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Pentagon Toilet Seats: Coming to a Head in 2012?

It’s been a lot of years since talk of military excess rose up. Pentagon overspending once was a talking point every bit as common as welfare, Social Security, crime and abortion rights.

We know what happened, 9/11.

It may not have been that the U.S. military could do no wrong in the eyes of good Americans, or that we citizens — to say nothing of elected officials — did not dare crowd Pentagon budget discussions with perhaps hindering debate over budget efficiency. Both of these, however, seem to be what happened in the past decade. They’re not provable, well they would be with “content analyses” performed by graduate students, but are perceptions, obvious if I do say so myself.

Remember the $640 toilet seats and similar items like incredibly expensive hammers and wrenches, which came to light during the Reagan years? These were items that the Pentagon had budgeted for, contracted with businesses to manufacture, that various members of Congress jumped on as outrageous during the 1980s into the ’90s.

What brings this to mind is an article in Salon.com today, “7 Absurd Ways the Military Wastes Taxpayer Dollars.”

The article, by Laura Gottesdiener, cites seven areas of unnecessary spending. The main ones are:

  • Rank inflation — there’s now nearly 1,000 general and admirals, and each has staff, and they get extraordinary perks.
  • The cost of scandals. Undiscovered the fraud keeps mounting, and correcting policies that allowed the scandal gets pricey, too.
  • Perks among lower officers, such as there being 234 Pentagon-managed golf courses around the world.
  • Military bands. I start to disagree with this one and not just because I love wind bands. Music has been a part of military campaigns for millennia. I don’t understand that necessarily, but it is a fact. But the reporter notes they cost taxpayers $500 million a year, including paying for their magazines and CDs, which are available for free to civilians who know to request them. But private companies, according to The Washington Post, do repackage the music and sell those recordings, retaining the profit.
  • Retired officers going to work for defense contractors, who as lobbyists persuade the government to overspend with the military industry.

Criticizing military largesse at different times has been the province of either party, of the left and the right. Opponents of the Vietnam War for example cited overspending. That would be the liberal thing to do, right? Some conservatives also opposed U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia, using the Isolationism argument of “U.S. shouldn’t mess with the sovereignty of other nations.”

Today, that is for the last 11 years, neither side has raised this loudly. Now with the post-election Washington debate of the “fiscal cliff,” one would think the Pentagon budget would be on the table. It surely is, but until this mainstream media article, little remarked upon.

Which could be my ignorance: I may have missed some pundit hubbub on the cable gasbag programs and editorial columns. Yet my guess is, as Congress and the president find spending and revenue compromises as the year closes, needless defense spending will be ignored in the fight against terrorism and wars for or against whatever it is in Afghanistan and our “minimum” forces in Iraq.

Maybe it’s my cynicism or naivete. Perhaps the Department of Defense is the most efficient government agency, having learned from the lessons of Vietnam.

Last, maybe this prediction of muteness will be wrong. Then the question will be which party, which ideology, will find fault with today’s industrial defense complex. The first one to shout it will be lashed with the illogical but effective retort, “You are criticizing our soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen, reservists and marines.”

No, of course not. Never mind. And thank you for your service!

Copyright 2012 Ben S. Pollock

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