General Ray Odierno approves fully of the Iraq troop withdrawal timeline, Paul Krugman approves mockingly of GOP hypocrisy on government spending, and Senator Evan Bayh can’t figure out how he feels about health care reform. All that and more in today’s Sunday Show Roundup …
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Krugman: Republican hypocrisy on military v. stimulus spending is “wonderful” to watch.
TPM Reader JH follows up on the Gates’ new Pentagon budget and all the squawking from Republicans:
Keep up the good work! You are doing great work addressing concern about the non-existent DOD budget cuts as well as Republican double talk on the stimulative effect of defense spending.
That said, you are missing the elephant in the room that no one wants to address — namely, the fact that the DoD Appropriations and Authorizations bills are a stimulus bill, for a few, mainly red states, paid for by the rest of the nation.
Given this, it should come as no surprise that Senator Chambliss would notice the concentrated stimulative effects of defense spending as compared to non-defense stimulus spending that is more equitably dispersed throughout the nation.
The industrial infrastructure that ensured success in World War II — building airplanes at Detroit’s Willow Run airport, tanks at Detroit’s Warren tank yards as well as ships at the Brooklyn and Philadelphia naval yards has increasingly been moved to the South and West. This was a concious political decision made over decades by the DoD, powerful Southern legislators, and multiple presidential administrations. The effect is that the bulk of our remaining naval yards are found south of the Mason Dixon line, Lockheed Martin has significant facilities in Newt Gingrich’s old congressional district, while Texas and California are also home large numbers of defense contractors. …
Yes, Massachusetts, Maine, and Pennsylvania still have considerable defense industries, but on a per capita and dollar basis the bulk of DOD procurement (CA excepted) is in Southern and to a lesser extent Southwestern — aka red states. This is the result of decades of policy decisions.
Even more marked is the location of military bases. The Midwest and Northeast have one large Army or Marine installation — New York’s Ft. Drum. Chambliss’ Georgia has eight, Texas eight, North Carolina five, Alabama three, and Louisiana one. The parallels are similar for the Navy and Air Force. These factors are due in part to weather (in part) and the end of the cold war (the northern, strategic defense air bases, the first defense against the USSR are no longer needed) — regardless the result is the same: the bulk of DOD spending on bases goes to Southern states. …
Now, Senator Chambliss (along with the North Carolina, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma and Florida delegations) might provide wholesale support DOD funding if it went disproportionally to Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Minnesota, but that is a hypothetical these Senators need not answer. Instead, they can remain intellectually dishonest advocating for trickle down economics and railing against “wasteful” social spending for the rest of us, while wrapping themselves in the flag and advocating for increased money for our troops that disproportionately benefits their states.
For too long too many have shamelessly used the DoD funding bills to pork-barrel for their home states while railing against any government spending that could make our economy more efficient and productive (not to mention just or equitable). It is long over-due that they were called on their fiscal and intellectual mendacity.
Keep up the good work.
Neil Cavuto claims Fox News is covering teabaggers in same fair and balanced way it covered the Million Man March in 1995 — except Fox News didn’t exist yet in 1995.
Responding to the flap over President Obama’s visit, Arizona State U. prez says the school doesn’t award honorary degrees to elected officials still in office — except it did in 2002.
A former federal prisoner who is now a consultant advising potential future white collar inmates (Wall Street Prison Consultants!!!) on how to survive prison confirms to TPMmuckaker that a woman claiming to be a relative of Bernie Madoff contacted him for advice, but he’s not sure if it was Madoff’s niece Shana.
An old TPM fave is back. Former Rep. Chris Chocola (R-IN), who lost his re-election bid in 2006, is taking over as head of Club for Growth, replacing Pat Toomey, who is expected to try to unseat Sen. Arlen Specter in the GOP primary in Pennsylvania next year.
A lot of interesting reader responses to the “It’s About Geography” post earlier, many agreeing wholeheartedly with TPM Reader JH, but some, like regular TPM Reader DC, taking exception:
A quick check of the Statistical Abstract of the United States indicates that in 2006 the top fourteen states in prime contracts per capita (i.e. those states that gained more than their populations might warrant) were, in order: Virginia, Alaska, Connecticut, Mississippi, Maryland, Missouri, Hawaii, Arizona, Alabama, Massachusetts, Vermont, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Texas.
Yes, the South is well represented here (if you count Maryland and Virginia as credibly “southern”); but so is New England (Connecticut and Massachusetts have long been among the most defense-dependent states in the country). Six of the above states voted for Obama in 2008. Georgia, BTW, is far down the list. In terms of absolute expenditures, the top three are … California, Texas, and Virginia.
Your correspondent is basically trotting out the old Kirkpatrick Sale/Bruce Schulman argument that the South systematically milked the blue states to gain federal subsidies. But in fact, throughout most of the post-WWII era, the South actually did *worse* than the rest of the country in terms of prime contracts–and procurement has accounted for at least sixty percent of US defense spending.
TBS, the South does indeed embrace a disproportionate share of active and retired military and dependents, and has since World War II. But what that has to do with issues involving the reshuffling of defense *procurement* is beyond me.
Yes, Chambliss will go to bat for Lockheed Martin–as Chris Dodd will for Electric Boat and Snowe and Collins for the Bath Iron Works (Does your correspondent know they exist? Does he know Fort Dix exists? That it’s in the Northeast?). But in the end, the Republican response to the Gates/Obama proposal isn’t about geography; it’s simply a repeat of the old Republican effort to paint everything Democrats do on defense as “soft.”
Check out our slideshow on the recent civil unrest and political turmoil in Thailand.