Creepy sentiment.... has anyone heard this sort of sentiment before?

[salin]

Buried in a washingtonpost LBN story about vets growing uneasy with bush... is a statement that makes my skin crawl.

"For every soldier that dies over there, there's $250,000 that just got put back into the economy," he said, referring to the standard military life insurance policy amount. "When you walk in that door, right after basic training, you know what your job is. If you stay because you want the college money, hey, I'm sorry, you took the risk."

From the article linked in this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=101024

This really disturbs me.

But I have to wonder... is this some sort of sick meme from one of our more extreme rightwing media personalities? Sorta sounds coulteresque...

[roguevalley]

1. its classic bastard.

anyone who thinks there's an economic opportunity in EVERYTHING
is a bastard.

[Cocoa]

2. pretty cold

and pretty bad economics. I don't think soldiers getting killed or wounded or traumatized is good for our economy. I could be wrong.

[Mairead]

9. Well, as Paul Hawken points out, our official economic policies

have a sick way of counting GDP. We count the manufacturing as a plus, we ignore the pollution it creates, and then we count the cleanup costs as another plus.

Just another Capitalist scam.

[Wwagsthedog]

3. An attitude like Andy Burkett's...

... says a lot about why this country is in such a mess. Hope you are reading this Andy, but you're probably too retarded to use the internet.

PS: The $250,000 quote is his in the original article.

[K-W]

4. How exactly

does one put money into an economy? Anyway this reeks of the blame the victim logic that lets greedy conservatives justify alot of bad things.

[Capn Sunshine]

5. False analogy

Like all other conservotrash thought this "sounds" true.

He forgets to account for the lifetime productivity of the individual, which is at least TEN TIMES what the $250,000 figure is.

By his logic, 9-11 was an economic boon, due to the insurance claims.

Sorry but a premature death is a NET LOSS to society and more specifically to the family fortune of the deceased.

Damn, conservonuts piss me off.
:grr:

[KT2000]

6. Right-wing anthem

in a nutshell! What an ass but what a great spokeman for the Republican, free-market party. Andy just had the audacity to say what they all feel.
Except for one thing - taking money from "insurance" is a no-no.
Another wing of the party would say that the dead soldier was responsible for his own death and therefore dependents are not eligible for the payout.
These people are just sick.

[dani]

7. the guy seems like an idiot

to me. He's never voted in his life, "I always had the excuse that, 'Somebody else elected that idiot,' "
But now he's gonna vote for AWOL-Bush; the whining about dead soldiers is just sissy stuff.

[Vitruvius]

8. Soldiers sign up to defend their country -- NOT to serve as underpaid

mercenaries to steal Iraqi oil for the BFEE. Soldiers are American PATRIOTS, not BFEE-gang "muscle". None of my relatives or friends in the service signed up for what they're being used for now.

Defend your country and the BFEE chickenhawks will place a value of ZERO on your life. Those thugs do not deserve to live in America.

Vitruvius