F-35 Foes Pile on the Data as Battle Builds over Local Basing Plan

1. Oh for god’s sake. EVERYTHING is bad for your health. Especially the bombs of frozen fat and sugar that Ben Cohen was handing out. You’re more likely to be harmed from ice cream than from jet noise, thanks to Ben & Jerry. Leaving your house in the morning is worse for your health than a few moments of jet noise. Oh, but “it’s all about the children.” What a crock. If loud noises are bad for children, don’t live in South Burlington at all, don’t take your kids on planes, don’t allow allow police and fire trucks to use sirens, and don’t allow your kids to go to fireworks or Grace Potter shows. But every one of these “concerned” parents allows all of these things. These protests against the F-35s are intellectually dishonest.

2. Well Hoo, what is dishonest is repeating over and over claims that are not supported in any way by the data in the Environmental Impact Statement or in scientific research. What is dishonest is claiming the F-35 noise is no louder than the F-16 when the Air Force states that it is 4 times as loud. What is dishonest is claiming that the noise has no impact on property values when the Air Force states that property values could go down by 25% or more in the impacted zone. The list could go on. The doctors presenting evidence have researched the questions diligently, have you?

3. Doctors are just people, with their own political points of view and biases. And contrary to your assertion, these doctors did not perform the research. They just hand-picked their personal conclusions based on their own biases.

4. I think national guard and reserve units are a good thing and what the Founders had in mind when they warned us to avoid standing armies. That said, the worst problem with the F-35 is that the bloody thing was designed, in typical pentagon fashion, to fight World War Three with the Soviet Union. It’s hard to contemplate why we need a fleet of supersonic radar evading planes to drop bombs on third world countries where the only opposition is an illiterate maniac with an AK-47.

5. NOISELESS
   Most of the noise concerning the F35 issues is about NOISE — and rightly so, as many Vermonters will be hurt, their lives and homes devalued and in some cases destroyed.
   But let’s not forget another aspect, at the moment relatively noiseless, but in the long run, equally worthy of note: the military’s push for the F-35 is intimately connected with Obama’s plan to upgrade the US’s nuclear strike capability. The current F-16 fleet is incapable of carrying and delivering the newly-designed “smart” nuclear bombs. The F-35 has been designed to do so.
   By supporting the development of the F-35, in Burlington or not, Vermonters are willy-nilly upholding the US’s evasion of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — to which it is a signatory — which contains a pledge to slowly lower nuclear strike capacity to zero.
   The anti-F-35 movement itself has bracketed this issue, in part because the local, clearly predictable effects will be so severe, but partly out of wariness about being seen as “unpatriotic”. What I think is unpatriotic is to allow one’s own country to be the linchpin and supplier of WMDs beyond any local nightmare.
   Let this remain an undertone at least in the current symphony of noise.

6. Vermont Government
   Rots from the Top

   A Weapon of Mass
   Destruction, F-35 Also Destroys the Democratic Process

   By William Boardman panthers007@comcast.net

   [NOTE: Written
   before the public meeting on July 8, about F-35 basing in Vermont, this piece
   predicts the outcome. The
   prediction is correct, but most of the post-meeting coverage has less detail,
   background, and context than this pre-meeting exercise. The meeting drew about 150 people,
   lasted almost four hours — see
   end for outcome.]

   Reader
   Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to
   republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
   Supported News.
   F-35, At $400 Billion
   And Counting, Is a Symptom of Much Greater Disease

   When the city council in a city of just 18,000 people reverses
   a vote it took a year earlier, it’s not usually off national significance, but
   if the South Burlington City Council votes as expected on July 8, in support of
   basing the F-35 strike fighter in Vermont, it will illustrate how deep the
   tentacles of national power reach into local government in this country.

   The F-35 nuclear-capable bomber, designed for aggressive
   war, is one of the more obvious tumors of the military-industrial-political
   cancer that has metastasized throughout the American system, from Congress and
   the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., all the way, now, to the five member city
   council in South Burlington.
   In 2012, the city council was led by a retired Air Force colonel who at first supported having the F-35 as a noisy
   neighbor — until she researched it carefully. After Col. Rosanne Greco, a former Pentagon planner,
   presented her findings to the council (and the public), the council voted on
   two separate occasions – 4-1 and 4-0 – that the F-35 should be based
   elsewhere.

   F-35 Boosters Bought
   the Government They Wanted in South Burlington

   And then there was an election in March 2013 in which councilor
   Pam Mackenzie – who had been the lone vote in favor of the F-35 – helped
   bankroll perhaps the most expense local election ever, supporting two
   candidates who are now poised to vote with her and in favor of basing the
   world’s most expensive weapons system in a city where it will have
   significantly destructive effects on the civilian population. If it happens, this will be a deliberate
   and callous vote in favor of inevitable collateral damage, without redeeming
   social importance.

   According to the Air Force’s own study, the F-35 is much
   louder than the F-16s presently based at Burlington International Airport, and
   those quieter planes have already made more than 200 homes uninhabitable. The
   F-35 would render another 1,300 or more homes uninhabitable because of noise –
   a wholesale destruction of affordable housing in a market where affordable
   housing is already scarce enough.

   None of the public officials who support basing the F-35 in
   Vermont’s most densely populated area – not the Air Force, not Vermont’s
   Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy or independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, nor Democratic
   Rep. Peter Welch nor Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin, nor Democratic Mayor of
   Burlington Miro Weinberger, nor any other statewide elected official – not one
   of them has even expressed serious concern over the destruction of housing for
   lower income Vermonters, much less put forward a serious plan to mitigate the
   destruction.

   It’s Military Pork,
   It’s a Career Boost, Why Should We Talk About It?

   Most Vermont political office holders duck the issue
   entirely, or, like Democratic Speaker of the House Shap Smith, hide behind the
   fiction that the decision is up to the feds – at the same time the feds are
   inviting public comment. Smith and his allies have been able to block those House
   members who oppose the F-35 from getting a serious vote on the issue.

   And now the city council of South Burlington includes people
   who, like Sen. Leahy’s relatives, stand to gain personally from an Air Force
   decision in their favor.

   As soon as Pam Mackenzie, daughter of an Air Force veteran,
   had funded the successful election of two allies, she enjoyed their support in
   replacing Greco as council chair, with herself. In May 2012, when Mackenzie was
   trying to block public discussion of the F-35, a reporter described her
   publicly stated reasoning this way:

   “Pam said that she supports the guard in anything they want
   to do because her dad was in the air force. That’s it. She voted against
   providing the public with a forum to question and discuss the impacts of the
   F-35 because of personal bias.”

   Conflicts of Interest
   Outweigh The Harm The Public Will Suffer

   Mackenzie is the CEO of the DeckerZinn management consulting
   firm. Although she has Air Force ties and spent lavishly to elect allies to the
   council, she has not apparently made any formal disclosure of conflicts of
   interest, nor has she apparently recused herself from involving her official
   duties with her personal interests.

   One of her new allies was an opponent when Mackenzie was
   first elected in 2012. But this
   time she supported Chris Shaw who describes himself on Twitter as a “husband,
   hockey dad, teacher, city councilor, justice of the peace, lax bro and
   responsible renegade — just your average brainy, brawny, balding badboy!”

   Shortly after his election, Shaw said: “I don’t have a
   specific policy change agenda. My agenda is to be a respectful listener.”

   What These People Say
   Has Little Relevance To What They Do

   Shaw ran as a supporter of local basing of the F-35, as did
   the other Mackenzie beneficiary, Pat Nowak, an investment advisor who refused
   to disclose her party affiliation during the campaign. But they ran as a team,
   with Mackenzie’s largesse and support of the F-35 in common.

   By all accounts, significant outside money also helped make
   this campaign roughly ten times more expensive than the usual city council races,
   but Vermont’s campaign reporting laws are such that demonstrating the exact
   dimensions of a candidate’s spending is difficult.

   According to
   Seven Days, “Shaw and Nowak are representative of a South Burlington ‘old guard’
   aligned closely with developers and other business interests.” The Burlington
   Free Press reported that Nowak and Mackenzie “agreed, for instance, that a new
   vote on the F-35 is not high on their agenda.

   During the
   campaign, Nowak said in an interview:
   “The single most pressing concern for our city is the degree of
   divisiveness that has entered the everyday processes of operation and decision
   making. It could be said that great issues are at stake and disagreement is
   normal and healthy. I don’t believe the atmosphere derives from the issues — they
   could be settled with research, analysis and civil discussion.”

   With An
   Opportunity to Hear New Health Information, Council Stonewalls

   At the July 1
   council meeting, four women, three of them elderly and living at a facility
   within the zone the F-35 will make uninhabitable, asked the council to delay
   its July 8 meeting for 48 hours. As reported in Vermont Commons:

   “All four of
   the women who addressed the South Burlington city council where soft spoken,
   polite and brief….
   “These women were petitioning for a delay because they wanted citizens to have
   the opportunity to attend another public meeting, this one regarding the
   effects of aircraft noise on the health of children, before making up their
   minds on the F-35 basing. This July 9th public meeting will feature doctors and
   researchers sharing their knowledge of the health effects of airplane noise on
   children’s physical and mental health and learning ability.”

   At that July
   1 meeting, Nowak was absent and unable to support any further “research,
   analysis and civil discussion.”

   Shaw showed
   little capacity for being “a respectful listener,” as he made personal attacks
   on his fellow council member, Greco.
   He adamantly opposed hearing any new information about the F-35 and
   refused to discuss it rationally, according to the transcript of the
   meeting.

   Mackenzie and
   Shaw refused to postpone the July 8 meeting. Their minds were apparently made
   up, their decision made, information of any sort would just waste their
   time.
   As Mackenzie
   put it, “I don’t have to justify my reasons.”

   POSTSCRIPT:
   Predetermined Vote Plays Out as Pre-Scripted

   More than 150 people turned out for the meeting in the
   stifling local elementary school gym located a quarter mile from the airport
   runway.

   Most of the audience opposed basing the F-35 in their small
   city. For reasons that are
   unclear, people in favor of the F-35 got to speak first. Some 70 people in all spoke,
   overwhelmingly opposed to the $400 billion strike fighter, but council chair
   Mackenzie called for a vote before all the speakers were heard. Greco objected to this as a violation
   of the rules of order. Mackenzie
   plowed ahead.

   Mackenzie continued to refuse to explain to her constituents
   why she was voting as she was. He
   refused to explain why she was the only council member who wasn’t explaining
   her vote. She said she would
   explain something later.

   The council voted 3-2 in support of the F-35, as had been
   decided well in advance.

7. Tim is right about F-35 military relevance —
   to a point, since it’s suitable for aggressive war
   against better-armed upstarts (like Syria, with
   it’s ground-to-air missile defenses).
   Bur he’s wrong about the Guard/reserves —
   the Founders had in mind STATE militias,
   as per the Second Amendment.
   The Guard and reserve are political compromises,
   although what’s not compromised is ultimate federal control.

8. Sutton Hoo describes self with fierce accuracy. ;-)))

9. The nuclear issue is crucial,
   especially in the context of American willingness
   to wage aggressive war against whomever….
   The F-35 represents a concatenation of war crimes,
   past, present, and waiting for an opportunity.

10. Nice non-response.

11. OK, you’re describing doctors you don’t know and ascribing to them attributes for which you offer no evidence.

12. No, what I was doing was responding to this exact sentence from SchmanVT:
    “The doctors presenting evidence have researched the questions diligently, have you?”
    What evidence did he have for his statements? None. And, in fact, he was wrong because they did not do any research. All they did — according to the article — is make statements interpreting other people’s studies. You don’t criticize SchmanVT for making assumptions about these doctors, but you criticize me for having the nerve to question HIS assumptions.
    Good grief.

13. The article indicates that the doctors read and processed the research materials, not that they did the original research. SchmanVT wondered if you’d done as much.
    Question still not answered.

14. The article says no such thing. Quote me where it says that.

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