“Improper Payments Top $100 Billion,” said the headline on July 10.
The Associated Press article discussed federal agency estimates — not necessarily proven figures — of over-payments and fraud in these agencies. As usual, the evil welfare queens and other shiftless bums had to take the perp walk. The AP reported billions stolen or wasted by Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment compensation, SNAP, Social Security, school lunches, Pell grants, and public housing assistance.
The accompanying Bloomberg News article was scarcely less enlightening. The Pentagon paid over $8,000 for a piece of $450 gear. The generals paid over $2,000 for a helicopter part that should have cost $300. Isn’t this old news?
Pieces like this, whether intentionally or not, distort an even worse truth of unimaginable waste of tax dollars. It’s easy enough to yawn at a 20-fold markup of the odd helicopter part if “national security” is at stake. We’re being trained to save our outrage for the welfare queens, and to give the corporate welfare kings a pass.
In this pairing of articles there was absolutely no mention of the Lockheed-Martin F-35 fighter jet. The plane doesn’t work properly. It crashes. It catches fire. Its designs have already been hacked by the Chinese. One potential buyer, Norway, complained that it was too expensive: A single plane costs about $10 million and its operational costs are estimated to be $800 million over its lifetime. The F-35 has been on and off “probation” with the Pentagon for mismanagement and cost overruns.
In 2012, a defense magazine reported that the F-35 program’s costs had soared to $1.5 trillion.
This one federal program rather puts the welfare queens to shame, doesn’t it? But who would even know when we routinely get propaganda instead of news.
This was published in the Standard Times on August 5, 2014
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20140805/opinion/408050301
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