War Pigs

Ever wonder why America keep fighting wars against nations and things that pose us no real threat?

Here’s a good answer to why. Congress is heavily invested in the war industry. According to the Center for Responsive Politics as reported by the AP, “Members of Congress have as much as $196 million collectively invested in companies doing business with the Defense Department, earning millions since the onset of the Iraq war”.

The bastards who vote to send our friends and family members to go to die. The bastards that squander our money on missiles and guns. Are the very same bastards that profit from war. The members of Congress have a huge conflict of interest when the decide how our taxes are spent.  

Yes, of course this a surprise to no one, but the size of the investments might be.

The study found that more Republicans than Democrats hold stock in defense companies, but that the Democrats who are invested had significantly more money at stake. In 2006, for example, Democrats held at least $3.7 million in military-related investments, compared to Republican investments of $577,500.

Overall, 151 members hold investments worth $78.7 million to $195.5 million in companies that receive defense contracts that are worth at least $5 million. These investments earned them anywhere between $15.8 million and $62 million between 2004 and 2006, the center concludes.

Neither Sen. Barack Obama nor Sen. John McCain reported no defense-related holdings, but Sen. Hillary Clinton did have investments in holding Honeywell, Boeing and Raytheon. As of last fall, the defense industry had been incredibly generous to Clinton’s presidential campaign. This relationship with the war industry could be why the LA Times reported today that Clinton is on the sidelines of efforts to end the Iraq war. In fairness, “Obama was equally peripheral to the Iraq war debate, but he has not claimed a similar leadership role.” There seems to be a lot of lip service paid to ending the Iraq occupation, but not a lot of action from the party that controls Congress.

However, the biggest war pig turns out be Sen. John Kerry, as “a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, [he] is identified as earning the most — at least $2.6 million between 2004 and 2006 from investments worth up to $38.2 million.”

Here’s CRP’s report on Strategic Assets:

The Investors: Lawmakers with the most money invested in companies with Department of Defense contracts

Member of Congress Minimum Value of Investment Maximum Value of Investment
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass)
$28,872,067
$38,209,020
Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ)
$12,081,050
$49,140,000
Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC)
$9,232,037
$37,105,000
Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis)
$5,207,668
$7,612,653
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif)
$2,684,050
$6,260,000
Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich)
$2,469,029
$8,360,000
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa)
$2,000,002
$2,000,002
Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis)
$1,365,004
$5,800,000
Rep. Kenny Ewell Marchant (R-Texas)
$1,163,231
$1,163,231
Rep. John Carter (R-Texas)
$1,000,001
$5,000,000

Get Congress to stop the funding for the occupation of Iraq? Hardly, there are profits to be made. Every bullet fired by a soldier needs to be replaced. Every bottle of water drunk in Baghdad needs to be supplied by a war contractor.

But replacement is not enough for obese war profits. Congress keeps feeding their investments with new contracts that just keep coming. The Washington Post reported that our Weapons budget has cost overruns of $295 billion.

The Government Accountability Office found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion, and are delivered almost two years late on average. In addition, none of the systems that the GAO looked at had met all of the standards for best management practices during their development stages…

The Pentagon has doubled the amount it has committed to new systems, from $790 billion in 2000 to $1.6 trillion last year, according to the 205-page GAO report. Total acquisition costs in 2007 for major defense programs increased 26 percent from first estimates. In 2000, 75 programs had cost increases totaling 6 percent. Development costs in 2007 for the systems rose 40 percent from initial projections, compared with 27 percent in 2000. Current programs are delivered 21 months late on average, five months later than in 2000.

Congress cannot stop any war, end any occupation, cancel any weapons program because they’re too heavily invested in keeping the conflicts going. It’s nothing personal America. It’s just business.

36 comments

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  1. see if they have the balls to print it…

    fuck, caveman. incredible. the reality of the numbers is shattering.

    great work. great.

  2. a few of Rockefeller’s votes over the past 7 years.  

  3. However, the biggest war pig turns out be Sen. John Kerry, as “a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, [he] is identified as earning the most — at least $2.6 million between 2004 and 2006 from investments worth up to $38.2 million.”

    I’m looking thru John Kerry’s 2006 financial disclosure (PDF), and it’s quite simply a gross distortion to call him a “war pig” based on his investments.  

    The problem here is with the criteria used to identify the “war pigs”: “Lawmakers with the most money invested in companies with Department of Defense contracts”.  This criteria fails to distinguish between true “war pigs”: those who were placing outsize bets on companies which would gain if the war were continued and/or escalated, and those, like John Kerry, who were merely invested in a broad cross-section of publicly traded companies, but had no particular “bet” placed on the war in their investment choices.

    The criteria fails to identify war pigs, because:

    1. It fails to consider the size of an individual’s total investment portfolio.  The more money invested in stocks, the higher you will be on the list.

    2. It treats all companies with defense contracts as if they were “defense contractors”, when, in many cases, a company’s total defense contracts are so small with respect to their total business that the defense contract is essentially immaterial to the company’s financial performance.  There is no effort to distinguish between Lockheed Martin and Dell Computer– both companies have Defense Department contracts, but only Lockheed’s total business is likely to be sensitive to changes in the course of the war.  

    Here’s a list of just some of the companies that Kerry owns that were counted against him because they happen to have a Defense Department contract:

    General Mills

    Dell Computer

    Microsoft

    Coca Cola

    Hewlett Packard

    Unite Parcel Service

    Procter & Gamble

    Disney

    Do you really think that an investment in Disney makes someone a war pig, when Disney’s DOD contract is little over $100,000, not material to Disney’s performance as a company, and probably has nothing to do with the war? Yet it is investments in companies just like this that make up the vast majority of the $28-$38 million that supposedly make John Kerry a “war pig”.

    Now Kerry does own stock in a couple companies which are legitimate “Defense Contractors”, for instance Raytheon and L3 Communitcations.  But it looks like these holdings represent a couple million dollars at the most– a lot of money to you and me, but less than 1% of Kerry’s investment portfolio, and certainly not $28 to $38 million.  Anyone invested in an index fund in their 401k would have a similar percentage of their money invested in Boeing or Raytheon, or General Dynamics.

    • Edger on April 5, 2008 at 15:26

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