I already got a head start on this post:
"Spending cuts taking hard toll on Head Start" by Akilah Johnson | Globe Staff, June 10, 2013
When the school year resumes this fall, at least 1,359 Massachusetts children — 259 more than earlier estimated — will probably not be in Head Start classrooms because of automatic across-the-board federal spending cuts.
The cuts, the legacy of so-called sequestration in Washington, will have a bigger impact than the federal government originally estimated, with slots for the preschoolers disappearing statewide, classrooms closing, jobs lost, and the school year ending early in some communities, officials say....
Now please let us raise your taxes, Americans.
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"Proposed budget cuts imperil defense jobs in Mass.; Jobs at 2 plants are threatened" by Bryan Bender | Globe Staff, May 13, 2013
WASHINGTON — Andrew Bagni, a 26-year-old supply manager who started at the General Dynamic’s C4 Systems division as an intern five years ago, is among hundreds of the firm’s workers at two Massachusetts plants who fear that any day they will lose their jobs because of a planned $128 million cut to an Army contract for communications equipment....
Related: The Engines of the Massachusetts Economy
The Pentagon is expected to inform Congress soon that it plans to strip the money from the Army communications contract and use it instead for war funding, to help replace $7 billion lost to the automatic cuts.
General Dynamics last week could not estimate the number of layoffs that would result in Massachusetts, or the timing. But the defense contractor said it would affect “hundreds’’ of the 1,000 employees in Taunton and 400 in Needham.
Related: Working on Massachusetts State Budget Post
GD got a tax break?
“It is very scary,” said Laura Miola, 62, the operations manager at the Taunton plant who has worked there for three decades....
The company and members of Congress, including newly-elected Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, are mounting a last-minute push to try to avert the cut in communications spending, either by persuading the Pentagon to slash elsewhere or by getting Congress to restore the money.
The state of limbo for the targeted workers highlights the upheaval caused by the sweeping reductions, which economists say are beginning to hamper America’s sluggish economic recovery.
Congress adopted the automatic cuts in August 2011 as part of a deal to raise the federal debt ceiling. It was believed the prospect of the sequester would be so onerous that lawmakers would negotiate a better deal. But by the time the 2013 deadline rolled around, Congress remained mired in partisan dysfunction and the $85 billion in automatic cuts for the current federal fiscal year began taking hold in March.
In Massachusetts and around the country, federal employees and contractors are cutting salaries, imposing furloughs, and laying people off. These moves all squeeze money out of the overall economy.
The proposed cut in Massachusetts is contained in a $7 billion request to shift funding out of dozens of weapons projects to pay for current operations. The shift, which was first reported by InsideDefense.com, gives precedence to the daily needs of forces. In exchange, the Army’s plan to outfit brigades with new communications equipment is placed on the back burner.
The apprehension felt by workers and their families has spread to businesses in the local communities and to scores of suppliers who rely on the company for their business.
The General Dynamics C4 Systems division, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., has a major presence in Massachusetts....
The new communications system for soldiers on the battlefield is undergoing field tests in New Mexico and is intended to be implemented in all 125 Army brigades over the next decade....
The cutbacks would freeze recruitment efforts at local universities, where General Dynamics draws a lot of the high-tech talent it requires.
For example, the project relies on cryptological experts who can ensure that the Army’s communications are secure, as well as engineers to build special components to prepare the equipment for battle conditions.
“To hire that engineering team and the manufacturing team to do that takes years of planning,” Marzilli explained. “You don’t turn that on a dime.”
And the company would curtail such benefits as tuition assistance programs....
Related: Budgeting My Posts
The C4 Systems facility is the largest employer in Taunton’s Myles Standish Industrial Park, according to state data.
Budget specialists say the actual impact of the cuts might not be immediate and there could be a window to persuade Congress to reverse the decision. But defense contractors tend to plan for the worst-case scenario.
The money will be put back for the military. It always is.
“If you are General Dynamics, you have start looking at all contingencies and start making decisions and planning accordingly,” said Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.
Harrison also noted that if sequestration is not reversed, the cuts are supposed to continue for nine more years.
“Over time the whole program could get canceled,” he said. “All the jobs could go away.”
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The fallout would affect even Home Plate, a Taunton sports bar that employs 52 people.
“We draw a lot of business from them,” said Frank Brack, the establishment’s manager. “Retirement parties, any kind of going-away parties, you name it. They come in for lunch, dinner, and we deliver there.’’
Kennedy, who signed a letter to Hagel along with the rest of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, said he, too, is concerned about the reverberations the cuts could have on the “corner store, the supermarket, the CVS pharmacy.”
“It does have a real ripple effect,” he said in an interview....
It used to be called trickle down.
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Maybe we shouldn't have tied our economy to the military-industrial complex.
Related:
"Thunderbirds of prey; The military steps up its PR to stave off sequestration" by James Carroll | May 13, 2013
This is Armed Forces Week, a time when the nation honors the military, and when many bases welcome the general public with open houses and receptions.
They are honored every week!
The observances culminate on Saturday, Armed Forces Day. In the past, the celebrations featured the precision flying teams — the Navy’s Blue Angels and the Air Force’s Thunderbirds — but they are grounded this year due to sequestration cuts.
Related:
Fly to the Angels
Blue Angel Air $how
The thrill of attending an air show lies only partly in the wonder of the astonishing precision with which the nation’s best pilots fly their planes.
Haven't there been a lot of crashes at them lately?
Their high-speed passes, rolls, tight turns, and loops reliably generate oohs and aahs. When the screaming fighter jets draw into formations that have their wingtips almost touching, spectators close their eyes. That’s when the other part of the thrill kicks in — the palpable possibility that the pilots won’t pull the trick off this time. No one goes to an air show hoping for a crash, but the possibility of a crash is key to the excitement....
Like at the car races.
Today, in what may be the most pointed observance of Armed Forces Week, Pentagon representatives are expected to go before the House Appropriations Committee to seek urgent relief from the sequester cuts. The Defense Department, joining another kind of diamond formation, echoes the Federal Aviation Administration and the Justice Department in declaring that its sacrosanct function justifies exemptions — “reprogramming” — from the automatic budget cuts that took effect in March. “The reality is that if sequestration continues as it is,” the Army vice chief of staff testified last month, “we risk becoming a hollow force.”
Then you can join the hollowed-out American people.
The armed services’ plea is expected to be generously heard by politicians, many of whose home districts are rife with military bases and defense industries. There is no equivalent constituency, meanwhile, for other institutions and people left reeling by the crude cost-cutting of sequestration. Who makes the case for the budgets of Head Start, cancer research, food assistance, nutrition programs, and unemployment? There is no such thing as Health and Human Services Week....
Indeed, traditions like Armed Forces Day, and popular displays like air shows, were instituted precisely to assuage any unease Americans instinctively felt about the failure to demobilize after World War II.
Americans don't like militarism and empire, and never have!
Until that period, Americans broadly believed that a massive permanent military establishment violated something fundamental in the nation’s sense of itself.
Yeah, the Constitution. There isn't supposed to be a standing army.
The Thunderbirds call themselves “America’s Ambassadors in Blue,” but they represent the Pentagon more than the country, and the impression they aim to make is on domestic opinion, not foreign.
Periodically, there have been opportunities for a shift in priorities — a shift in which the Pentagon might lose its primacy. But fears of a hollowed-out military always trumped fears of hollowed-out schools, inner cities, civic infrastructure, and moral value. No surprise, therefore, that the war that did not end in 1945, or even in 1989, is refusing to end again....
The sequestration cuts have presented an accidental opportunity to adjust the political and economic order. This Armed Forces Week, Congress should let human services, for once, count for as much as armed services.
They ended up cutting food stamps instead.
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Related:
"Dozens of the nation’s air shows cancel their events" Associated Press, April 29, 2013
MILWAUKEE — Dozens of air shows that draw tens of thousands of people and generate millions of dollars for local economies have been canceled this year after the military grounded its jet and demonstration teams because of automatic federal budget cuts.
For years, the biggest draws at air shows have been the military’s two elite jet teams, the US Navy’s Blue Angels and the US Air Force’s Thunderbirds, and their stunts. The armed services also have provided F-16, F-18, and F-22 fighter jets and the US Army Parachute Team, the Golden Knights.
All the teams were grounded as of April 1 to save money.
Those cutbacks have affected more than 200 of 300 air shows held each year, said John Cudahy, of the International Council of Air Shows.
How much greenhouse gases are being spewed into the atmosphere by these shows?
About 60 shows have been canceled, and he expects more cancellations as hopes for restoration of the cuts fades. He predicted 15 percent to 20 percent of the shows will not return next year, even if the military begins participating again.
‘‘The worst case is that they either cancel and go out of business,’’ he said.
Local economies will feel the sting of the cancellations without the air shows bringing in crucial tourism dollars.
Representatives for some of the nation’s biggest air shows, such as the air and water shows in Chicago and Milwaukee and the Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wis., said they did not expect a lack of active military jets to affect their events.
The Chicago and Milwaukee shows are held along the shore of Lake Michigan, where large crowds are expected for a free spectacle; the Oshkosh event is primarily a convention of pilots and aviation enthusiasts, with an air show attached.
But organizers of other events said they expected such a sharp drop in attendance that they felt they had to cancel.
Major Darrick Lee, of the Thunderbirds, said a typical season costs an average of $9.75 million and the Air Force has to focus its resources now on its mission in Afghanistan. Team members are still doing local public appearances that have little or no cost, he said.
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Let's hope they make it back from Afghanistan, and not this way:
"Arlington Cemetery planning an expansion" by Susan Svrluga | Washington Post, May 12, 2013
WASHINGTON — Arlington National Cemetery leaders are working on what could be one of the largest expansions in decades, warning that without more burial space the nation’s iconic military burial ground would run out of new grave sites within a dozen years....
Then you will just have to shut the wars down and bring the troops home.
It is no small question for a place that attracts more than 4 million visitors a year, with graves that span US history, including Revolutionary War soldiers, US presidents, Abner Doubleday, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Joe Louis, Pierre L’Enfant, and many thousands of others who served the country.
‘‘I love Arlington. But it’s not big enough for all future wars,’’ said Representative Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee, a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Meaning the wars are never going to end, 'eh?
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Related: A Trip Through Arlington
Who are the terrorists again?
Look who else is getting an expan$ion:
"House moves to protect Capitol budget amid cuts
WASHINGTON — House lawmakers are moving to protect Capitol Hill’s budget even as they’re working to slash other programs such as education, health research, water projects, and housing aid for the poor.
Yeah, the cuts won't pierce their taxpayer-funded bubble.
The effort by the House Appropriations Committee promises a small budget increase for legislative branch operations. Funding for labor, health, and education programs would absorb an almost 20 percent cut. Federal firefighting efforts also face big cuts, as do transportation and community development grants.
The GOP-controlled panel is giving Congress a budgetary reprieve after three consecutive years of cutting Capitol Hill’s operating budget.
The House budget has dropped by 15 percent to $1.2 billion over that time from the record levels established when Democrats controlled Congress.
An Appropriations panel spokeswoman said the reason for the slight budget increase include greater police costs and security upgrades....
At issue are the 12 annual spending bills setting agency operating budgets for the fiscal year starting on Oct. 1. This so-called discretionary spending has been squeezed since Republicans took back the House in 2011 and is bearing the brunt of automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that took effect in March.
Oh, when it affects them Congress budgets more money!
The total budget for Congress is about $4 billion. The 435-member House has a slightly larger budget than the 100-member Senate, and the two chambers share costs like the Library of Congress and the US Capitol Police.
The move is preliminary and came on an Appropriations panel vote on Tuesday in which it allocated $967 billion to the 12 annual bills. Specifics won’t be available until later this spring when detailed legislation is released.
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Looks like a slush fund to me.
UPDATE:
"Senate panel rejects request for military base closings" June 12, 2013
WASHINGTON — Another round of military base closings has hit a dead end.
The Senate Armed Services readiness subcommittee on Tuesday approved legislation rejecting the Defense Department’s request to shutter installations and facilities in the United States that are no longer needed as the military branches cut the number of troops in uniform.
The House Armed Services Committee also said no to more base closings last week, and even took the additional step of adding a provision barring the Pentagon from even planning for another round.
The refusals by the House and Senate effectively ensure that a final defense policy bill approved by Congress for the 2014 fiscal year won’t give the department permission to close excess bases even as lawmakers clamor for ways to cut the federal deficit.
Lawmakers also have rebuffed the Defense Department’s attempts to rein in spending on the costly military health care program by increasing enrollment fees for military retirees and their dependents. Pentagon comptroller Robert Hale warned during a separate congressional hearing Tuesday that the military would have to cut about 25,000 troops to offset the expense if it can’t slow the growth of the health care program by 2018.
On base closings, Defense Department leaders have argued that the troop drawdown will leave them with more installations than they need. The money saved by closing facilities can be spent on training and other essential operations.
But military installations are often the economic lifeblood of the communities that surround them and any discussion about shutting bases is a political hot button.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, the chairwoman of the readiness subcommittee, said the upfront costs of starting a new round of closures are too high.
And Democrats are our peace party!
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