Vermont Miltary Boondoggle

Good coverage of how military pork barrel spending generates political corruption:

This is a story primarily about corrupt practices by the Burlington City Council, in its headlong determination to force a neighboring city to be the base for a weapon of mass destruction, the nuclear capable F-35 fighter-bomber (in development since 1992, first flown in 2000, still not reliably deployable in 2018, at a cost of $400 billion and counting).

"Progressive Democrats" in Vermont love the F-35:

The entire “leadership” of the state of Vermont, mostly Democrats, has spent more than a decade making this atrocity happen, with widespread media complicity. And you wonder how we got Trump as President.

Local residents of South Burlington gathered signatures for a ballot resolution opposing using a local airport to site F-35 operations:

After decades of falling behind schedule, the Air Force still doesn’t have an F-35 ready to deploy in Vermont before September 2019, if then. With this in mind, F-35 opponents at SAVE OUR SKIES FROM THE F-35s decided to try to get the F-35 question on the ballot for the Burlington town meeting on March 6, 2018.

The City Council and City Attorney violated the law to block the Save Our Skies ballot initiative, because military pork trumps local opposition:

Opposition to basing the F-35 in a residential neighborhood is at least as old as the mindless official support, and the opposition has been much more articulate, thoughtful, and detailed. Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat and Burlington native, has been enthusiastic about militarizing his hometown from the start, treating it as if it should be seen as an honorable piece of pork from the military-industrial complex.

Yeah, I'm talking to you Bernie!

Independent senator Bernie Sanders, like Democratic congressman Peter Welch, has hedged slightly in his support, but neither has come close to a cogently articulated position, much less opposition. Governors of both parties have been cheerleaders, especially Peter Shumlin, who took a junket to Florida to listen to an F-35 and decided it wasn’t all that loud (which was shortly before he decided universal healthcare wasn’t all that necessary).

Nothing stops an American military boondoggle. The bloodthirsty hand of corporate military corruption can buy politicians anywhere on the planet:

As currently assessed by the Pentagon, the F-35 can’t shoot straight and has more than 200 other deficiencies, but Australia is going ahead buying 100 of them. An Australian military strategic thinker observed dryly: “It’s disappointing that there’s still deficiencies turning up fairly regularly in an aircraft that we’re already going to get about ten years later than we originally thought.”

The full story of hardball local politics here:

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-are-democrats-and-progres...

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EdMass's picture

I am a Mason, 32Nd degree Scottish Rite.

The Illuminati and I have an agreement. When the time comes, and it will, and we really finally take over, I have dibs on Vermont. I will receive it and then things will be different.

Heh. Deal with it.

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Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!

Firesign Theater

Stop the War!

Meteor Man's picture

@EdMass @EdMass
I have my Free Mason Legionnaires, authorized by the Grand Lodge of Irregular Freemasons, staged at the Vermont border. This is your only and final warning!

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Seems I have something to say about everything today, y'all keep making me log back in to pile on. There's a typo in the Subject btw, Miltary is missing an i. ai yi yi

WASHINGTON – Sustainment costs on the F-35 are poised to become unaffordable, and that’s a big challenge for Ellen Lord, the Pentagon’s newly christened undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment.

As a result, Lord is focused on testing new business and data processes on the fifth-generation stealth fighter, including leveraging big data analytics for sustainment purposes.

“Right now, we can’t afford the sustainment costs we have on the F-35. And we’re committed to changing that,” Lord told reporters at a Jan. 31 roundtable, adding that the plane is the “most significant” program in the Department of Defense.

"sustainment costs" also known as "software upgrades" and they are costly because their shit don't work. The rentiers can't even provide a stable monopoly for the "Homeland". Hence, exports galore. P.T. Barnum with extra Bernays sauce.

PEACE NOW

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snoopydawg's picture

WE will never have decent health care in this country until the military is defunded by 80%. And we know that you know that too, so quit playing with people's hopes of if we just get the right person in office we will sunshine and roses. This is not going to happen until the corporations start paying for their own damn wars.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

jorogo's picture

where F-16s currently fly out of Madison to the Volk airspace in Central Wisconsin. The upshoot of this arrangement - Madison gets to lap up the trickle-down economic benefits, while rural Wisconsinites, having already endured one F-16 crash that reduced a house to toothpicks and a smoldering crater, get to pay for the bloated F-35 to simulate combat here, over our homes, and endure the increased noise and danger of a new, louder, unproven boondoggle F-35. Yes, urban elitism is alive and well here, garnering support from all the usual suspects, including Democrats - Tammy Baldwin (Madison - also in bed with big ag, Grocers Manufacturers) and even so-called "progressives" like Mark Pocan (Madison).

They all feed at the same bullshit trough as Madison's Chamber of Commerce, with phrases like "noise comparable to the F16" (farts and fireworks can be compared too) and "catalyzing the state’s economy" (we all pay, yet only Madison gets a return equal to 0.032% of Wisconsin’s 2016 GDP, or 19% of what all Wisconsinites pay into the F-35 program)

What even the Alternet article fails to mention, is that the base (airfield) location is only one point of hazard and noise. These warplanes, obviously, must go somewhere to perform their "training", or in the case of the F-35 experiment, a POP for an unproven craft. The rural yokels, easily ignored with little to no voice in political decisions, are the inevitable chosen victims for this lab experiment. Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle (Democrat) in his 2005 letter of invitation to the US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense to base F-16s here, pointed this out clearly, throwing rural Wisconsinites to the military wolves thusly...

The surrounding area is sparsely developed. In fact, land use densities around Fort McCoy and Volk Field average about seven homes and 17 residents per square mile. In other words, encroachment and noise complaints are not an issue at Fort McCoy and Volk Field.

My bold. And who do you think was demonized in 2010 rural Wisconsin to facilitate the Scott Walker ascendance? Dem sellouts always pave the road for subsequent Republican exploitation. Make your own list.

Does anyone really still wonder why rural America gives a big middle finger both to urban elitism and to near-universal bi-partisan government capitulation to profiteering predators of war, food manufacture (big ag), health insurance, pharma, energy and wall-street industries?

One of the 17 per

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"If I sit silently, I have sinned." - Mossadegh