Russian Army Garage Sale

The United States doesn't scrimp when it comes to military spending. That doesn't mean the money given to the military is spent wisely, it just means they get a lot to throw at various projects and problems.

The U.S. Federal Budget for the 2009 fiscal year amounts to $2,650 billion. The military gets the lion's share - 54%; which leaves 46% for all non-military expenditures.

Is this a great country, or what?

Reagan liked to pontificate by repeating that stupid statement that "Government is not the solution, government is the problem." Actually, he was totally wrong about that as he was totally wrong about most things. We can't get along with government. The problem is not government but the people running the government.

Bush. Cheney. Republicans. Big problem.

A peace-loving country that spends over 50% of its money on the military has a big problem.

In Russia, they do things differently. They have allocated about 15-18 percent of their total budget for military expenditures. The year, 2008 will see a 20% increase in military spending over 2007, but the military's cut of the country's budget will remain at 15.5 - 16%.

That has implications for the Russian army. There's not enough money to operate efficiently.

So, the Russian army plans to auction off some of the property that it owns - "fabulous mansions, guest houses, dilapidated garrison towns, unused shooting ranges and vast tracts of neglected land, on which no human has set foot for years."

Monies raised from this mammoth garage sale will go to provide housing for army officers, some of which have been on waiting lists for a long, long time.

Whether this plan will actually work is questionable. One army officer said "I didn't know the army had anything left to sell. I thought it had all been stolen long ago."


All of this made me think that perhaps we should cut back the amount of money allocated to our military each year. Maybe there are things they could sell to raise funds, and they wouldn't need so much from the budget.

They could conduct a U.S. Military Garage Sale - wait, I think they already do that and end up giving away all kinds of stuff to countries that later turn around and use it against us. That won't work.

Well, let's just cut their budget and see what happens. Maybe if they didn't get so much money they wouldn't buy $20,000 toilets or $9,000 hammers.

Aw heck. That wouldn't work, either. They'd still buy those toilets and those hammers, because the folks who make those toilets and hammers are good friends of the high and mighty poohbahs who inhabit the hallowed halls of Congress and the White House.