Slashdot Mirror

The Bush Administration is the most corrupt federal government the U.S. has had: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

A more explicit link to the sig above: Retired CIA Official Says Bush Is A War Criminal.

--
Are you happy with the way your money is spent?

Microsoft's "me too" products have not been very successful in the last several years.

An organization that doesn't have the creativity to create something often doesn't have even the creativity necessary to copying it successfully.

--
Are you willing to pay a lot to kill Arabs?

From the Slashdot story: "It is nice to see more companies serious about helping to getting rid of our oil dependency."

That's why democracy doesn't always work: Many people don't understand the issues. Electric cars do not necessarily reduce the oil dependency, and definitely not greenhouse gases, because the electricity to run the car comes from power plants.

--
Like where your money goes?

Excellent point. But the point can be taken further:

Countries, like companies, tend to talk toughest when they're in decline. The U.S. government has invaded 24 countries since the Second World War, killing people and destroying their property.

If you look around, it is more than a few organizations in decline. We are experiencing a wholesale cultural breakdown.

It is also good to remember that Forbes Magazine is owned by Steve Forbes, and Steve Forbes is a socially backward man with the past you would expect of someone whose father was rich. Here is the second Google link to a search on "Steve Forbes": Steve Forbes' Skeleton Closet

Here is the first Google search result: Steve Forbes. Remember, he ran for president of the United States.

What is written in Forbes Magazine is valuable because it is an example of how rich people think. The only thing that matters to them is their own unbalanced ideas. When I say "rich people", I'm not talking about the condition of having a lot of money. I'm talking about the condition of being psychologically unbalanced by a lot of money.

This particular Forbes article is an example of the stream of consciousness of the kind of people who have almost no inner principles except that money is important, and of the kind of people who work for them and who have adopted their view of life.

The author of the article, Parmy Olson, is "an Assistant News Editor at Forbes.com", it says.

> Feeding the troll, perhaps, but if by "most of their money" you mean less than 1% of gross domestic product, then perhaps you would care to explain your innovative new system of mathematics to the rest of us.

Your link there is out of date, we've spent quite a deal more since 2004. I think the only fair way to say we spend 'most' of our money on the war(s) is if you look at the $200 billion we've spent so far in additional appropriations above and beyond the general military expenditure over that same period. It's widely known that our "defense" budget commands the lion's share of the budget each year (~20-30%, only now reaching parity with 'social security').

A fun way to look at the numbers is a http://costofwar.com/.

His usage was valid. The deficit is the difference between earnings and expendetures for a period of time. The yearly deficit for 2006 is not 8.3 trillion, but the 230-yearly deficit for 2006 is. Deficit does not necessarily mean YEARLY deficit. As to the site, it is also reffering to total cost, not yearly cost. Where did you see the 1.214 trillion figure? The dynamic counter at http://costofwar.com/index.html (Same source.) is a total, not a yearly, and at the time of this posting says 277 billion...

Typically these expenditures are popular (war here is the exception).

If you're trying to imply that the war in Iraq is the reason for our deficits, you need to add some facts to your thinking.

The cost of the Iraq war will be about 315 billion as of September 2006, which is in the future.

The current national deficit is on the order of 8.3 trillion.

Even if we had spent nothing on the Iraq war, that only gets you down to 8 trillion.

For all the coverage in the media, we are fighting this war with our pinky finger*. The bitching about the monetary costs of the war has its origin more in politics than reality. The real problems lie elsewhere, and are left as an exercise for the interested reader.

(*: Something the true enemies of America may wish to consider, lest they do something stupid that precipitates a popular and obviously necessary war.)

My best reason against the war in Iraq (since taking out dictators is generally such a good idea that you can hardly argue about it) is that with a fraction of the money spent ( http://costofwar.com/ ) we could have come A LOT closer to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and could have done so much more for so many more people.

Hopefully this works better than the $272,000,000,000 Oil-Finding trick we've been playing around with...

$250BN? What about funding a war?

> How can we spend a 180billion a year in Iraq when we have been there 3 years and haven't even spent 180billion yet?

Turn on JavaScript and visit costofwar.com, then visit their explanation of the number.

Or dismiss them as liberal commie socialist democrats, if you prefer.

> How can we spend a 180billion a year in Iraq when we have been there 3 years and haven't even spent 180billion yet?

Turn on JavaScript and visit costofwar.com, then visit their explanation of the number.

Or dismiss them as liberal commie socialist democrats, if you prefer.

I'm reminded of Titan, a book by Stephen Baxter I just read. It is an aching story about a manned trip to Saturn and how apathy killed the space program, and has some vivid experiences with closed biosheres, long space voyages, budget cuts and lots of kinds of disturbing but realistic personalities. If you are interested in this story read it, but not all in one go - you may get too depressed!

One good thing about space is it's a new framework. You can learn new things, you can look back at the entire Earth from one point, you can trigger advances on the ground. For example the recent discovery of the interplanetary superhighway. And tracking of asteroids is also not a bad idea. The photos this month of Enceladus and other parts outbound.

Personally I think a mission to Mars, without nuclear rocketry, is premature and a bad idea. We need fabulous control of materials, biological processes, space agriculture, robotics, space construction processes, bioelectronics and polymers, and probably a bunch of other things, which are the difference between a suicide trip and building a serious beachead with honest to goodness 21st century engineering. If we can't fire a seed at the planet from here and know it will set up a fully powered biosphere with plenty of room, air, temperature and nutrition waiting for our astronauts, it just seems a waste to send people there just yet.

Instead, why not take 10 or 100 billion bucks or so, and make this stuff a profitable business so we can get tons of highpowered people into one campus to work on these kinds of things, make it international and make obvious spinoffs to the commercial sector as well (as the above would). Make something young people can aspire to participate in, and guarantee it will continue to be funded and not be shrunk or pillaged no matter what the administration.

Also it takes less time and energy to get to the moon, so work on that too. First practice on the Earth and successfully build these things here, while identifying key areas and making a sequence of competitions for successively more advanced solutions in each area. This means we will be able to start moving out as soon as a minimal solution is found in each area and then the bar will be raised in stages.

If you consider that NASA's 2005 budget is 16 billion dollars whereas the Iraq war is costing 200 billion dollars (see calculations), you can see that it is a simple matter of the country not making space a priority. It is something like the non-financing of the levees all these years. If you set things up so that it is practically impossible to achieve goals, and instead of a scientific approach you take a cynical, smirking, thieving, political approach, well you end up with a dead space program, a dead city, much waste of human lives and toil. There really is little reason why things are the way they are, except that most people find this way the easiest, and because these things are hard for simple people to understand. They require science, funding, technical capability and longterm committment, and they require everybody else to be happy enough that the experts are left alone to do their jobs. I hope they are beginning to revise their ideas but am wondering what it takes to make a dent.

What banana peels? I'm so tired of this baseless rhetoric. Just because YOU don't like the problems that Microsoft's products have, doesn't mean that they are a)evil b)should be regulated c)should be sued d)should be called unfair competitors and most importantly e)that you have to use their products.

Personally, I use a Debian variant at home for most of my tasks and Red Hat for web and db servers. I think Linux is great in many respects (if you're patient and experienced with computers), but that doesn't mean I don't also have Windows and can't appreciate Microsoft's efforts to improve the OS over the years. I just get so irritated that Linux users don't realize that the primary reason windows computers are "less secure" is that windows users comprise about 90% of the market. Linux home users is probably like 1%! If you wrote viruses, trojans and so forth...would you like to target 90% of computers or 1%? And besides, as a linux user myself, I know how many godamn security patches are issued for Linux as well...so don't tell me that Linux is bug free! It's just that it is such a minor product in the huge computer market that press doesn't cover the Linux security bugs like it does for Windows.

Here's what I'm asking you people...try to break out of your typical thinking. There's just too much false causality in your reasoning when you think that because microsoft dominates the market and that because there are security issues with most computers that everything is microsoft's fault. Lets see how "secure" linux would be if Linux comprised 90% of the market. You have to remember that most linux users are computer pros, or at least fairly security conscious. If you gave Linux to the same dumb windows users that don't update their computers and always run as "Admin", you can be fairly certain that their obvliviousness wouldn't change--they would also run always as root and never download a single security update package and ultimately we'd be reading about how many viruses Linux users have on their computers.

The good news is that all OS makers are really wising up with regard to security. All the negative press Microsoft gets over it's vulnerabilities can only help to encourage them to take security much much more seriously. And of course, Linux wants to maintain their position on the security pedestal...so all the developers will continue to eagle eye security there, and hopefully this intense focus on security will pervade the relatively insecure mobile device market shortly as well. There has to be a learning phase at some point...and Microsoft has helped us ALL learn about security vulnerabilities so that we can ALL improve our products and our thinking about developing code.

In short, your sweeping conclusions are virtually meaningless because they completely ignore the real problems with the market and the consumers that comprise that market. You also ignore how having problems is actually a good thing because we learn from them and make things better. Henry Ford didn't build the Ferrari 430 Modena. It took a good 100 years of automotive innovation to create this masterpiece. Keep in mind that computers really are rather new, and given the infinite number of applications we can ascribe to computers, I'd say we're doing pretty damn well so far (especially in light of the relatively short amount of time we have had to adjust to our now blazing processor speeds and lightning fast networks).

Besides, if you want to be an activist for a cause, there are far worse things in the world than computer bugs that you can fight against. Religion, power-hungry politicians that waste 200 B

We had had a bit more foresight when we were setting our priorities.

Find it disgusting that emergency aid workers have to beg for money to provide vital equipment to people who are dying?

This in a country that has spent nearly 200 Billion on an unnecessary war in a far off land.

My point exactly... broadband for food though. It sure is helping to feed those in India.

Education is the first thing that needs to be tackled - and broadband surely can help with that (it has in India). Maybe stopping the Iraq war would be a good idea too. But heck, who needs 3 million more teachers?

The Iraq adventure is costing American citizens $US 1 billion per day ... and they've been there for years now.

That's too high by a factor of about five. The National Priorities Project is claiming a total of $204.6 billion, for a little under three years (which is to say, about a thousand days). Your number would see them spending a cool trillion in that time.

They're still spending way too much, of course, but let's not make up silly numbers.

Estimating 131 billion gallons of gasoline used per year in the United States, a total cost of the Iraq war to date of $181 billion over two years--that comes out to $0.69 per gallon.

It might also help the U.S. trade deficit (just over just over $50 billion per month) if you weren't importing 2.4 million barrels of oil per day from the Middle East (at $50 per barrel, that's $3.6 billion per month).

The fact is that no ethanol maker can make a profit without that subsidy.

Gasoline could not be produced without it's government subsidy, either.

Well in my opinion we should be looking for the "technological silver bullets" becauase that is were the future resides. Bush is worried that the US economy would be wrecked by taxing energy consumption, then what does he think a disastrous war that is costing hundreds of billions of dollars is going to do.

I use to think that people were naive if you thought the war in Iraq was about oil and now I think you are naive if you think it wasn't about the control of oil and contracts in oil field development. Lets just put it this way, the war in Iraq was not about WMD and it wasn't about terrorism.

It is good tho to see Bush acknowledging that our dependance on oil is a national security. Amory Lovins has been saying this for years. In fact, our dependence is not unlike a chemically dependent junkie who will do things to get his next fix that he would not normally do.

Regardless imagine if the money that was spent in Iraq was spent on the development of new demand and supply side technology such as hybrid vehicles, cheap diode lighting, solar sail lighting, better building techniques and terrestrial and extraterrestrial solar energy production, safer and cleaner nuclear, wave energy and of couse the holy grail of fusion energy.

Further the taxing of energy consumption would not create economic disaster as Bush states and as you note in the UK. It would harm certain segments such as traditional energy suppliers but creates and fosters others industries that are self sustaining and pay long term dividends. It would create a whole new economy dedicated to supplying new forms of energy and using what we have more efficiently.

Although I'm not American, I have to agree... I've just found this, and this. Oh, maybe this calls your attention more.

Although I'm not American, I have to agree... I've just found this, and this. Oh, maybe this calls your attention more.

Although I'm not American, I have to agree... I've just found this, and this. Oh, maybe this calls your attention more.

A War of choice ?

oh and Cheney gets a bigger house

You get a war in Iraq at the low low bargain price of 1 billion dollars a month and Cheney/Bush and the rest of the traitors get new yachts and their families get to live in absolute luxury for the rest of their lives, too bad for you

http://www.costofwar.com/

Ahem, third largest.

Come on... isn't this obvious? You can only put $200 hammers and $500 toilet seats on invoices for so long before people start asking questions again.

Where do you think these ridiculously high-priced projects put their money? You think it goes into the project? Heck no, the project will be delayed, deferred for more research, requesting more money, etc. like all lofty projects of this ilk.

No my dear taxpayers, this, like other projects of the same quality will just be used as another vehicle to misappropriate spending into other things like TTR, black projects, more domestic weapons we don't need, and other things.

We've already cut billions of dollars out of things like broadcast television, the No Child Left Behind act, elementary school teachers and programs, and hundreds of other community things, why not just ferret that over to the "Big Skullcap In the Sky" instead?

Why not? Because its easier to get people to go "Oooo... Ahhhh" and hand over their wallets like Good Citizens, instead of questioning the goals of the project.

Why not spend a few billion on domestic problems? Or spend a few billion feeding and educating hungry people in poverished countries? Why not explore conversion to alternative fuel solutions? Why not look for ways to improve everything UNDER the atmosphere that has measurable results, instead of trying to improve everything OUTSIDE of the the atmosphere, which we can't measure yet?

No, this is just a ruse to get more money stashed away into other projects and to buy more beaurocrats, than to actually improve technology that exists today.

Heck, we've only spent a paltry $170 billion already on "The War(tm)", and we're doing so well there... why not spend the same amount on things we CAN fix, without killing ~20k civilians and soldiers?

Let me start by saying that effective immediately, foreign aid to those nations on List 2 ceases immediately and indefinitely. The money saved during the first year alone will pretty much pay for the costs ofthe Iraqi war.

Ah.... you've got to love the imagination of the right-wing nutcases. Sounds like this particular one has serious problems with math.
http://costofwar.com/ says we're up to $176 billion for the cost of this war. Most of which, by the way, went straight into the pockets of the fat cats in the military-industrial complex...

The CIA World fact book says the US spent not even $7 billion in foreign aid in 1997 (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos /us.html#Econ). Let's say it's a bit more now (probably not, but hey) - maybe $10 billion?

So, to offset the cost of the war would take not one but at least 18 years. And we're not done yet in Iraq...

Why don't you go and study up on math and common sense. And while you're at it, it sounds like you need a good dose of basic human values too. For starters, stop watching Fox News, and start listening to NPR. Maybe you'll get some notion of what things are really like in the world that way. Someday. Hopefully.

A couple years ago, it was estimated that a two year manned mission to Mars would cost $20 billion. Invading Iraq has cost the U.S. over $170 billion so far. The American people have barely blinked. There is no need to raise my taxes. Congress just needs to adjust its priorities.

Building a more reliable oxygen generator would probably cost less than the medium-sized town I used to live in has spent supporting the war in Iraq ($15,000,000).

"This would effectivly be the worlds largest waste of money."

PAT

Given that a fiscally conservative governemnt should, by nature, intervene in or assist with the population's energy needs, our government is taking a proactive stance to reduce dependence on expensive foreign energy.

Bush announced [http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/] $1.2 billion in federal grants to fuel cell programs in his 2003 SOTU Address so that we could lessen our dependence on foreign oil. According to http://costofwar.com/, we Americans have supported Bush in spending $163.9 billion to destroy and rebuild Iraq since 2003.

That is, if anyone's interested in giving less money to people who have been granted the rights to profits from Earth's natural resources. Whether 2020 is a conservative estimate or not, anyone even contemplating further industrialization should recognize that we're treating oil like diamonds: overvalued for lack of an equally well marketed alternative.

According to Cost of War.com total spending has cost 161.3 billion (over two years, caution, that link crashed mozilla). That averages out to 80.7 billion per year. Adjusting that back into the original gives:
"Department of Health and Human Services" [kowaldesign.com] (643.9 billion)
"Department of Defense"+"Department of Veterans Services" +Additional allocation(475.4+68.3+80.7=624.4 billion)
"Social Security Administration" (583.5 billion)
"Department of the Treasury" (441.2 billion)

Congradulations, it moved up to cost more than Social Security, but still less than the Department of Health and Human Services (which, btw, would cost an additional 40.2 billion if we include "Department of Housing and Urban Developement" (housing vouchers)).

Sorry, the Iraq war has not cost that much more in the scheme of things.

Why is this modded funny? It's not, it's scary. Because it's true.

Don't be a troll. Moderators why is this insightful ?

Its insightful because people still do not understand how much the war costs. They are throwing around HUGE numbers, and people still can not "grasp" them. Sure its all relative, and there are orders of magnitude (pretty popular around here) between the 160 billion USD spent in two years and the number of [scientific things] in a [scientific thing], but the problem is that all of the numbers are large enough for one (if not all) to lose perspecive.

In the spirit of hogsheds and old Koreans, the spending of the war could fund well over 32,000 (thirty-two thousand) additional years of Vyger mainenance and research. [~160,000,000,000 / ~ 5,000,000 ] This is unnecessary, as only ~15 years of funding would be needed, so in useful war perspective, funding Vyger to the end of its scientific life would take ~0.00046875 wars in Iraq (if the war ended today).

And these calculations are generous! (hopefully the math is correct and the point is not lost)

You are correct that it is better to write the politicians and have them adjust how they spend tax dollars but until people have enough perspective to care, they never will.

For more \fun\ numbers, visit thecostofwar and see American tax dollars at work!

Well, you got your friendly relationship when soon after the first inauguration the lawsuit against Microsoft was settled rather than pursued. But right now you have what happens when tax cuts are given without accompanying service cuts: some services eventually have to be cut. And funding research is not seen by short-sighted individuals (like those who want to privatize social security) as a threat to industry. Someone without much schooling might think cutting government-funded research is actually beneficial to industry. Since the industry can always do it by itself. Yeah, yeah. That's the ticket. Let's see those stem cells grow. Some others might point out that the United States' lead in the industry surrounding the Internet is a direct result of government funded research. But that wouldn't fit very well with the agenda of someone else who needs some quick funding cuts to help soften the damage being done by earlier irresponsible tax cuts. Or, to keep the $160 Billion dollar Iraq War of aggression from appearing to be the scam it is.

Cost of War ($)

Cost of War (lives)

Note: the above two links are U.S.-centric.

Here are some numbers.

Exactly, 4.2 millions is less than half what Bennett lost at casinos, less than DeLay spends on FEMA helicopters, and, to be fair, about equal to Ted Kennedy's hamburger budget. It is also about 36,000 times less than the cost of the War in Iraq.

57 billion is no small sum...

You are pro-low-taxes and pro-war? Then, logically, you are pro-enormous-national-debt. Pardon me for saying so, but I think $7700000000000.00 in debt is enough. That's one hell of a inheritance to leave your kids. I'm burning spent mod points to say this so I might as well speak my mind here; America has spent enough money ousting Saddam to buy a new home for each and every one of the 1.3 million homeless children in America. So, as an American, which do think is most important? Nevermind, I know your duckspeak answer.

"He said high schools must be redesigned to prepare every student for college"

What about the kids who cannot afford to go to college. The funding for scholarships is just as important as preparation. As a high school student in Canada but it's not extremely different, I know that if kids know they don't have a chance of being able to afford college, they will not even try to go.

costofwar.com states that the money spent on the Iraq war could buy over 7.5 million college scholarships. However, if you have a room full of corporate execs who probably have contracts in Iraq, this is not a favourable opinion.

i think it may have gone to iraq

*ducks*

Duck not, for you are right: http://www.costofwar.com/

One billion ain't shit. See here.

be good practice for them and the whole world benefits at the same time

all for less than the price of a months war in Iraq

86 billion over the next 5 years. Their budget is an average of around 17 billion per year.

Oh, and meanwhile, the current cost of the Iraq war, ignoring debt interest, collateral costs (like the cost of society for guardsmen to be called up or the cost to society of having the wounded for the rest of their lives), etc, is 152 billion dollars, and the US just announced we'll be keeping high troop levels for a minimum of two more years (likely many more unless they cut and run). Just showing a budgetary priority comparison here.

usability.gov is a useful place to read up on how to maintain compatibility and accessability using up-to-date standards. Lots of interesting and informative design tips there, too, and it's surprising considering it's a .gov. Nice to see my federal taxes put to good use (or at least better than other purposes).

USA has sent 20 million $ in cash total (1 F500 ceo yearly salary) for this disaster which would save lives yet it can find a cool billion $ a week to take lives ? (iraqi)

civilised nation ?

The U.S. will donate $35 million. Let's see...

$35000000 - amount committed to help victims
100000 - conservative death toll
= $350 - spent to aid each victim

$147000000,000 - spent on war in Iraq
17000 - rough number of Iraqis killed
= $8,647,058 - spent to kill each Iraqi

I'm ashamed to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but these numbers are sickening.

The actual total cost to the end of the year is approximately $152,000,000,000 based on additional Congressional appropriations (over the normal cost of the military) since the start of the war. However, since this money is borrowed (not out of a big piggy back somewhere) the actual cost should by multiplied by 1.4 to factor in the cost of interest for a grand total of $212,800,000,000. Since March 2003, that works out to approximately $9,670,000,000 per month or $322,000,000 per day or $3731 per second.

Nail on the head. We are expected to pay, because we were the ones that wanted to invade. Seems simple enough.

I did not support the war, in fact, I haven't found one good reason to invade... not one outside of greed for mideast control/oil. So, when I see these web sites that list what we could have done with that money, it makes by blood boil. How Bush retained his job is so far beyond any reason that I am completely convinced that many of the people that voted for Bush simply did not have enough information to make an informed decision.

I digress...