150 billion peanuts

Breakfast could not be entertained with National Public Radio.
There was a program about Country and Western music and this kind of music is highly disliked.
Hence, a switch was made to CNN who have the sound of their TV news broadcasts on XM Satellite Radio.
Landed in the studios of CNN Barack Obama was heard saying that he will spend 150 billion US Dollars on green energy.
To create thousands of jobs and to make the USA less depended on foreign oil.

That is great !
To spend so much money on finding alternative sources of energy so we can quickly get out of this mess of high gas prices and suffocating and devastating pollution.
Barack Obama understands that it is simply a matter of money.
Give scientists a good salary, an excellent laboratory and enough woman and manpower and not for long we have bacteria’s eat plastic producing fuel.

But there is a natural distrust of politicians.
Promising to spend 150 billion Dollars and soon the problems will be over sounds too good to be true.
Like the vacuum cleaner salesman emptying a bag of dirt on your living room floor promising his machine will clean it spotlessly.

For the fervent and loyal blog readers some research has been made and the shocking outcome is that this 150 billion Dollars are peanuts.
What Barack Obama is not saying in his speeches is that his 150 billion Dollars will be spend over a period of 10 years.
That is 1,25 billion Dollars per month.
Now, we could argue that 1,25 billion Dollars monthly is still buying more than a Domino pizza.
But let’s revive in our minds how much for example the war in Iraq is costing:
9 billion Dollars a month.
And how much the USA is spending on its army and defence per month:
49 billion Dollars per month.

So, what is a meagre 1,25 billion Dollars per month compared to 49 billion Dollars?
Is that a good balance between current urgencies?

Will there be a shift in that balance once Mr. Obama becomes possibly President of the USA?
Hell no!
What did Obama told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last April?

“I strongly support the expansion of our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.”

That’s precisely the number favoured by President Bush’s Defence Secretary Robert Gates over a five-year period at a cost of $108 billion, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office.

Is that the way to go to enforce the army and to moderately handle the energy crises?
To spend more on defence and just a little on more essential problems affecting people badly in their daily lives?

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To learn more on defence spending, click on:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures










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