As long as it is a US taxpayer/citizen that has been victimized by a big insurance company, Boehner and Cantor are nonstop in their deficit hawk Red-Baiting rhetoric. When it comes to Social Security and Medicare they are sadistic with glee at worsening the lot of their impoverished fellow citizens. But, when it comes to a $382 Billion airplane that the Defense Department does not want, but is made by big employers in their districts, they are not only just as “tax and spend” as any Democrat, but they do so at the expense of our National Security.
Meet the F-35 joint strike fighter. Not only does it come with a $382 Billion price tag, but part of that is $450 million dollars for a spare engine for each plane! And the Pentagon does not want it!
Per Defense Secretary Robert Gates, “…American taxpayers are spending $28 Million dollars a month, for an excessive and unjustified program that is slated for termination.”
Production of this fighter has already been plagued with cost overruns and delays. Indeed, details of this new Stealth fighter have already been hacked and thus might be obsolete. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html
So why is Boehner forcing them to take it anyway? It could have something to do with the fact that most of the spare engines are slated to be built just outside of John Boehner’s district in Ohio! And Rolls Royce, who gets another huge piece of making this unwanted expensive engine, just built a giant factory in Cantor’s district in Virginia.
This blatant brazen hypocrisy would be funny if Boehner and Cantor weren’t proposing budget cuts that negatively impact food inspection, NOAA (our weather service), and NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration).
The NNSA is important because the deliberate logical fallacy that Elitist Inside-the-Beltway Conventional Wisdom would throw back in our face is an Appeal to Fear. Appealing to Fear is a very powerful tool when it comes to manipulating the gullible and manufacturing consent. It has been used often lately; the fact that there are jihadist terrorists and Muslim extremists who want to kill us and are hiding among various civilian populations is used to justify blind subservience to the military-industrial complex.
When the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945, it didn’t just force Japan into a surrender that they were desperately seeking anyway. The advent of atomic energy as an offensive weapon changed the nature of warfare forever. Understand that the leaders of nations back through ancient history would periodically invent a reason (sacred honor, broken treaties, holy mandate, etc.) to wage war and rearrange the boundaries on a map at the expense of human life and suffering. When the bomb dropped in 1945 and we were looking at Mutually Assured Destruction, the nature of warfare changed. The planners of these wars realized that if nations challenged each other in the old conventional way the next time might just be the last.
The F-35 is designed to replace the F-16, A-10, F/A-18 and AV-8B. But our enemies are not building aircraft and engaging in dogfights. They are living in civilian populations and waging warfare from the shadows of those populations. If the Pentagon is saying that it’s already obsolete and they want to go with other options for a fighter why make them take something expensive and unwanted?
The mission of the NNSA is to monitor nuclear fuel and keep it out of the hands of any terrorists. A small cell of 19 jihadists willing to kill themselves for their religious beliefs was able to inflict a historic wound on this country almost 10 years ago. You can imagine what an organized larger band might do if it had access to nuclear fuel.
So even if the Appeal to Fear was valid, Boehner and Cantor take money away from the most effective method of dealing with the threat we face from jihadist enemies and give it to something designed to replace aging aircraft whose details have already been leaked.
John Boehner is currently getting predictable mileage for his stand against Social Security and Medicare in the name of “fiscal responsibility” at the same time he is attempting to get away with this con job. He as declared that cuts to Social Security and Medicare the table when it comes to coming budget cuts. Eric Cantor does feel entitled to keep a pork barrel Defense project for Rolls Royce, but he is silent on the subject of making the US citizen/taxpayer stay in the workforce for more years before claiming benefits for which they have paid into their entire lives.
The incompetence and corruption of the Bush Administration ultimately had no other use than political capitol for Barack Obama. Just as he got into power and used that capitol to back up Wall Street’s worst gamblers, so are Boehner and Cantor using the political capitol they got from the Tea Party to continue to tax and spend and make sure poor working citizen/taxpayers have to make due with less.
They are hypocrites. They are liars.
There is no reason to believe a word that Boehner or Cantor says!
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