Military-Congressional-Industrial Complex
Firms that donate to Inouye receive his earmarks
By HERBERT A. SAMPLE - Associated Press Writer
pddnet.com
11/1/2009
HONOLULU (AP) — A team led by a small Hawaii company was competing to design a new generation of military transport ships when Navy officials dropped it from contention in late 2007. The reason: the team's entry didn't meet the Navy's criteria.
Not all was lost for Navatek Ltd., however. The Honolulu firm had a powerful ally in Washington D.C. — U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye.
Since 1997, executives of Navatek and its parent firm, the privately-owned Pacific Marine, have contributed more than $29,000 to Inouye's campaign coffers, most of it since 2003.
And now, the eight-term Hawaii Democrat is trying to direct $2.2 million in taxpayer money to the company to finance a model of an amphibious vehicle that was a vital component of the entry the Navy rejected.
It's all part of a pattern for the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the jubiantly self-proclaimed "No. 1 earmarks guy" in the nation.
In the Senate version of the fiscal year 2010 defense appropriations bill, which Inouye was instrumental in drafting, he is sponsoring almost three-dozen provisions that would spend more than $200 million on projects in Hawaii that the Pentagon generally does not want, an Associated Press analysis of federal election reports has found.
The contributions were contained in a Federal Election Commission database that dates back to 1976.
Of the $200 million, more than $25 million would flow to Hawaii-based firms whose employees have given more than $102,000 to his campaigns since 1997. Another $33 million is intended for larger, more well-known companies, such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, whose political action committees have contributed $114,000 to Inouye's political war chest since 1997.
Such contributions are not illegal or uncommon. And Inouye has long been applauded in Hawaii for bringing federal dollars back home. But congressional watchdogs say the donations and earmarks are questionable.
"I think what that shows you is, at the very least, there's the appearance of a quid pro quo between campaign contributions and then how decisions are made to allocate taxpayer resources," said Mandy Smithberger of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington D.C.
Inouye refused repeated interview requests, and his staff would not disclose how the earmarks were justified. In a brief statement, he said congressional earmarks comprise a tiny percentage of overall federal spending and his benefit military personnel, small businesses and Hawaii's economy.
"The congressional funding initiatives that I support are necessary and thoroughly vetted by my staff and colleagues," he added.
But many of Inouye's earmarks exemplify how Congress targets spending, said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, another watchdog group in Washington D.C. "Decisions are not being made on project merit but on political muscle, and certainly Sen. Inouye ... has more political muscle than just about anybody," he said.
Last January, Inouye took over the appropriations committee, where he wields tremendous influence over the expenditure of hundreds of billions of federal dollars. He also has long been either chairman of or a high-ranking Democrat on its defense subcommittee. At 85, Inouye is seeking a ninth six-year term next year.
During his 46 years in the Senate, he has sponsored hundreds of targeted provisions in every corner of federal spending. Such practices have been heavily criticized by Ellis and others as contributing to a "pay to play" culture in the nation's capitol.
Nonetheless, Inouye remains exultant about his role in the earmarking process.
"It may please you or it may not please you," the senator told Big Island business leaders in August. "I'm the No. 1 earmarks guy in the U.S. Congress."
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The Defense Lobby Under the Obama Administration:
Following an extraordinary year, the status quo marches on.
By Andrew Heaslet
Originally written for The FriedensForum (Peace Forum), which is a bimonthly magazine of the German peace movement
The US is coming out of a tumultuous year; we spent 2008 engaged in the most expensive election in history while our economy was simultaneously falling apart. Following an extraordinary year throws a bit of a kink into typical, linear analyses, but noting that the American defense industry is still financing on par with the years leading up to last year’s record-breaking performances, one can conclude that these companies a) know that lobbying dollars are high-return investments and b) have weathered the economic and electoral storms very well.
High Returns
The Bush administration ushered in a period of plenty for defense manufacturing contractors. Between 1999 and 2009, the defense budget roughly doubled, many of those funds going towards “rebuilding” efforts, tossing gobs of money into cold-war-era weapons to prepare to do battle with cold-war-era foes at a time when we were fighting groups of insurgents whose most effective weapons were (and are) simply known as “Improvised Explosion Devices.”
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Demystifying the Military-Industrial Monolith: the Myth of Competition
Todd Zimmer, Industrial Analysis and Research Intern
July 20, 2009
Note: The week after this article went to press, the Senate voted in favor of a McCain/Levin amendment, which stripped the funding for the F-22 from the Senate Defense Appropriations budget. This is a terrific step in the right direction, but it is clear that proponents of the F-22 will continue to scheme and fight to replace the funds for these planes in other parts of the budget, set to be finalized this fall.
As summer winds down and St. Louis begins to cool off, things will be heating up on Capitol Hill, where battle lines are being drawn in preparation for the latest fight to reduce military spending. Defense secretary Robert Gates is leading the charge against bloated and unnecessary weapons systems, specifically targeting the cold war relic F-22 Raptor, a $351 million-a-pop fighter originally designed for combat with Soviet jets. Gates' efforts to cap production of the F-22 at 187 units are strengthened by a coalition of congressional allies like senate armed services chairman Carl Levin (D.-MI) and ranking minority member John McCain (R.-AZ), who have endeavored to strip $1.75 billion of F-22 funding from the senate version of the proposed 2010 defense budget.
Meanwhile, in the lower chamber, Barney Frank (D.-MA) was defeated in an effort to pass an amendment to block the inclusion of F-22 money in the house version of the budget, where proposed funding for the F-22 has been siphoned from monies originally intended for the environmental cleanup of defense sites. Should congressional efforts to block further funding for the F-22 fail, president Obama has threatened a veto of any spending bill that would waste taxpayer money on unneeded F-22s. Yet despite considerable opposition to the program, the political puppets of the military-industrial complex are organizing to defraud the American public in the name of corporate profits.
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The Military Industrial Congressional Complex
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
Dwight D Eisenhower, Jan 17, 1961
The MICC has four core elements, Congress, The Pentagon (the Military), Military Contractors, and finally Voters:
Let’s start with Congress. Congress has the power to both declare war and to fund the pentagon’s budget.
The Pentagon is responsible for waging war and protecting US vital interests and they do so with equipment purchased from:
Military Contractors. These are privately run corporations that do everything from serving the troops their meals to building bombs and the planes that drop them. They also employ:
Voters. Those working in the defense industry often receive good wages and are fairly loyal to their employers and, in turn, vote for politicians who they feel will support their own best interest.
Digging in to this simple framework, is what we call the Revolving Door. There are countless examples former politicians and high-ranking military officers who, upon retirement, become lobbyists or other influential employees for military contractors earning lucrative salaries. These ex-politicos and former officers use their clout to gain influence with their friends still serving in congress and the armed forces. These same individuals might then return to government service for a period of years and eventually return to positions with military contractors as even more influential employees for these companies.
President Obama’s national security advisor, Gen. James Jones, is a shining example of an individual who is enjoying perks and peddling influence on a full run through the revolving door. This man spent 40 years with the US Marine Corps, eventually becoming the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe. Upon retirement, he earned positions on the Board of Directors of the Boeing Company and the Chevron Corporation. He now moves into the political world as a prominent member of President Obama’s cabinet.
A congressperson sitting on the Defense Appropriations Sub-Committee would rightfully listen to and respect a long-serving veteran of the armed forces’ opinion. But when private interests are financing that opinion to the tune of millions of dollars a year, one must question the motives of the opinions being shared. In 2008 for instance, the Boeing Company spent $16.6 million lobbying our political leaders. That’s a hefty investment that they would not make if it did not yield results.
One must also question to whom congresspersons owe their loyalty when military contractors are donating huge volumes of money to their congressional campaigns. Missouri senator, Kit Bond, for example, has received more than half a million dollars from such companies since his political career began in the 1980’s.
In another example of the hazards of the MICC, it is not rare for military contractors to use their employees as gambling chips to extend older or win new contracts. The F-22 Raptor is a prime example of how military contractors spread jobs across strategic congressional districts to ensure longevity of a program, whether needed or not. This plane supports tens of thousands of jobs spread across 44 different states. That means, even if only one house district per state is represented, already 10% of House of Representatives members have interests in this plane as do 88% of Senators. Broad based congressional support like this, which is exclusively connected to jobs, makes it nearly impossible to dispute the need for and merits of any military program.
Finally, throughout the scandalous and corrupt nooks and crannies of the MICC, we must remember that this political maneuvering is all so these contractors and politicians can make money off of war.
Created by A. Heaslet, coordinator of the Peace Economy Project.
War Profiteers + Obama Administration = ???
The verdict will be slow in coming. There are several things to be optimistic, shall we say, “hopeful,” about when it comes to confronting the corruption, fraud, waste, and deceit of war profiteers – and, not surprisingly, there are many reasons to doubt that we’ll see any real change after all. I am genuinely torn as to what to expect. If he follows through on his positive programs, life will be much more difficult for military contractors. On the other hand, however, if he succumbs to the various pressures working against him, it may mean more of the same old frustrations.
While much has been made of Obama’s choice of National Security Advisor, Marine General James L Jones (Ret.), and his connections to Chevron and Boeing as well as other controversial, “centrist” appointments, like retaining Defense Secretary Gates, I wanted to provide a handful of examples that to illustrate Obama’s potential Dr. Jekyll and/or Mr. Hyde. Here they are:
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Military Industrial Complex 2.0
Cubicle Mercenaries, Subcontracting Warriors, and Other Phenomena of a Privatizing Pentagon
by Frida Berrigan
Published on Monday, September 15, 2008 by TomDispatch.com
Can be found Commondreams.org
Seven years into George W. Bush's Global War on Terror, the Pentagon is embroiled in two big wars, a potentially explosive war of words with Tehran, and numerous smaller conflicts - and it is leaning ever more heavily on private military contractors to get by.
Once upon a time, soldiers did more than pick up a gun. They picked up trash. They cut hair and delivered mail. They fixed airplanes and inflated truck tires.
Not anymore. All of those tasks are now the responsibility of private military corporations. In the service of the Pentagon, their employees also man computers, write software code, create integrating systems, train technicians, manufacture and service high-tech weapons, market munitions, and interpret satellite images.
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Making Money on Terrorism
by WILLIAM D. HARTUNG
This article appeared in the February 23, 2004 edition of The Nation.
February 5, 2004
We all know that Halliburton is raking in billions from the Bush Administration's occupation and rebuilding of Iraq. But in the long run, the biggest beneficiaries of the Administration's "war on terror" may be the "destroyers," not the rebuilders. The nation's "Big Three" weapons makers--Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman--are cashing in on the Bush policies of regime change abroad and surveillance at home. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was on target when he suggested that rather than "leave no child behind," the slogan Bush stole from the Children's Defense Fund, his Administration's true motto appears to be "leave no defense contractor behind."
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War Profiteering and the Concentration of Income and Wealth in America
Escalating Military Spending
by Prof. Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Global Research
April 13, 2007
How Escalation of War and Military Spending Are Used as Disguised or Roundabout Ways to Reverse the New Deal and Redistribute National Resources in Favor of the Wealthy.
Escalating Military Spending: Income Redistribution in Disguise
Critics of the recent U.S. wars of choice have long argued that they are all about oil. "No Blood for Oil" has been a rallying cry for most of the opponents of the war.
It can be demonstrated, however, that there is another (less obvious but perhaps more critical) factor behind the recent rise of U.S. military aggressions abroad: war profiteering by Pentagon contractors.
Frequently invoking dubious "threats to our national security and/or interests," these beneficiaries of war dividends, the military–industrial complex and related businesses whose interests are vested in the Pentagon’s appropriation of public money, have successfully used war and military spending to justify their lion’s share of tax dollars and to disguise their strategy of redistributing national income in their favor.
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Time to end waste at the Pentagon
By SEN. BERNIE SANDERS & WILLIAM D. HARTUNG
Politico.com
6/24/08
As Congress prepares to consider the annual Department of Defense authorization bill and other military spending legislation totaling more than $700 billion, the need for more aggressive scrutiny is abundantly clear. At a time when we have a $9.3 trillion national debt and large unmet social needs, oversight of these enormous and ever-increasing sums has failed to keep up.
The Pentagon’s procurement and budgeting processes are rife with problems. For example, the Government Accountability Office has identified $295 billion in cost overruns on 72 major weapons systems, even as the Pentagon can’t balance its books or keep track of its vast inventory. These problems can lead to bizarre results, such as the fact that the Pentagon has hundreds of millions of dollars in spare parts now on order that are already marked for disposal. Despite huge cost overruns, major contractors have received $8 billion in performance bonuses that have been paid out regardless of the results of their work. These abuses of the public trust — and the public purse — are simply unacceptable.
These are complex problems that will require multifaceted solutions. A good way to start would be by slowing down the “revolving door” that allows high-level Pentagon bureaucrats and military officers to go to work for major defense contractors.
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Eisenhower's Legacy
You’ve probably hear of the Military-Industrial complex, but a little known fact is that when Eisenhower, who made the phrase popular, originally wrote his famous speech he included an import, third element: Congress, calling it the Military-Congressional-Industrial complex. The outgoing president was pressured into removing the congressional element from the final draft of his speech, but we at the Peace Economy Project feel that this body is equally responsible for the superfluous spending that is used in the name of “Defense.” If you are not familiar with Eisenhower’s speech, please watch the video below, filmed nearly 60 years ago, which forewarns of the situation we find ourselves in today.