Merchants of Death Become Honest

There's been a remarkable restoration of honesty and integrity amongst America's merchants of death. As this chart shows, the companies that manufacturer and sell the equipment that allows American boys to go around the world, meet interesting people, and kill them, have become almost perfectly honest in their dealings with the US government.

While spending on 'defense' has soared to levels far beyond what the rest of the world combined spends, the American tax payers who pay for all of this can rest assured that every single nickle and dime is being spent completely honestly. This is a remarkable turn around for an industry that was once derided for selling $400 ash-trays and $1000 toilet seats. But as you can clearly see in this chart, since the peak of corruption in 1989, the number of prosecutions for fraud have now dropped to almost zero.

There's no one quite so honest as a Merchant of Death.

-- chart from Fraud Cases Fell While Pentagon Contracts Surged by Nick Schwellenbach at the Center for Public Integrity, who makes the odd assertion that the only reason the number of cases dropped is that there are fewer investigators today than back in 1995 when the 'Defense' budget was only a fraction of what it is today.