The Defense Industry
Apr 30th, 2006 at 5:16 am by Susie
In California’s 36th district, incumbent Jane Harman is facing a strong primary challenge from anti-war activist Marcy Winograd:
Asked about Harman’s contributions from and support for defense contractors, Behr said Winograd didn’t understand the dynamics of her district.
“Marcy clearly doesn’t understand the importance of the aerospace industry to this district,” he remarked. “The aerospace industry is one of the leading creators of jobs in the district. The Congresswoman has, from the day she took office, been a strong advocate in helping them diversify, create and preserve jobs. She not only has the support of the companies, she has the support of the employees as a result.”
Winograd has pledged not to accept any campaign contributions from defense contractors.
You know, that “jobs” argument for the defense industry is a perfect example of the military-industrial schizophrenia affecting Congress.
The defense industry isn’t self-sustaining. They couldn’t exist without constant infusions of pork from their friendly neighborhood congress critter. On some level, I already knew that. But it didn’t really hit me until some 15 years back, when I served on my paper’s editorial board.
The question then (and now) was funding for the V-22 Osprey, produced by the local Boeing plant. I immersed myself in the subject for a few weeks, reading everything I could find and interviewing contrarians. My conclusion was that this was truly a classic boondoggle. The Osprey, under the best of circumstances, is too slow to ever safely do that for which it’s sold - troop transport. As one former general put it to me: “We’re selling hand-held rocket launchers all over the world. If we move troops in the Osprey, they’re sitting ducks.” Not to mention how delicate the thing is. Imagine using it in a dust storm.
The thing is, even under the best of circumstances, the figures didn’t add up. See, Wacky Curt Weldon (our congressman from Boeing) kept talking jobs, jobs, jobs. But I found something not commonly known: the V-22, as costly as it was, produced very few new jobs at our local Boeing plant. That’s because when there was additional work, Boeing would recall laid-off workers in Seattle and fly them in to work at the Philadelphia-area plant.
I crunched the numbers and found the Osprey cost-per-job figure to be in the millions. That’s right, millions. As I wrote in the editorial, we’d be better off writing those Boeing workers a fat check for new job training or even an Ivy League education.
But what about our enemies? you might ask, not unreasonably.
Well, here’s the thing. When you have bright, shiny weapons, they’re like any other toy: You want an excuse to use them. Doubt it? In the runup to Peewee’s Big Iraq Adventure, the military types and their adoring media lapdogs were virtually drooling over the technology. Bigger, smarter, faster ways of blowing civilians (and the cradle of civilization) to bits! (One of the reasons the wingnuts love the Osprey is that it allows theoretical military intervention in cases where they might otherwise be limited to actual diplomacy.) But I digress.
Should we have means of repelling enemies? Yes. Should we base our local economies around overpriced, unnecessary and inefficient military projects simply because the people who have always worked at the local defense plant want to keep working there? Hell, no.
I’m not saying we should throw those people out in the economic cold. Give them money to make the transition, put government backing into peacetime technology. But if the only rationale for a project is jobs, can’t we find something more cost-efficient and equally lucrative for them to do?
And shouldn’t we at least be having that national discussion?
This is great news. These war-whores need to be purged.
The V-22 is an object lesson in monetary black holes that is the military-industrial-media complex. Plus, 26 Marines and four civilians killed in the last five years. Same type of boondogle cash cow as the Bradley has been. Thank those Texas congressbeings for the waste.
But hey, with the rapture-crapture nearly upon us, it’s the end times and stuff. So none of this will matter, right? heh, heh. These dogs will be hung wiht their own ropes…
Here’s a nice piece on the Osprey:
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2004/07/the_v22_opsrey_.html
This is one of your best entries of the year. You’ve laid it out so beautifully, the conclusion/cost-analysis so indisputably final.
I love the Ivy League education suggestion, too. A few years ago the city fathers & mothers were pushing for a big boondoggle, building a >$300 (the public part) Million facility for a sports team that plays fewer than 10 games a year in it. The billionaire’s argument about needing the facility was the team was losing a potential $2 - 5 million a year because there weren’t enough places to put luxury boxes in the old facility. I suggested to one of my city councilfolk they just cut the billionaire a check for $6 million a year in exchange for not building the new facility.
Believe it or not, when put that simply, that argument carried the month (though ultimately, he worked a different system to get his facility).
There’s no time like the present to take on fakes like Harman with the truth. This is the year the otherwise-Liberal War Democrats are MOST vulnerable — they have a sense (an illusion, I suspect) that they can take the House or Senate this year so they don’t want *any*thing to go “wrong”. If the Ospreys of the economy stand in their way, they will ditch them (with regrets, of course) as blithely as they habitually ditch the public interest in a more normal Congressional-election year.
It’s all about relentless pressure and simple-simple-simple indisputable arguments deftly delivered like what you did in this essay.
I agree with Marcy, but Behr might be right — Harman’s district also covers the South Bay, just south of Los Angeles. And the biggest businesses there have been defense since Howard Hughes opened Highes Aircraft there back in the day.
Marcy will have to run a campaign that appeals primarily to the northern part of the district — Venice, Santa Monica, Marina Del Rey. Another point is that a fair number of those workers have been and are African Americans, who’s famillies were lifted into the middle class when those factories first opened. So being painted as anti-defense industry could splinter the black vote in the district.
She’ll probably need to focus on being anti-THIS war, and make it less about defense and more about Harman being a useful idiot in allowing our defenses to be used by this administration in such a shabby manner.
Lots to think about. Here’s to hoping she succeeds.
I have no problem throwing those “workers” out the door. This country needs to rethink everything about our society and this whole defense budget idiocy is a good place to start.
Question:Where do the good citizens of Military Industrial Complex U.S.A. thing the “bacon” their CongressPimp “brings home” comes from. Harman is a member of the crew who got us where we are today….
Ignorant, deeply in debt and convinced that racist jingoism is a foreign policy.
The entire nation could have health care, energy independence and be pollution free if we spent just a fraction of the dollars we through away on stupidity such as the V-22 on research and development.
But noooooooooooo….Osama is coming!
There is only one solution: Organise and throw all those currently in Congress out on their well-funded pensions and replace them with progressives who will overhaul the government.
I urge action now…there’s not much time left.
I used to live in Harman’s district. At the time it was almost all defense employers (and I mean 80%+). Harman has done a great job representing her district.
A. Citizen says:
“I have no problem throwing those “workers†out the door.”
Great. Come on down to Inglewood and Torrance and El Segundo and do it. Hate to tell you but they’d probably beat your ass to a pulp, before they threw you out the door.
Typical elitist bullshit. Not worried about workers? No wonder the left is in the shape it’s in.
Another reason (beside job creation) to keep the defense workers around is to maintain continuity of experience. If, at some point in the future, we need all that experience, it’s much better to have it around than to try to generate it from scratch. So we keep them around designing and building technologically amazing but operationally questionable doodads. Current missions could be adequately handled with WWII airframes.
If we ever tangle with a technologically sophisticated opponent (who? I dunno.), I suspect we’ll get handed our head. Our military is *’way* too focused on having a small number of extremely expensive platforms.