Some of you may know that I spent almost 20 years as a pilot’s crew scheduler for United Airlines. When I was there, we called it FIFO (First In First Out), some places such as cop shops and prosecutors call it “the wheel.” Basically, it means that when you come back from an assignment or day off, your name goes to the bottom of the availability list. As assignments are handed out, you climb the list, and when you get to the top, you get the next assignment. Not all that complicated, but fair and equitable.
The Defense Department just released a detailed list of the 129 planned military construction jobs that are being affected by His Lowness pulling $3.6 billion from the Defense Department to put a rush order on his brainless vanity wall. Nattering Network Nabobs are already foaming at the mouth in anticipation of the politicians in the GOP up for reelection that are going to mutiny when they return to Washington over the millions of dollars, in some cases tens of millions of dollars of hard fought for pork that is being pulled from their states so Trump can fulfill a promise so empty even his core supporters didn’t believe it.
But there’s an error in the way that the media is covering this story, and it’s a big one. The media is fixating on the 129 projects that are directly affected by Trump’s brazen cash and power grab. But the mistake is in limiting the coverage to only those 129 projects. In fact, every pending domestic military construction project is being affected by The Mango Messiah’s dunderheaded ploy.
Here’s why. It turns out that the congressional military construction process uses a modified version of the FIFO list, or “The Wheel.” Military construction projects are planned years in advance for the most part, and then they go to the bottom of the list. As military construction funding is approved, it’s divvied up starting at the top of the list, and working downwards until it’s all gone. As items are funded, they are removed from the list, and the others move up, waiting for their turn. It’s a never ending process.
Are you starting to get the picture? When the DoD pulled the funding from those projects at the top of the list, the projects themselves weren’t canceled, They were simply put on hold. Granting that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in the House will never agree to pass any more “emergency” military construction funding, in effect paying for the wall, those projects will remain on hold until either a court decides that Trump’s cash grab was unconstitutional and returns the money to the DoD, or until the next appropriations process rolls around.
Those projects that just had their funding pulled for Trump’s Folly will now have to wait until next year for their funding, and that’s a problem. Because, like most things in Washington, military funding tends to move with the grace and speed of a well danced waltz. Military construction spending is basically a set amount every year. Senators and congressmen can calculate about how long it will take for their money to be approved, and start laying the groundwork for the money’s usage well in advance.
If the spending for this year’s projects are being delayed until next year, that means that the spending for the next 129 projects on “The Wheel” will be delayed for another year as well. And that’s going to make a whole lot of Senators and congress critters look like world class schmucks when the long expected bonanza of local jobs and cash infusion into local economies are delayed for another year because The Pampers President decided to screw them over so that $6.3 billion of their money could sit around while nothing happens as eminent domain rights are fought over in Texas for years.
So no, it isn’t just 129 projects being held hostage by Hair Twitler’s selfish display of arrogance and self aggrandizement. It’s all of them, every single project on the military construction FIFO list. And when you get ready to vote, don’t just look at the list of states with those 129 projects. Call your congressman or woman’s office, and ask what military projects were scheduled to start in your state next year, because you just took it in the shorts too. What do the road construction signs always say? Oh yeah, “Your tax dollars at work!”
To know the future, look to the past. before the insanity of the 2020 election, relive the insanity of the 2016 GOP primary campaign, and the general election, to see how we got to where we are. Copies of President Evil, and the sequel, President Evil II, A Clodwork Orange are available as e-books on Amazon, at the links above. Catch up before the upcoming release of the third book in the trilogy, President Evil III: All The Presidents Fen
I read that some of them have been on the waiting list for funding for years. The GOP-T in the Senate *should* be mad enough to tell Himself where to stick his wall – but they won’t say anything.
We’ll see what happens PJ…Thom Tillis in NC just got absolutely blistered n an editorial over this yesterday…
Another factor that I’ve seen mentioned but not nearly enough is the local economic effect all those construction jobs have. IOW it’s not active duty troops doing the construction but local civilian contractors and when their workers are idled because of this kind of crap it means significant numbers of people in communities aren’t getting paychecks (good ones btw) and circulating that money in their local economies & therefore positively impacting other businesses and boosting local economies. It can even ruin some local contractor’s businesses – imagine knowing a big project you’d won for your business has made it to the point where construction had been scheduled to begin at a certain time and having signed contracts to purchase materials and equipment. Then the project gets put on hold which effectively means it’s cancelled for the reasons you cited. Given the way so many construction workers are hired as independent sub-contractors the pain to the construction company in not bringing those workers on is relatively minimal but if you’re on the hook for a large amount of cash committed to ramp up operations you could well be screwed.
I wonder if you sent this information to Rachel Maddow if she could use it in a segment on her show. She seems to do that when people send her this kind of information. Could you please look into this Mr. Murfster35? I love your writing and all the good information you give us here. I just think some of what you write could be given out to more people if it got more exposure in the media, and Rachel Maddow does do this when give the information. I know because I have written her program before with suggestions and lo and behold have then seen her talk about it on her show.