MJ: Elizabeth Warren Is Doing to the Pentagon What She Did to Wall Street

[DrFunkenstein]

Warren, a consumer protection icon who entered politics with a reputation as the bane of Wall Street, has spent the past several months treating defense contractors, generals, and civilian Defense Department officials to the same sort of withering criticism she grew famous for heaping on banking regulators and Wells Fargo CEOs. Her perch on the Armed Services committee has produced heated exchanges with Pentagon leaders over the department’s carbon footprint and its bloated war-fighting budget, but no topic has invigorated her more than the influence wielded by the $226 billion defense industry.

“It’s clear that the Pentagon is captured by the so-called ‘Big Five’ defense contractors—and taxpayers are picking up the bill,” Warren declared in November. “The defense industry will inevitably have a seat at the table, but they shouldn’t get to own the table.”

Defense giants and their allies in the Pentagon have long benefited from what Warren decried in May as “this business of more, more, more for the military.” Despite winding down its Middle East wars, the United States is still projected to spend $1.25 trillion on national security this year, according to the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight (POGO), and Pentagon officials continue sounding the alarm for more funding to ward off China and Russia’s development of new cyberweapons and missiles. Warren, like many lawmakers from both parties, has frequently criticized corporate lobbyists for their swampy wheeling-and-dealing in Washington, but her “focus on DOD to this degree is new,” says Mandy Smithberger, director of POGO’s Center for Defense Information.

By tackling Pentagon spending and contractor malfeasance, Warren, one of the top-tier Democrats in the 2020 presidential primary, has been able to shore up her national security chops and tie the Defense Department to her attacks on corrupt government bureaucrats. This approach has also allowed her to be a different sort of Pentagon critic in the Democratic primary, unlike Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), who have more directly assailed American military interventions. “It’s a ‘good government’ position, not a ‘left’ position,” says Gordon Adams, a former Pentagon official whose 1981 book, The Iron Triangle: the Politics of Defense Contracting, outlined the problem of close ties between government officials and industry leaders. “She’s saying the relationship is too cozy. And, she’s dead right.” Warren’s signature ethics plan would go “much broader than the current law,” says Craig Holman of Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group. She proposes barring ex-national security officials from lobbying for foreign governments and urges prohibiting defense contractors from hiring senior DOD civilian and military leaders “for four years after they leave the Department.”

Warren’s campaign consulted POGO and People Over the Pentagon, a coalition of progressive groups that advocates deep cuts in defense spending, in the months following the campaign launch in February. Their influence is apparent in her Pentagon ethics plan, which Warren released shortly after the White House announced in May that Trump would nominate Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive, as secretary of defense.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/elizabeth-warren-is-doing-to-the-pentagon-what-she-did-to-wall-street/

[FM123]

1. Thank you Elizabeth Warren!

Watch out you corrupt government bureaucrats, she is coming for you!

[madville]

2. The defense industry creates millions of middle class jobs

Manufacturing and contracted services are a huge part of the defense budget, millions of good jobs to take into account when proposing massive cuts.

[elleng]

3. Right,

A driving factor behind this relationship between the government and defense-minded corporations is that both sides benefit—one side from obtaining war weapons, and the other from being paid to supply them. . .

A similar thesis was originally expressed by Daniel Guérin, in his 1936 book Fascism and Big Business, about the fascist government ties to heavy industry. It can be defined as, "an informal and changing coalition of groups with vested psychological, moral, and material interests in the continuous development and maintenance of high levels of weaponry, in preservation of colonial markets and in military-strategic conceptions of internal affairs.

Eisenhower's farewell address, January 17, 1961. The term military–industrial complex is used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex

[zentrum]

4. Love her more every day.

[DCofVA]

5. Finally! A candidate with the intestinal fortitude to address...

...America’s number one area of wasteful spending. As a veteran, I’ve witnessed it firsthand. It doesn’t create job one to spend $10.00 on something we could get for $1.00. This is common practice when it comes to contractual military spending. It lines the pockets of the contractors and does nothing for our military.