Defense industry fatcats swill public pork
Harry Hope
From The Washington Post, 3/20/97:
By Tom Harkin and Chris Smith
When defense giants Lockheed and Martin Marietta
merged in 1995, the company's stock soared 75
percent in a matter of months. Corporate
executives pocketed $90 million in merger bonuses.
And Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine reaped a
reported $8.2 million in stock options,
performance incentives and other compensation.
Just another day on Wall Street? Guess again.
While corporate executives and stockholders were
busy gathering their new-found wealth, someone
else was left holding the bag -- the American
taxpayer.
That's right, taxpayers have been forced to
provide large, profitable defense companies with a
merger subsidy over and above their huge
earnings. The tab for this "money for nothing"
policy has already come to hundreds of millions of
dollars, and it's estimated to climb far higher.
During the past four years, the Pentagon has
received 17 requests for merger subsidies from 11
contractors totaling $817.3 million. And the
meter is running. The merger between Lockheed and
Martin-Marietta alone may cost taxpayers up to
$1.2 billion in reimbursement costs. Other major
mergers will add more. Quite simply, this is
corporate welfare at its worst.
The Department of Defense suggests that they
have no idea whether contractors' promises of
savings tomorrow' will ever come true. But the
Pentagon's willing to bet your money on it. What's
another few hundred million dollars anyway?
Lap it up, guys. Ya never know when it'll end,
right?
Harry
Jay Dunn
<snip>
> The Department of Defense suggests that they
> have no idea whether contractors' promises of
> savings tomorrow' will ever come true. But the
> Pentagon's willing to bet your money on it. What's
> another few hundred million dollars anyway?
>
> Lap it up, guys. Ya never know when it'll end,
> right?
>
> Harry
>
>
Sure as DOD knows a monopoly always decreases prices by providing sole
source for products.
Jay
Stan Ivester
In article <5grllv$7...@sjx-ixn5.ix.netcom.com>, riv...@ix.netcom.com (Harry
Hope) wrote:
> From The Washington Post, 3/20/97: > By Tom Harkin and Chris Smith > >
When defense giants Lockheed and Martin Marietta > merged in 1995, the
company's stock soared 75 > percent in a matter of months. Corporate >
executives pocketed $90 million in merger bonuses. > And Lockheed Martin
CEO Norman Augustine reaped a > reported $8.2 million in stock options, >
performance incentives and other compensation. > > Just another day on Wall
Street? Guess again. > While corporate executives and stockholders were >
busy gathering their new-found wealth, someone > else was left holding the
bag -- the American > taxpayer. > > That's right, taxpayers have been
forced to > provide large, profitable defense companies with a > merger
subsidy over and above their huge > earnings. The tab for this "money for
nothing" > policy has already come to hundreds of millions of > dollars,
and it's estimated to climb far higher. > > > Lap it up, guys. Ya never
know when it'll end, > right?
These are subsidies that can't be allowed to end; the "defense" industry is
our country's actual industrial policy, although this is a fact that cannot
be allowed to be spoken in the polite media. The American public doesn't
like direct corporate welfare, but the electorate can be tricked into
thinking that there's some kind of threat that necessitates these kinds of
expenditures, even though in reality it's mostly corporate welfare.
Now that the most evil of all bogeyman, the Soviet Union, is no more, it's
getting a little hard to conjure up some new Great Satan to justify these
hundreds of billions of dollars for "defense." One might even ask, after
decades of this kind of spending, what exactly do we have left that we are
defending with all of this money? We now have a nation that provides
dwindling resources for the great majority while profits are gushing out
the ears of the wealthy and the big corporations. (If you don't believe
that's the case, then start reading the Wall Street Journal or
BusinessWeek, especially the recent BW cover story on marketing to the Two
New Americas--the very rich, and everyone else.)
Eventually the public will figure this out and call for an end to the
military-industrial oligarchy. But I'm afraid we'r going to see even more
miserable Third World conditions in this incredibly rich country before
such a revelation finally occurs.