what the Defense Barons do to keep Congress in their grips

[ensho]

on govt. contracts, they put suppliers in almost every state. then if Congress wants to close the contract or reduce the contract the Barons wail about how it would hurt the workers in all those states.

read it and be outraged.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175045


Tomgram: Frida Berrigan, How Shovel-Ready Is the Pentagon?


President Obama has recently threatened to rescind the "blank check" the Bush administration offered to big defense contractors. So now is the time when all that planning by Lockheed Martin and the other major arms manufacturers comes into play. One of that company's major weapons systems, the F-22 Raptor, is potentially on the chopping block. How convenient then that, in the midst of an economic meltdown, Lockheed just happens to have more than 1,000 parts suppliers for that jet carefully scattered across 44 states, all of which, as far as I know, have representatives in Congress. This is pretty typical.

Take the Army's Future Combat System (FCS), which Noah Shachtman of Wired.com's Danger Zone blog calls a "poster child in Washington for Pentagon bloat and overreach." According to a recent Army briefing document, "The FCS Manned Ground Vehicle program encompasses more than 839 suppliers in 38 states totaling more than $6.2B in development cost impact." The only question, of course, is: How could the prospective eight-vehicle system have missed those other 12 states? Similarly, when it comes to the Navy's much desired Virginia Class Submarine, according to MSNBC's Tom Curry, "Supplier work on the subs is spread from Northampton, Mass., (Kollmorgen Corp.) to Tacoma, Wash., (Bradken-Atlas Castings) not to mention the main sub building sites in Groton and in Newport News. Each of those congressional districts happens to be represented by a Democratic member of the House of Representatives."

-snip-

Is the Next Defense Budget a Stimulus Package?
Why the Pentagon Can't Put America Back to Work
By Frida Berrigan

-snip-

At the end of February, another huge "stimulus" package was announced but generated almost no comment, controversy, or argument. The defense industry received its own special stimulus package -- news of the dollars available for the Pentagon budget in 2010; and at nearly $700 billion (when all the bits and pieces are added in), it's almost as big as the Obama economic package and sure to be a lot less effective.

-snip-

In 2002, the first full year of what came to be known as the Global War on Terror, for instance, those three companies -- ranking first, second, and third on the Pentagon's list of top ten contractors -- split $42 billion in contract awards, more than two-thirds of the $67 billion distributed among the top 10 Pentagon contractors.

In 2007, the last year for which full contracting data is available, the same Big Three split $69 billion in Pentagon contracts, which was more than the total received by the top 10 companies just five years earlier. The top 10 divvied up $121 billion in contracts in 2007, an 80% increase over 2002. Lockheed Martin, the number one Pentagon contractor, graduated from a mere $17 billion in awarded contracts in 2002 to $28 billion in 2007. That's a leap of 64%. Given such figures, it's easy enough to understand how the basic military budget -- excluding money for actual war-fighting -- jumped from about $300 billion to more than $500 billion during the Bush years.
-long snip-
-------------------------------------

defense Barons are good at scamming.


well, the troops could come home, be taught HAZMAT so the military can clean toxins out of their bases.

Defense Barons need to go the way of the dinosaurs.

the pentagon should be turned into an apt. bldg.

aircraft carriers turned into universities.

[stillcool]

1. An apartment building?

How about a city?

[ensho]

2. true - self contained and! a veg./flower garden

way back when, women gathered at the pentagon and wove all the entrance doors shut with yarn and thread.

wish someone would fill us in on this history. I'm not good at searching.

[stillcool]

5. Third World Traveler...

is loaded with information: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/
If you do a search on damn near anything, you will be rewarded with tons of information.

[Greyhound]

3. This is where that leadership thing is supposed to come in.

But then again, being a servant of The People was not intended to be a career either.

[LearnedHand]

4. Good find! k&r

[depakid]

6. So the alternative is to outsource these programs?

Seems to be what the author's saying.