find the money to take care of our poor elderly. Its a repulsive joke. Twenty-one trillion. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke about how no one knows where the money is flying in the Pentagon. In a barely reported speech in 2011, he said, My staff and I learned that it was nearly impossible to get accurate information and answers to questions such as, How much money did you spend? and How many people do you have? They cant even find out how many people work for a specific department? Note for anyone looking for a job: Just show up at the Pentagon and tell them you work there. It doesnt seem like theyd have much luck proving you dont. For more on this story, check out David DeGraws excellent reporting at ChangeMaker.media, because the mainstream corporate media are mouthpieces for the weapons industry. They are friends with benefits of the military-industrial complex. I have seen basically nothing from the mainstream corporate media concerning this mysterious $21 trillion. I missed the time when CNNs Wolf Blitzer said that the money we dump into war and deatheither the accounted-for money or the secretive trillionscould end world hunger and poverty many times over. Theres no reason anybody needs to be starving or hungry or unsheltered on this planet, but our government seems hellbent on proving that it stands for nothing but profiting off death and misery. And our media desperately want to show they stand for nothing but propping up our morally bankrupt empire. When the media arent actively promoting war, theyre filling the airwaves with shit, so the entire country cant even hear itself think. Our whole mindscape is filled to the brim with nonsense and vacant celebrity idiocy. Then, while no one is looking, the largest theft humankind has ever seen is going on behind our backscovered up under the guise of national security. Twenty-one trillion. Dont forget.
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#3. To: Deckard (#0)
A Trillion here,a Trillion there,and pretty soon you are talking about REAL money!
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