#179
The following information is from an interview with US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene
The financial support America provides to Ukraine looks very much like money laundering schemes, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has claimed in an interview with Lisa Boothe. “The money supposedly destined for Ukrainians ends up in the pockets of non-profits and NGOs that are often run by people close to the politicians in Washington.” She claims that the money given to Ukraine is like a revolving door, some of it stays in Ukraine, but some of it comes back to favored people, such as our representatives in Congress. A non-profit organization is a business that has been granted tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) because it furthers a social cause and provides a public benefit. According to Investopedia, a non-governmental organization (NGO) is a non-profit group that functions independently of any government. NGOs, sometimes called civil societies, are organized on community, national and international levels to serve a social or political goal such as humanitarian causes or the environment.
According to The Ron Paul Institute of September 2021, “between one-third and one-half of that total defense spending was pocketed by defense firms, which provided logistics and reconstruction, private security services, and weapons – along the way, these contractors habitually engaged in ‘questionable or corrupt business practices,’ including fraud, abuse, price-gouging, and profiteering.” In recent years, the government has awarded Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman a quarter to a third of all Pentagon contracts. It’s undoubtedly no coincidence that four of the past five US Defense Secretaries previously worked at one of these five companies. According to STATISTA, in 2021, the total lobbying spending in the United States amounted to 3.73 billion US dollars, up from 3.53 billion US dollars spent on lobbying Congress in 2020.
According to The American Conservative, “nearly half the Pentagon budget goes to contractors. The money goes directly to private corporations and much of it is then wasted on useless overhead, fat executive salaries, and startling (yet commonplace) cost overruns on weapons systems and other military hardware.” According to Representative Greene, “They want to give $40 billion to Ukraine and you have these $40 billion on top of the money that has already been given. That brings it to $53 billion. That is over two-thirds of the State Department’s entire budget for the year.” She believes that Congress is involved with money laundering because politicians have a stake in companies that supply the proxy war in Ukraine and the money comes back into the pockets of friends and families. Our tax dollars are just like one big slush fund for criminal operations and it needs to end. Greene is also concerned about the American farmer, who, according to her, is on the verge of going out of business. Washington’s sanctions against Russia have caused many farmers to bankrupt. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of fertilizer and farmers are huge purchasers of gas and oil. Senator Rand Paul has claimed that “the latest package would bring total US aid to Ukraine to $60 billion since the conflict began in February, nearly as much as Russia earmarks annually for its entire defense budget.” The 40 billion dollar aid package for Ukraine passed in the House by 368 to 57.