Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
The Army doesn’t have enough money to keep its people trained and its equipment maintained and up to date.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni2wJo7fKBA
“There is no simple relation between government spending and inflation”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=346rx5Mc9Ng
For a long time, a lot of people who really just wanted a smaller government pretended to care about debt (or fooled themselves into thinking they cared about debt).
Three quarters of US government spending make the federal government an insurance company with an army. As a percentage of the total spending, waste fraud and abuse is very small. DOGE was a failure because it didn’t understand the US federal government. If you want to significantly reduce spending, you have to stop sending Americans checks (like Medicare and Social Security), or/and have to weaken the military, although the check cutting part is much bigger than the military spending part.
Republican politicians used to lie, or be misinformed, by saying that tax cuts pay for themselves; now they lie, or are misinformed, by saying Trump won the 2020 election (he did not). It’s hard to make a tough compromise under such politics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXKAfcgl7eU
Young men don’t believe they have a future, they don’t trust institutions, and they don’t trust each other, so they feel that they need to get rich quick with a variety of ways to gamble. Most of them lose money, which could make their trust in society even worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwT5ifxFXOk
Mamdani managed to balance New York City’s budget with help from the state, taxes, efficiency savings, and financial engineering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4X75xWwq-c
“President Donald Trump on Wednesday said it’s “not possible” for the federal government to fund Medicare, Medicaid and child care costs, arguing that it should be up to the states to “take care” of those programs while the federal government focuses on military spending.
The president’s remarks were delivered to attendees at a private Easter luncheon at the White House”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-says-not-possible-u-150440299.html
The Democrats tried to fund the TSA. Republicans rejected it.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5794925-tsa-funding-senate-rules/
“The first six days of war in Iran cost U.S. taxpayers at least $11.3 billion in munitions alone, according to Pentagon estimates reviewed by lawmakers, and experts say the ongoing cost could increase exponentially. That total does not include the cost of operating and maintaining the military force engaged in the war or battle damage sustained from Iran’s attacks.
…
While initial cost estimates of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were around $50 to $60 billion, they ended up costing a combined $8 trillion, according to analysis by Costs of War.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/much-iran-war-costing-taxpayers-212311982.html
“After spending millions of taxpayer dollars on a fleet of new vehicles with Donald Trump-inspired paint jobs, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents reportedly don’t want to drive them.
Last summer, a slick promotional video captured a Ford Raptor pickup truck and GMC Yukon SUV rolling around Washington, D.C., with music from DaBaby playing over close-up images of navy blue paint jobs with red-and-white racing stripes and a gold seal.
The words “defend the homeland” appear on the side, and “President Donald J. Trump” is printed in gold on a rear window.
Homeland Security’s preview of its new fleet — with paint jobs designed to look like the president’s private jet — cost more than $700,000. The government ultimately spent more than $2 million buying up hundreds of new cars with custom wraps, according to contracts reviewed by The Independent.
But officers don’t want them
…
“ICE has never had marked vehicles,” one person familiar with the purchases told the outlet. “In talking to people, they’re like, ‘We don’t want to use these, we can’t.’”
Another said it’s “ridiculous” to drive marked cars because “you don’t want to advertise what you’re doing.”
“We’re just hiding them in a parking garage somewhere because we don’t want to drive them,” the person reportedly told the outlet. “Who wants to drive the marked vehicles?”
Roughly 25 newly delivered ICE vehicles are sitting at an immigration detention facility in California, unused, according to the Examiner.
ICE has denied any suggestion that its new vehicles aren’t being used.
“Any allegation that these ICE vehicles are not being used is FALSE. ICE is a law enforcement agency, and like all other law enforcement agencies, has a fleet of vehicles that includes those with ICE branding,” a spokesperson wrote”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ice-denies-flashy-cars-hiding-223005933.html
“”Since June 2025, the Administration has deployed National Guard personnel or active-duty Marine Corps personnel to six U.S. cities: Los Angeles, California; Washington, D.C.; Memphis, Tennessee; Portland, Oregon; Chicago, Illinois; and New Orleans, Louisiana,” the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) responded to a query from Sen. Jeff Merkley (D–Ore.). “The Administration has also kept 200 National Guard personnel mobilized in Texas after they left Chicago. CBO estimates that those deployments (excluding the one to New Orleans, which occurred at the end of the year) cost a total of approximately $496 million through the end of December 2025.””
https://reason.com/2026/02/04/deploying-troops-to-u-s-cities-cost-half-a-billion-dollars-in-2025/