Two Local Events in the DC area featuring Jeremy Scahill and Bill Hartung

We hope you can attend both these upcoming events

“Dirty Wars” Opens in D.C. Weekend of June 7-9

“Dirty Wars”, the new film featuring Jeremy Scahill, is playing every day at 12 noon, 2:30pm, 5:00pm, 7:30pm, and 9:55pm at Landmark’s E Street Cinema, 555 11th St NW, Washington, DC

You can buy tickets now at E St Cinema

Following the 12:00, 2:30, and 5:00 showings on June 7th, Amnesty International’s Jiva Manske will lead a discussion of the film and of activism that can address some of what the film covers.
Following the 7:30 showing on June 7th, *Code Pink* will lead a discussion of issues surrounding the film.
Following the 2:30 screening on June 8th, RootsAction’s David Swanson and Yemeni-American activist Rooj Alwazir will lead a discussion of the film and, in particular, of an imprisoned journalist whose story is told.
Following the 5:00 and 7:30 screenings on June 8th, Jeremy Scahill will take questions.
Following the 2:30 and 5:00 showings on June 9th, Afghan War whistleblower Matthew Hoh will lead a discussion of the film and whistleblowing.

For a more in-depth discussion, the following free and public event has been planned:
WHAT: Discussion of Jeremy Scahill’s new film and book Dirty Wars
WHO:
- Jeremy Scahill, author of *Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield* and
star of the film by the same name.
- Rooj Alwazir, Yemeni-American activist and co-founder of SupportYemen media collective.
- A former operative with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command
(name to be revealed at the event).
WHEN: 5-7 p.m., Saturday, June 8, 2013
WHERE: Busboys and Poets restaurant at 5th and K Streets NW, Washington, DC
SPONSORS: Amnesty International, Code Pink, Peace Action, Iraq Veterans Against the War, RootsAction, Veterans for Peace.
Busboys is a restaurant, and you can order dinner during the event.
Books will be sold and signed.
Sign up on Facebook for Busboys event
and for opening weekend in general
To learn more about the film

Please join us in Silver Spring on June 11 to hear a terrific speaker and engage in a dialogue.
William Hartung, noted journalist and military analyst, will discuss his powerful book Prophets of War, a trenchant historical expose of
the world’s largest military contractor, Lockheed Martin, whose world headquarters is located in Bethesda.
We won’t just listen (to a fabulous speaker)–we’ll also talk about how we can move the money, to invest in institutions for social justice in the U.S. and around the world, instead of in new weapons systems.

Bring your family and friends:
Prophets of War
William Hartung
Tues., June 11th, 7 p.m.
Silver Spring Civic Building
One Veterans Plaza

9 bases in Afghanistan, 1 outside Philadelphia

According to an Associated Press article from last Thursday, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai says the United States wants to keep nine military bases in the country, which Karzai has said could be agreed, with certain conditions (namely the U.S. continuing to provide military training and economic development aid).

We’ll need to press Congress and the Obama Administration on this issue, as zero is the correct number of U.S. bases that should remain. Significantly, the U.S. Embassy spokesperson in Kabul took pains to say the U.S. doesn’t want permanent bases in Afghanistan. Cost and mission will of course be the focus, with cost likely to be the determining factor. Also, a “strategic partnership agreement” should not be the formal document between the two countries, as this avoids the issue of direct Congressional oversight, unlike a treaty, which needs a 2/3 Senate ratification vote. Oh yeah, and tens of thousands of our troops are still there, not all coming home until the end of next year. They should all come home sooner, with no troops remaining. (Another AP article from Saturday covered the negotiations between the two countries on some of these issues.)

Then there are the drone strikes, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also Yemen and other countries. So far, the drone bases, as far as we know, have been at U.S. Air Force bases, like Creech in Nevada and Hancock near Syracuse, New York. Comes now a plan to use an Air National Guard Station in Horsham, PA, just north of Philadelphia, as a drone warfare command center.

Not surprisingly, peace activists in the Philadelphia area loathe this idea, as they should (as we all should). Our friends at the Brandywine Peace Community, who have long protested war and the biggest war profiteer, Lockheed Martin (which has a major facility near Philly) and the American Friends Service Committee have called a protest at the Horsham base for Saturday, May 25 at Noon, and then the last Saturday of each month leading up to the proposed opening of the drone command center in October. Here is some info from our friends at Brandywine:

 

 “Extra-judicial assassinations,” “targeted killings,” the “global war on terror,” U.S. Drones (UAVs, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) — armed with Lockheed Martin Hellfire missiles — are remotely controlled through space-based satellites(also produced by Lockheed Martin) from command centers in the continental United States,
such as the one planned for the Horsham Air Guard Station outside of Philadelphia.

 

STOP-IT BEFORE IT-STARTS

Drone War Command Center at Horsham Air Guard Station

Sat., May 25, 12Noon  – Protest Demonstrations begin at Horsham Air Guard Station, Easton & County Line Roads, in Horsham, PA , continuing on the last Saturday of each month through September.

For more information: Events at  www.brandywinepeace.com 

 

That’s Where the Money Goes – Larry Wittner, Peace Action board member, on Huffington Post

Great piece on Huffington Post, as always, by SUNY-Albany emeritus professor of history and politics and Peace Action board member Larry Wittner, on U.S. and global military spending.

According to a report just released by the highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), world military expenditures in 2012 totaled $1.75 trillion.

The report revealed that, as in recent decades, the world’s biggest military spender by far was the U.S. government, whose expenditures for war and preparations for war amounted to $682 billion — 39 percent of the global total. The United States spent more than four times as much on the military as China (the number two big spender) and more than seven times as much as Russia (which ranked third). Although the military expenditures of the United States dipped a bit in 2012, largely thanks to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, they remained 69 percent higher than in 2001.

U.S. military supremacy is even more evident when the U.S. military alliance system is brought into the picture, for the United States and its allies accounted for the vast bulk of world military spending in 2012. NATO members alone spent a trillion dollars on the military.

Thus, although studies have found that the United States ranks 17th among nations in education, 26th in infant mortality, and 37th in life expectancy and overall health, there is no doubt that it ranks first when it comes to war.

This Number 1 status might not carry much weight among Americans scavenging for food in garbage dumpsters, among Americans unable to afford medical care, or among Americans shivering in poorly heated homes. Even many Americans in the more comfortable middle class might be more concerned with how they are going to afford the skyrocketing costs of a college education, how they can get by with fewer teachers, firefighters, and police in their communities, and how their hospitals, parks, roads, bridges, and other public facilities can be maintained.

Of course, there is a direct connection between the massive level of U.S. military spending and belt-tightening austerity at home: most federal discretionary spending goes for war.

The Lockheed Martin Corporation’s new F-35 joint strike fighter plane provides a good example of the U.S. government’s warped priorities. It is estimated that this military weapons system will cost the U.S. government $1.5 trillion by the time of its completion. Does this Cold War-style warplane, designed for fighting enemies the U.S. government no longer faces, represent a good investment for Americans? After twelve years of production, costing $396 billion, the F-35 has exhibited numerous design and engineering flaws, has been grounded twice, and has never been flown in combat. Given the immense military advantage the United States already has over all other nations in the world, is this most expensive weapons system in world history really necessary? And aren’t there other, better things that Americans could be doing with their money?

Of course, the same is true for other countries. Is there really any justification for the nations of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America to be increasing their level of military spending –as they did in 2012 – while millions of their people live in dire poverty? Projections indicate that, by 2015, about a billion people around the world will be living on an income of about $1.25 per day. When, in desperation, they riot for bread, will the government officials of these nations, echoing Marie Antoinette, suggest that they eat the new warplanes and missiles?

President Dwight Eisenhower put it well in an address before the American Society of Newspaper Editors 60 years ago:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed … This world in arms is not spending money alone; it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children … This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

 

That sentiment persists. On April 15, 2013, people in 43 countries participated in a Global Day of Action on Military Spending, designed to call attention to the squandering of the world’s resources on war. Among these countries was the United States, where polls show that 58 percent of Americans favor major reductions in U.S. military spending.

How long will it take the governments of the United States and of other nations to catch up with them?

Lawrence Wittner is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual (University of Tennessee Press).

This Blogger’s Books from

Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford Nuclear Age Series)
by Lawrence Wittner

Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971-Present (Stanford Nuclear Age Series)
by Lawrence S. Wittner 

Tax Day and The Pentagon. Op-Ed on Common Dreams

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/04/14-1

Published on Sunday, April 14, 2013 by Common Dreams

Tax Day and the Pentagon

by Kevin Martin

This month, as budget and policy issues in Washington muddle along inconclusively as usual, grassroots peace activists are busy organizing, educating, protesting and lobbying.

Last weekend, Historians Against the War hosted an ambitious, illuminating conference at Towson University north of Baltimore on “The New Faces of War” with speakers and participants examining rapidly-changing foreign and domestic policies.

Anti-Nuclear activists will converge on Washington next week for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability’s D.C. Days, for strategizing, training and lobbying on nuclear weapons, power, waste and cleanup issues.

Around the country, peace and social justice organizers will convene local actions on Tax Day, April 15, to educate taxpayers on the country’s skewed budget priorities that favor the Pentagon over human and environmental needs. This year, April 15 is also the Global Day of Action on Military Spending, with activities around the world and in over 30 U.S. states drawing attention to the world’s addiction to militarism and exorbitant “defense” budgets. If you can’t organize or attend a Tax Day event, you can still join our Thunderclap “It’s Our Tax Day, Not Theirs” online social media action.

The prestigious, independent Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) will release its annual report on world military expenditures on Monday, which will show the United States continues to spend over 40% of the world’s $1.7 trillion annually allocated to weapons and war. Randy Schutt of Cleveland Peace Action put together an impressive article titled Our Tax Dollars are off the War – 2013 edition on Daily Kos with charts, graphs and citations comparing U.S. military spending to the rest of the world, and to domestic spending, which serves as a nice complement to the upcoming SIPRI report.

Lastly, an impressive national coalition has come together to organize days of action throughout the month to stop U.S. drone warfare.

All these actions focus on crucial issues, and they come at a time when there is hope not just to impact those specific policies, but when a confluence of events give us an opportunity not seen in at least a decade to fundamentally question the mission and role of the U.S. military in both domestic and foreign policy.

In short, it’s time for the Pentagon to stop weaving all over the road, to get back in its lane, and to stay there.

On domestic policy, the most obvious issue is the metastasis of the Pentagon budget, which has doubled since 9/11. The total “national security budget,” which includes not just the Pentagon but also intelligence agencies, Department of Homeland Security and nuclear weapons spending under the Department of Energy is over $1 trillion per year. Globally, the U.S. accounts for about 43% of total military spending, and more than the next 13 countries (most of which are U.S. allies) combined. The opportunity cost of this Pentagon pig-out is investment in the things we really need to make our country more secure – improved education, health care, jobs, rebuilding our infrastructure and addressing climate change.

While not necessarily the fault of the Pentagon, a creeping militarization of social policy, as seen in policing, prisons, the “war on drugs” and immigration, among other areas, is cause for grave concern and corrective action.

Constitutionally, the arrogation of power by the Obama Administration to assassinate anyone, anywhere on the planet, anytime it wants to by drones or other weapons with little or no congressional or judicial oversight can hardly be what the president ran on as “change you can believe in.”

(The president’s home state senator and former colleague, Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, plans a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing later this month to address this issue, including the Administration’s assertion of the Authorization of the Use of Military Force after 9/11 as the legal justification for drone strikes in countries with which we are not at war.)

Militarization of U.S. foreign policy has been a bipartisan project since at least the end of World War II. And perhaps that’s not surprising for a country founded on and consolidated by the extreme violence of the genocide of the First Americans and imposition of slavery on Africans brought here in chains.

Quick, name the last real diplomatic success by the United States. Anything really significant since Carter’s Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel? That was in 1978 (and of course Palestine is still waiting for justice while Israel gets over $3 billion in U.S. military aid annually).

Look at U.S. foreign policy under our current Nobel Peace Prize laureate president. It’s less obviously and ham-handedly belligerent than Bush’s, okay. But in addition to ongoing drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and other countries, he says “all options are on the table” with regard to Iran’s nuclear program, when even military leaders themselves say there is no military solution, only a diplomatic one. The U.S. and South Korea evidently think putting out the fire with gasoline is the right approach to North Korea’s nuclear test and recent threats, evidenced by ongoing war games, simulated nuclear attacks on the North using B-2 and B-52 bombers, and rushing F-22 fighter jets to South Korea to beef up the already robust U.S. military presence in the region as part of the “Asia-Pacific Pivot” aimed at isolating our main banker, China. And last but not least, despite voting for the Arms Trade Treaty at the United Nations this week, the U.S. remains the world’s number one exporter of conventional weapons.

Certainly the tens of millions of dollars annually spent on lobbying and campaign contributions by the largest war profiteers — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon and others — have a toxic effect on our national priorities. It’s doubly galling, in that their profits come almost entirely from military contracts paid for by our tax dollars, which they then use to impact legislation and elections to benefit their interests, to the detriment of those of the taxpaying public.

It is not necessary to pinpoint cause and effect on this state of affairs, where Pentagon interests and macho militarist approaches seemingly run roughshod over everything else, to declare that it is wrong, and needs to be changed. And there is no blame, only respect, for those serving in the military, who need the very best care we can provide as they return home from our misguided wars and far-flung military bases abroad (over 800 of them!).

So what is the mission of the U.S. military supposed to be? According to United States law, it is “Preserving the peace and security and providing for the defense of the United States, the Commonwealths and possessions and any areas occupied by the United States; Supporting the national policies; Implementing the national objectives; Overcoming any nations responsible for aggressive acts that imperil the peace and security of the United States.”

I see nothing there about “full-spectrum dominance” of the rest of the world, as the Pentagon’s joint Vision 20/20 doctrine released in 2000 advocates, and which has seemingly become the military’s de facto mission.

Regardless of what anyone in the military says its mission is, they work for us, the taxpayers that provide their salaries and buy their weapons. So we can overrule them and force the Pentagon to reduce its role and get back in its lane.

It shouldn’t be hard to see how we can get the Pentagon back in its lane, and let more peaceful, just and sustainable priorities prevail in our domestic and foreign policies. Slash the Pentagon budget by at least 25%, and invest those savings in human and environmental needs in order to jump start our economy. Let diplomacy take precedence in foreign policy over military threats and false solutions. I suspect many people, even in the military hierarchy, might welcome such a reduced role in U.S. policy, and in the world. It must be tiring driving all over the road. Staying in one’s own lane can have its advantages.

Kevin Martin is Executive Director of Peace Action, the country’s largest peace and disarmament organization with 100,000 members and over 70,000 on-line supporters.

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KC Peace Measure Wins Nearly One-Quarter of the Vote, Succeeds in Public Education

By Jane Stoever, PeaceWorks Kansas City

Kansas City, Mo., voters received a barrage of negative publicity from the “vote no” camp before the April 2 election, but 23 percent of the voters still said yes to stopping future KC financing for producing parts for nuclear weapons. The vote tally was 25,006 against and 7,559 for the measure.

“It’s a win!” said Rachel MacNair, campaign coordinator for “vote yes” proponents, after the polls closed April 2. “We’ve always said our strategy was to educate the public about the nuclear weapons parts plant, and our goal of making the plant and the nuclear weapons upgrade program more controversial has been achieved.” She said it was amazing to gain 23 percent of the vote in the face of the negative publicity from the opposition.

That publicity, focusing on jobs and national security, included three pricey mailers, robo calls from Mayor Sly James, handouts from paid workers at polls, and ads in local papers. For example, a promotional insert from Freedom Inc. in The Pitch in late March said of the ballot measure, “This is a rogue issue that was placed on the ballot by initiative petition, motivated by anti-nuclear extremists who want the United States to dispose of its nuclear weapons while other nations keep theirs.”

When, earlier, the second mailer from the “vote no” camp made the same charge, MacNair countered that peace groups are calling for multilateral, not unilateral, disarmament, and the third mailer carried revised language. However, that third mailing featured North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s threat to turn Washington, D.C., into a sea of fire—a way to call for strengthening the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Despite the fear-based mailers, many voters talked with peace activists outside the polls, and some voters said they’d vote yes because of those contacts. One voter who, on leaving the poll, said she had voted yes, was asked why. In a quiet voice, she replied, “It’s just terrible to make those weapons.”

Before election day, PeaceWorks members informed the community about the peace measure through multiple activities. KKFI community radio interviewed various proponents on four programs and played a public service announcement. KCUR, an affiliate of National Public Radio, played and replayed a segment quoting MacNair and City Councilman Scott Taylor, who opposed the measure. Local TV programs such as “Week in Review” discussed all the election issues. Although The Kansas City Star editors recommended a no vote on the measure, news reporter Lynn Horsley quoted heavily from MacNair in her story originally titled “David vs. Goliath in Measure on Weapons Manufacturing.” PeaceWorks members circulated flyers at churches, offered informational cards to “Disney on Ice” attendees and to community groups, and leafleted on sidewalks. Perhaps the most flamboyant stint was the dropping of three banners above highways 71 and 670. The banners flew a few days.

PeaceWorks committed $4,000 to the campaign as its major contributor. The opposition amassed more than $123,000, with donors including Honeywell, which manages the current and new KC plants for the National Nuclear Security Administration; J.E. Dunn Construction Co., which heads up construction for the new plant; and the Chicago law firm Richmond Breslin, home base to Kevin Breslin, lawyer for CenterPoint, the development company that worked with KC on the plan for public/private ownership of the new plant.

Ann Suellentrop of PeaceWorks shared election results with national peace leaders on behalf of the KC peace community. The American Friends Service Committee disarmament coordinator, Joseph Gerson, replied, “Thank you for all that you’ve done. Born Jewish in 1946, in many ways my frames of reference are from the Second World War and the Holocaust. It would seem that … the majority of voters in KC seem to care in the short term about their well-being but, in what Hannah Arendt once termed the ‘banality of evil,’ put jobs and comfort ahead of nuclear genocide or omnicide.”

Kansas City MO anti-nuke ballot initiative – vote is tomorrow!

Peace activists and groups in Kansas City, Missouri, including our Peace Action affiliate PeaceWorks KC, have been waging an impressive local struggle around the oddball government-corporate (Honeywell – don’t buy their products!) partnership that was concocted to build a new plant in KC that will manufacture the non-nuclear components of U.S. nuclear bombs (why such a thing is needed as we downsize our nuclear arsenal is quite a head-scratcher). They succeeded in getting an initiative on tomorrow’s municipal ballot to prevent such shenanigans from being repeated or expanded in the future. The local NPR affiliate ran a story on the issue this morning, give it a listen and if you have friends or relatives in KC, make sure they vote yes on Question 3!

Here’s the text of the story on KCUR radio:

The National Nuclear Security Agency contracted that work to a company called Bendix (after a merger, it’s now called Honeywell).  At the height of the Cold War, in the 1980s, the factory employed some 8000 workers.

That was when psychologist Rachel MacNair first got involved in the movement against nuclear weapons.

“Back in the 1970s and 80s, people were really afraid the world was going to end in a nuclear holocaust,” MacNair says.

She joined a group in Kansas City that advocated converting the Bannister facility to a factory that made some other product.

“At the time it was a pie-in-the-sky, starry-eyed idealist,  easily-dismissed kind of idea,” MacNair says. “And then the Cold War ended. And the Cold War has been over for a couple of decades.  And nowadays we have retired military people, we have military experts, we have the same people who set up mutually assured destruction saying that it’s time to get rid of nuclear weapons.

According to The Kansas City Star, the Honeywell plant currently employs about 2000 workers, who “maintain the W76 missile warhead, a submarine-based weapon which is seven times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb.”

The factory is getting old, though, and Kansas City officials were afraid of losing the plant, and the jobs, to New Mexico. So, they offered tax incentives to a private developer. And in 2010, ground was broken on a $1 billion new facility.

MacNair thought the project made no sense, since the Obama administration is talking about reducing nuclear arsenals.

“I just could not stand the idea of building a whole new plant as if we were going to be making new parts for decades.”

Anti-nuclear weapon activists in Kansas City tried to stop the incentives with previous petitions. And two years ago, some 50 people were arrested in a protest at the construction site.

The building’s complete now. The NNSA and Honeywell have been transferring operations already. It’s supposed to go online in August of 2014.

The question on the ballot isn’t about shutting down the new plant down, but rather, it prohibits the city from offering any futures incentives to “facilities that produce or procure components for, assemble, or refurbish nuclear weapons.”  This would apply to companies that work exclusively with Honeywell or any future nuclear weapons plant.

According to city councilman Scott Taylor, this makes Kansas City look like an unappealing place to do business.

“A company, regardless of the size, is looking to locate a new facility.  They will usually have a site selection process, that has multiple sites,” Taylor says. “And if one of those sites happens to have something that’s different from all the others, that’s a little strange and  really might require some additional legal work, or research to see if they have some legal issues, they’ll just take us off the list and move to the other options because it will be a lot easier for them.”

Taylor is the at-large councilman in District 6, where the new plant is located.  He says the new building has already helped bolster Kansas City’s construction industry through the recession. And he’s hoping it will anchor development in a struggling part of town.

‘Specifically in South Kansas City, we’ve really been fighting hard for the Three Trails re-development, the old Bannister Mall,” Taylor says. “We’ve had an incentive package on all that property; it’s already in place, we’ve already done that. If a company has any ties to this facility there’s a question as to whether they can even locate there if they wanted to. If they can’t locate there, it’s just as easy for a lot of these companies looking to locate near this plant to locate in Overland Park, Leawood, Grandview and other areas.  I’d rather have them in South Kansas City.”

Taylor says the old Bannister facility is on federal land, so it doesn’t generate taxes for the city and the school district.  The new plant is on private land, so despite the incentives, it will bring in property taxes for Kansas City, Missouri, as well as the Grandview school district, which dips into KC at that spot.

Taylor says he understands the intent behind the ballot question.

‘We all agree that it would be nice if all countries would disarm nuclear weapons,’ Taylor says. “But that’s not the world we live in and quite frankly the language of this doesn’t address disarmament or doing anything with the federal government specifically.  My concern is that the unintended consequences of this would be very dramatic for our local economy.”

Other opponents say that the ballot question would not stop the production of nuclear weapons, anyway, that it would just shift the jobs elsewhere.

But proponents say they want to raise awareness that the nuclear weapons plant is here, and that it’s controversial.

This story was produced for KC Currents, which airs Sundays at 5pm with a repeat Mondays at 8pm. To listen on your own schedule, subscribe to the KC Currents podcast.

Lockheed Martin Made How Much Money Last Year? And They Still Need to Shake Down Maryland Taxpayers?

Thanks for Stephen Miles of Win Without War for this legwork. To put this amount of money in context, Lockheed Martin’s sales last year were more than double the gross domestic product for the country of Afghanistan. And Lockheed needs $1.4 million in corporate welfare from me and other Maryland taxpayers (whose federal tax dollars already fund Lockheed’s war profiteering)? Seems they need to look up “chutzpah” in the dictionary.

From LM’s 2012 Annual Report and 2013 Proxy Statement. A few fun facts to keep in mind.

- 2012 was another banner year for LM with a record sales of $47.2
billion.
- Former LM CEO Robert Stevens actually did see a dip in his pay last
year, bringing in a meager $16.5 million in total compensation. Rest easy
though as LM’s Proxy Statement indicates he’s in for a golden parachute of
$36.6 million. He’ll also continue to earn a healthy salary in his new role
as Executive Chairman of LM’s Board of Directors.
- In 2012, LM increased its dividend by 15%, representing the 10th
consecutive annual double-digit percentage increase in dividends
- LM ended 2012 with a total backlog of $82.3 billion (another record,
up from $80.7 b in 2011), $35.0 or 43% of this is expected to be converted
to sales in 2013. The majority of this backlog is already funded ($54.8 b).
The backlog only includes firm orders and does not include existing
unexercised options or potential indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity
orders.
- As in 2011, LM earned 82% of its sales directly from the US government
(61% from DoD), 17% from international sales (roughly half of which were
Foreign Military Sales contracted with the US government and half were
Direct Commercial Sales) and 1% from everything else. Bonus points to
anyone who can figure out how much of that 17% in international sales is
derived from foreign military assistance funding (ie money the US gives
other countries to buy weapons from us).

Marylanders – Let’s Stop a Corporate Welfare Handout to the World’s Biggest War Profiteer!

Lockheed Martin lobbyists and their friends are working to squeeze millions of dollars from Montgomery County tax payers. They have written a bill, specifically for Lockheed Martin, that would require the County to redefine a hotel in order to exempt the guests at Lockheed Martin’s hotel on its Bethesda campus from paying the county’s 7% hotel tax. This law would affect no other facility in the state.  In addition, the bill requires the county to reimburse $1.4 million to the company for legally required taxes it has already paid.

The Montgomery County Council has refused to consider awarding Lockheed Martin such special favors twice.

This week the state legislature is making an end run around the Montgomery County Council decision with its bill in the General Assembly.

Call your Senators and Delegates Now! 

Ask senators to oppose Senate Bill 631 and delegates to oppose its companion bill in the House, HB 815.   http://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2013RS/fnotes/bil_0001/sb0631.pdf

For more background, read this story in Maryland’s premiere state political blog.

Lockheed Martin is making mega profits, so why won’t they pay their fair share of taxes like everyone else?

Call your Senators and Delegates Now! 

Singling out one company for preferential treatment, at the expense of the rest of county businesses and individuals, who pay their taxes, is not right.

When WIC supplements for babies and pregnant women are being cut, when children are being deprived of Head Start, when unemployment benefits are being reduced–why in such a time should one of the wealthiest companies in the state receive this kind of special tax favoritism?  

We’ve won this battle twice before, at the County Council level. We can win again, if you will help us. Please call now!

Humbly for Peace,

 

Kevin Martin
Executive Director
Peace Action

Sequester This! One Weapons Contractor Has a “Defense Backlog” Bigger Than the Entire Military Budgets of All But Two Countries! Let’s Pull the Pork from the Pentagon!

 

The “sequester” — automatic across-the-board federal government spending cuts that appears to be inevitable come March 1 — will hurt domestic discretionary spending very badly, so the poorest, youngest, oldest, weakest and sickest Americans’ plight will be significantly worse. According to the White House, 70,000 children of low income families will be kicked out of Head Start. Six hundred thousand mothers and their kids will lose WIC (Women, Infants and Children) nutritional assistance. Over 100,000 formerly homeless people would lose their subsidized housing.

Not a pretty picture, which is why so many people, including many in Congress, would like to see a last minute deal to avoid sequestration, though that seems unlikely at this point in our embarrasingly polarized do-nothing nation’s capital.

The other side of this is the Pentagon budget, which accounts for 57% of federal discretionary spending. The weeping and wailing by the Pentagon, armed services and weapons corporations over the cuts they’d need to absorb is absurd. Our good friends at the National Priorities Project have a great fact sheet analyzing Pentagon spending, comparing it to human needs cuts and global military expenditures (the U.S. spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined on weapons and war).

On the corporate side, the Boeing Corporation is mostly known for its civilian airline business, but it’s also the second largest weapons contractor on Earth, behind only Lockheed Martin (Boeing is the main contractor on the exorbitant fraud known as “missile defense”). While military contractors have been disengenously alarmist about job cuts due to sequestration, since they’ve been cutting jobs while racking up increased profits for years, Boeing noted that it had lost 9,000 “defense” jobs out of a 60,000 person workforce, but about 8,000 of those had switched over to civilian aircraft work.

But this is what really caught my eye – the “defense backlog” of Pentagon contracts to Boeing is $71 billion.

71,000,000,000 smackeroos.

That’s more than the entire military budgets of every country on the planet except the United States and China, and roughly equal to Russia’s entire military budget.

So there’s no reason to shed any tears for Boeing or the other giant weapons contractors. But there are billions of good reasons to support cutting the Pentagon budget, including getting involved in the February 27 Pull the Pork from the Pentagon actions around the country!

Action Alert: Pull the Pork from the Pentagon Budget!

As the debate continues on the automatic spending cuts, the deficit, and the 2013 federal budget, it may seem like there is no way forward.

Over a trillion has already been cut in the last two years to community services programs in the federal discretionary budget. The idea of  “sequestration” making 50-50 cuts between domestic needs and the Pentagon is a rope-a-dope, at best!

Congress has a choice to make! Let’s start by pulling the pork from the Pentagon budget.

On February 27, we are joining USAction and others in cities and towns across the country, to tell Congress to Pull the Pork! 

Have you heard about the Pentagon spending $1.5 million to develop their own beef jerky? Or how about the $9 billion being spent on the Osprey helicopter which has been fraught with problems for years? Some call it the “pork with wings.” When Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense he tried to kill the program 4 times and failed.

Some in Congress would rather cut first responders, education, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid than cut the Pentagon budget.  But, across the political spectrum, new voices of reason in both parties are being raised to cut Pentagon waste. Without public pressure we won’t win.

On February 27, join us for an action in your community.  Find a location; download materials to hold your own event or fact sheets to write Letters to the Editor or question your Congressional representatives this week while they are at home for the Congressional recess. Go to http://pullthepork.org/

Move the Money from wars and new weapons, to fund jobs and human services.

Judith LeBlanc
Field Director
Peace Action