Lockheed To Furlough 3,000 On Monday, Layoffs Also Kicking In 341
Dawn Kawamoto writes "Lockheed employees are the latest casualty in the government shutdown, with the defense contractor announcing Friday it plans to furlough 3,000 workers on Monday. But what they didn't mention is they are laying off workers too, says a Lockheed source on the hush-hush. Lockheed, of course, isn't the only defense contractor taking it on the chin. Other contractors include United Technologies, which has furloughed 2,000, and BAE Systems which cut 1,000."
Re: Defense (Score:5, Informative)
That's a bit of an oversimplification. There are three major camps now in the red team: the neoconservatives who favor imperialism and value military spending for the sake of American power, the vested-interest establishment that wants to feed its defense contractors for little reason except to reap kickbacks and support local porkbarrel spending, and the libertarian wing (with some of the Tea Party) that earnestly and without cynicism believes in reducing military expenditure for constitutional reasons and a sense of historical obligation to the ideals of the Founding Fathers. The blue team finds it hardest to work with the lattermost faction, which uncompromisingly also wants to cut social spending; the establishment cores of each team, blue and red, work together to increase spending on arms and useless foreign conflicts. The leftmost blue team factions (i.e. Kucinich) might like to reduce military expenditures, but no one listens to them. There's really no mainstream political will on either side of the aisle to reduce the military to sane levels, because that will cost campaign dollars and district jobs. Everyone has to Support Our Troops to get reelected, after all. Eisenhower was right: the Military-Industrial Complex has changed the way we think about the economic and political status of the Union.
Re:Who shut down the government? (Score:5, Informative)
That was an awful lot of words built up on one fundamental, crippling flaw.
The House has the right to initiate budgets, as you say. But those budgets must be agreed to by the Senate and (barring a 2/3rd majority) the President.
If your stance is that the Senate and President must accept whatever the House gives them, then why do we even have a Senate or Executive?
Re:Damn (Score:2, Informative)
Looks like you're wrong. (I'm not shocked.)
62-year milestone: Fuel tops list of U.S. exports [seattletimes.com]
2011 (through October)
1. Fuel: $73.4 billion.
2. Aircraft: $70.8 billion.
3. Motor vehicles: $39.6 billion.
4. Vacuum tubes: $37.1 billion.
5. Telecommunications equipment: $33.2 billion.
Re:Defense (Score:5, Informative)
The Republican controlled House of Representatives passed a spending bill funding the entire federal government - except Obamacare.
Whatever you think of Obamacare, it was passed into law by a majority of both houses and the president's signature, just like the Constitution requires. Now the house R's, instead of trying to repeal the law, are instituting a tyranny of the minority. Don't do what we want, and we'll screw up everything. Much as it sucks to have the federal government largely shut down, the D's are right not to give into this extortion. Let this kind of crap get started, and we'll have a situation where an overall minority that controls one house, or the presidency, gets a chance every year to effectively veto any law they don't like.
Re:Defense (Score:2, Informative)
Whatever you think of Obamacare, it was passed into law by a majority of both houses and the president's signature, just like the Constitution requires.
I see you're good at parroting Democrat talking points.
The law was passed by a previous Congress, and the current Congress doesn't want to fund it. Since funding bills have to come from Congress, they have every right to refuse to fund a law.
I presume you just as outraged when Obama told the Justice Department not to enforce laws he didn't like, right?
Re:Damn (Score:5, Informative)
Aside from guitar / bass amplifiers and hi end stereo equipment who uses vacuum tubes ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_magnetron [wikipedia.org]
You're welcome.
Re:Who shut down the government? (Score:5, Informative)
"Since we cannot read minds, we cannot say who -- if anybody -- 'wants to shut down the government.' But we do know who had the option to keep the government running and chose not to. The money voted by the House of Representatives covered everything that the government does, except for ObamaCare."
No need to read minds, just read a newspaper like the conservative Washington Examiner from July when they were pushing for it as a GOP tactic, headline:
"Republicans are willing to shut down government to stop fraudulent Obamacare subsidies".
http://washingtonexaminer.com/morning-examiner-republicans-are-willing-to-shut-down-government-to-stop-fraudulent-obamacare-subsidies/article/2533356 [washingtonexaminer.com]
Acting like there's some question of who's to blame is ridiculous. In addition, we know that there are votes in the House to pass a full-funding bill right now but the GOP leadership won't allow the vote to occur. (See "discharge petition" in the House below):
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/05/us-usa-fiscal-idUSBRE98N11220131005 [reuters.com]
Re:Defense (Score:5, Informative)
Generally most of the people intent on shrinking the US budget as much as possible do not want to shrink defense spending. They consider an overwhelming defense/offense force with pie-in-the-sky projects to be vital, but health care and social programs are unnecessary (or should be handled by the states/counties, at which point they'll gripe that the states/counties spend too much).
More specifically, they don't want to shrink it at all. They just want all the money spent on rich people.
Re:Not only that (Score:3, Informative)
Unless you find out that the funding that they are fighting about for Obamacare was not in the original Law. It was supposed to use existing funding and a wee bit more. Then after it was passed, they decided that it needed 900 billion more dollars. This is why there is so much fuss from Republicans. It was not supposed to have any need for additional funding. In a country that 17 Trillion dollars in debt (this is if we could pay in cash, the actual debt with interest is estimated at nearly 100 Trillion) we can't afford to add another trillion dollars to a bill that was supposed to be covered.
Re:Weaponized keynesianism (Score:3, Informative)
Your assuming the 11k actually makes it down to each elementary school. And then your assuming that because it does, it will have some sort of long term beneficial effect. Your wrong on both counts. The US spends more on education per pupil then just about any other country in the world and we have shit results from it. Until the educational/unionization/bureaucratic complex is dealt with, more money wont make any difference in our schools.