Would you pay $400,000 for a single helmet? Of course you wouldn’t – but that is precisely what the U.S. government is doing. Just the helmet for the pilot of the new F-35 Lightning II is going to cost taxpayers nearly half a million dollars. And since we are going to need 2,400 of those helmets, the total bill is going to end up approaching a billion dollars. But what is a billion dollars between friends, eh?
Sadly, our military has a very long history of wasting money like this. Back in the 1980s, the “six hundred dollar toilet seat” became quite famous. Average Americans were absolutely outraged that the government was wasting so much of our hard-earned money, and promises were made that things would change. Here is more on what transpired back then from Wikipedia…
Beginning in 1981, President Ronald Reagan began an expansion in the size and capabilities of the United States armed forces, which entailed major new expenditures on weapons procurement. By the mid-1980s, this spending became a scandal when the Project On Government Oversight reported that the Pentagon had vastly overpaid for a wide variety of items, most notoriously paying $435 for a hammer, $600 for a toilet seat, and $7,000 for a coffee pot.
But of course things haven’t changed, have they?
Instead, they have gotten even worse.
I have no idea how a single helmet could be worth $400,000.
Does it grant magic wishes?
Does it turn the user into a mutant superhero?
Here is an excerpt from the USA Today article that is reporting on this super expensive helmet…
When the joint strike fighter, the F-35 Lightning II, finally takes to the skies on its first official mission, it will be one of the most advanced and one of the most expensive planes ever.
And the pilots flying the aircraft will be wearing the most advanced and most expensive helmet ever.
The helmet will give pilots quicker access to the information they need to see and has special cameras to “see” through the bottom of the plane. But it will cost an estimated $400,000 per helmet — more than four times as much as the Air Force paid for head wear for other aircraft such as the F-16.
Is that why the helmet is so expensive?
It can help the pilot see through the bottom of the plane?
Really?
If you just go down to your local Ford dealer they will be glad to show you lots of new trucks that can “see behind them”, and the best truck on the lot only costs about $50,000.
Or better yet, if F-35 pilots really want to see what is going on underneath them they should just slap a window on the bottom of the plane.
Of course I am just being facetious, but I think that you get the point.
We all work really hard for our money, and it is quite disheartening to watch the government waste it so flippantly.
And this week the Republicans in Congress have agreed to suspend the debt ceiling for the rest of the time that Barack Obama is in the White House. In one of his final acts as House Speaker, John Boehner has given Barack Obama a wonderful parting gift…
Outgoing House Speaker John Boehner presented his newly forged budget deal to his Republican colleagues at a private meeting this morning, outlining his plan to avert another government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling as a parting gift to his successor.
The deal would increase federal spending by $80 billion over two years and raise the federal borrowing limit through 2017. The 144-page bill, which was released Monday shortly before midnight, was welcomed by Democrats who have been pushing for budget negotiations all year.
Thank you John Boehner for selling us all down the river time after time. You have done a great disservice to our nation.
This new budget agreement is actually going to significantly increase spending. Here are some more of the details from the New York Times…
For this fiscal year alone, the deal would add $50 billion in spending, divided equally between defense and domestic programs, as well as $16 billion for emergency war spending, half for the military, half for the State Department. Together, that represents an increase of $66 billion in the spending limits for 2016, not far off the $70 billion increase Mr. Obama requested in his budget.
Personally, I can’t wait to see how much of that 16 billion dollars is for lethal military aid for Ukraine. Many of you that have been following this closely know exactly what I am talking about.
Of course this budget deal still must be approved by Congress, but that is just a formality at this point. Many “conservatives” in Congress are voicing displeasure with this deal, but is anyone listening? The following comes from Business Insider…
Conservatives moved quickly to revolt over a blockbuster budget deal reached among congressional leaders and the White House early Tuesday morning, calling it a “betrayal” days before US House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is set to leave Congress.
“This budget deal is a betrayal of all the fiscally conservative promises Republicans made in the last election. It is emblematic of why working-class Americans are angry with congressional Republicans,” said prominent right-leaning economist Stephen Moore, in a statement released by the conservative group FreedomWorks.
The Tea Party is supposed to be standing against the tax and spend agenda of the Democrats and the establishment Republicans, but enthusiasm for the Tea Party seems to be subsiding. In fact, according to Gallup support for the Tea Party has hit an all-time low of 17 percent.
So we will just continue to witness business as usual in D.C. until disaster strikes. At this point it is expected that somewhere around 100 Republicans in the House will support this deal, and with all of the Democrats on board that should be enough to get it to pass.
Since Boehner reached his first “budget deal” with Barack Obama back in 2011, the U.S. national debt has increased by $3,970,023,503,348.07. It is a betrayal of a magnitude that is difficult to put into words.
Overall, the federal government has been stealing 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day since Barack Obama first entered the White House.
When I tell most people that, I can tell that they don’t really believe me, and truthfully that statistic does sound completely and utterly ridiculous.
But it is true.
When you multiply 100,000,000 by 24 by 365 you get 876,000,000,000. And if you multiply that number by 7 (the number of years that Obama has “served” so far rounding up), you get 6.132 trillion.
Well, according to CNSNews.com the U.S. national debt has risen by more than seven and a half trillion dollars since Barack Obama was first inaugurated…
Since Obama took office, the total debt of the federal government has already increased by $7,525,761,885,381.30—rising from $10,626,877,048,913.08 on Jan. 20, 2009 to $18,152,638,934,294.38 on Oct. 23, 2015.
When you break that number down, the amount of new debt added under Obama comes to $64,134.73 per household…
The $7,525,761,885,381.30 that the total debt has increased so far during the Obama presidency equals $64,134.73 for each of the 117,343,000 households that were in the United States as of June.
Are you ready to cough up your share?
The truth is that it is already mathematically impossible for the U.S. government to pay off this debt.
What our politicians are attempting to do now is to keep borrowing money and extending the game for as long as they possibly can.
If that sounds like a really bad plan to you, that is because it is a really bad plan.
What our leaders have done to future generations of Americans is beyond criminal. But the American people have come to accept this as “normal”, and only a very small percentage of us are still complaining about it.
So the jokers in Washington will just keep on doing what they are doing until it all comes tumbling down all around them. By then, it will be far too late to do anything about it.