Reports are that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is engaged in a massive, military buildup.
An article by the Associated Press (published by the Denver Post in February) confirmed an open purchase order by DHS for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition.
This has been confirmed elsewhere by Hyungwon Kang of Reuters and by FedBid.US (a private marketing news service).
(That’s more than 5 bullets for each man, woman and child in the whole USA)
According to an op-ed in Forbes, that’s enough to sustain an Iraq-sized war for over twenty years. John Pike, director of the Washington military research group GlobalSecurity.org, said that, based on the GAO’s figures, US forces had expended around six billion bullets between 2002 and 2005. Op/Ed 3/11/2013 1.6 Billion Rounds Of Ammo For Homeland Security? It’s Time For A National Conversation
Millions more rounds of ammunition are sought by other departments such as the IRS.
DHS has also acquired a few thousand heavily armored ‘Mine Resistant Protected’ personnel carriers known as MRAPS, repatriated from the Iraqi and Afghani theaters of operation. They all have gun ports and bullet-proof glass.
They in turn are being sold to cities and towns such as Keene and Concord, NH. (What the hell for?)
Seriously, why would DHS need such a vehicle on our streets?
Then, there’s the ‘militarization’ of US police services, as illustrated by responses after the Boston Bombings.
Evidently somebody in government is expecting some serious civil unrest. The question is, why?
I think DHS is preparing for
I think DHS is preparing for the day when America finally goes bankrupt. The remedies will be harsh and folks will revolt. Beware of Obama, the socialist who thrives on never letting a crisis go to waste.
Paul Craig Roberts
You may be right on the money!
Read this quote from Paul Craig Roberts dated today:
“Now you know why Homeland Security purchased 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition, enough ammunition to fight the Iraq war for 12 years, has its own para-military force and 2,700 tanks. If you think the “terrorist threat” in America warrants a domestic armed force of this size, you are out of your mind. This force has been assembled to deal with starving and homeless people in the streets of America.”
(Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan administration, and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has been a columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available at http://paulcraigroberts.org/ )
By the way, if you seriously think Obama is a socialist, you know absolutely nothing about socialism…or Obama!
Link to PCR
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36621.htm
wake up?
It’s simple, when you spend trillions more then you take in, something bad is bound to happen. Yes, and taxing us to death will just give them more to spend…
More to Spend?
Be serious.
Republicans are the ones who drive the deficit & debt up with wars and cut taxes at the same time.
The GOP has no trouble spending your money.
They just want to be very sure that none of it gets spent on you.
Putting the con in conservative
Conservatives love socialism, but only when it means handouts of public money to the wealthy. Ronald Reagan and George Bush II spent trillions on tax breaks and out-and-out handouts to the 1%, and you never heard a peep about “bankruptcy” from any of these dolts. But in the depths of a conservative-led depression a Democrat increases the debt far less (16%) than any one of the previous three Republican administrations (Reagan @ a whopping 139%, Bush 55%, Bush 115%), and suddenly we’re slipping into effing communism – mooozlum communism, at that.
It’s not a surprising strategy from the leaders of a movement that depends, and thrives, on its own hypocrisy. What’s amazing is that anyone could be so easily brainwashed as to believe it, and so shameless as to repeat it.
Things are looking up eh?
Oh yeah. Things are just looking great huh Maus? 6 yrs of Hope and Change and a few lies here and there and we’re just reliving the good ol’ days of the 50’s huh buddy?
Looks like the progressive movement is really doing wonders for us. How about that Detroit.
Oh I know I know it’s still Reagan’s fault. I get it.
C’mon stop the nonsense and get your progressive touchholes to fix the problem if they think they can.
Hopus Change-us
We’ve seen neither hope nor change – they never had a chance with gerrymandered minority rule. And we’ve certainly never seen any progressive politics with the president and his party adopting every harebrained conservative scheme hatched over the last 30 years. It is funny, however, to watch the right wing forced to declare their own ideas “librul, soshlist, and un’merican.”
At least the election of Obama has managed to curb the right’s uquenchable appetite for debt and deficit. The debt, in particular, as a percentage has increased under Obama a fraction of the amount under any of the last three Republican presidents. What’s unfortunate is that it’s those at the bottom who are paying for it.
No Side Stepping
Flat out: you are right, mr.mike. President Obama has been a huge disappointment.
Where we would disagree is that your side still wants to call him a liberal, and to me, he’s not that. He’s a conservative in every way that counts.
Progressives have dropped the ball. We aren’t fighting back like we used to and that’s what cost Detroit.
Wall Street is moving in to gut the pensions of the workers there and where are we?
Sitting on our hands.
Detroit
Detroit is being picked apart by professionals. It’s an inside job, old buddy! And you can bet the insiders ain’t Progressives.
Hint: Where have all those jobs manufacturing auto parts gone?
Paul Craig Roberts is also
Paul Craig Roberts is also one of the designers of Reaganomics. He used to be quite proud of this so let’s be sure he gets credit. That fact alone makes me leery of any other opinions he might voice. Shows quite poor judgment in my opinion regardless of what other jobs he may have managed to use his connections to get.
I'm sure you send more then you take in every month?
Accordingly, you have to go back to 1946 to find a year when federal outlays were as large as they have been every year of this presidency. I thought hope and change would get us out of the hole, and the buck stopped with this fellow? Instead… we go over the golden cliff face first. The latest 600 million spent on laughable non usable software is only a drop in the bucket .
Re: Obama & economy. Let's use some actual sources, shall we?
According to factcheck.org
Reviewing some key statistical measures of Barack Obama’s presidency so far, we find:
The economy has added more jobs since Obama took office than it did in his predecessor’s entire eight years in office.
Federal spending under Obama has grown faster than inflation, but far more slowly than it did under President Bush.
They also state that “By the time of Obama’s second inaugural in January, the economy had added a net total of 1,208,000 jobs since he was first sworn in four years earlier, according to current figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That beats George W. Bush’s eight-year total of 1,083,000.
And so far, Obama is extending his lead over Bush. Counting jobs added in February, his total now stands at a net gain of over 1.5 million jobs.
………………………and then there’s this
The economy lost 8.7 million jobs as a result of the 2007-2009 recession, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Those losses included 4.4 million jobs lost during Bush’s final year, and another 4.3 million during Obama’s first 13 months in office. But since then, all the jobs initially lost under Obama have been regained, plus another 1,564,000.”
Hmmmmmmmmmm, now who was president in 2007 when that recession, the worst since the Great Depression, began……………let me think, oh yeah I know it was George Bush.
Got any actual legitimate sources for your statements about the economy and the late 40s? Feel free to offer them here.
Re: Obama & economy. Let's use some actual sources, shall we?
According to factcheck.org
Reviewing some key statistical measures of Barack Obama’s presidency so far, we find:
The economy has added more jobs since Obama took office than it did in his predecessor’s entire eight years in office.
Federal spending under Obama has grown faster than inflation, but far more slowly than it did under President Bush.
They also state that “By the time of Obama’s second inaugural in January, the economy had added a net total of 1,208,000 jobs since he was first sworn in four years earlier, according to current figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That beats George W. Bush’s eight-year total of 1,083,000.
And so far, Obama is extending his lead over Bush. Counting jobs added in February, his total now stands at a net gain of over 1.5 million jobs.
………………………and then there’s this
The economy lost 8.7 million jobs as a result of the 2007-2009 recession, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Those losses included 4.4 million jobs lost during Bush’s final year, and another 4.3 million during Obama’s first 13 months in office. But since then, all the jobs initially lost under Obama have been regained, plus another 1,564,000.”
Hmmmmmmmmmm, now who was president in 2007 when that recession, the worst since the Great Depression, began……………let me think, oh yeah I know it was George Bush.
Got any actual legitimate sources for your statements about the economy and the late 40s? Feel free to offer them here.
Apologies for posting twice
Apologies for posting twice but I thought maybe then SteveJD would notice that factcheck comment about Federal Spending growing more slowly under Obama than Bush.
Why?
There’s at least two explanations. One is that this is simply another example of a scam transferring taxpayer funds to the 1 %.
The price for a typical round, say a .223 Remington (The .223 Remington is a civilian cartridge with the same external dimensions as the 5.56×45mm NATO military cartridge.) – averages 75¢. So, let’s say wholesale is 50¢ per round and make the math easy. If they buy the entire quantity, that’s $ 850,000,000. A significant sum, but nothing spectacular in these days of taxpayer ripoffs.
Another explanation is AlanF’s and PCR’s doomsday scenario. I shudder to think of the implications if it proves to be the case. (If so, it won’t likely be Obama’s doing alone, but he would at least be complicit. At worst, he’d be up to his eyeballs. And BTW, he’s already implementing numerous procedures that would give the gumment far more powers to control the citizenry.)