PLEASE READ-> House panel: Don't even think about more base closings
From USA Today:
[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0.3077em 0.3077em 0em 0em; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]House panel: Don't even think about more base closings[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.3077em 0.3077em; background-color: #f4f4f4; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]It wasn't enough for lawmakers to refuse approval of additional rounds of base closings; they have voted to stop the Pentagon from spending any money on even considering the idea.
The Military Times reports the House Armed Services Committee, which omitted the Pentagon's request to authorize two more rounds of base closings in the 2013 defense authorization bill, added a provision to the bill that would specifically bar spending any money next year "to propose, plan for or execute" the base closing and realignment process. The 44-18 vote came Wednesday.
Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., who offered the amendment, said the five previous rounds of base closing have shown there are upfront costs in the process, which would come at a time of declining defense budgets. Base closings, he said, "could cost billions of dollars and thousands of jobs."
There was never any doubt that in an election year the committee would block base closings, but Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the committee's ranking Democrat, said Wittman's restriction goes too far. "It prevents them from even looking at and talking about what they might do," he said.
This little story might otherwise have gone unnoticed today but I think its implications are terribly important. Think about it- we're living though a time in America where austerity cuts (whether they're called that or not) are affecting the lives of almost every American at every age: From education and nutrition for the young to the security net for the old, and everyone else in between.
And yet behold the neat little wall these insects are attempting to construct around the military in order to prevent those same cuts from affecting it.
Please consider this, not just in the specific context in which it is presented, but as a view port into our future under austerity cuts and how you and I will become more and more affected by them while the Military Industrial Complex will safely remain cocooned behind legislative walls.
Some might see this as an isolated event. I see it as prophesy.
PB
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