PMC makes over 100 BILLION $$$ a year {private military corp.}

And some have the arrogance to asked why we are despised around the world. We hire the most broken, sadistic, drunks, mentally disturbed people to go around the world killing people in the name of "America's national interest". Ironically, virtually all of these "contractors/murderers" are the broken minds of our past military adventures.

Privatizing War & Prisons is just Stupid. There should be no argument. Why should any businesses profit from human misery at the expense of taxpayers. It's completely insane. Why should private industry be lobbying our politicians to find ways to to start wars and lock people up just to make a buck.

When it comes to war how could anybody in their right mind think it's fine to just farm it out. If we can't get enough soldiers to volunteer or aren't willing to spend money on a larger military we shouldn't be getting involved in these wars to begin with.

I could see using private contractors for moving supplies, building camps and handing food services but that should be it. When war is about nothing then private industry making profit or political parties getting votes we end up in ridiculous wars. We've seen the proof.

Not food service, please. In Iraq the private food service corp. wouldn't go into hostile areas, hence all of the soldiers there had no food service, they had to eat MREs or nothing.

I would guess that private contractors cost much less than doing it through the military. Private industry is always more efficient than government. Besides, let the military do what they do best and fight wars, while private contractors can take care of the logistics.

What on earth makes you think it costs less to have private contractors doing this work? Private contractors are doing the work only because the political class doesn't have the guts, and the American people don't have sufficient understanding of reality, to reinstitute the draft.

Private industry is not always more efficient than the government. Our son works as a government contractor. He makes about what he would make if he were actually a government employee; however, the firm that pays him obviously gets a nice big cut for providing his services. Hiring contractors costs a salary for the person doing the work and for each level of contractor involved along the chain. Everyone will charge the government enough for them to make a profit.

You parrot the Republican mantra about business ALWAYS being more efficient than government. Nonsense. Example Medicaid overhead; 4%, health insurance overhead; 30+%. Cost for private businesses in Iraq have been no-bid cost plus contracts. The farthest thing from efficient you could possibly get.

Most everything that the government does is inefficient. It's just the nature of it. Socialism has failed - it works on paper, not in reality. If we're going to fight unnecessary wars like Afghanistan and Iraq, then at least let's do it efficiently. I'm even for hiring mercenaries from other countries to do the fighting for us, kind of like the British with the Gurkas. Why sacrifice our own children when we can pay others to do the dirty work for us...

Read the article in this month's Vanity Fair about the US soldier who is a sniper in Afghanistan and pay attention to all the times it is mentioned that contractor's are out on patrol with U.S./Afghanistan military. Contractor's are not just there to "protect" whomever they are supposed to protect, but are part of military operations. Maybe you need to get educated on what is happening in Afghanistan.

i haven't been able to validate this separately, but i was told the following by a friend of the family who's done private contractor work in iraq for kbr & is now doing the same in afghanistan. he said a common practice of kbr is to put employees in theater (this particular friend does engineering support work) for a relatively short period of time & then remove them so they can rotate a new crew of employees thru. this friend could not initially understand the reason for this practice, since he & others were making good money & not complaining of long assignments & at least in his experience, he'd just gotten fully up to speed when cycled out. what he learned by accident thru a source in the know, was that kbr was able to charge the u.s. gov't a surcharge every time they placed a new employee in theater. he believed that surcharge to be approx $10,000. ostensibly, this charge was to cover the extra work of processing a person in & out, but what it provided was a perverse incentive to process people in & out more quickly than they might have otherwise just to be able to charge & capture the fee. it was his understanding that they were able to charge the fee even if they were processing in an employee who'd been in theater at a prior time who was already trained & familiar with the in-theater routine. he believes that the short assignment terms serve no other purpose than to collect the fee. again, i have not validated this thru any separate channel, but pass it on for anyone who can follow up on what is suggested here to investigate.

there should be no "for profit" private contractors.
time to reassess and do the right things.

That's not news, that's common knowledge and happening every minute of every day to the tune of 10's if not 100's of billions.

Prince learned devious contracting from the master - his brother in law Dick DeVoss, owner of the notorious Amway (now Quixtar -funny they had to change their name, too).

http://devos.wordpress.com/2006/10/20/blackwater-usas-erik-prince-dick-devos-brother-in-laws-in-arms/

What in the world are we doing paying private armies to fight our wars? Are we not able to recruit and train a competent force? Are we spending money on these guys that could be better spent equipping and training our own military?

Leads me to believe this war is more about the money and the profit for the defense contractors than it is about anything else. We have one story here about how we are taking the enemy out with unmanned drones, and anohter about how expensive it is to hire these mercenaries.

And the citizens are falling for this scam?

God help us.

Contractors not only drive up the cost of the war; they are embedded throughout federal and state government, so we get to pay the cost of their profits on almost every government service we have.

Last Summer I was up in Tower MN, not far from the Canadian border, having a few drinks at the Iron Ore Bar with a couple of buddies, Rob and Brent, from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Also present was a high school buddy of Brent's, Dave and his cousin, Greg, who is a sniper for Xe and claims to be friends with Eric Prince.
After four or five drinks, Brent is like, Hey let's go over to you guy's cabin on Vermillion and do some real drinkin'. So we caravan up and head off to their place. There seems to be an endless supply of booze on hand and as we get liquored up, things start to get strange. I can't help needling this guy, Greg, who is a flat out, White, Christian Supremacist, about everything from the embarrassment of his company being kicked out of Iraq and having to change it's name to the secret little thrill his sister gets every time she sees a picture or hears the voice of President Barack Hussein Obama. But, its Brent and Dave who get into the first physical altercation.
Rob, wisely, realizes the time has come to get out of there and heads back to his place in Ely. The rest of us, somehow, decide to pile into Greg's Tahoe and drive to this remote bar called the Vermillion Club, which they refer to as the VC Club, despite the redundancy. (to be continued ...)

what healthcare is about
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9JmEHsCv4c&feature=related

Welcome to the party Senator. How long can you fight off millions in lobby money to do what's right? The whole purpose for wars is to enrichen the bank accounts of the military/industrial complex. That is their entire reason for living - take away their wars and they have nothing.

He's a congressman and he's been at this party for quite some time....

Oops, sorry. I referred to him as Senator, my bad. I'm on his side.

I would not worry about Grayson, he of the 'money bomb' who raised a half million dollars in a single day from small contributors. At least until the corporations kill net neutrality...

Alan Grayson is an endless source of great progressive legislative ideas. But nobody outside a small percentage of the progressive community knows about them.

These bills have to be publicized. Since we know the media will not do the job, paid ads will have to. Along with presidential speeches.

Every time a Grayson bill is met with deafening silence progressives lose another battle in the war.