div class=’posterous_autopost’p”This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team.” Well said!/p/div

An archaeological team, digging in Washington DC, has recently uncovered what is believed to be the fossil remains of the first politician to have ruled some 10,000 years ago.

Source Google +  Derya Unutmaz

Source  businessinsider.com

A friend was recently debating the question of whether or not the U.S. is generous with foreign aid. One of his colleagues pointed to data that show the U.S. giving less “official development assistance”, as a percentage of GDP, compared to other countries (various charts, most of which make the U.S. look stingy compared to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, et al).

My friend commented that the U.S. is actually the most generous country because our enormous military efforts benefit many other nations. For example, we discourage wars and keep shipping lanes open (except off the coast of Somalia!). Our military also shows up in other nations when disaster strikes. This costs a huge percentage of our GDP but isn’t counted as foreign aid per se.

Some of the most valuable assistance that we provide to other nations is not accounted for either in military or foreign aid spending. For example, we have spent a high percentage of GDP on funding scientific research that is published and available to anyone worldwide who can afford the price of a journal subscription. We have spent our tax dollars on standards such as TCP/IP that can be used at no charge by people worldwide. A lot of free Web services, such as Wikipedia, Hotmail, Yahoo!, and Gmail, were built and are run by Americans. A foreigner who learns from Wikipedia and uses Gmail has received very useful aid.

Why not come up with an accounting measure for how our military, scientific research, and Internet offerings benefit people in other nations? Then we can feel good about ourselves without spending (i.e., borrowing) more money.

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“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower

“If we don’t stop behaving like the British Empire, we will end up like the British Empire.” -Pat Buchanan

The time has come for a change in our country. I’m glad that Iraq is ending this December and think it’s time to get out of that whole Afghanistan/Pakistan mess George Bush created. Above all else, that’s why I support slashing the military budget; it might make our politicians think twice before putting our young kids in harm way if they don’t have a blank check that Republicans and Democrats are all too willing to write for the military.

The grand total for the known national security budget of the United States is:

$1,219.2 billion  (That’s more than $1.2 trillion.) source

A country with a gross domestic product of $1.2 trillion would have the 15th largest economy in the world, ranking between Canada and Indonesia, and ahead of Australia, Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Saudi Arabia.  Still, don’t for a second think that $1.2 trillion is the actual grand total for what the U.S. government spends on national security. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once famously spoke of the world’s “known unknowns.”  Explaining the phrase this way: “That is to say there are things that we now know we don’t know.” It’s a concept that couldn’t apply better to the budget he once oversaw.  When it comes to U.S. national security spending, there are some relevant numbers we know are out there, even if we simply can’t calculate them.

To take one example, how much of NASA’s proposed $18.7 billion budget falls under national security spending? We know that the agency works closely with the Pentagon. NASA satellite launches often occur from the Air Force’s facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Air Force has its own satellite launch capability, but how much of that comes as a result of NASA technology and support?  In dollars terms, we just don’t know.

Other “known unknowns” would include portions of the State Department budget. One assumes that at least some of its diplomatic initiatives promote our security interests. Similarly, we have no figure for the pensions of non-Pentagon federal retirees who worked on security issues for the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, or the Departments of Justice and Treasury. Nor do we have figures for the interest on moneys borrowed to fund veterans’ benefits, among other national security-related matters. The bill for such known unknowns could easily run into the tens of billions of dollars annually, putting the full national security budget over the $1.3 trillion mark or even higher.

There’s a simple principle here.  American taxpayers should know just what they are paying for.  In a restaurant, a customer would be outraged to receive a check almost twice as high as the menu promised.  We have no idea whether the same would be true in the world of national security spending, because Americans are never told what national security actually means at the cash register.