Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

The New Republic Daily Report 11/29/10 Waste Land: The Pentagon's Massive, Wildly Irrational Spending Binge Gregg Easterbrook  This year, the United States will spend at least $700 billion on defense and security. Adjusting for inflation, that’s more than America has spent on defense in any year since World War II—more than during the Korean war, the Vietnam war, or the Reagan military buildup. Much of that enormous sum results from spending increases under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Since 2001, military and security expenditures have soared by 119 percent. For most of that time, of course, the United States has been fighting two wars. Yet that’s not the cause of the defense-spending explosion. Even if the costs of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are subtracted, the defense budget has swelled by 68 percent since 2001. (All money figures in this article are stated in 2010 dollars.) The U.S. defense budget is now about the same as military spending in all other countries combined. Continue reading "Waste Land: The Pentagon's Massive, Wildly Irrational Spending Binge"  Bill Kristol's Think Tank Fetish: A Complete History of His Pseudo-Intellectual Hackery Jason Zengerle  How to Stop a Genocide Richard Just