The effects of sequestration were just erased:
"Ben Cohen: from ice cream man to Pentagon budget warrior" by Bryan Bender | Globe Staff, November 29, 2013
WASHINGTON — The image delivered this summer via Facebook and e-mail depicted the Air Force’s menacing F-35 fighter-bomber approaching at high speed, with the words, “Hey Ice Cream Man . . . The Jets are coming.”
The rhetorical assault by a group of F-35 boosters pleased the ice cream man in question, Ben Cohen, cofounder of Ben & Jerry’s.
“I consider it a badge of honor,” said the 62-year-old Vermont confection mogul.
Cohen, an entrepreneur who helped build a global brand with flavors such as Cherry Garcia before selling his company to Dutch conglomerate Unilever for $326 million, has embarked on a unique undertaking in the world of philanthropic entrepreneurs: combatting what he considers bloated, wasteful Pentagon weapons programs.
Is it not sad that is a unique thing?
Among his targets is the F-35 joint strike fighter — a maligned, $857 billion project — and the tentative decision by the military to base a squadron of the advanced jets at a Vermont Air National Guard base near Burlington.
Related: War Profiteer Piece of the Pie: F-35 Flying High in House
All being built because Israel wants them.
Cohen recently made a contribution to the Washington-based Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group, to investigate details of the F-35 procurement process, according to people with knowledge of the donation. Cohen estimates he has contributed $1 million to various contract-monitoring efforts since selling his company in 2000 and plans to keep spending.
He also recently financed a University of Massachusetts study comparing the economic impact of defense spending with public investments in education and other social programs. Cohen said his goal is raising questions about Pentagon assertions that big-ticket weapon systems are the key to making the nation safer.
It's the key to padding war contractor profits.
“It is a lie,” he said in a recent interview. “The Pentagon budget gets away with being at an absurdly high level because politicians are deathly afraid of being called weak on defense, and the public doesn’t really understand what is necessary for defense.”
In Vermont, taking on the F-35 also means taking on Senator Bernie Sanders and the state’s Democratic establishment, including Senator Patrick Leahy and Governor Peter Shumlin — all supporters of bringing the jets to the base.
See:
Fighter Jet Dogfight Above Vermont
Sunday Globe Special: The Long Arm of Leahy
And they are considered good dove Democrats!
Cohen’s fight may come to a head soon with a final decision by the Air Force to send F-35s to Vermont, despite the objection of local officials and residents.
Yeah, who ares what the people that live there think or want.
According to a draft copy of the so-called record of the decision shared with the Globe, the Air Force is poised to select the Burlington airport as the most suitable site.
Cohen said he will help organize a legal challenge if, as expected, the Air Force takes that step, contending that the aircraft is unproven, potentially dangerous to the local population, and that the Air Force’s selection process was flawed.
But he sees the fight over the F-35 as part of a larger struggle to shift defense spending away from what he considers a Cold War mentality to the more pressing threats of the 21st century, such as terrorism and nuclear proliferation.
That isn't getting us anywhere. The lies upon which wars are based needs to be exposed.
“From a business perspective,” Cohen says, “it just doesn’t make sense to spend more money on things that are less needed, and spend less money on things that are more needed.”
The F-35, which is designed to be built in several versions for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines, has been plagued by problems. The Pentagon says it is seven years behind schedule, will cost billions more than predicted, and is beset with a myriad of technical problems — from its ability to navigate in bad weather, to its combat software, and even the pilot’s high-tech helmet.
We overpaid for a non-functioning piece of $hit?
Lockheed Martin, the primary contractor on the F-35, has declined to engage publicly in the Air Force selection process for Air National Guard bases. It said the aircraft is performing well in tests. Last month it said the aircraft had achieved 10,000 flight hours.
“The new milestone effectively doubles the safe flight operations of the F-35 in a year,” the company said.
As for supporters in Vermont, they say that the aircraft will bring new revenue to the Air Guard base in South Burlington and ensure that the state’s storied “Green Mountain Boys” will continue to play a prominent role in the nation’s defense for years to come.
At a recent press conference in Burlington, Frank Cioffi, president of the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation and a leading supporter of bringing the planes to Vermont, said that without the new planes the very existence of the state’s Air National Guard could be imperiled.
“You can’t say ‘I’m for the Guard but I’m not for the plane,’ ” Cioffi said. “An Air Guard without a fighter aircraft is not a fighter division, so without this aircraft, without the F-35, then the mission drastically changes for the Vermont Air Guard.”
Just worship the war machine and shaddup!
To the handful of nonprofit watchdogs in Washington that seek to expose wasteful defense spending, Cohen is a godsend for a community that freely admits it doesn’t have many boosters from the business world — even if, in this case, it is a businessman who built his brand on a tie-dyed image in a liberal state.
“That is an incredibly important constituency that is not heard in Washington,’’ Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, said of the wider business community. “Defense contractors speak for American business in Washington and that is not an accurate depiction of the economy.”
War I$ good bu$ine$$.
Cohen first became involved in policy issues after he sold Ben & Jerry’s in 2000 and used some of the proceeds to start a group called Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities.
The idea was to enlist like-minded executives to “use their credibility as people who deal with budgets and large sums of money to weigh in on national budget priorities,” he said.
Cohen said he now hopes to highlight how defense firms and their allies shrewdly build the necessary political support for high-priced weapon systems as a way to inoculate them against future budget cuts. He believes the expected decision to base the F-35 in Vermont, a liberal state, is part of that strategy.
“We do political engineering once we develop a new weapon system to make sure it never gets killed,” Cohen said. “How to fight it is the big question.”
I want to know when this government is going to stop killing people.
Franklin “Chuck” Spinney, a former Air Force officer and Pentagon weapons development expert, believes that Cohen has selected the right target.
“The F-35 is one of the most exquisite examples of political engineering,” Spinney says. “It is not only built all over America but all over the world. That is no accident. That is done deliberately. Now we’re stuck with it and no one knows what to do.”
And we all know jwho $tuck us.
--more--"
