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Introducing The "Overseas Contingency Operations Account" – Washington's Crony Capitalist War Slush Fund
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain has called it a “gimmick,” and Democrats complain that larding up the separate war funding bill with extra spending amounts to an “abusive loophole.” Yet so far, the massive increase is likely to remain in this year’s budget.
Another major criticism of the process has been its common use to fund favored projects and other items not directly tied to the war — a trend that has steadily grown over the years as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on and the Pentagon loosened the definition of war-related spending.
From 2001 to 2014, nearly $71 billion of nonwar funding was provided through war appropriations, according to the Pentagon’s own definition, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service reported in December.
– From the Politico article: War Budget Might be Permanent ‘Slush Fund’
Many people will read this post, and posts like it, and shrug their shoulders saying that there’s always going to be corruption. True; however, there are degrees of corruption. When empires such as the U.S. attain a certain level of corruption that reaches the point where it becomes engrained within the fabric of society, and you couple that with zero accountability for the super rich and powerful, you have the ingredients for societal collapse. We are rapidly approaching this point, and I personally don’t think there’s any way to stop it.
The best we can hope for is to sound the alarm bells as loudly as possible right now, identify the culprits and their methods of systemic abuse so that when what Martin Armstrong calls “crash and burn” happens, we don’t respond counterproductively by elevating even greater sociopaths into positions of power (yes this is possible and as history shows, quite probable).
With all that in mind, I want to introduce readers to the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account, or what is being referred to as the “war slush fund.” You know something’s bad when even Crazy John McCain calls it a “gimmick.”
From Politico:
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain has called it a “gimmick,” and Democrats complain that larding up the separate war funding bill with extra spending amounts to an “abusive loophole.” Yet so far, the massive increase is likely to remain in this year’s budget.
Read that again and think about the complete insanity of it. Everyone agrees it’s horrible, but it’s likely to remain anyway. This is imperial incompetence at its worst.
The practice of funding military operations through a separate spending account — called the Overseas Contingency Operations, or OCO, fund — was initially conceived as an “emergency” option, since wars cannot be budgeted for ahead of time and require supplemental funding as needs arise.
Fed funds rates at 0% were also an “emergency measure” and here we are five years later, supposedly in a healthy economy with financial oligarchs still hooked on earning from 0% free money.
War budgets have historically received far less scrutiny than the Pentagon’s so-called base budget. Weapons or equipment requested in these supplemental appropriations do not require detailed justifications. And, politically, lawmakers have also been less willing to vote against the budget that funds troops in foreign wars — making the measures easier to pass without serious scrubbing.
No wonder the U.S. seems to become engaged in a new war every other week. They don’t even care who’s fighting and killing each other. Weapons disappear and no one even cares, see: True Story – U.S. Military Lost Equipment from $750 Million Program, Some Ended up on eBay and Craigslist.
It’s all about producing more weapons, making mountains of cash, and then doing it again and again. The NSA in particular gets the joke:
It’s Not Just Spying – How the NSA Has Turned Into a Giant Profit Center for Corrupt Insiders
Another major criticism of the process has been its common use to fund favored projects and other items not directly tied to the war — a trend that has steadily grown over the years as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on and the Pentagon loosened the definition of war-related spending.
From 2001 to 2014, nearly $71 billion of nonwar funding was provided through war appropriations, according to the Pentagon’s own definition, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service reported in December.
The task of determining how to allocate the additional $38 billion in war funding will be left to the appropriations committees, if they are able to pass bills with the added spending. The administration’s initial $58 billion request already includes more than $42 billion for the war in Afghanistan and $5 billion for operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
“I think that we need to support, reluctantly, the OCO provision, which is to some degree a gimmick,” the Arizona Republican said last week. “But as opposed to going with the effects of sequestration, I would support OCO as the House acted.”
Just classic. You can always count on John McCain to come out and support something even though he admits it’s a gimmick. With “leaders” like these…
“Adding hundreds of billions of dollars that are more conveniently designated as emergency expenditures — so that they don’t have to be budgeted for along with other national priorities — is only making the fiscal problem that much greater,” McCain said in a floor speech then. “It is unfortunate that, at a time of war and with such a huge deficit and burgeoning debt, we continue to fund unnecessary projects and load up emergency supplemental appropriations bills with non-emergency items.”
What is now in the offing is a scale of abuse not yet seen, according to Winslow Wheeler, a former national security staffer for members of both parties and longtime Pentagon spending critic.
“Four or five years ago, Congress embraced it as a gimmick for $5 [billion] to $10 billion extra,” he said. “Now, they want to embrace it for $40 billion extra.”
The imperial spiral into the stratosphere of stupidity is well underway. With zero accountability for those in power, there’s no way to realistically stop it before crash and burn. The best we can hope is to bring the responsible to justice afterward and pick up the pieces by going back to the Constitution. The intellectual foundation for this must be laid down now. That is the primary purpose of this website.
* * *
For related articles, see:
A First Look at a New Report on Crony Capitalism – Trillions in Corporate Welfare
The Department of Homeland Security is a Conduit for Crony Capitalism
Meet James Biden: The Vice-President’s Crony Capitalist Brother
»
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Hey Hey Hey...this is all very convenient isn't it?
"The best we can hope is to bring the responsible to justice afterward and pick up the pieces by going back to the Constitution."
no. the best we can hope for is an end to the state and letting people live their own lives free from tyranny. government is tyranny and no one has the right to rule over others.
Do we call women who sell their bodies for sex "crony VIRGINS"?
Remember the Alamo!
Remember the Maine!
Remember the Place de la Concorde!
Never Forget.
What's wrong with that. Every company I've worked for has a expense line called unexpected war expenses.
Right ?
Wrong, gold standard= responsibility with consequences for war. Don't you love the fiat world but can't wait until the responsibility returns.
The only practical method to "end the state", by which I think Stacking is referring to the Federal Republic, is to push our state legislators to call an Article V Convention and to dramatically reduce, or even terminate the branches of government that constitute the Federal Republic by adopting new amendments to the Constitution that eliminate the original founding and legitimacy of the Federal Republic. In other words, the amended Constitution would define the beginning and the end of a central government that has gone totally out of control.
Then, it will be left to the 50 sovereign states to mismanage their own governments on an independent basis. At least citizens could vote with their feet if they didn't like the politics of the state where they resided.
" is to push our state legislators to call an Article V Convention and to dramatically reduce, or even terminate the branches of government that constitute the Federal Republic by adopting new amendments to the Constitution that eliminate the original founding and legitimacy of the Federal Republic. "
Not the answer, even by a long shot.
The neo-cons have actually secretly had the requisite number of states agree to a "V" convention. Their plan is to gut the Constitution at such a convention. This is also how they will still, at least temporarily, the Constitutionalists. They will fool them with a "V" convention and then gut it.
Conflicting state guns laws (Watch the orchestrated gun-law conflict of Colorado and neighboring states), morality (abortion and gay marriage), and a balanced budget will be the stated reasons for the convention, but the outcome, like all things from tyranny, will be quite different.
THE answer is the Restoration of the Constitution, as is. Then the people can argue and change it from a position of Liberty, and not by and for tyranny.
The banksters need to repay us.
If you're depending on tyranny, you're depending on your slavery and murder.
http://preservefreedom.org/article-v-constitutional-convention-guaranteed/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/31/constitutional-conundrum...
Wow, you folks have given up on having any chance of influencing your state legislators to do the right thing during an Article V (which would not legally include any Fed government participation) and take back the powers of the states usurped by the Feds. You might as well all crawl under a rock and wait to die if you are unwilling to do anything about the current situation.
So, if you are willing to do anything more than pissing and moaning about how bad it is to change it to the way that you think it should be, I hope that you have been buying up all the weapons and gear that you will need to do it the hard way. I've already done that as well as trained with state militia but it is really the last method that I want to use. But, it is one that I am willing to use should 38 legislatures fail to do the right thing at an Article V. I hope that all the computer hacks on ZH are serious about their philosophies about having rights as citizens and are willing to get off their asses and act to restore their rights. Otherwise, you will lose all of them.
What? The only practical method to end The State is to bring together a criminal class of people who expressly survive through its corruption to collaboratively end their very means of theft, plunder, and power? Are you insane?
The only practical way to end The State is wide-spread individual non-compliance. That or implosion and balkanization. Implosion is far more likely.
Anarchy has always worked so well.
How would you know?
Because "they say"?
Would you like to experiment with Russian-Roulette as well?
There are smarter ways. Like a nationwide strike with a realistic list of key reform demands. It takes longer, requires actual commitment and personal loss of income, but it works.
Striking is also a codified Universal Human Right btw and no government has any legal 'right' to call it an illegal gathering as Freedom of Association is also a codified Universal human right, so such a government can be disobeyed (and definitely should be).
Then you still have a country, a city, a home, schools, hospitals, supermarkets, good relations with your defense force and no civil war (pretty important, that one) and a working industrial and business infrastructure at the end of it, nothing much is destroyed.
Damage is primarily to economy, businesses and to bank loan repayment, which prompts them to place weight on the Govt to make a settlement soon, which results in a more-or-less major curtailing of state powers, and state abuses.
A better country for more of the population, with far fewer families harmed, injured or killed results. Far lower risk, far more manageable, far more acceptable, and far more realistic.
The main trick is to not have a strike turned into a destructive revolution, that ends in armed conflict. If that is coolly understood from the beginning, as well as the explicit demands and objectives of the strike, and where and how it ends, the risks of destructive outcome is again dramatically lowered.
Strikes work. Protests alone do not, they just lead to confrontation, or give a government opportunities for repression and provocation.
You don't even have to protest at all, you can simply hold orderly public meetings under freedom of association.
You only have to get the majority of the population to go on strike and stay on strike until the government must cave, and nothing more is needed. No revolution, not storming the Bastille, no anarchism, no killing, none of that juvenile BS.
Just effective results from making the most of the choices available.
Element wrote- "Striking is also a codified Universal Human Right btw and no government has any legal 'right' to call it an illegal gathering as Freedom of Association is also a codified Universal human right, so such a government can be disobeyed (and definitely should be)"
If only that were true, but it is not. There are many precedents and examples of this. Here is just one of many available:
Remember 1981 when the senile fool "Saint Reagan" declared the air traffic controller's strike illegal? He clobbered and fired them all, while all the "rugged individualist patriots" cheered the defeat of their working-class peers. Organized Labor laws and precedents have gone way, way downhill since then, and been eviscerated by legislation.
The simple truth is that even the slightest accusation of being a "collectivist" or "socialist" will be sufficient to cause many grown men and women to pee their panties and soil their drawers. These people would irrationally oppose any such national agenda and strikes. There are plenty of enablers who reflexively and unthinkingly bash on workers and the remaining feeble unions, to the benefit of the 1% masters.
This large and vocal group would likely and irrationally sabotage any strike efforts, regardless if the demands are political and/or economic, regardless if they are unionized and/or non-unionized, and regardless if the strikers are just citizens and/or "workers".
Here is the senile saint's promise in 1980. We all know how they turned out.
Dear Mr. Poli,
I have been briefed by members of my staff as to the deplorable state of our nation's air traffic control system. They have told me that too few people working unreasonable hours with obsolete equipment has placed the nation's air travelers in unwarranted danger. In an area so clearly related to public safety the Carter administration has failed to act responsibly.
You can rest assured that if I am elected President, I will take whatever steps are necessary to provide our air traffic controllers with the most modern equipment available and to adjust staff levels and work days so that they are commensurate with achieving a maximum degree of public safety.
I pledge to you that my administration will work very closely with you to bring about a spirit of cooperation between the President and the air traffic controllers.
Sincerely,
Ronald Reagan
Sounds like they just need another war to bring accounts into alignment.
GAAP would be the most logical reason for war that that they've come up with yet.
I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... www.globe-report.com
As long as Grandma Israel is happy... CRANK UP THE FUCKING WAR MACHINE...
<--- Goddamn motherfucking hypocrites CH1, & SMG, & some other motherfucking fuck paid troll have an issue with that... ~ lol
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
– Eric Hoffer
War is a racket.
Poppy fields forever....
The best we can hope is to bring the responsible to justice afterward
Yeah, right. These fuckers arent going to allow that. Nukes gonna be flying well before any of these cockroaches are brought to justice.
Oh I'm sure they'll all submit to an impartial jury of their peers for justice.......hehehehhehhe
"Yeah, right. These fuckers arent going to allow that. Nukes gonna be flying well before any of these cockroaches are brought to justice."
With respect, but that sentiment represents the problem more than power's tyranny--defeatism.
You must look around and see what you can do, and when you can do it.
Now may not be the time, but the time is coming. You must prepare, or you will miss your time to act, and miss contributing to the Restoration of your Liberty, and the Constitutional republic.
The banksters need to repay us.
“Liberty Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Tyranny"
Defeatism, realism, one of those. You really think all these assholes running the show are just gonna lie down? Look what they have done so far to maintain power. Youre dreaming if you think this ends in any other way than total destruction. Hell, the Israelis basically told us that is the case. They will keep the illusion alive for as long as possible, and when people finally wake up and pressure them, theyre going to pull the trigger. And neither you, nor me, nor our "2nd amendment rights" are going to stop them.
Serious Crime Syndicate: O Inimigo Dentro (The Enemy Within)
http://winteractionables.com/?p=19601
"If at first you don't secede, try, try again!"
Time to move to Texas!
"Time to move to Texas!"
Actually, Texas is going to be neo-con central for the coming neo-con dictatorship, and their evangelical Christian and Zionist oriented ideology.
The banksters need to repay us.
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=oded_yinon
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=western_support_for_islam...
http://mycatbirdseat.com/2013/06/the-machiavelian-threefold-game-of-the-...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/The%20Zionist%20Plan%20for%...
Why are we on the same side as the Saudis – and al Qaeda – in Yemen?
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/03/26/leave-the-houthis-alone/
Yemen Exploding: Is the Stage Set for the Big War? by Ron Paul
http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2015/03/27/yemen-exploding-is-the-stage...
Corrupt, Corrupter, Corruptest.
The banksters need to repay us.
Treason, Treasoner, Treasonest.
They say follow the money...well maybe destroying our currency is the solution to bring about a reboot. How long would the "powerful" last on the street if their wallets are worthless. Power used to be linked to authority and respect. We tried to define its exercise with law but we acquiesced to the leadership desires of psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissts and immoral and greedy leeches. Can we get our lives back? Have to disarm them before they do us. Make their dollars worthless and they brought a knife to a gun fight.
Where the FUCK is FACTA when you need it.
One set of "laws" for us, and NO "laws" for the rulers.
What the M.I.C. wants, the M.I.C. gets. Between them and the banks the debt serfdom plantation is nearly indestructible.
Now go take your SOMA and get back to picking cotton!
".....back to the Constitution" you say ? I say we have no Constitution, it's been schreded.
“The best we can hope is to bring th[ose] responsible to justice afterward and pick up the pieces by going back to the Constitution.”
I beg to differ.
Americans have the same power American Founders had. The problem is that there is hardly an American who knows it.
And, the suggestions that we should go “back to the Constitution” is quite unrealistic; for, there is, also, hardly an American who knows ideals won by our Revolution.
For example, Founders repeatedly declared that “no man is obligated to obey any law or pay any tax unless he has given consent to it”. Did they mean this literally? Of course they did. From the first English settlement to the Revolution this was how affairs of the colonies were managed. Every “law” and every “tax” had its origin in contracts between colonial assemblies and those who petitioned for redress of grievances. The terms of the contract were sometimes referred to as “laws” of the contract while its money payments were treated as “taxes”. And only petitioners were obligated to obey such “laws” and pay such “taxes”. When redress was completed, related “laws” and “taxes” expired.
We also have a constitutionally-protected right to withhold our taxes until the government redresses our grievances (but do not try it until you have studied my book, The Lost Right, edition 3.5; and well-positioned your assets).
There, in two paragraphs I conveyed to you more real history than you learned in 12 years of elementary and high schools, and 4-6 years of university indoctrination. You won’t learn this and other lessons from professors, or judges, or lawyers; the first two depend on continued grievances for their pensions, the third never learned such history, or law. If you’re inclined, see, Pawn or Fool?
These rights were won with the Revolution… and who knows it?
Constitutional Convention has already been called for 2016. Michigan recently became the 33rd staate to get aboard. As this is a CONSTITUTIONAL action there should be NO elected officials involved. They REPRESENT us but that does not convey to them the status of SOVERIGN; that is by constitutional first words "WE THE PEOPLE There are supreme court decisions that agree as does John Locke.
This SHOULD be far more important than the 2016 election scharade
This is the fourth nor fifth time my entering in a statement has been interferred with; mostly by errasing my posts as I am entering them. Not that my words are of any signofance--everyone of them has been about constitutional issues.
The count down is getting much shorter and less naunced--it is becomming much more forthwith in demenor and intent.. Our days I think are getting quite short. Milestones
You got a whole lot of nuthin in the middle of your rant there pod.
I can't remember a just war since I was born. These wars and the debts from these wars are on the heads of the MIC and their ilk and someday they will pay for it.
So help me God.
As if there is any part not in force you see it is a interpreted document by judges and for a long time now mostly republican ones. Because to claim this is to claim Republicanism is dead. Do you really want America to go there on this bull shit ride?
Let's see....corrupt politicians, bloodthirsty military commanders, sociopathic intelligence agents, venal bankers, money-grubbing arms merchants, and senile, reactionnary judges.
Yep, we will definitely see justice done here. Yep, nothing to worry about.
Please, can someone tell me when it will legal to drop neutron bombs on Washington and Wall Street, because I will gleefully push the buttons when it is.
p.s Screw you, NSA, DHS, CIA. Let's see if Echelon and Carnivore prompt you to kidnap and torture me or put me on a no-fly list.