Everything said about the unnecessary expenditures for the 20 B-2 bombers is certainly true. It indeed makes us question the intelligence of our leaders.

Is it not possible however that the true reason for these decisions is that if these funds were not spent there would be massive layoffs in the aerospace industries which are supported by hundreds, if not thousands, of sub-suppliers and thus a total of many millions of workers would be idled. The real reason for this action may well be that such massive layoffs would swell the welfare rolls and other assistance programs to such an extent that there would be massive uprisings among citizens. This could result in more demands for more federal programs to alleviate the obvious financial suffering incurred by these millions of "VOTING" citizens.

I recall that as a young Marine in 1946, after WW2 ended, there were thousands of cases of multi-band short wave radios lined up on a runway in Texas and then run over by tanks to destroy these no longer needed military supplies. I questioned why they didn't sell them to the returning veterans, who knew of their usefulness, at reduced prices rather than destroying them. I was told that if they did the radio manufacturer would go out of business since the market would be flooded with these military surplus items and the market for such radios would be destroyed. Therefore there would be no jobs for either the returning veterans nor the current employees of the radio manufacturing company. In short they were destroyed to keep the company and its employees in business and gainfully employed at, of course, the expense of the government.

I cannot vouch for the authenticity of these claims but these possibilities seem plausible enough to me to be at the heart of the current decision to approve 20 more unneeded B-2 bombers since eliminating them could cause similar massive unemployment considerations and associated federal problems that our elected officials would prefer not to tackle.