130 million to pay our service members AND SNAP benefits??? Are you

[niyad]

fucking kidding me???? Pay them what, exactly?? We currently have approximately 1.3 MILLION active duty service members. By my math, a little over ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS EACH. Add in SNAP recipients (around 41 million) and what have we got?

Oh, and is anybody besides me freaked out about privatizing our military???

[Captain Zero]

1. It's a bribe for something else, face it.

It ends up in a Trump LLC.

[2naSalit]

2. And it amounts to pay...

For about 6 minutes of military operations.

[LoisB]

3. Who the heck is the "friend" who made the donation to pay the military? Maybe they will send

everyone a $15, $20 MacDonald's gift certificate.

[Wiz Imp]

4. Timothy Mellon is Trump's $130 million mystery military donor: NYT

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/25/trump-timothy-mellon-military-donor-government-shutdown.html

The mystery donor whose $130 million contribution is meant to pay U.S. military troops during the government shutdown is Timothy Mellon, an heir to a renowned Gilded Age banking family, The New York Times reported Saturday.

But Mellon’s donation works out to only about $100 per service member. It costs nearly $6.4 billion to pay U.S. troops every two weeks.

And using his money might run afoul of federal law, according to the Times, which cited two people familiar with the matter in identifying the billionaire railroad magnate as the donor.

He contributed $50 million to Trump’s super PAC during the 2024 election cycle, one of the biggest single donations ever publicly shared, The Times reported.

[LoisB]

5. Ah, yes. Thank you.

[ancianita]

14. Here's more...looks like his "military donation" is double what he's donated in the past.

[KPN]

15. And MAGAs probably ss well as stupidly applaud him

as a real patriot willing to sacrifice for ‘Merica’s well being. It doesn’t get any more corrupt or stupider.

[LoisB]

16. Proof that he is a certified a-hole.

[Pas-de-Calais]

6. Completely agree

[James48]

7. I worked out the math.

Personnel costs run about $16 BILLION a month for u. S. Military payroll, heath benefits and retirement costs.

Chipping in $130 million covers just a small piece of the costs.

[Wiz Imp]

8. Yep. The cost to pay all military personnel for 2 weeks is $6.4 billion.

Mellon's "donation" represents only 2% of the military's 2 week payroll cost. Where is the other 98% supposed to come from? Or are military members supposed to be satisfied to receive just 2% of their normal paycheck?

[Cha]

9. TY... Where do you see SNAP

benefits are going to be paid?

[niyad]

12. I don't remember whether I saw it here in an OP title early this morning, or

a Guardian headline. But I had to leave unexpectedly, so did not read it.

[Cha]

13. Thank You!

[Marie Marie]

10. To all these rich fuckers who want to "help" the unfortunates caught up in Trump's mess, here's an idea:

Instead of making some grand gesture of throwing around millions toward something that will make you "feel" good, how about you pay your fair share in taxes?? Quietly, without fanfare or favor, just pay your fair share of taxes and let the Congress make a budget to distribute that revenue.

But then again, you can't buy influence from that Freak in the WH from a tax check to the IRS.

[ancianita]

11. Exactly. When Clinton & Newsom made them pay their fair share, the U.S. & CA ended up with budget surpluses.

All credit goes to the Democratic Party. Oligarchs know they got rich under democracy, and that when democracy & rule of law governs, they do better than in any other country.
But here, better isn't enough. They want it all.

These oligarchs worship mammon, their demon idol of wealth and power.

Plutus appears in The Divine Comedy as a wolf-like demon of wealth, wolves having been associated with greed in the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas metaphorically described the sin of Avarice as "Mammon being carried up from Hell by a wolf, coming to inflame the human heart with Greed".

Under the influence of the Social Gospel movement, American populists, progressives and "muck-rakers" during the generation of 1880–1925 used "Mammon" with specific reference to the consolidated wealth and power of the banking and corporate institutions headquartered on Wall Street and their predatory activities nationwide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammon