Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Sponsored by Pax Christi - seeking the peace of Christ.

People collecting signatures for Grace Ross to run for governor- on the Democratic ticket, so primary i assume,

Chris Hellman
Joined NPP

A couple handouts: the president's budget, where do your tax dollars go, and the Massachusetts, Natick, and Framingham [breakdown of war costs].

http://NationalPriorities.org/

If elected officials don't hear from you, they assume you don't care. Which means they can do whatever they want.

Learn.
Write.
Hold accountable.
Organize.

Barnie Frank: "You have to stop us."

There are tremendously powerful forces happy to keep the status quo

Under Bush administration, military spending not including the wars went up 30%. Obama predicts another 25% increase.

Freezing the defense budget would be a good place to start. Even excluding the wars we are at the highest level since WWII. Higher than Vietnam. Higher than Reagan's build-up.

We have a military presence, even if only a couple people, in three-quarters of the world

only military where we divide the globe into 8 spheres of influence and have a plan in each.

Some good things: we were able to build a new airport for Haiti after the quake within 72 hours.

It would help us to be able to do that with people not in uniform, in the parts of the world - Latin America, Middle East - where they do not like our soldiers.

Boeing used to dominate the airplane-producing market. We subsidize Boeing too-- we just do it through the defense budget-- the military production offets the overhead. Doing business with the federal government is really really lucrative. Ronald Reagan ended shipbuilding subsidies (except for Navy) and the only ships we build - from the leading builder in the world - are military.

We have six major shipyards. All of our shipbuilding could be handled by Norfolk Connecticut alone.

The military is as broke as the rest of us.

Gates wanted to end 30 weapons programs. Some he did. Some Congress would not let him cancel.

Hard to move spending from one area to another.

The ship of state is slow and dumb.

Military contractors in Mass:
Raytheon
G.E.
MIT
Natick Labs

Interlude from co-author of a book with
Vivek Kundra, at 34 years old now the first-ever Chief Information Officer of the United States

Real-time transparency!

But he's going to need support.

http://data.gov

Structured information.

Cambridge group: Project on Defense Alternatives