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August 25, 2005
Yes, I care about base closings, and so should you.
I know that the percentage of this weblog's readership that's concerned with the BRAC committee recommendations hovers somewhere around zero, but I wanted to say a couple of things about them nonetheless. Believe it or not, there's stuff in here that everyone should find illuminating.
For one thing, I can't for the life of me imagine why the NYT's reportage of this is so disastrously selective. This morning's article mentions that one of the commission's proposals involved sending 200 F-18s from Virginia Beach to Jacksonville, FL. It implies that this move is why Jeb Bush "came out of the room smiling broadly." What's puzzling is why the article references this situation so obliquely. The meeting was about base closings. They weren't talking about moving fighter jets from one state to another, they were talking about closing the Oceana Naval Air Station, thus sending about 12,000 jobs out of state. I really don't get why that number wasn't in there, or why Oceana wasn't once mentioned by name.
What's worse, is that this loss won't be mitigated in any way by Hampton Roads getting any of the 6,000 jobs that should be heading south from Connecticut and Maine but aren't.
Don't get me wrong. It's not so much that I'm bothered by Oceana closing, or at least not for any reasons other than sentimentality (For those of you just joining us, I grew up in Va Beach. Somewhere at my parents' house, there's a flight jacket patch I got when I was a kid and got to sit in the cockpit of an A-6 Intruder sitting in a hangar at NAS Oceana. There's no denying how cool that was). The Sword of Damocles has been hanging over NAS Oceana for pretty much as long as I can remember, so this doesn't come as a tremendous shock. What does bother me, is how shamelessly political the closing is. Let's see here: we're going to send 12,000 jobs to Florida. Wait, who's the governor there? Oh right. It's the president's brother. Well, I'm sure that's just an isolated coincidence. I mean, it's not like keeping the base in Groton, CT open was in any way a gift to a Democrat in name only who's been one of the president's biggest cheerleaders on pretty much every issue, right?
(While we're talking about the politics of this, how about how Bill Frist totally sold out the people of South Dakota by letting the hammer fall on Ellsworth AFB, despite promising to use his power to save it if voters rejected Senate Dem Tom Daschle in favor of Republican John Thune.)
Anyway, if you want to read something about the BRAC recommendations that goes into a lot more detail about the fate of Oceana, there's this Virginian Pilot article.
Posted by matt at August 25, 2005 11:38 AM
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Comments
Man, I'd heard about Ft. Monroe, but I didn't know Oceana was back on the chopping block this go-round. That Pilot article makes it sound pretty dire. What did John Warner do to piss off the administration? I mean, the guy authored the BRAC law and he's chair of the Senate Armed Service committee. I always thought VA would escape any major BRAC damage until J-Dubs was out of office. Is he really gonna take it like a little bitch from George and Jeb?
I love the statement attributed to James T. Hill, a retired *Army* general from *Texas*. One day a jet will crash into Lynnhaven Mall? Come ON. Lamest fear mongering ever. I don't know why they even try anymore. They should have just said Florida has more sunshine or better orange juice or something.
Anyway, yes, I'm the one reader who actually cares about this shit. Somebody's gotta rep the big VA.
Posted by: RZA at August 25, 2005 03:06 PM
RZA! Yeah, dogg. VeeBee crew represent.
I share your surprise that this all went down on Warner's watch. At least he's threatening to bring it to the courts (which is especially funny since the BRAC act was his law).
Well, you read the Pilot article, so you know that Oceana's not getting the axe yet, since they're giving the city the ultimatum about development around the base and restrictions on flight paths. But that's pretty clearly just a pretense.
Oceana's been hurtling towards obsolesence for a long time now, and it would probably be throwing good money after none to try to get it back up to snuff at this point. I just wish everyone would be a little more forthright about it. It's disrespectful to the folks who live/work there to string them along like this, and it's disrepectful to the country as a whole to be so underhanded about the real motivations for all of this.
Jerks.
Posted by: matt at August 25, 2005 04:05 PM
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