Eisenhower was right

[DoktorT]

He warned us in the 50's about the miltary-industrial complex. He saw it coming and he was right.

I want a new law. The govt cannot be allowed to buy more than half the ammo production for domestic uses. Half the ammo production must go to the PEOPLE. No more 600 million rounds per year for govt domestic uses, which creates the public short supply. The govt is using OUR tax money to buy massive orders of ammo to strip the PEOPLE of the 2ND ammendment.

The ammo manufacturers have not been expanding output to meet the gross govt orders. They have just shifted production from public outlets to the govt contracts, leaving piddling amounts for the PEOPLE.

Remember cheap surplus mil spec ammo? Your tax money is being used to sequester it from you. You are still buying the ammo, it's just not getting into your hands.

http://www.informationliberation.com/index.php?id=42086

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[moose]

The Eisenhower 1961 speech is worth reading in its entirety. Considering who said it and when shows amazing clarity in to what was to come.

[...]
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of
my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or
Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments
industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make
swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of
national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments
industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and
women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on
military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms
industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic,
political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every
office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this
development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our
toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our
society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and
will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or
democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and
knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and
military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that
security and liberty may prosper together.
[...]

<broken link removed>

 

[fd15k]

A strange way to twist it. Trillions of dollars and thousands of dead Americans (much more wounded) in foreign wars, and you're worried about some ammo shortage that is likely created by your fellow paranoids....

 

[JimmyS1985]

The reign of the military industrial complex came to full fruition with George W Bush. His military industrial complex speech is my favorite, he wasn't considered a great president when he died, but now he's considered one of the top 10 best. I'd have a lot more respect for Republican's if they looked to Eisenhower than to Reagan, but the Eisenhower Republican these days, is about as dead as the Dodo.

In another thread I had some guy claiming that the UN Weapons Inspectors begged Bush to invade Iraq. Actually if you look at history, the UN Weapons Inspectors demanded more time for inspections as they had inspected over 700 suspected WMD sites and found nothing. Bush forced them to leave Iraq so he could invade, because his convictions that Saddam had WMD's were quickly being proven false by the UN. I think there is a blatantly false notion amongst Republican's that there actually were new WMD's in Iraq at the time of the invasion when in fact none were found at all.

Eisenhower was a great President, him and Barry Goldwater are my top two favorite Republicans and I think the party would of fared much better in the last 3 out of 4 election cycles if they looked to him for their inspiration on how to govern the country, than to Reagan.

edit: Saw the video clip of his famous speech. That constant whirring noise of Eisenhower rolling over in his grave, if you've ever visited his grave site, does get annoying after about 5 minutes.

 

[Bigfoot]

Well, Eisenhower was mostly right.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments
industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make
swords as well.

It would be foolish to cut our military to the bone after the wars ceased as we had traditionally (stupidly) done now that we had become a world superpower and were involved in a brinkmanship cold war with the USSR armed with ICBMs.

However he was correct in the dangers of the huge scale of the Mil-Industrial spending which was his main point.

Asking our whores in congress to abandon Mil spending in their states (it's spread around for a reason) is folly. Just as in Eisenhowers time it's just another way to get money out of our pocket and into theirs.

 

[JimmyS1985]

Well, Eisenhower was mostly right.



It would be foolish to cut our military to the bone after the wars ceased as we had traditionally (stupidly) done now that we had become a world superpower and were involved in a brinkmanship cold war with the USSR armed with ICBMs.

However he was correct in the dangers of the huge scale of the Mil-Industrial spending which was his main point.

Asking our whores in congress to abandon Mil spending in their states (it's spread around for a reason) is folly. Just as in Eisenhowers time it's just another way to get money out of our pocket and into theirs.

I think it was that F22 Raptor that had components built in something like 48 out of 50 states so legislatures would always have the military industrial complex building more of the planes even when their usefulness waned. The F22 raptor, while an awesome plane, is kind of a prime example of largess and excesses of the US military industrial complex. The plane was first being designed in the late 80's with a future cold war conflict in mind and the need for all out air superiority. In 1991 the USSR dissolved, yet we kept on with plans to keep designing the plane anyways. I forget the exact numbers, but the number of planes we had wanted to order, vs the ones that were actually built before production ceased entirely was only 187. It turned out to have massive over costs from what was intended, and also can not land on aircraft carriers so it's limited to having US airbases nearby where it can refuel in Mid-air. It's a great plane, but costs around $150,000,000 per plane which is ridiculous. Also todays conflicts are entirely unconventional, like the insurgency in Iraq and the Afghanistan war so a technologically advanced air-superiority fighter plane is of little use in the conflicts we have found ourselves in, in the 21st century.

Just one of many prime examples of too much government spending in the name of "defense" (I actually prefer to call it the Department of Offense than the Department of Defense).

edit: Another example is the M1 Abrams tank. We got something like 3,000 of them in massive row after row after row, sitting, gathering dust, in California. Their usefulness in a conflict like Afghanistan is highly questionable, and as part of a new defense spending bill they were looking at building an additional 300 of them. The company that builds the Abrams had its employees donate some of their paychecks to a lobbying firm to convince congressmen to keep building the tanke, when the military actually wants to retire the design altogether and start with a new tank than keep trying to squeeze usefulness out of the aging M1 Abrams chassis.

 

[DoktorT]

Few of the complainers seem to know the culprit for the ammo supply
problem and everything else that follows. Last year the govt ordered 600
million rounds for domestic uses. They have ordered more than that for
this year already.

The military-industrial complex (ie: Big Producers) have not invested in more production
to meet the massive
extra demand of govt. They are producing for the govt orders and leaving a
pittance for sale to the PEOPLE. Using the taxes of the PEOPLE to buy and
sequester the ammo from the PEOPLE.

It is a back door to destroy the 2ND amedment. The major manufactures who
get the govt contracts are the one and same that produce the military
ammo. Remember the low cost bulk mill spec supply? That is barred from the
PEOPLE as well as brass, primers, powder and bullets. All supplies to the
PEOPLE are purposely scarce and in itermittent short supply, BY DESIGN in
the interests of TYRANNY.

Notice just how quiet this obvious manipulation of the industry is being
kept by the MSM. The govt, the military-industrial complex, the world
banks, the world wide commodaties industry, the shipping industry and the
MSM are all the puppets of the global leaders above and beyond any
government.

 

[Burt Gummer]

As stated before, if you are an ammo buyer you are directly competing with a funny-money printing press. The gov/FED prints/digitizes billions or trillions and gets what they want. This money is created out of thin air, back by nothing.

To compete head on, you had better have a money printing press of your own where you don't have to work at all, just kick back and print notes for anything you need. That is the ONLY way you could compete in the market with this other buyer in a supply and demand scenario.

The cruelest form of taxation ensues, which is dollar supply inflation (been to the grocery store lately?).

When the gov purchases a few billion rounds of ammo they do it for FREE in terms of their end. Print, print, print. YOU are paying for it via real inflation because there are more dollars/digits in circulation competing for a fixed amount of goods, making your $$ worth LESS.

Since you are competing with Gov at this time to buy ammo, you lose. They have unlimited funds off of your back. Other than that, good luck finding fair pricing on ammo ....

All of this is very simplistic, but absolutely true. YOU are paying for all the billions of rounds that GOV is buying via inflationary taxation. YOU are enabling the ammo shortage and you may be ignorant to the whole Federal Reserve scam, and if you are, you are part of the problem.

While GOV is obsessed with death and occupations, the average age of a US farmer is close to 60. They are passing up dentists as the #1 professional most likely to commit suicide. Thank you Montesanto! So, your next item that will skyrocket in price will be even more important than bullets. That will be food. That fighter jet used to go kill goat herders and cab drivers 7300 miles away could have instead paid for a lot of small farmers well being.

In layman's terms, we are screwed.

 

[Kevatc]

I think it was that F22 Raptor that had components built in something like 48 out of 50 states so legislatures would always have the military industrial complex building more of the planes even when their usefulness waned. The F22 raptor, while an awesome plane, is kind of a prime example of largess and excesses of the US military industrial complex. The plane was first being designed in the late 80's with a future cold war conflict in mind and the need for all out air superiority. In 1991 the USSR dissolved, yet we kept on with plans to keep designing the plane anyways. I forget the exact numbers, but the number of planes we had wanted to order, vs the ones that were actually built before production ceased entirely was only 187. It turned out to have massive over costs from what was intended, and also can not land on aircraft carriers so it's limited to having US airbases nearby where it can refuel in Mid-air. It's a great plane, but costs around $150,000,000 per plane which is ridiculous. Also todays conflicts are entirely unconventional, like the insurgency in Iraq and the Afghanistan war so a technologically advanced air-superiority fighter plane is of little use in the conflicts we have found ourselves in, in the 21st century.

I think that it's always good to try to think ahead in terms of potential advesaries so I understand the F-22 concept but you are right ... the price tag is HUGE especially considered its usefulness right now is nil. Why not upgrade the 15's, 16's, and 18's? I've always thought the A-10 should be the plane getting some upgrades especially.

 

[Bigfoot]

The cruelest form of taxation ensues, which is dollar supply inflation (been to the grocery store lately?).

.......In layman's terms, we are screwed.

The cruelest form of taxation because it hits hardest on the retired, the working poor, people trying to hang on to their underwater homes, the very people these clowns claim to want to help by "spreading the wealth" through "Economic fairness".

Keep em poor and dependent on government largess and they'll get that permanent majority and most importantly...POWER!!

Edit: Had to give another example. Notice how our leader NEVER meets with any of the Small Business Associations? You know, the "Engine of our Economy" They employ people making them independent, bad. They create wealth for the owners and investors, very bad. Drown em in new regs, make every form of energy more expensive, tax everything including the air (CO2), make em employ their workers only part-time in order to stay in the black. Ruin em any way you can, cause you can't control them.

 

[JimmyS1985]

While inflation is to be loathed, I don't think deflation is something we want either. I particularly have a problem with Ron Paul wanting to convert to the Gold Standard. The country wasn't famous for stability and a complete lack of crashes and bubbles due to keeping a gold standard, in fact the Great Depression occurred while the nation held the gold standard. Depending on who you get your information from, most main stream economists find that the world economies that dumped the gold standard the fastest, also recovered from the Great Depression the fastest.

I'm not taking a moral high ground but my dad has a Master's in Business, has taken both Macro and Micro-economics courses and me and him discuss economic policy and history as a side hobby. Anyways current dollars are not backed by anything yet society at large still accepts them.

A pure gold standard and nothing more I don't think would work for the US simply because the economy's GDP is much larger than the world wide gold supply. IIRC all the gold in the world is worth around $6 trillion, and the US economy is around $15 trillion GDP, hence it would be impossible to back up each dollar for dollar in our GDP with gold. Fort Knox doesn't hold nearly as much gold as it use to either, they use to store lots of gold there because it was shortly after FDR made hoarding gold illegal, in which all the gold was rounded up and put back into Fort Knox. Some kind of commodity exchange might work with gold and several other commodities, but I personally think if we switched to a gold standard, the first thing a lot of country's would do is dump the US dollar as their reserve currency.

I would be afraid if we made it so every dollar had to be backed by gold, we might face massive deflation, prices would be artificially much lower and the dollar worth much more, but there would bea lot less dollar's floating around in the economy and they would be much harder to obtain for the average individual.

Also the price of gold bubble's and crashes like a lot of other things in the market. I would think stores across the country would have to change their prices everyday just due to what gold is doing in the market since the dollar would be directly tied to the price of gold.

 

[fd15k]

By the way, anybody has a source for the number "6 billion rounds per year" ? I remember there was a contract awarded to ATK for supply of 450M rounds in 5 years or something, plus I've seen something about additional 125M rounds, but 6 billion doesn't ring a bell.

 

[Stomper]

Yeah, 6,000,000,000,000 rounds sounds a bit much, even for Americans.

 

[Grunwald]

While talking about the military industrial complex let us not forget that it is unconstitutional for the US to have a standing army unless at war. Sort of makes not ending the Korean war very convinient from a constitutional point of view.

 

[PMKN_PI]

Few of the complainers seem to know the culprit for the ammo supply
problem and everything else that follows. Last year the govt ordered 6
billion rounds for domestic uses. They have ordered more than that for
this year already.

The military-industrial complex (ie: Big Producers) have not invested in more production to meet the massive
extra demand of govt. They are producing for the govt orders and leaving a
pittance for sale to the PEOPLE. Using the taxes of the PEOPLE to buy and
sequester the ammo from the PEOPLE.

It is a back door to destroy the 2ND amedment. The major manufactures who
get the govt contracts are the one and same that produce the military
ammo. Remember the low cost bulk mill spec supply? That is barred from the
PEOPLE as well as brass, primers, powder and bullets. All supplies to the
PEOPLE are purposely scarce and in itermittent short supply, BY DESIGN in
the interests of TYRANNY.

Notice just how quiet this obvious manipulation of the industry is being
kept by the MSM. The govt, the military-industrial complex, the world
banks, the world wide commodaties industry, the shipping industry and the
MSM are all the puppets of the global leaders above and beyond any
government.

I think the need is clear : Save the ammo for the stormtroopers of the new world order. Closed caskets for all.

 

[DoktorT]

My bad, It's 600 million last year, more this year. See this:

If Obama Is Opposed To Guns, Why Did His Administration Just Purchase 1.6 Billion Rounds Of Ammunition? - informationliberation

 

[fd15k]

My bad, It's 600 million last year, more this year. See this:

If Obama Is Opposed To Guns, Why Did His Administration Just Purchase 1.6 Billion Rounds Of Ammunition? - informationliberation

Next title should read "Obama is opposed to guns, why did he buy ammunition for United States military ?"
But seriously, let's take a look.

First, let's look at DHS. It's the front for Customs and Border Protection, Secret Service, FEMA (yeah, those are the guys that make some folks wet their pants), TSA, Coast Guard, and a few others. According to the wikipedia, it totals 240,000 employees. Let's assume for our calculations that half of those dudes are issued small arms, i.e. 120 thousand armed agents.

Now let's look at that supply contract of 450M .40 caliber rounds. The way it reads :

ANOKA, Minn., March 12, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- ATK ATK +0.15% announced that it is being awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) agreement from the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (DHS, ICE) for .40 caliber ammunition. This contract features a base of 12 months, includes four option years, and will have a maximum volume of 450 million rounds.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like the contract is UP to 450 million rounds, in up to 5 years. I.e. they're securing the price, but do not necessarily buying all that ammo. But let's say they bought it. So 90 million rounds per year. Divide 90 million by assumed 120 thousand armed agents... that's 750 rounds per agent per year. My personal need in ammo goes to about 5 thousand rounds per year.

Then if you look a the next purchase order, your source has conveniently provided original PDF, which reads :

This contract is for commercial leaded training ammunition (CLTA) in accordance with this document. When Government requires CLTA covered by this contract, delivery order(s) will be issued: delivery instructions will be listed therein. Prices include all delivery cost and Federal Excise Tax (FET). The minimum guarantee that the Government will order is 1,000 rounds per contract per year. Unit price is per 1,000 rounds.

So once again, this seems to be a price fixing contract "should we need some ammo, we will buy it from you at this price".

Please do comment

 

[DoktorT]

I have seen ZERO mil-surp M193 or M855 since late December available. I check some 5 or 6 shops weekly. The always before available mil-surp has VANISHED from the supply chain to the PEOPLE. It is due to govt contracts for domestic uses that never existed prior to 2012.

 

[DireWolf]

He warned us in the 50's about the miltary-industrial complex. He saw it coming and he was right.

I agree with this 100%, but the rest is short sighted.

We don't need more laws about defense spending.

We need more laws that end unlimited corporate influence ($$$$$$$$$) on the legeslative/electoral process, and to abolish the idea that corporations are people.

The plutocracy/oligarcy is the problem.