Brothers: I have snipped the bottom 2/3's of this article from the Sunday New York Times which examines company by company, the unnecessary pork barrel spending of the current congress and the Pentagon in regard to weapons systems. Only the lead paragraphs remain, which summarize how the administration's efforts of restraining wasteful military spending has been thwarted. Money that could have been used to provide aid for seniors in regard to prescription drugs is being wasted on weapons systems that are obsolescent, won't be used, and in some cases, won't be built. The only system, out of dozens, that was cut out was the Crusader Cannon, too heavy to move to a battlefield. Even that company will receive $475 million for future development of a system that will (hopefully), not be built. In this era of one-party government, the only restraint on the raid on the treasury is the Executive Branch of Government. The real test of President Bush in the next two years will be the management of the economy. HOw frugal will the adminstration be? How often will the veto be used to stop the waste of resources? The president has done some reshuffling of people who deal with the economy. Lets hope that more will be done in this regard than the symbolic "turning out the White house lights" that occured in a previous administration. These folks need to be burning the midnight oil in search of a way out of the economic quagmire. Our President will ultimatly have to face down his friends in Congress as he has Sadam. Charles+ ---------------------------------------- December 22, 2002 So Much for the Plan to Scrap Old Weapons By LESLIE WAYNE OVER the past year, even as he hunted down terrorists, oversaw lingering operations in Afghanistan and made plans for a possible invasion of Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld was also waging a battle much closer to home. On that front, pitted against American military contractors, he has more than met his match. This week, Mr. Rumsfeld will deliver to President Bush a $378 billion military budget that had been trumpeted as a new strategic vision — one that was to have shaken the relics of cold-war weapons systems from the national arsenal and replaced them with new, lighter and more lethal fighting forces. Yet it now appears that the military contractors, united with allies in the Pentagon and Congress in a group known around Washington as the Iron Triangle, stood up to Mr. Rumsfeld — and won. Weapons systems that had been on the chopping block have been saved, and others that many critics say should be consigned to the dustbin of history are about to receive millions, and in some cases billions, of taxpayers' dollars. "As far as the sweeping, let's-turn-the-place-inside-out changes that were being proposed, that's just not going to happen," said Byron K. Callan, a military industry analyst at Merrill Lynch. "The most interesting thing about this administration and Pentagon is that there has been a lot of talk, but action only at the margin." For two years now, the administration has wanted to make good on Mr. Bush's campaign promise to modernize the military, even if it meant skipping a generation of weapons in the works. Despite the attention the military receives for its high-technology weaponry, billions of dollars still flow into weapons systems designed to fight the battles of yesterday — fighter jets built for aerial battles with the Soviets, warships designed for battles in the open seas. For companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and dozens of others, hundreds of millions of dollars were on the line every time Mr. Bush talked about modernization. He gave two major speeches on the subject at the Citadel, one as a candidate and one last year. His pronouncements were repeated even more forcefully by Mr. Rumsfeld, who, known for tough decisions, looked as if he could turn the tough talk into action. But it hasn't turned out that way. After canceling one weapons system last year and saying that six other major ones were on the block, Mr. Rumsfeld is expected to put forward a budget that is said, by those who have seen it, to keep the funds flowing to nearly every weapons system that was up for review. The Pentagon will not comment on the budget until its official release. But barring a last-minute change of heart in the White House, the scope of military spending appears to be set for the next several years. <SNIP> _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 3 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus&xAPID=42&PS=47575&PI=7324&DI=7474&SU= http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/getmsg&HL=1216hotmailtaglines_virusprotection_3mf