By the Numbers

From the May 2012 Rotor and Wing, h/t Andrew Drwiega...


Some numbers mentioned during Sen Jeff Sessions' speech before the Army Aviation Association of America.  


Over the last three years...


- Defense spending has increased 10%.
- Medicare spending has increased 37%.
- Department of Education spending has increased 70%.


Food stamp spending has increased 300% since 2001.  


The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost $1.3 trillion over the last ten years.  


The US budget deficit for LAST year was $1.3 trillion.  


In 1962, defense was 48% of the budget, while entitlement spending was 26%.  In 2013, defense will be 19% of the budget and entitlement spending will be 60%.  


The Department of Defense (DoD) budget is $688.3 billion out of a total Defense budget of $903.3 billion ($130 billion for vets, $43.8 billion for foreign economic aid, and $12.5 billion for foreign military aid).  


With continuing budget deficits each year exceeding $1 trillion, completely eliminating the DoD outright would not balance the budget.  


Guns or butter, take your pick.  

Sauteed invasive species

How best to deal with invasive species?  Baked, broiled, or fried?


That is the basic premise described in a recent article in Popular Mechanics that advocates either training natural predators to attack invasive species such as Lionfish and Asian Carp, or to market them as human food.  


I cannot think of a better win/win proposal for wildlife management and menu selections. Pass the butter, this is gonna be good.