2016 May 11^th

In his column yesterday, Cal Thomas made a number of blunders that I addressed in a previous blog. I was also sufficiently energized to write a letter to the Record-Eagle, the responsible party for publishing Thomas’ egregious inadequacies.

Well, there is more. Thomas maintains that good conservatives should defund, cancel or otherwise eliminate, the F-35, a very advanced and very over budget fighter weapons system; it has been plagued with design problems to the point where its critics claim that by the time all of these flaws are fixed the fighter will be out of date. Some of these fighters are flying now and the pilots who fly them are not particularly exuberant about the plane.

There might be a problem if this weapons system was defunded. There about 32.5 thousand jobs that depend on the continuing production of just this one airplane. The work is spread over 46 states. Do you suppose Cal Thomas has any idea how many Congress People would be getting angry calls from their suddenly out of work constituents if this project were defunded? Hey, he doesn’t care; his column is secure.

Back in the 1930s President Roosevelt instituted a number of make work projects designed to provide employment. They worked and the revolution forecast by some Communists didn’t happen. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) were examples, there were others. My civil engineer father had a paycheck in the ‘30s thanks to President Roosevelt.

At the end of World War 2 we had to deal with an enormous number of returning service men who would not be quickly soaked up by factories gearing up to meet the demand for civilian goods. What would we do about these unemployed young men? Then there was the G.I. Bill and that largely solved the problem. It certainly solved my college problem. Notice that the country used the dreaded “social engineering” to deal with both of these issues.

At this point we have about 6 million jobs that depend on military spending. This is the minimum; it includes all active duty military and the 4.2 million jobs associated with military procurement and supply. That’s equivalent to about 27 General Motors payrolls. That’s a lot of jobs. It’s also about half of our budget. So instead of producing jobs that improve our infrastructure we fund jobs that add to our military power. It’s probably easier to get approval for military spending than it is for infrastructure spending.

You remember when President Eisenhower was trying to get congressional approval for the Interstate Highway expenditures he claimed that it was necessary for national defense. Then he had no problem.