Many people say that the Republicans have no plan to increase the number of jobs in America. This is not true. The largest employer in America at the present time is the military-industrial complex and the Republicans want to increase its size even more. Under George W Bush, 17 million square feet of office space with a concomitant increase in personnel was built so that the intelligence establishment could increase its size. This is equivalent to three times the size of the Pentagon. Under George W Bush civilian and military employees of the military-industrial complex were ramped up. Republicans want to go back to the policies of George W Bush and these certainly include increasing the size of government as long as that increased size has to do with the military-industrial complex and not with any 'social programs.'
The US Defense budget is already larger than the combined defense budgets of the rest of the world. The US is already a national security state. That is its economic interests are so intertwined with military interests that any attempt to change that meets with widespread disapproval either from the defense contractors who stand to profit from more defense spending or from ordinary citizens many of whom have been processed through the military and have been subjected to the military's brainwashing. They see patriotism through the narrow prism of saluting the flag and singing God Bless America or the National Anthem before the umpire yells "Play Ball!" They are more worried about whether or not Obama wears an American flag pin in his lapel than whether or not the poverty rate among American children is increasing. One of the reasons they are not worried about poverty is that every time the evening news runs a story on poverty, they show a bunch of black people. Every time they run a story on the misery caused by Katrina they show a bunch of black people. Every time they run a story on unemployment they show a bunch of black people standing in an unemployment line. So the white majority can justifiably conclude that all the maladies of America only affect black people and not them.
So Republicans want to take us back to the 1950s when taxes were low (well, not really - the upper brackets under Eisenhauer were in the 90% range), cars had tail fins and there were plenty of jobs in the defense establishment. The same remains true today. If you want a good job with benefits, go to work for the military-industrial complex - Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, the FBI, the CIA and many others too numerous to mention. While Republicans want to expand budgets for these corporations and departments, they want to reduce them for social programs that mainly help the poor (read: black). White people's programs are with the military establishment and its offshoots. Welfare, unemployment, food stamps and the like are for poor (mainly black) people. Therefore, Tea Baggers are against those Big Government social programs and for those Big Government National Security State programs which mainly employ white people.
The US has around 1000 military bases spread throughout the world. That's several for every country in the world. This is from America's Empire of Bases by Chalmers Johnson:
As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.
Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we are creating some thirteen naval task forces built around aircraft carriers whose names sum up our martial heritage -- Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John C. Stennis, Harry S. Truman, and Ronald Reagan. We operate numerous secret bases outside our territory to monitor what the people of the world, including our own citizens, are saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another.
Our installations abroad bring profits to civilian industries, which design and manufacture weapons for the armed forces or, like the now well-publicized Kellogg, Brown & Root company, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston, undertake contract services to build and maintain our far-flung outposts. One task of such contractors is to keep uniformed members of the imperium housed in comfortable quarters, well fed, amused, and supplied with enjoyable, affordable vacation facilities. Whole sectors of the American economy have come to rely on the military for sales. On the eve of our second war on Iraq, for example, while the Defense Department was ordering up an extra ration of cruise missiles and depleted-uranium armor-piercing tank shells, it also acquired 273,000 bottles of Native Tan sunblock, almost triple its 1999 order and undoubtedly a boon to the supplier, Control Supply Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and its subcontractor, Sun Fun Products of Daytona Beach, Florida.
The above was written in 2004 when the US had "only" 700 military bases. Many more have been added since then especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the US were to defund the military-industrial complex and instead devote those funds to building infrastructure or helping the poor, many "white" jobs would be eliminated. Is it any wonder why the Tea Baggers are up in arms? They want the military establishment to remain strong because that is the primary source of their employment. That is one area where there is no lack of jobs at all levels from high school dropout to PhD. American militarism is a cash cow providing both opportunities for entrepreneurs and employees. Good, stable jobs with the best possible benefits including health care and pensions. But if you're a high school dropout and can't find a job, the Army will provide you with one.
WW II proved that the way out of a depression is through the military. WWII solved the problem of the Great Depression which FDR's WPA and CCC only partially solved. It wasn't the war itself exactly but the buildup to the war - the humming factories producing guns, ammunition, tanks, boats and airplanes. Military production produced a full employment economy so it stands to reason that massive government expenditures in the military sphere can stem the tide of unemployment. That's the lesson of the Great Depression: direct government intervention in the economy can only do so much while a military build-up can provide jobs for everyone.
And there is little belt tightening among government workers. While private sector employees are having their pay and benefits reduced to near minimum wage, the average pay for government workers is $75,000. a year with ample benefits.
And Big Government only got bigger under George W Bush. Let's face it. Republicans aren't against Big Government as long as that Big Government is in the military arena. They are only against Big Government when it comes to 'social programs,' programs that help the poor (read black). Republicans are not against socialism as long as it mainly benefits the rich. They are only against socialism that mainly benefits the poor. Here's how Big Government got bigger under Bush:
The federal government keeps getting bigger.
The Republican Party's oft-stated affinity for smaller government has not applied during the Bush administration. According to a recent study, not only is the number of federal civil servants on the rise, but so are the numbers of employees working for government-funded contractors and for organizations that receive government grants.
Roll all of those together -- and mix in the numbers of postal workers and military personnel on the federal payroll -- and the "true size" of the federal government stands at 14.6 million employees, said Paul C. Light, the study's author and a government professor at New York University.
That compares with 12.1 million employees in 2002, said Light, who has tracked the growth of government for years and has data for as far back as 1990. The latest increase is almost entirely due to contractors, whose ranks swelled by 2.5 million since 2002, Light wrote in his 10-page research brief.
"This time, almost all of the growth can be attributed from the war on terrorism, which boosted Defense spending for both goods and services systems and covered the continued cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," he wrote.
"The rest of the hidden workforce held steady at roughly 2.9 million grantees, while civil service employment inched up and postal employment fell."
Light calls the 10.5 million federal contractors and grantees the government's "hidden workforce" because politicians tend not to mention them when discussing the size of the federal bureaucracy. Yet such workers absorbed nearly $400 billion in federal contracting funds and $100 billion in federal grants in 2005. They often performed vital work such as researching new vaccines, running federal computer systems and making body armor, weapons and meals for the military.
So Big Government subcontracts out a lot of its work to the private sector creating military-industrial complex jobs. This doesn't bother Republicans at all since they claim that these jobs are created by the private sector when in reality they are created by government contracts. But Republicans will squawk if government contracts out any jobs to repair infrstructure. That's socialism whereas anything military related is not socialism according to their definition. In Nazi Germany big corporations like I G Farben, Krupp and Siemens funded the Nazi Party and were in return rewarded with military contracts. Today Boeing, Lockheed Martin and others fund the Republicans Party which rewards them with generous military related contracts. The collusion of defense contractors with a political party is one of the hallmarks of fascism and it's as true today as it was in 1930s Germany. There are no corresponding giant corporations which are devoted to 'social programs' or infrastructure building who are feeding at the government trough. It's only military related so-called defense contractors who are living off the government. Republicans want to eliminate the 'social programs' budget so that they can grow the military-industrial complex even larger and provide jobs that way. This kind of socialism doesn not bother them. What bothers them is the kind of socialism that helps poor people.
So Republicans actually have a jobs program: the military-industrial complex. In order to fund this program to the maximum possible extent money needs to be taken away from programs which help the poor or even the middle class which they consider 'wasteful' government spending. Their well-funded lobbyists swarm Capitol Hill cajoling, persuading and demanding that more money be devoted to defense spending while there are no lobbyists arguing for more money to be devoted to helping the poor or even the middle class who are expected to find employment in the military-industrial complex.
