[MAPC-discuss] F-35

[MAPC-discuss] F-35

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2001-10-29

Surprised?  By Bob Reuschlein,  realeconomy.com,  madpeace.org
President's Home State Gets Next Fighter Plane Contract
     October 26, 2001.  The pentagon announced today that the F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter, a $200 Billion project was awarded to Lockheed's Fort
Worth (Dallas) Texas factory, rather than Boeing's St. Louis, Missouri
factory.  This continues a long proud tradition of awarding major
defense contracts based always on politics and sometimes on merit.  Many
presidents and top congressional leaders have built their careers around
these two facilities.
    St. Louis is the leading military spending city with $7 Billion and
has long been at the top of the list, thanks to being in the home state
of the first Cold War president, Harry Truman, and the home city of
current Democratic congressional leader, Dick Gephardt.
Fort Worth has the distinction of being in the home state  of three
presidents, Lyndon Johnson and two named George Bush, and one Speaker of
the Houses home district, Jim Wright, and in the home state of another
Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn.  In the sixties the F-111 contract
had to be bid out three times before President Johnson could award the
contract to his home state over what many considered a superior Boeing
bid.
    Today the Lockheed bid is considered better so Bush can accept the
first bid.  Another nominal factor is that a pure military contractor
like Lockheed will be more desperate to get the job than a commercial
aircraft provider like Boeing that has long had only 20% or 30% of its
business in military sales.
    Notably, Republican Senator Kit Bond of Missouri is asking the
Pentagon to share the production of the F-35 in the future to prevent a
monopoly of fighter production by one company.  His odds will be greatly
improved, probably guaranteed, if the Democrats retake the House next
year and Dick Gephardt becomes the new Speaker.
    Other prominent past examples of military pork barreling include the
famous Reagan unprecedented peacetime military buildup.  The loot was
divvied up three ways, House, Senate, and President, so 30% of the
buildup went to Reagans California, and the Speaker's New England did
very well as did Senator Sam Nunn's Georgia and Bob Dole's Kansas.
    The best fighter craft in the world today are the F-15 produced in
St. Louis and the F-16 produced in Fort Worth.  The new contract will
add 9000 jobs to Texas.
Another important story of the military industrial complex is the
Atlanta suburb of Marrietta, Georgia.
    All the nation's military airlift capacity produced during the Cold
War came from Marietta until Reagan gave some of the business to
California.  Former John Birch Society President Norm MacDonald
represented that congressional district until he died in the Korean
airliner shot down by the Soviets in 1983;  Newt Gingrich was his
successor.
    When Jimmy Carter was elected President the former Georgia Governor
was used to working closely with Georgia's Senator Sam Nunn.  So it was
very natural for both of them to be big believers in military airlift
capacity.  Naturally, their answer to the oil embargo of the seventies
was to build a military Rapid Deployment Force which would be very
dependent on airlift capacity.  Later Nunn suggested reducing our
300,000 troops in Germany to 100,000.  George Will speculated that Nunn
was moving to the political center to be more acceptable to mainstream
democrats put off by this hawk.  But this policy would lead to thousands
of more Georgia jobs building the increased airlift capacity necessary
to quickly return troops to Germany in a crisis.
    These examples and countless more illustrate the phenomena that some
states own the military industrial complex while others merely rent it.
Owner states like California, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, and
Massachusetts gain more than they lose in taxes when there is a military
buildup.  Renter states like Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and
New York pay more in taxes for their average share of the military money
than they receive back.  Hence state and regional economies profit or
lose dramatically when there's a military buildup or builddown.
    This is well known in the high military states but it affects the
low military states just as much or more.  The owners profit mightily in
a military buildup at the expense of the renters.  As the rent goes up
the landlord wins and the tenant loses.  The opposite happens in a
military builddown like after the Cold War.  As the rent goes down, the
owners suffer and the renters become more prosperous.
    No region is affected more than the Industrial Midwest area of the
Great Lakes region of the country, the one region farthest from the
national average of any:  the West and South are slightly above average
and the Northeast is slightly below average, but the Midwest is way
below average.  For example, the Midwest prospered after the Cold War
ended, with 74% of the national housing boom of  1994.  And they suffer
under a military buildup, with 65% of the lost jobs in the last year as
the military budget increased $25 billion in fiscal year 2001. The
budget was formed in October of the presidential election year, with the
huge temptation to trade jobs for votes.  Add another $38 billion
increase in the new military budget thanks to the current crisis and the
Midwest recession will become a depression.
    Every elected president during the Cold War came from an above
average military spending state.  Hence the military owner states own
the presidency.  And the presidential election resembles more of a
military auction as no one dares offend workers in military contractor
plants and military aircraft plants seek to have their home state
candidate elected president with the resulting lockhold on the military
budget.
    Oh, the only post WWII elected president to come from a low military
state?  Clinton, who came from a high military region, embraced every
weapons system on the campaign trail in 1992, and still was violently
hated by the right wing as Bush won 90% of the military vote in 2000.

Monday, October 29, 2001 5:14 PM

[MAPC-discuss] F-35