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Comment by paulkrush | Hacker News Reader

Not so fast: "One hundred and fifty white oak trees spread over the 64,000-acre base were designated for Constitution"

As a mushroom enthusiast, this is disappointing. I was imagining millions of pounds of maitake just sitting there, waiting for someone to steal them from the military.

Yeah, it's more like "DoD vanity project used as backdoor funding/justification for wildlife preserve".

The USA launders unpalatable social programs through the military, including enormous amounts of basic science funding, several tuition-free universities, and four of the largest jobs programs in the world. Adding wildlife preservation to the list isn't very surprising.

Michigan has 2.8 million acres of national forest. I'm not sure 64,000 acres counts as much of anything at that rate.

There's a couple National Parks here that are larger than 64,000 acres too.

They didn't say that this 64,000 acres is the total of the effort. It's just a parcel.

Do you think that these projects don't further the DoD's core objectives? The vast majority of such projects do contribute to the departments ability to wage war and build a competent force.

Free school lunches in the US are a defense program. The draft in WWII was impeded by the fact that poor kids tended to be malnourished, and grew up to be physically unfit for military service.

Ironically the military now rejects so many potential recruits for obesity that it has become a national security threat.

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/10/10/americas...

So Michelle Obama should have tried to position the push for improved nutrition in school lunches as a pro-military effort to get conservative support?

To get conservative support, Michelle should consider a push to support one income families where one family member can dedicate themselves to provide improved nutrition for their own children.

Conservatives believe that the State is not a proper substitute for mother + father family, but any measure strengthening the biological family is absolutely anathema in liberal circles. At some level your rhetorical question acknowledges this state of affairs.

The Democrat's Expanded Child Tax Credit is the single largest transfer of wealth to SAHMs in the history of the country.

I guess that would make any assistance by a state to its population a defense program, yes?

everything that goes well in the country contributes to the DoD ability to wage war

Maintaining wildlife is part of national defense too, I would argue.

I would be curious to see an analysis of this. How much of the USA's military budget goes to things that would normally be done by other institutions in a country like Canada?

Canada doesn't have a VA for example. We just have universal health care.

The GDP comparisons alone may be misleading.

I don’t know if it’s even possible to tease out this number. The US Army even purchases Skilcraft pens [0] in large part because they are manufactured by the visually impaired. Basically every dollar they spend has multiple purposes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skilcraft

> The US Army even purchases Skilcraft pens...in large part because they are manufactured by the visually impaired

This is underselling it a little. Skilcraft quite literally would not exist if the federal government weren't required by law to buy supplies from them.

The ship this wood is harvested for is older than the DoD and most states. It had to come from somewhere. The DoD isn't even mentioned in this NAVY article. Not everything is a conspiracy.

>Not everything is a conspiracy.

It has nothing to do with it being a conspiracy and everything to do with an opportunity to take a cheap jab at the US for doing it wrong (as if literally every country ever doesn't shoehorn hard to justify niceties into more palatable to fund projects).

> an opportunity to take a cheap jab at the US for doing it wrong

I don't have any issues with the DoD. There's nothing wrong with tax-funded social programs for rural communities. Collectively being more honest about the dual purpose of most DoD spending would be great, but whatever.

> The ship this wood is harvested for is older than the DoD. The DoD isn't even mentioned in this NAVY article.

Huh? DoN is part of DoD...

> Not everything is a conspiracy.

In what sense am I accusing anyone of conspiring? Massive social programs are palatable if you tie them directly to defense. Otherwise they're not palatable. That's not a description of a conspiracy. It's a kind of weird state of affairs, granted, but no conspiring is going on.

Most of the US weapon systems have production in many different states as jobs programs for the senators of those states. You are absolutely correct that the DoD has a lot of political reasons to exist outside of fighting wars.

If a group within the DoD has plans for a project other than the stated goals, that is a conspiracy.

A conspiracy only requires conspiring. It doesn't need to include conspiring for harmful activity.

> If a group within the DoD has plans for a project other than the stated goals, that is a conspiracy.

But that's not what my comment is claiming, at all. There's no conspiracy. Everyone is acting on sincerely held beliefs. "We need a large standing military for defense." Or "We need R&D for defense." Or "We need a huge number of bases spread out across the country for defense." Or "We need this base anyways and the Constitution is symbolically important to our mission/history/culture so we need an oak grove." Etc.

The result is a sort of sprawling socialist state operating in parallel to the rest of the USA, administered by and benefiting people who don't call the cow a cow, but there's nothing conspiratorial going on. Everything operates on sincerely held beliefs. Or more often jaded disinterest in bending the status quo. But not conspiracy, per se.

If you just asked for an oak grove it'd be a fight. Say it's for defense ans there's much less of a fight. Ditto for literally anything else. That's all I'm saying.

> > The ship this wood is harvested for is older than the DoD. The DoD isn't even mentioned in this NAVY article.

> Huh? DoN is part of DoD...

The US Navy was founded in 1794 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy

The USS Constitution was launched in 1797 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution

The US Department of Defense was formed in 1947 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_De...

Government departments aren't organized chronologically, however.

The DoN is part of DoD. I promise. Even your last link mentions DoN is a child agency of DoD and the DoN wiki page states "The United States Department of the Navy (DoN) is one of the three military departments within the Department of Defense of the United States of America" [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_th...

Nah, I think that's coincidence otherwise the Navy would do better cleanups in their own Superfund sites.

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