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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sig who wrote (137121)	6/20/2004 9:01:11 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Harking back to the Clinton years I recall a string of Military base closures in the news as spending was decaying. Visit any military base and surrounding it is the vast civilian support complex of mostly minorities who do the dirty work. House cleaning, baby sitting, maintenance, food preparation. With increased military action, those jobs are coming back and my assumption was, right or wrong, that those workers lean toward the Democratic vote. First, that has to be a very small segment of the working class. Compare that to the retail industry, manufacturing, etc... A lot of people in the civilian support complex no doubt, but a small percentage of the overall "working class". Second, Rummy hasn't increased the number of bases, nor has he increased the authorized troop levels. I even recall that during his first year as SECDEF he testified before Congress that he wanted to close additional bases, but was struggling because no member of Congress was willing to accept the base in their State closing. If you want to consider the bases in Iraq and Afghanistan as new bases [I wouldn't in the context you're using.], those aren't directly related to US jobs. Third, for those jobs that you are citing, I don't believe that the DoD has lowered the prestige, pay or benefits. Are there more cooks at Ft. Gordon, GA because we have 130,000 troops in Iraq? Fourth, for that particular niche market, i.e., support to military bases. I wouldn't guess that they were primarily Democratic voters. They could be, but I don't see a basis for making a supportable claim on those political demographics. And you haven't replied to the direct question as to: Are you suggesting that working class Republicans are happy about their prestige, pay and benefits decreasing? Or are there no working class Republicans? So far what you've really said is that you weren't really talking about the "working class" you were talking about a special class of workers supporting the DoD and I don't haven't seen anything that would suggest that those numbers are increasing, or that their prestige, pay or benefits have decreased. Harking back to the Clinton years I recall a string of Military base closures in the news as spending was decaying. This brings up what I think is an interesting aspect. Having wars is an expensive operation. You've got the billions of dollars spent on used bombs and bullets, additional fuel, contracts to Halliburton, etc...it's a darn expensive operation. You activate the reserves, the national guard, you build some new foreign bases, you replace blown up hummers, helicopters and the like. None of which does anything to build the military. We're putting in a BMD system that hasn't gone through an OT&E to defend against an ICBM from North Korea that doesn't have that capability. A lot of money. Spending more money doesn't equate to anything good about defense spending. It's just spending more money. jttmab

To: Sig who wrote (137121)	6/20/2004 9:31:18 AM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 281500

Addendum to Defense spending increase. Anecdotal and I make no claims that this is typical of all Defense spending....but... Money is free flowing these days. One base I was at last year added a sunroom addition to their Strike Zone. It was quite nice. I know a group contracting to an Intelligence agency for an effort ... wages, benefits, overhead, etc. about $250K/year per person. Everyone working on the effort believes that it's a complete and total waste of tax dollars. But the government agency needs to spend money. Spending money in the DoD makes conservatives happy. How it's spent doesn't really matter. When the money flows, people find a way to spend as much as they can. jttmab