The War Machine Keeps Rolling Along

Trey Smith

Spending cuts have been applied by Congress to both military and non-military spending.

In my view, the military cuts are much too small and the non-military cuts should not exist at all. In the view of most liberal organizations, the military cuts -- like the military spending and the military itself -- are to be ignored, while the non-military cuts are to be opposed by opposing all cuts in general.

But, guess what?

The spending limits on the military are being blatantly violated. Both houses of Congress have now passed military budgets larger than last year and larger than is allowed under the sequester.

Meanwhile the sequester is being used to cut away at all that is good and decent in public policy.

In fact, the House Appropriations Committee proposes to make up for its violation of the law on military spending levels by imposing yet bigger cuts to non-military spending. And what's the harm in that if all cuts are equally bad?

The sequester, like the anti-torture statute, the war crimes statute, the Fourth Amendment, the First Amendment, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, or the U.N. Charter, turns out to be one of those optional laws.
~ from Sequester Optionally Applied Only to Good Things by David Swanson ~

National politics has become little more than smoke-and-mirrors. Shared sacrifice? Not really. Equal standing before the law? Nope. Leakers not tolerated at all? Depends on whether it is deemed by the powerful to be a good leak or a bad leak. Constitutional protections recognized? Don't make me laugh.

You want to know why Congress doesn't hold the Obama administration's feet to the fire re the NSA scandal? Because they just as wantonly break the law too. As Swanson shows, they have upped the ante on the military-industrial complex when, by law, they are prohibited from doing so.

Hey, but who can stop them?

The old adage is true. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.