Bullets and Jobs

KENTUCKY IS OFFERING TAX BREAKS TO DEFENSE FIRMS said the headline. Kentucky is offering to forgo property tax on buildings constructed by private defense contractors on Bluegrass Station (formerly part of Lexington-Bluegrass Army Depot). The property has evolved from a former Army installation that was shuttered due to budget constraints into a property that houses companies that do business with the Defense Department. Bluegrass Station provides a secure environment for defense contractors to conduct sensitive operations.

With jobs as scarce as they are state governments are offering some enticements to lure businesses in order to create jobs. I have for some time looked with a dim view at tax forgiveness and other lures that decrease revenues for the state such as tax increment financing. Especially when it is offered to private enterprise. It is difficult for me to understand why such corporations as Raytheon or Lockheed-Martin need such tax breaks when they are some of the most profitable companies in the world through their feeding at the public trough in the name of national security. They start out with the taxpayer giving them breaks and end up with the taxpayer paying for their product. Pretty sweet deal if you can get it and they can.

For this to be an attractive business proposition for the state of Kentucky these companies that do business with the federal government have to be viewed as growth industries and therein lies the problem. At the first of this month, just a few short weeks ago, when the famous “sequester” was making its cuts known there were plaintive cries all around the country about the jobs that it would cost. In Newport News there were shipbuilders, welders and restaurant owners crying about the hit that their pocketbooks would take as a result of the budget cutbacks. Already hundreds of thousands of jobs that were supported by state and federal governments such as teachers and social workers have been cut. My question is this: who said that jobs building implements of war would last forever? It just does not make sense that we should maintain jobs for people engaged in making materials for war when we are striving for peace. War materials are not required during peacetime despite what the dogs of war try to tell us.

But we were warned of this and by a Republican yet. It was President Dwight D. Eisenhower who was also the supreme allied commander in Europe during World War II. You may imagine a wartime commander and lifelong army man to be a great booster of the armed forces but his farewell address when stepping down from his two terms as President spoke of warnings to the citizenry. He has been much quoted but little heeded. It goes as follows:

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.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

As with so many other things we have allowed this demon to creep up on us through our fear of an imagined lack of security. Sure, we have been attacked but we have not been brought down but the fear of such coupled with the avarice of the armaments industry has created in us a desire for absolute security at the cost of many of our liberties. Astonishingly I find myself largely in agreement with our junior Senator on this subject. Well, as with many other things the time has come to pay the piper.

The aforementioned complex now creates so many jobs building attack submarines, Apache helicopters, F-22 Raptors, drones and smart bombs that we just can't afford to stop making those implements of destruction. And unless we want to be renting out storage units then we must use them creating in the process the world's largest government stimulus program. You may call me a peacenik nut but I challenge you to find the flaw in the reasoning.

So, here is another quote from that great leftist (not) General and President Eisenhower:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

I haven't always been a great fan of President Eisenhower but compared to the rhetoric we get today he was a towering fount of wisdom.

Why should the military-industrial complex be a growth industry? Why should we continue to make weapons just because of the jobs? And why should Kentucky pin its hopes on the hope of the United States remaining on a permanent war footing? I am not so pie in the sky as to think we can instantly change this dynamic but I do believe we can start. Right now.

This is my take on bullets for jobs economic fishing.