Posted on 06/07/2005 8:14:42 PM PDT by A. Pole
Your statement is incorrect, there are literally millions of defense contracting companies. There are market forces involved as well (the U.S. is not the sole employer of defense contractors), plus most large contractors also have plenty of nongovernmental commercial ventures as well.
As to the status of a defense contractor as a quasi-government employee, that is patently false. Other than working at a government facility, a contractor has no ability to influence the government agency he works for substantively. Contractors do not have the sames rights as a government employee nor do they share the same protections. Defense Contractors are elements of the free market as much as accountants at Microsoft or IBM.
Cheers,
CSG
Unready For This Attack
By Jon Kyl
Saturday, April 16, 2005; Page A19
Recently a Senate Judiciary subcommittee of which I am chairman held a hearing on a major threat to the American people, one that could come not only from terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda but from rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea.
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the American homeland, said one of the distinguished scientists who testified at the hearing, is one of only a few ways that the United States could be defeated by its enemies -- terrorist or otherwise. And it is probably the easiest. A single Scud missile, carrying a single nuclear weapon, detonated at the appropriate altitude, would interact with the Earth's atmosphere, producing an electromagnetic pulse radiating down to the surface at the speed of light. Depending on the location and size of the blast, the effect would be to knock out already stressed power grids and other electrical systems across much or even all of the continental United States, for months if not years.
Few if any people would die right away. But the loss of power would have a cascading effect on all aspects of U.S. society. Communication would be largely impossible. Lack of refrigeration would leave food rotting in warehouses, exacerbated by a lack of transportation as those vehicles still working simply ran out of gas (which is pumped with electricity). The inability to sanitize and distribute water would quickly threaten public health, not to mention the safety of anyone in the path of the inevitable fires, which would rage unchecked. And as we have seen in areas of natural and other disasters, such circumstances often result in a fairly rapid breakdown of social order.
American society has grown so dependent on computer and other electrical systems that we have created our own Achilles' heel of vulnerability, ironically much greater than those of other, less developed nations. When deprived of power, we are in many ways helpless, as the New York City blackout made clear. In that case, power was restored quickly because adjacent areas could provide help. But a large-scale burnout caused by a broad EMP attack would create a much more difficult situation. Not only would there be nobody nearby to help, it could take years to replace destroyed equipment.
Transformers for regional substations, for example, are massive pieces of equipment that are no longer manufactured in the United States and typically take more than a year to build. In the words of another witness at the hearing, "The longer the basic outage, the more problematic and uncertain the recovery of any [infrastructure system] will be. It is possible -- indeed, seemingly likely -- for sufficiently severe functional outages to become mutually reinforcing, until a point at which the degradation . . . could have irreversible effects on the country's ability to support any large fraction of its present human population." Those who survived, he said, would find themselves transported back to the United States of the 1880s.
This threat may sound straight out of Hollywood, but it is very real. CIA Director Porter Goss recently testified before Congress about nuclear material missing from storage sites in Russia that may have found its way into terrorist hands, and FBI Director Robert Mueller has confirmed new intelligence that suggests al Qaeda is trying to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction. Iran has surprised intelligence analysts by describing the mid-flight detonations of missiles fired from ships on the Caspian Sea as "successful" tests. North Korea exports missile technology around the world; Scuds can easily be purchased on the open market for about $100,000 apiece.
A terrorist organization might have trouble putting a nuclear warhead "on target" with a Scud, but it would be much easier to simply launch and detonate in the atmosphere. No need for the risk and difficulty of trying to smuggle a nuclear weapon over the border or hit a particular city. Just launch a cheap missile from a freighter in international waters -- al Qaeda is believed to own about 80 such vessels -- and make sure to get it a few miles in the air.
Fortunately, hardening key infrastructure systems and procuring vital backup equipment such as transformers is both feasible and -- compared with the threat -- relatively inexpensive, according to a comprehensive report on the EMP threat by a commission of prominent experts. But it will take leadership by the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department, and other federal agencies, along with support from Congress, all of which have yet to materialize.
The Sept. 11 commission report stated that our biggest failure was one of "imagination." No one imagined that terrorists would do what they did on Sept. 11. Today few Americans can conceive of the possibility that terrorists could bring our society to its knees by destroying everything we rely on that runs on electricity. But this time we've been warned, and we'd better be prepared to respond.
The writer is a Republican senator from Arizona and chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
if I work as an engineer for a defense contractor, and the government cancels the contract, and I lose my job as a result - it must mean that I in-effect worked for the government. The government contract paid my salary, in its absence I am unemployed, so they must have effectively been my employer. Forget the semantics of it.
I know alot of techies who went to real estate. Math and science public school teachers, real estate, one guy sells Infinitis now - just some of the jobs they fled to.
Don't worry, the interest only mortgages will keep you afloat. The RE bubble is the only thing holding up the economy right now, and there are so many specualtors making their livings from swapping real estate.
We have a $12 trillion economy.They have a $1.5 trillion economy and exported less than $200 billion to us in 2004. You have a strange definition of debt ridden beggar.
Regarding your chart. Wages went up 60 cents in 10 years. BMFD!!!. Also notice how in the last 2 years they are leveling out and have actually gone down in the last year??? I would like to see what 2004-2005 chart shows when it comes out.
Millions? I seriously doubt that.
Quote: "Ignoring imports and counting only exports is like balancing a checkbook by counting only deposits but not withdrawals.
Just needs repeating. Also our trade deficit with china increased more last year than the TOTAL amount they buy from us. Went from 156 to 196 billion but they only buy 35 billion from us.
You're right, Bump!
I always thought rising wages were good. And I thought wages were supposed to drop after NAFTA.
I doubt that.
Actually the trade deficit with China went from $124 billion to $162 billion.
" And we're looking at 5 % unemployment rate here. .. How's Europe doing, by the way?"
The Feds stop counting you as unemployed when your unemployment insurance runs out. A really neat little accounting trick to make things look rosier than they are.
Quote: Actually the trade deficit with China went from $124 billion to $162 billion.
You are quoting 2003 I believe. My numbers were for 2004.
Yeah, I still think that's a unique viewpoint.
Source?
I'm trying to do a search on the guy to find out how old he is on the possibility that 'others' are doing his writing for him. From what I can gather Roberts is in his 90's and is simply not competent. Then again, they really love him at (especially this particular piece) at the DU.
Show us the 2004 to 2005 wages.
As we will find out.....all too soon, I fear. And no one to blame but ourselves.
Another dead-on article from Roberts. Thanks. Of course, it matters not, as the Free Traitors will ignore the economically obvious anyway. It's a religion with them. You'd have better luck trying to convince a Scientologist to become an Orthodox Jew.
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