Sunday Globe Special: The Long Arm of Leahy

And a stretch of surprise that you will soon see....

"As jets seem bound for Vt., questions of political influence arise" by Bryan Bender  |  Globe Staff, April 14, 2013

SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. — The Air Force says it carefully sorted through 83 military bases around the country before deciding where to assign a coveted prize, the first Air National Guard squadron of F-35s, the next fighter jet in America’s arsenal.

In the end, it picked Vermont for the honor, home state of one of the National Guard’s most powerful political allies in Washington, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy.

But state pride in the award to the “Green Mountain Boys,’’ as the Vermont Air National Guard calls itself, has been clouded by the Air Force’s failure to fully take into account the thunderous noise the F-35s would generate in densely populated communities around its base at Burlington International Airport.

That failure and other flaws in its selection process are raising questions about whether the Air Force deliberately sought to reward a key friend in Congress with a squadron of advanced fighter jets for his state, and whether residents near the airfield might fall victim to Washington’s system of political spoils.

Projected sound levels around the airport are so high with the F-35s that local officials predict several thousand nearby homes would fall within a zone designated “incompatible for residential use,’’ negatively affecting the lives and property values of as many as 7,000 citizens.

A Globe examination of records, and interviews with Pentagon officials directly involved with the review, show the Air Force — in selecting Vermont over competing locations — relied on inaccurate, excessively low estimates of the impact of the jet blast on the local population.

One of the Pentagon officials said in an interview that the lengthy base-selection process was deliberately “fudged’’ by military brass so that Leahy’s home state would win.

“Unfortunately Burlington was selected even before the scoring process began,” said the official, who asked that he not to be identified for fear of reprisals from his superiors. “I wish it wasn’t true, but unfortunately that is the way it is. The numbers were fudged for Burlington to come out on top. If the scoring had been done correctly Burlington would not have been rated higher.”

Leahy, in an e-mailed statement, reiterated his support for the planes but did not respond to allegations of political influence. The Air Force denied the fix was in for Vermont, even though it now says it is reassessing residential impacts and other factors using updated information — a review that could end in a reversal of its preliminary decision....

The Air Force was expected to finalize its selection of Vermont later this year, which could clear the way for preparations to begin for jets’ arrival in Vermont. The earliest the squadron could be flying would be late 2015.

Air Force officials insist its selection of Vermont was based on objective criteria and that there was no intent to reward Leahy with a squadron of state-of-the-art jet fighters.

“I can attest to the integrity of the process,” said acting assistant secretary of the Air Force Kathy Ferguson, who oversaw the service’s so-called Executive Steering Group for Basing.

But she acknowledged the Air Force has revised estimates of the environmental impact of the F-35s, and said the final review will reassess some of its earlier conclusions, including proximity to a weapons depot.

“We are well aware of that,” she said.

The Air Force’s chief of staff, General Mark A. Welsh III, also recently assured local officials who are raising questions about the basing decision that he believes the service’s selection process “is working as designed.”

But he also acknowledged in a letter to members of the South Burlington City Council that some of the environmental data that was initially fed into the process was not up to date.

Leahy, elected in 1974, is a powerful figure in the Senate. He is the longest-serving member and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Defense, which exerts great control over how the Pentagon spends its budget. As cochairman of the National Guard Caucus in the Senate, Leahy also is a prominent booster of the Guard and looks out for the Guard’s interests in Washington.

And he is supposed to be one of the "peace" senators.

While the Air Force was conducting its F-35 National Guard base evaluations, Leahy was simultaneously sponsoring successful legislation that significantly elevated the National Guard’s status within the military by making its top official a four-star general and giving it a seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Leahy also has other political connections to the Air Force and the National Guard. One of his former top Senate staffers, Daniel Ginsberg, is an assistant secretary of the Air Force. The former adjutant general of the Vermont National Guard is a general in the Air Force and second in command for North American homeland defense.

Leahy was a strong advocate of basing F-35s in Vermont, issuing laudatory press releases with each positive step toward the award. Asked specifically about allegations of political influence, Leahy did not respond directly. In an e-mailed statement, the senator said the benefits of the F-35s appear to outweigh the disadvantages.

????? 

He's not the one being kicked out of his home in the name of the empire.

“Fighter jets have been flying out of the airport since the mid-1950s,’’ Leahy said....

Leahy has been among the most prominent cheerleaders for basing F-35s at the Vermont Air National Guard, but he had plenty of company. Strong support came from the governor, the state Legislature, a slew of local business leaders and groups, as well as his fellow senator, independent Bernie Sanders.

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

As controversy has bubbled about the Air Force base decision, F-35 boosters have mounted public relations campaigns to defend the choice. Nicole Citro, a local insurance agent, has circulated thousands of green ribbons and bumper stickers expressing support....

Jobs may be at stake, say supporters....

Yeah, who cares about the lies its based on, or the fact that empire is unsustainable? As long as you have that job now. What did Eisenhower warn us about (after setting it all up)?

Local supporters and military officials insist that Vermont offers military benefits that other potential F-35 locations do not, including relatively unfettered airspace to train and proximity to populated areas across the Northeast of the United States. They point out that it was Vermont Air National Guard that patrolled the airspace over New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.

Related: Sunday Globe Special: Northern Command

But local officials and residents upset about noise have sent an avalanche of letters to the Air Force in recent months, asking that it reconsider its decision.

The potential for thousands of homes to be negatively affected by excessive noise — deemed to be above 65 decibels — would add to the 200 homes that have already been so designated due to commercial growth of the airport. Already, some 50 homes have been purchased by the airport with federal grants and are in the process of being demolished. 

Your tax money in this time of social service austerity.

One of the strongest voices of opposition to the F-35s is retired Air Force colonel Rosanne Greco, a member of the South Burlington City Council who has pored over the Air Force’s environmental impact statement and scoring sheets for Burlington. “Burlington was not the highest rated base either operationally or environmentally for the F-35,” she said. “Yet somehow it was chosen over other bases that were much better suited.”

She said she believes that the Air Force is delaying the final report because “they cannot say why, given this, that Burlington was chosen.”

Ben Cohen, founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, is among those who are speaking out publicly. Cohen said in an interview that he believes the new fighter jet is not only unsuitable for Vermont but, citing F-35 development problems, is an ill-advised investment of taxpayer dollars.

“We are not going to be part of this boondoggle,” Cohen said in an interview. “Someone finally has to say ‘no.’ ”

Even Leahy has been sharply critical of the Pentagon’s broader, $400 billion procurement program for the F-35, which is one of the costliest in Pentagon history and is suffering from a series of delays and technical setbacks. Leahy’s office says he has decided that if the program is going to go forward his constituents should benefit from it....

And someone else. That is why they are being built when the Pentagon doesn't even want them.

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Related: War Profiteer Piece of the Pie: F-35 Flying High in House 

Where did the MISSING TRILLIONS go? $32 billion for weapons that were never made?

Now about that other senator:

The Buying Off of Bernie Sanders 
Senator Sanders Delivers For Vermont Vet

At least he is delivering for someone.

"Sanders fights to prevent program cuts" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg  |  New York Times, December 14, 2012

WASHINGTON — When President Obama cut a deal with congressional Republicans in December 2010 to extend tax cuts for the wealthy, Senator Bernard Sanders, the brusque Vermont independent who calls himself a socialist, decided it was time for a protest.

He had a cup of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal in a Senate cafeteria, marched into the chamber and began talking. He talked for so long — railing for 8 hours 37 minutes about economic justice, the decline of the middle class and ‘‘reckless, uncontrollable’’ corporate greed — that his legs cramped. So many people watched online that the Senate video server crashed.

Today the issue of tax cuts for the wealthy is once again front and center in Washington, as part of the debate about how to reduce the federal deficit.

Not any more: Sunday Globe Specials: Fiscal Cliff Fraud 

What do you mean the tax increase on the rich was a TAX CUT?

And Sanders is once again talking, carving out a place for himself as the antithesis of the Tea Party and becoming a thorn in the side to some Democrats and Obama, who Sanders fears will cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits as part of a deficit reduction deal.

His fears have come true.

Some congressional Democrats agree with Sanders that ‘‘no deal is better than a bad deal,’’ but he may be the most vocal.

He is emboldened by his recent reelection with more than 70 percent of the vote — ‘‘Seventy-one percent, but who’s counting?’’ Sanders said — and he appears to be making a little headway.

Well, apparently he is.

He has been pressing Obama to take Social Security off the negotiating table, and the White House now says changes to the retirement program should be considered on a ‘‘separate track’’ from a deficit deal.

Failed.

‘‘I think maybe he has learned something,’’ Sanders, 71, said of the president, who is 20 years younger. ‘‘After four years he has gotten the clue that you can’t negotiate with yourself, you can’t come up with a modest agreement and hope the Republicans say, ‘That’s fair, you’re OK, we’ll accept that.’ He’s reached out his hand, and they’ve cut him off at the wrist.’’

Yeah, whatever. I'm tired of all the bric-a-crap from both parties.

The Senate is generally a polite place, so Republicans have little to say about their colleague from Vermont with the thick Brooklyn accent. (He acquired it growing up in Flatbush.)

And I'll give you one guess as to his religion -- not that it really matters to me. It is a persons acts for which they are to be judged, not their race, sexual preference, gender, or all the other wonderful little divisive categories the supremacist Zionist media like to promote. However, it is interesting to note the outsized influence Zionist Jews have in AmeriKan government relative to population and other demographics. That's not anti-Semitic, that's just a fact.

After four years of accusing Obama of practicing ‘‘European-style socialism,’’ they are hardly enamored of a man who actually embraces European-style socialism, and who carries a brass key chain from the presidential campaign of Eugene V. Debs, who ran in the early 1900s as the Socialist Party candidate.

‘‘Bernie?’’ Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said with a raised eyebrow and a sly smile. ‘‘He’s one of a kind.’’

Vermont Republicans are a bit more pointed. Richard Tarrant, a businessman who ran against Sanders in 2006 and was trounced, agrees with him that taxes should rise for the rich. But he sees his former opponent as a populist ‘‘advocating class warfare’’ and raising ‘‘false hope’’ about programs that are unsustainable.

Sanders, who has a habit of answering questions with questions, says it is Republicans who are engaging in class warfare.

‘‘Do we really say we’re going to balance the budget on making major cuts in disability benefits for veterans who have lost their arms and legs defending America while we continue to give tax breaks to billionaires?’’ he thundered. ‘‘Is that what the American people want? They surely do not, and only within a Beltway surrounded by Wall Street and big-money interests could anyone think that is vaguely sensible.’’

Sanders, who Wednesday was appointed chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, has 28 of the Senate’s 51 Democrats with him on keeping Social Security out of the deficit talks; all signed a letter that he and the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, sent to the president.

In the House, 104 Democrats — more than half of the caucus — signed a similar appeal. And 13 Senate Democrats, plus Sanders, signed a second letter demanding that entitlement programs be spared ‘‘harmful cuts.’’

To Sanders, ‘‘harmful cuts’’ means any cuts in benefits. He says that entitlement spending should be trimmed only by wringing out inefficiencies. Many budget experts say that is unlikely to produce as much savings as the president and Republicans want.

But Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, believes that Sanders has some silent support.

‘‘I think Senator Sanders represents the majority of our caucus,’’ Harkin said. ‘‘Not all of it, but the majority. They may not be saying it in the same way that Sanders says it, not as aggressively as Senator Sanders. But I think that’s where they are.’’

With his gruff exterior and utter lack of interest in the false pleasantries of politics, Sanders is an unlikely figure to have gained admittance to the Senate, often called the world’s most exclusive club.

He is a onetime college radical who led a sit-in in 1962 at the University of Chicago to protest discriminatory housing policies. Before becoming successful in politics, he knocked around from job to job — carpenter, tax clerk, writer.

He took his first trip to Vermont in the mid-1960s. In 1968, he moved permanently.

In a small state like Vermont (population 626,000), Sanders has proved to be a master of retail politics. This year, he held dozens of town meetings and won without running a single television advertisement.

‘’Bernie engages everyone,’’ said Garrison Nelson of the University of Vermont. ‘‘He walks the streets of Burlington alone, without an entourage. People will come up to him and say, ‘You lousy communist SOB,’ and he’ll say: ‘What do you mean? Clarify yourself.’ ’’

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At least he voted against Lew, right?

Also see:

Senator Bernie Sanders Reveals The Top Ten U.S. Corporate Tax Dodgers
Sanders pushes bill to block corporate tax havens
Bernie Sanders opposes state moratorium on big wind projects
Bad rule, bad tactics from the FCC

He's worried about more consolidation in the corporate press? 

Why not worry about blocking CISPA and keeping the Web free for people like me, Bernie?