Instead of concentrating money on capital intensive, military hardware purposed for destruction, and causing long term economic drain, our very limited and valuable economic resources should be invested in building the true strength and capacity of our economy, our nation, and her people.
June Actions Information and Resources
[DOWNLOAD PDF] Toolkit for Jobs Not Wars June Actions
Toolkit Contents
- Connecting with Partners in Your Area
- Ideas for Organizing Actions
- Researching Federal Cuts to Social Programs
- Researching Military Contractors and CEOs in Your Area
- Focusing on Economic Conversion
- Sample Press Release
The Jobs Not Wars campaign proposes actions throughout the country from Friday, June 21st to Wednesday, July 3rd. We are asking endorsing organizations to organize local actions or events that highlight the disparities between military contracts and social spending in the federal budget, as these play out in our communities. The aims of the actions are:
- to make visible the sites and corporations where military contracts enrich a few, or serve immoral and useless wars, and the places and people hurt by federal budget cuts to social programs;
- to put forward the vision and prospect of converting military spending to projects that both generate jobs and serve desperately needed and socially constructive ends;
- to help create coalitions of local people, especially those who have not worked together before; and
- to reach people that previous actions have not reached.
Despite Sequester, High-Level Federal Executives Slated to Get Bonuses
Lindsay Wise, McClatchy Newspapers: A report issued by a Senate subcommittee revealed that members of the government’s highly paid Senior Executive Service is set to receive cash bonuses, despite this year’s automatic budget cuts.
Read MoreMay 17, 2013 – 12:33 p.m.
House Looks to Preserve Defense Spending Via Deep Domestic Cuts
By Kerry Young, CQ Roll Call
House Republican appropriators are preparing to write fiscal 2014 spending bills that would protect spending for the military and homeland security by making deep cuts to domestic programs.
House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky, is circulating a $967 billion plan for the 12 annual spending bills, known as 302(b) allocations, that are due to be approved by the panel on Tuesday.
The overall figure adheres to the spending caps set by recent budget agreements and assumes automatic, across-the-board cuts, known as the sequester, occur in fiscal 2014 without larger agreement to cut the deficit. But the division of spending for the annual bills makes it clear that Republicans have preserved national security spending at the expense of domestic programs favored by Democrats.
Calling it an “austere budget year,” Rogers said, “This is the hand that sequestration has dealt us, and we have no choice but to try and make the best of what we have.”
Read More‘Money has to serve, not rule!’ Pope tells new ambassadors
By Estefania Aguirre
Pope Francis begins his popemobile tour of the May 15, 2013 general audience in St. Peter’s Square. Credit: Stephen Driscoll/CNA.
Vatican City, May 16, 2013 / 05:47 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis told the new ambassadors to the Holy See from Kyrgyzstan, Antigua and Barbuda, Luxembourg and Botswana to use money to serve and asked them to help reform the world economy along “ethical lines.”
“Money has to serve, not rule!” he said during a May 16 meeting with the new ambassadors of four countries who do not have a physical location for their embassy to the Holy See in Rome.
Pope Francis used the occasion to underscore that “wanting power and possession has become limitless” and “the selfish sprawling of corruption and tax evasion have gone global.”
“The Pope urges a return to the unselfish solidarity and ethics in favor of man in financial and economic reality,” he said during the 11:00 a.m. meeting in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall.
C-27J Reemerges Despite AF’s Boneyard Plans
Congress is forcing the Air Force to purchase additional C-27s as the service continues work to mothball the aircraft:
By Michael Hoffman Thursday, May 16th, 2013 12:37 am
The Air Force is set to discard 21 C-27Js before the end of fiscal year 2013, yet service officials still issued a request to industry on May 10 for proposals to purchase even more of the same exact aircraft that will likely sit in the boneyard.
The C-27J Spartan is the cargo aircraft that has found itself in the middle of a battle between the Air Force’s active duty and the Air National Guard. Active duty leaders have said the service likes the aircraft, but can’t afford it with the forthcoming budget cuts. Guard leaders have responded saying the aircraft will save the service money and the Guard, which was set to receive the bulk of the fleet, is being unfairly targeted to absorb the brunt of the service’s budget cuts.
Congress has for the most part taken the Guard’s side in the debate. Lawmakers have ordered the service to consider buying more C-27Js even though the service is set to follow through on plans to send the C-27J fleet to the service’s boneyard at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., with the 309th Aerospace Maintenance And Regeneration Group. There the aircraft will sit in storage unless another federal agency claims them.
The original plan was to field a fleet of 38 C-27Js across the service as part of the Joint Cargo Aircraft Program. Already, the Air Force has 15 C-27Js stationed at Guard bases and another two at Waco, Texas, at a L-3 Communications plant. Four more are on the books to be built by Alenia Aermacchi in Italy and sent to the U.S. in fiscal year 2013. Those newly built aircraft will likely be sent directly to the boneyard.
The Air Force spent about $1.6 billion to purchase the 21 aircraft. Soon after the first C-27Js arrived in Afghanistan in 2011 to start resupplying deployed Army units, the Air Force said it could no longer afford the luxury of the aircraft.
Air Force leaders had said the sustainment costs were too expensive to keep the C-27J when compared to the C-130. Former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz told Congress in 2012 it cost $9,000 per hour to fly the C-27J and $10,400 to fly the C-130. Even though the C-130 was slightly higher per hour, the C-130 is well established within the fleet and the Air Force couldn’t afford to introduce and sustain the C-27J.
“In response to a requirement in the FY12 NDAA to perform a cost-benefit comparison of the C-27J and C-130, the AF performed an exhaustive analysis which included a direct comparison of cost, capability and capacity of like-sized C-130 and C-27J units,” Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokeswoman, said. “The results of this analysis clearly demonstrated a lower life-cycle cost for the C-130 versus the C-27J.”
The Ohio Air National Guard, which is one of four Guard units that fly the C-27J, had cost estimates of their own. Officials with the Ohio Guard said it cost $2,100 per hour to fly the C-27J and $7,000 per hour to fly the C-130.
Congress ordered the Air Force within the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act to form a working group and add 32 strategic airlifters. Lawmakers did not specify that those airlifters be C-27Js and Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said it’s unlikely the service will keep the Spartan fleet alive.
However, the request issued on May 10 appears to be an attempt by service officials to show Congress that the service considered buying more C-27Js. Stefanek issued a statement in response to questions from Military.com.
“The Mobility Directorate (AFLCMC/WL) is contemplating procurement of C-27J aircraft, in accordance with Congressional language that states ‘the Secretary of the Air Force shall obligate and expend funds previously appropriated for the procurement of C-27J Spartan aircraft for the purposes for which such funds were originally appropriated,’” Stefanek wrote in an email to Military.com.
Notably, the request from the Mobility Directorate stated the Air Force would not “reimburse participants for any information or expenses associated with their participation in this survey.” The Sources Sought Synopsis stated that the Air Force Life-Cycle Management Center is “conducting market research to identify potential sources that possess the expertise, capabilities, and experience to manufacture and deliver C-27J aircraft.”
Meanwhile, airmen continue work to transport the first 21 C-27J Spartans to the boneyard.
Military spending is not right way to boost America’s economic security
By Michael Shank, Elizabeth Kucinich
Published May 15, 2013
FoxNews.com
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That Washington is holding defense cuts responsible for slow economic growth is a specious argument at best. War spending is unproductive and inflationary. Modern defense costs are capital intensive, not labor intensive, making the industry inefficient as a job creator.
CBO says deficit problem is solved for the next 10 years
Washington Post Wonkblog: CBO says deficit problem is solved for the next 10 years
New York Times: Economists See Deficit Emphasis as Impeding Recovery
Paul Krugman: About That Debt Crisis? Never Mind
Washington Post Wonkblog: We won’t have another budget battle until fall
New York Review of Books: Paul Krugman, How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled
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By Ezra Klein, Published: May 14, 2013 at 4:13 pmE-mail the writer
It looks like we’ve moved to talking about possible scandals just in time, because according to the Congressional Budget Office, the debt disaster that has obsessed the political class for the last three years is pretty much solved, at least for the next 10 years or so.
The last time the CBO estimated our future deficits was February – just four short months ago. Back then, the CBO thought deficits were falling and health-care costs were slowing. Today, the CBO thinks deficits are falling even faster and health-care costs are slowing by even more.
Here’s the short version: Washington’s most powerful budget nerds have cut their prediction for 2013 deficits by more than $200 billion. They’ve cut their projections for our deficits over the next decade by more than $600 billion. Add it all up and our 10-year deficits are looking downright manageable. Following are the highlights.
1) Swoosh-shaped debt.
‘Sequester’ hits home for Pentagon as 800,000 civilian workers furloughed
The sequester budget cuts have led the Pentagon to force the majority of its civilian workers to take unpaid leave – but the blow isn’t as bad as it could have been.
By Anna Mulrine, Staff writer / May 14, 2013
![[]](http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/content/2013/0514-chuck-hagel-sequester.jpg/15793117-1-eng-US/0514-Chuck-Hagel-sequester.jpg_full_600.jpg)
Aides look on as Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel (2nd r.) is reflected in a window as he holds a news conference at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., earlier this year about the effects of the ‘sequester’ on military operations.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/File
WASHINGTON
The Pentagon’s civilian workforce learned just how extensive its “sequester”-related furloughs would be on Tuesday, with the announcement by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that 800,000 employees would be forced to take unpaid leave.
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Why no sign of ‘sequester’ cuts in perky April jobs report?
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Pentagon budget woes: furlough civilians, buy tanks you don’t want
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Air shows cancelled: Blue Angels, Thunderbirds grounded by sequester (+video)
That figure represents most of the Department of Defense’s civilian workers. Media reports suggest 10 to 15 percent of civilian workers could get exemptions. The rest are expected to be affected.
There was a glimmer of what the Pentagon did its best to emphasize as good news: that the planned number of furlough days would be reduced from 14 to 11 for most Department of Defense (DoD) employees.
Still, the furloughs are expected to leave a mark on the lives of civilian workers and Pentagon business.
Read More
