It appears that George Bush and Dick Cheney aren't the only war criminals of the last decade.

The out of control spending and wanton destruction of people continues unabated by policy change, political change, or economic realities back at home. It started with George W. Bush and does not appear to be ending with Barack Obama.

Since 2001, the United States has bumped its military budget up by 35%. Considering it wasn't exactly an underfunded institution pre-Bush, a bump up to damn near $1 trillion per year is a hefty increase.

What do we get for all this extra money? According to the The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, not much. We have the same basic military capabilities as 2001. The military is the same size and in the same overall shape. It just happens to cost 35% more

It is the highest amount of defense spending since World War II, a period which includes wars in Korea, Vietnam, another Gulf War, and the standoff Cold War with the former Soviet Union.

Here is what the CSBA had to say about the budget: "The FY 2012 budget requests a total of $676 billion for the Department of Defense (DoD). The base budget for DoD includes $553 billion in discretionary funding and $5 billion in mandatory funding, and an additional $118 billion is requested for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The budget request also includes $19 billion for defense-related atomic energy programs and $8 billion for defense-related activities in other agencies, bringing the total national defense budget to $703 billion.



Adjusting for inflation, the level of funding proposed for the base defense budget in the FY 2012 request is the highest level since World War II, surpassing the Cold War peak of $531 billion (in FY 2012 dollars) reached in FY 1985."

So...why aren't heads rolling over this? We're staring at a $14 trillion dollar debt. We're in the middle of two (or more) wars across the globe. The government is so (allegedly) broke that it is talking about defaulting on its debts, cutting off food for old people and medicine for sick people, and the Pentagon is throwing out hundred dollar bills like a rapper at a strip club?

Where are the investigations into cost overruns? Where is the outrage over burning through a thirty-five percent raise without one iota of improvement? Is Casey Anthony that amazing a story that we're going to ignore the outright, blatant fleecing of America by the Military-Industrial Complex?

ACTION ITEMS:



Bullish: Obviously, this is fantastic news for defense contractors who receive the benefits of the Pentagon's spendy ways. This includes standbys like (NYSE: NOC), (NYSE: BA), (NYSE: RTN), (NYSE: GD), and (NYSE: LMT), among others.

Bearish: At some point, someone like Senator Franken or Senator Sanders will wake up and hold hearings on the ridiculous waste of money (and likely fraud) that has gone on in the past ten years. Heads could roll. Jail is on the table. All those Pentagon-tied stocks could slide.