We, Who Did Not Heed Eisenhower, are Now Slaves to the Military-Industrial Complex

We’re in the height of tax season and, as you prepare to pay your fair share, be sure you know you’re giving $260.00USD to Lockheed Martin, a single armaments manufacturer.  Do you feel safer at night knowing you’re faithfully paying your “Lockheed Martin” Slave Tax?

[T]he company receives one of every 14 dollars doled out by the Pentagon. In fact, its government contracts, thought about another way, amount to a “Lockheed Martin tax” of $260 per taxpaying household in the United States, and no weapons contractor has more power or money to wield to defend its turf.

We live in an era where $250,000.00 USD a year is considered the poverty line, while teachers making $50,000.00 a year are seen as greedy and in need of a collective bargaining disembowelment while half the Camden, New Jersey police force have been laid off.

Where is the logic in our politicos?  Where have all the good people gone?

We were told this would happen in 1960 when President Eisenhower warned us against the rise of the Military-Industrial complex:

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Here’s Ike in his own voice:

We are at a crossroads in America.  Do we want to pay for bombs in the Middle East or for better education here at home?  Do we want to pay Lockheed Martin or do we prefer to keep our money in a savings account we alone control to protect our personal well-being?

There’s a war here in the Homeland, and it is being waged in public against the morality of common sense.  You know the invaders by their mark: Waving an American flag and testing your blind allegiance to their corrupted patriotism and their unAmerican, contemptible, need to make the rich even richer off the backs of the working poor.