Want boondoggle?

[Ernesto]

Only $3billion for unwanted, unneeded jet fighter!

....""The Bush administration opposed this engine. The Obama administration opposes it. We have recommended for several years now against funding this engine, considering it a waste of money," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters this week. "To argue that we should add another $3 billion in what we regard as waste … frankly, I don't track the logic.""....
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/joint-strike-fighter-billion-boondoggle/story?id=10692337

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

1. Raise your hand if you looked at this OP title and saw "Want bondage?"

:spank:

[damntexdem]

2. How about a Boonkittie?

In any event, the Joint-Strike Fighter is a doggle that has hardly been a boon.

;-)

[texastoast]

7. Wouldn't that be boonkittle?

:P

[Selatius]

3. The short answer is several senators are pushing it as a form of jobs program.

People wonder why the defense establishment is so hideously over-sized. It's because if you look in your backyard, there's probably a military installation within 20 miles of you, and the people who work on that base drop money into the local economy.

If you wanted to demobilize the US military and go back to the way things were pre-World War 2, you're talking about killing off a lot of cities and towns that have built up around these installations.

Hate to break the bad news, but war is tremendously profitable, and it will be until somebody has the fortitude to take profit out of war.

[sharp_stick]

4. It's not the bases

it's the McDonnell Douglas's, the Pratt and Whitneys etc that are the jobs programs. These are the same corporations that bitch and moan every couple of years that the States just aren't business friendly enough so they move the Oh so vital programs out of State and often out of country.

You want to see what happens to a city after a base closes you have to only look at a city like Plattsburg NY. It used to be thriving, now not so much. The bases provide a completely different form of economic engine. The bases and their economic wishes couldn't care less what fighter they happen to be flying or what engine happens to be on that fighter.

[Selatius]

6. I narrowed the target window a bit much. Those arms manufacturing plants are to be included too.

Factories and other installations involved in the making of war, of course, employ quite a lot of people. To keep them going, you need to invent excuses to keep the money flowing, like another threat on the horizon. Those senators mentioned in the article who keep pushing the program even though the Pentagon wants no part of it know it brings in the money.

[Tejas]

5. Very true, and the same could be said about

the prison industry. Now THAT is a money-maker! Maybe not for you and me, but for 'somebody'. :)