MB Civic

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Taibbi strikes again in this indictment of the military industrial complex of which Dems are happy participants.

So to recap: a weapon that was designed to fight an enemy that no longer exists, which may be a spectacular design failure, and which costs up to ten times as much as the last generation’s still-excellent and still-superior weapon, is to be mass-produced by a government steeped in a budget crisis of its own making, at a time when vital social services are being slashed. The funding bill for this plane was endorsed by a research group whose president is a board member of a subcontractor and was passed by a Congress heavily subsidized by the F-22’s chief contractors. In just this one election year of 2006, members of Congress received $1,124,646 in contributions from Lockheed Martin alone ($949,271 to House reps, $175,375 to senators), and that doesn’t even account for the huge contributions from other contractors like Connecticut-based Pratt and Whitney (still wonder why Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman voted for the Chambliss amendment?) and Texas Instruments.

Defense appropriations remain the most hideously undercovered ongoing story in America. Some of this is probably due to the fact that defense companies have a long history of owning major media outlets (Westinghouse and GE being prime examples), but even beyond that there seems to be an instinctive reluctance on the part of reporters to even consider covering military waste stories.

More posts like this will get Taibbi’s phone tapped by the NSA…