Dear Reader,
I notice the United States Secretary of Defense — Hegseth — proposes an annual 8% scissoring of the military budget.
The 2024 defense budget ran to $814.4 billion. An 8% limitation would hand back $67.3 billion to the besieged American taxpayer this fiscal year.
Handsome! I am for it.
Yet Wednesday the United States House of Representatives proposed a $100 billion boost to the same military budget.
The president stood in back of it.
What will it be? An annual 8% shave? Or a $100 billion fattening?
I wager on the $100 billion fattening.
The Lobbyists Are Too Powerful
Armaments industry lobbyists will seize Congress by the ear… and take them in their direction.
Their donations will keep Congress safely within their hip pockets.
Reports CNN:
- The proposal is certain to meet with resistance from Congressional Republicans, many of whom have called for increasing the defense budget and derided the Biden administration for only modest hikes in defense spending. Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called for defense spending to gradually increase to more than $1 trillion per year.
Meantime: This past November the United States Department of Defense failed its seventh consecutive audit.
I am confident, supremely, that the United States Department of Defense will fail its eighth consecutive audit this year.
Then its ninth next year, its tenth the year following, its eleventh the year after that one.
The Private Sector vs. Government
Imagine the scene at a private concern, Company X you may name it. For seven consecutive years its “management” has failed the audits.
Yet instead of demanding a square accounting, ownership showers this mismanagement team with even greater resources to squander.
A private concern is jealous of its capital and guards it with great ferocity. Yet the government runs to a different accounting.
Would an airline park its airplanes on a tarmac, idle, with the engines going? It is very nearly inconceivable.
That is because fuel is dear. And no sane outfit would waste it.
Yet the United States Air Force has done it. It has deliberately wasted fuel by running the engines on parked airplanes. Why?
Use It or Lose It
Because the end of the fiscal year was nearing.
And if the Air Force did not burn through all the fuel allotted it in that year’s budget?
Then it could not justify requests for additional fuel the following year.
It must use it — or lose it.
The solution of course is to run the engines on inert airplanes — to literally burn fuel.
Here you have the “logic” of government appropriations.
I cite but one example. Many others exist — depend on it.
It is not merely inefficient… but anti-efficient.
Sound Money Is the Money of a Free People
I often beat my tom-toms for sound money.
That is, for private, decentralized money. That is because I believe private, decentralized money is the money of a free people.
And I am heart and soul for freedom — my freedom, your freedom, the fellow’s freedom one house across the street — the fellow’s freedom 3,000 miles across the country.
That is one reason I embrace gold. It curbs, checks and limits the natural rascalities of government.
It is a money suited for a free people.
Unlike today’s money — which is disguised debt — government cannot fabricate gold into existence at a stroke.
Human labor must haul it out of the ground. Often, at fantastic expense.
Yet men would not do it if they did not find it profitable.
Washington’s Warning
And paper (fiat) money fuels government in the manner oxygen fuels fire. As Washington long ago warned:
“Like fire [government] is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
Meantime, gold is a sound money. It is therefore an honest money.
An honest, sound money is a disciplined money. It chains government down in thick, imprisoning fetters.
Would the Air Force be permitted to burn fuel if the government truly had to watch its money… and ran to a sane accounting?
It would not.
Yet a government in charge of money is a fox in charge of a henhouse.
Immoral, Dangerous and Impoverishing
“Austrian” school economist Ryan McMaken:
- State-controlled money is immoral, dangerous and impoverishing. It paves the way for government theft of private wealth through the inflation tax, and thus allows the state to do more of what it does best: wage wars, kill, imprison, steal and enrich the friends of the regime at the expense of everyone else. Privatizing the monetary system and imposing a “separation of money and state” would help limit these activities.
That is precisely why no government will allow a private monetary system. No government will agree to chain itself down.
Not an autocratic government, not a democratic government, not a republican government.
The Worst Failure of Civilized Man
Baltimore’s sage, Henry Louis Mencken:
- All government, of course, is against liberty…
- The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse — that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it…
- Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, criminal, grasping and unintelligent.
That is why I do not believe the United States Department of Defense will take an 8% annual nick — despite Mr. Hegseth’s fine intentions.
Nor will any other agency of the United States government.
The Racket Is Simply Too Large
There are far too many backs that demand scratching, far too many bellies that demand rubbing, far too many palms that demand greasing.
Together they form a highly formidable defense that guards its perimeter with the highest jealousy.
The president may chink their armor some — he already has.
Yet they are a resourceful lot. I do not know if the president can lance them through.
I am willing to be proven wrong. I would be pleased beyond description to be proven wrong.
If the president can triumph over them?
Then I would nominate him for immediate, prehumous etching into Rushmore.
You would not be able to identify a worthier man.
Regards,
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
