Keith, I’m
only responding to a portion of this posting and that is about the closing of
some of these military facilities. Some of them are insignificant, don’t be
alarmed by the volume. For
example, the ANG (Air National Guard) unit adjacent to the Portland Int’l
Airport is small, but it will affect several hundred jobs, surprisingly. A Navy
recruiting station with 7 employees will be closed. The Umatilla Depot will be
shuttered completely when its work of destroying WW2 era bombs is finished, hopefully
all without incident, and that encompasses several hundred more civilian jobs.
Oregon’s total is just over 1000 jobs affected, but it will affect those small communities.
Perusing the list, I noticed that
numerous listings were accounting offices.
The savings
are not that great, $48.8 Billion over
2 decades. They’ve just received yet another supplemental spending request of $82 Billion for war expenses that will only
last through this September. They are saving pennies and spending
dollars, as the saying goes, but the military industrial beast must be fed.
The closings
will be brutal in many communities. The media is hastily complying with the Pentagon
citing examples of past closed installations that have been redeveloped
successfully, some quite well with a higher jobs picture than before. Some on this list are very valuable
property now and will be eagerly redeveloped. But these will take time and there will be suffering in the
meantime. Others are isolated and/or toxic enough from years of weaponry
pollution that they could be best used as waste sites.
It’s the
timing, I think, adding to economic insecurity right now. Some will question if the cuts are
hardest in blue states while so-called red states benefited. On the east coast, its clear that Blue
New England took a hit while the Red Southeastern states gain. They said they would
offer assistance in some cases. The Pentagon will now have to justify each of its
decisions where challenged, which should tie economic and foreign policy in the
minds of voters, some negatively while others will take this as justification
to continue militarized diplomacy a la Preemptive Doctrine. KwC
From Military is Consolidating @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/13/AR2005051300216.html
In effect, the
Pentagon is trimming away hundreds of inefficient bits and pieces of its
military infrastructure while concentrating its assets in big bases, where it
can reap economies of scale. A major goal is for the Army, Air Force, Navy and
Marines to share facilities in joint, multi-service installations -- both to
save money and benefit from closer cooperation.
For example, the
Army's 7th Special Forces Group will move from Fort Bragg, N.C., to Eglin Air
Force Base in Florida, where it can train and prepare for operations together
with Air Force special operations personnel. Eglin will establish a joint site
where the Navy, Marines and Air Force can all train pilots for the new Joint
Strike Fighter aircraft. The services will also share schools for subjects such
as transportation and religion.
The growing Army will
account for some of the biggest expansions under the plan as it increases the
number of brigades stationed in the United States from 26 to 40. Fort Bliss,
Tex., will gain a whopping 11,354 military personnel including the 1st Armored
Division from Germany, and artillery and aviation units from other U.S. bases.
Fort Benning, Ga., will gain 9,221 troops, while Fort Carson, Colo., adds 4,200
and Fort Riley, Kan., increases by 2,400.
The Army will also
build 125 Armed Forces Reserve Centers to improve the ability of National Guard
and reserve units to train, mobilize and deploy. Meanwhile, it will close 176
aging Army Reserve facilities and shrink regional reserve commands from 10 to four.
The change aims to move reserve facilities closer to population centers that
can better sustain their membership, said Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the
National Guard Bureau. "The demographics that once supported those
installations have migrated," he said.
The Army also faces
the closure of 14 major bases -- defined as facilities with a plant replacement
value of more than $100 million -- although most of the shutdowns involve
industrial depots and institutional headquarters. Fort Monmouth in New Jersey,
which houses schools and research centers in electronics and other fields, will
close with the loss of 5,272 military and civilian employees.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
733. American turkeys voting for Xmas
That the Pentagon seeks to close 33 big bases right across America is not
something it would want to do willingly. It has been told to do so by the
Bush administration for financial reasons even though, in many instances,
it is going to bring about tremendous hardship to many local communities
which depend on the bases economically.
To save face, the Pentagon is rationalising this major cutback by saying
that it wishes to bring about a more agile defence force. It doesn't
mention that at least three major high-tech projects (including a stealth
fighter, an advanced Abrams tank and an Internet-linked battle control
system) have already been cancelled for cost reasons in the 2005/6 budget.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, mainly because of the burden of its
defence expenditure (about 50-60% of its total GDP), America was also able
to cut back (from about 20% of GDP to 15%). Now America is cutting back
further. It cannot afford to maintain its occupation of Iraq and scores of
other well-equipped bases around the world -- usually near oilfields and
pipelines -- unless it reduces its domestic costs substantially. With a
steady growth in long-term unemployment, a slackening consumer demand, a
decline in middle- and working-class incomes and a yawning budget deficit,
America stands on the edge of economic stagnation (as is already taking
place in Japan and the European Union) and the Bush administration can do
no other but to reduce government expenditure.
The decline of America as a military power is a significant sign of its
concomitant decline as a centralised nation-state, such as those -- mainly
West European -- which came to their peak from about 1870 and through most
of the last century. Indeed, the immigration of large numbers of Mexicans
into California (already comprising more than 30% of the state's
population) will inevitably mean the breaking away of California as an
independent governance in due course.
China is about the only exception to the economic malaise which is
affecting all developed countries at the present time. (Even South Korea is
becoming desperate.)But it is still not a developed country but a
developing one and it has not been a nation-state ever since Den Xaioping
and Zhu Rhongi managed to release the country from its Communist Party
stranglehold in the late '90s and release the energy of its home grown
entrepreneurs and laid out a welcome mat to its rich diaspora Chinese
businessmen from all over Asia.
China still has a common written language and a past civilisation which
will hold it together as a culture that is distinct from the rest of the
world for a long time to come but it is fast losing its nation-state status
which it gained during its fight against the Japanese occupation during
WWII and its subsequent brief period as a communist regime. It is
privatising its state industries (and also one of its state banks so far),
reducing its armed forces and is welcoming senior Western bankers and
financial experts to take over its banks and guide its stock exchanges.
But the clearest sign of all that China is not retaining its brief status
as a nation-state is that its provincial and big city Communist Party
governors have started to give way to entrepreneurial executives and mayors
who take decisions independently from the central government. China now has
six major economic regions based around the cities of Beijing, Dalian,
Tianjin, Shanghai, Fuzhou, Hong Kong and Guanzhou which are competing for
industrial development and trade against one another as much as with
foreign countries. Keniche Ohmae, one of the leading management consultants
of the world and a constant visitor to China, considers in his recent book,
The Next Global Stage, that each of these regions has more potential than
his own country which he now considers to be moribund due to bureaucratic
over-control. He writes this sadly because he is still a proud and loyal
Japanese.
The nation-state took hundreds of years to develop on the back of a
succession of increasingly expensive military innovations which demanded
more centralised taxation and governance each time, and probably came to
its peak between about 1870 and 1970. But it's now on the decline. There
can be no more terrible a military weapon than the nuclear bomb and so,
today, the military lobby has nowhere further to go -- even if their patron
nation-state politicians could afford new monster weapons -- and even if,
as in America, the UK, Japan and Western Europe, there were enough young
men who were willing to be recruited into their professional armed forces.
The supply of credulous young men willing to die in foreign lands on the
say-so of politicians is now drying up quite fast.
The last point is something else that the Pentagon has declined to mention.
Keith Hudson
<<<<
PENTAGON SEEKS TO SHUT DOZENS OF BASES ACROSS NATION
Eric Schmidt
WASHINGTON, May 13 - The Pentagon on Friday recommended closing nearly 180
installations and offices, including 33 big bases, from Hawaii to Maine in
the first major restructuring of the nation's vast military network in a
decade.
Ranging from tiny Army Reserve centers to sprawling Air Force bases that
have been the economic anchors of their communities for generations, the
proposed closings, consolidations and reductions of more than 800 military
facilities in all, which could cost several thousand civilian jobs
nationwide, sent shock waves across all 50 states. The plan also
underscored the Pentagon's far-reaching effort to revamp the armed services
into a leaner, more agile force.
In the New York area, the Pentagon wants to shut the Navy's submarine base
in Groton, Conn.; the Army's Fort Monmouth in New Jersey; and the Air
National Guard Station in Niagara Falls, N.Y. The Groton base had the
largest single loss of jobs in the proposal.
Other bases proposed for closing include some familiar names in military
history, including Fort McPherson in Georgia, the Pascagoula Naval Station
in Mississippi and Fort Monroe, Va. And in South Dakota, the state's
second-largest employer, Ellsworth Air Force Base, would be shut.
The military also wants to move thousands of military and civilian workers
out of leased commercial high-rise buildings near the Pentagon in Northern
Virginia to more secure locations at bases around the country.
Closing bases, though, does not mean shrinking the military, just
rearranging it.
"Our current arrangements, designed for the cold war, must give way to the
new demands of the war against extremism and other evolving 21st-century
challenges," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said. The plan is
proposed to save $48.8 billion over 20 years.
The Pentagon sent its findings on Friday to the independent Base
Realignment and Closure Commission, or Brac, which will spend the summer
reviewing them in public hearings and installation visits. Mr. Rumsfeld
will testify to the panel on Monday.
....
New York Times -- 14 May 2005
>>>>
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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