The Key Word in ‘Defense Industry’ is ‘Industry’

Thanks to Glen Greenwald, I noticed this:

Just as the security farces going on at airports mean big bucks for the regimes cronies like Michael Chertoff, drone warfare means big bucks for the welfare queens at Lockheed Martin. The limitless trillions in military spending, which still help to protect Germany from a Soviet invasion, for example, finds its way into the pockets of the owners of Xe/Blackwater/Academi and Lockheed Martin, to just name two players in this immense industry that lives on tax loot. Unbelievably, such comapanies present themselves as part of the “private sector” even though they wouldn’t exist if not for the massive piles of cash that once belonged to the taxpayers, and are now shoveled in their general direction.

Anyone who’s ever witnessed defense contracting knows that there is essentially zero oversight. Afterall, when it comes to “national defense” who would ever be so unpatriotic as to question the expense? Another trillion can always be stolen from the taxpayers, or more likely, printed as new money.

Fortunately, the pay that Lockheed receives for its drones (one of which crashed in Iran, by the way)allows for enough surplus for the company to pay PBS to advertise for their product.

(See @ryanmcmaken at Twitter for more.)

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10:32 pm on January 24, 2013