It's kind of typical of rich airheads to forget what it takes to keep people and structures going. They've never had to think about it. I got good and mad at my place yesterday about the news that the food private contractors are serving the troops in Iraq and 'stan is old -- per the for-use-by labels. So the airheads and their private contractors/political supporters are making out bigtime and the troops are given the diarrhea producing leftovers.

Why questions aren't asked about this beats me. Someone said? wrote?* this morning that the problem with the Democrats is that they've been incumbents for 8 out of the past 14 years. They think they're still are incumbents. In fact, when you think about it, that's just how they're behaving -- as though they're part of this inexcusable administration and bound to defend it...

*It was Kevin Phillips, whose latest speech I'm slowly transcribing.

There's us and there's the gawddamn politicians. Once they get to that gawddamn Washington they stop listening to us. We need to wrench the microphones out of their gawddamn fists and send 'em back to... well, Fairfax VA I guess -- their real home.

ledeen and her ilk have fancy new cars and vacation homes. and that's what matters, right? heaven forfend that our troops would be fed and medically cared for, they are just fodder after all.

June 30, 2006

War bill getting paid while lights go out at Army posts

By Liz Austin
Associated Press

FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas — While billions of military dollars are being spent on the war in Iraq, some Army posts back home can’t afford to pay the electricity bill or cut the grass.

The Army’s Installation Management Agency is $530 million short of what it needs through Oct. 1 to fund the garrisons at the 117 installations it oversees in the United States, Europe and Asia, agency spokesman Stephen Oertwig said.
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Garrisons are basically the city halls of Army installations, providing services such as garbage removal, shuttle buses, mail delivery and firefighting.

The crunch is forcing garrisons to drastically curtail services except those essential to the war on terrorism and the health and safety of soldiers and their families.

Fort Knox in Kentucky closed one of its eight dining halls for a month and laid off 133 contract workers. Fort Bragg in North Carolina can’t afford to buy pens, paper or other office supplies until the new fiscal year starts in October.

And Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio hasn’t been able to pay its $1.4-million monthly utility bill since March, prompting the energy company’s automated computer system to mail out 1,300 disconnection notices for many of the post’s administrative buildings.

CPS Energy spokesman Bob McCullough insists the company understands the problem and won’t turn off the lights any time soon.

But Col. Wendy Martinson, Fort Sam’s garrison commander, still lies awake at night worrying about what services she can afford to lose and what services she can’t — but will have to cut anyway.

“Every time something goes away it impacts a person ... a soldier or their family or one of our civilians,” said Martinson, whose post has 27,300 military and civilian workers. “I’m charged with taking care of them, not taking things away from them.”

more AP