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And perhaps a way to turn over the army's stockpile & keep its suppliers in business. Quite a bit of the defense budget seems to have this goal, and it's not c

by iguy 6y ago

And perhaps a way to turn over the army's stockpile & keep its suppliers in business. Quite a bit of the defense budget seems to have this goal, and it's not crazy -- if you skip a generation of tanks/planes/ships because your old ones are OK, the experience to build the next generation will have to be re-grown from scratch.

jjk166 6y ago
Again though, selling the old equipment as surplus or just scrapping it achieves the same goal but also brings in some money.
- iguy 6y ago
  Sure, but maybe this has better PR than scrapping stuff. Or having it show up in Isis videos. Mostly I don't think it's clear that "subsidize domestic police forces" need be the main goal.
  - jjk166 6y ago
    The simplest explanation that adequately explains the observation tends to be correct. There's really no need for any conspiracy here, support for "law and order" has been a winning political strategy for decades. Meanwhile, getting the department of defense to increase the number of MRAPs they order by a fraction of a percent seems like it could be achieved in other, easier ways. It's good to be skeptical, but at some point you need evidence.
    - iguy 6y ago
      Conspiracy is quite a strong word! My take on the neutral explanation would be is to assume that it's like every other policy -- about a dozen people with varying motivations had to support it, and then a few more motivations got added by PR people, and by whoever doesn't want it to stop. Policies "pretty obviously" driven by exactly one factor are extremely unusual.
      - jjk166 6y ago
        You are talking about a group of powerful politicians crafting legislation with a secret ulterior motive to transfer money to an unknown entity or entities in the military industrial complex. That's a pretty textbook conspiracy. If you dig into the line items I'm sure there will be some compromises to get the maximum number of votes, but that's a far cry from an elaborate scheme to line the pockets of the military industrial complex. It's not hard to imagine this bill passing on its own merits without heavy lobbying. No one in the 90s was going to want to be painted as anti-cop, pro-drug, pro-terrorist, and/or pro-government waste. Even if we now see the terrible consequences of police militarization, and many still don't, that's hindsight. At the height of the war on drugs, as children who grew up hearing about serial killers in the 70s were now worrying about their own young kids, taking the weapons that had been lying in warehouses since Nam and putting them to good use protecting the streets here at home had wide bipartisan support. It costs very little, makes people feel safe, and makes a lot of politicians look good. Again it is good to question the official narrative, but your hypothesis needs to be falsifiable. You will always be able to go a layer deeper and say "oh well they did it this way to make it harder to see their real motive" but without evidence there is no reason to continue going down that rabbit hole.
        iguy 6y ago
        You're mis-reading me. Nowhere have I proposed any well-thought-out secret scheme. I'm pushing back against a story that says there's one precise purpose to this, which I thought was your claim above: "pretty obviously just a way for the federal government to subsidize domestic police forces". I suggested one other motivation some people might have felt, of keeping the hardware moving. You've suggested some more, too, now, like looking tough on TV. Maybe that means we agree.

by iguy 6y ago

jjk166 6y ago

Again though, selling the old equipment as surplus or just scrapping it achieves the same goal but also brings in some money.

iguy 6y ago
Sure, but maybe this has better PR than scrapping stuff. Or having it show up in Isis videos. Mostly I don't think it's clear that "subsidize domestic police forces" need be the main goal.
- jjk166 6y ago
  The simplest explanation that adequately explains the observation tends to be correct. There's really no need for any conspiracy here, support for "law and order" has been a winning political strategy for decades. Meanwhile, getting the department of defense to increase the number of MRAPs they order by a fraction of a percent seems like it could be achieved in other, easier ways. It's good to be skeptical, but at some point you need evidence.
  - iguy 6y ago
    Conspiracy is quite a strong word! My take on the neutral explanation would be is to assume that it's like every other policy -- about a dozen people with varying motivations had to support it, and then a few more motivations got added by PR people, and by whoever doesn't want it to stop. Policies "pretty obviously" driven by exactly one factor are extremely unusual.
    - jjk166 6y ago
      You are talking about a group of powerful politicians crafting legislation with a secret ulterior motive to transfer money to an unknown entity or entities in the military industrial complex. That's a pretty textbook conspiracy. If you dig into the line items I'm sure there will be some compromises to get the maximum number of votes, but that's a far cry from an elaborate scheme to line the pockets of the military industrial complex. It's not hard to imagine this bill passing on its own merits without heavy lobbying. No one in the 90s was going to want to be painted as anti-cop, pro-drug, pro-terrorist, and/or pro-government waste. Even if we now see the terrible consequences of police militarization, and many still don't, that's hindsight. At the height of the war on drugs, as children who grew up hearing about serial killers in the 70s were now worrying about their own young kids, taking the weapons that had been lying in warehouses since Nam and putting them to good use protecting the streets here at home had wide bipartisan support. It costs very little, makes people feel safe, and makes a lot of politicians look good. Again it is good to question the official narrative, but your hypothesis needs to be falsifiable. You will always be able to go a layer deeper and say "oh well they did it this way to make it harder to see their real motive" but without evidence there is no reason to continue going down that rabbit hole.
      - iguy 6y ago
        You're mis-reading me. Nowhere have I proposed any well-thought-out secret scheme. I'm pushing back against a story that says there's one precise purpose to this, which I thought was your claim above: "pretty obviously just a way for the federal government to subsidize domestic police forces". I suggested one other motivation some people might have felt, of keeping the hardware moving. You've suggested some more, too, now, like looking tough on TV. Maybe that means we agree.