Plane and Not So Simple: Who Spent How Much Arguing For and Against the F-35?

[unhappycamper]

http://www.7dvt.com/2013plane-and-not-so-simple-who-spent-how-much-arguing-and-against-f-35



F-35 cheerleader Patrick Leahy announcing the decision to base the F-35s at Burlington International Airport

Plane and Not So Simple: Who Spent How Much Arguing For and Against the F-35?
By Kevin J. Kelley 12.11.13

Seventeen months ago, Nicole Citro tied a green ribbon to a railing on the front porch of her Essex Junction home. Her simple gesture started something big: what Sen. Patrick Leahy and Gov. Peter Shumlin both recently hailed as a winning “grassroots campaign” to base a squadron of F-35 fighter planes at the Burlington International Airport.

But to the plane’s opponents, the Green Ribbons campaign is more like political AstroTurf, an effort underwritten by Vermont’s biggest business interests and hyped by the state’s most powerful pols. It’s a case of the 1 percent pretending to be the 99 percent, says Paul Fleckenstein, a leader of the Stop the F-35 Coalition.

Citro, owner of a South Burlington insurance agency and daughter of a Vermont Army Guard master sergeant, acknowledges receiving financial help from organizations such as the Greater Burlington Industrial Corp. and the regional and statewide chambers of commerce. Wealthy executives such as realtor Ernie Pomerleau also made contributions, as did “20 or so” local companies, Citro adds.

Together, she reckons, business sources accounted for “around half” of the Green Ribbons campaign’s total take of “a little more than $20,000.” Citro says the rest of the money came from “hundreds” of work a day Vermonters who either made small donations or bought marked-up merchandise such as hats and T-shirts emblazoned with pro-F-35 slogans.