spoke digital films

As I mentioned in my last post, I am working as an independent “Citizen Journalist” for MTV’s Choose or Lose Street Team ‘08 and will periodically be placing some of that content here on my Spoke Films blog. With this MTV gig I have free editorial control to cover whatever issues I feel are relevant to the state of TN. Below is a piece written about a month ago. The original post for MTV is here. (Also, since this blog often focuses on documentary filmmaking, I should note the excellent film Why We Fight is mentioned below and was the impetus for this reporting).

-Dustin Ogdin

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One of the excuses I used to hear frequently from young people who didn’t bother to vote or engage with politics is that it didn’t matter for whom they voted. “They’re all corrupt,” or “they’re all bought and sold,” they’d say, speaking of politicians. Of course, I disagreed that voting and political engagement were a waste of time, but I also couldn’t deny the corrupting influence that money has on American politics. With record turnouts this election, however, young people seem to realize that withdrawing from politics is the worst possible response; politicians and big-money agents can more easily collude when fewer are watching. Thanks to youth voter participation, politicians are now forced to listen to the concerns of young people, and I hope that young voters bring their tough questions about money and government directly to their newfound admirers.

One question to ask is who is spending money on political campaigns and what are they getting in return? (My last vlog post briefly touched on this topic) Another question to ask is where the enormous budget of Washington is being spent? Is it going towards those issues that concern young people? Does your school have music and arts programs or have they been cut? What about physical education? Are you asked to sell magazine subscriptions or participate in other programs to raise money for your school? What about the environment or global warming, issues that most young people care deeply about. Is Washington investing in renewable energy research or greenhouse gas reduction? Where, exactly, are your tax dollars going? Are they serving you or are they serving the interests of big-money campaign donors?

“I remain awestruck by the number of mom and pop companies making big dollars in the defense industry… Imagine if the owners and employees of these companies wouldn’t dream of voting for a candidate that proposed cutting our education budget the same way I presume they vote for candidates who protect military expenditures. America might be a different country.”

Well, an enormous chunk of your money is going to the military. In fact, the largest portion of discretionary spending in Washington goes to the Defense budget. According to the Department of Defense’s own statistics, their 2007 budget was $471 billion. For comparison’s sake, the Department of Education’s website states their 2007 budget was about $58 billion, or 12% of military spending. That’s almost ten times less spent on books, pencils, computers, and teachers than our country spends on guns, planes, missiles, bombs, and soldiers.

Last year, I watched the excellent documentary, Why We Fight, which explored the issue of the military industrial complex and the vast economic interests behind our military. One part of the film described how the Pentagon routinely spreads the expenditures for their projects to as many Congressional districts as possible keeping voters and members of Congress economically invested in the military. Here’s a hypothetical example. The Pentagon decides to build a new plane. It could hire a contractor to build the plane in one location in one factory. A more typical scenario, however, is having the wings built in Colorado, the engines built in Kentucky, the landing gear built in South Carolina, and the computer controls built in Iowa, etc. This way, several states and several voting blocks have jobs and tax dollars dependent on the project rather than just one.

With this in mind, I decided to research military contractors in Tennessee. Surely there must be a few in even our modest state, given the vastness of the defense industry. Well, I was right but my estimate was a bit shy. Actually, it was well over two thousand shy. That’s right, according to governmentcontractswon.com, Tennessee has over twenty-five hundred defense contractors. I found this number mind-boggling. Now, some of these contracts are very small, in the thousands of dollars. Some of them might be providing paper clips or socks or canvas fabric. However, even the small, non-descript suburb of Nashville that I grew up in, Hendersonville, has twenty-five contractors spread somewhere among the strip malls and fast food outlets. One of those anonymous companies, blandly named All USA, Inc., did over two-hundred thousand dollars worth of business in 2006 and others in this little town have six-figure deals as well.

Our capital, Nashville, has three hundred and eighty-nine defense contractors with several companies earning tens of millions of dollars. Memphis leads the state with four hundred and eighty-four contractors and several more multi-million dollar earners. These big-dollar companies are far from household names, either. They are companies titled Flinco, Inc., Mahaffey Tent and Awning, or Smith and Nephew, Inc.

I remain awestruck by the number of mom and pop companies making big dollars in the defense industry. Sure, this is good for the economy. The military industrial complex is providing jobs and revenue for regular Americans and small business owners. I can’t stop thinking, however, what our country would look like if these same businesses were devoting their time, energy, and resources to education programs or renewable energy. Imagine if our education budget made up even twenty percent of our defense budget (which would almost double its size) and these small businesses were producing new computers, better software, or even art supplies for our public schools. Imagine if the owners and employees of these companies wouldn’t dream of voting for a candidate that proposed cutting our education budget the same way I presume they vote for candidates who protect military expenditures. America might be a different country. Our inner-city and rural schools could have the resources they desperately need to compete with cash-rich suburban schools. And the students of those schools wouldn’t suffer the cruel irony of being limited to jobs within the same military that is soaking up the funds that could be used in their schools to train them to be engineers, doctors, or computer programmers. They might join the military for reasons of pride, patriotism, and a desire to serve their country, but not because the military is one of the few options for kids graduating from their underperforming schools.

So, as we watch this campaign unfold, don’t hold your breath waiting for a candidate, be they Democrat or Republican, to demand a cutting of the Defense budget. Of course, after 9/11, no candidate wishes to “look weak” on national defense in any way. That, however, is only part of the reason for their silence. Long before we became swept up in the rhetoric of “The War on Terror”, the military industrial complex has remained a sacred cash cow. While we’ve heard candidates push for reductions in welfare spending, social security, and even education; never have we heard a viable Presidential candidate ask for a reduction in military spending. Tennessee alone has over twenty-five hundred reasons why that question hasn’t been asked. Those numbers grow exponentially when you factor in the employees of those twenty-five hundred reasons. I’m hoping, however, that some of these new voters turning out in record numbers in primaries and caucuses might have the inclination to ask some tough questions about our economic priorities. Young voters seem especially suited to ask. They are unsullied by the stale arguments of the past and are not afraid to ask new questions and seek new answers. More importantly, however, it’s the youth who are being asked to put on the uniforms that keep the military in business. It’s time they make some requests of their own.