By John Mitchel
RE: “ Springfield base gets missions”, Dayton Daily News, May 8, 2010
Propaganda artists Jack Torry and John Nolan couldn’t have written a more one-sided piece on the recent Pentagon announcement that the MQ-1 Predator aircraft is on its way to the Springfield Air National Guard. This article is nothing more than stroking whiny politicians from both parties looking for top cover as the November election approaches.
First, Torry and Nolan either didn’t get their facts straight or were lied to by Sherrod Brown, Ted Strickland, John Boehner and Steve Austria. They wrote that moving the MQ-1 (Predator) mission to Springfield “will shift the base’s mission to unmanned aircraft and retain 866 jobs.” At the Miami Valley Military Affairs Association luncheon in Springfield on May 3, 2010 (one day before the primary), Col. Craig Wallace, Vice-Commander for the 178th Fighter Wing, stated there were never more than 360 jobs at the Springfield location. You may agree it’s largely disingenuous that the article claims to “retain” over 500 jobs that never existed in the first place. That’s nothing new for career politicians like Brown, Strickland, Boehner, and Austria , but it’s very disappointing coming from journalists who should be reporting the facts accurately.
Actually there’s good reason to base Predators returning from Afghanistan and Iraq in Springfield , but when career politicians from both parties knock themselves out to take credit for those jobs, we should ask the question, “What’s driving the train here, support for the warfighter or the November election?” You don’t have to go far to answer that question. Not once in Torry and Nolan’s front page article, nor in another piece on page A6 was there any mention of how the Predators coming to Springfield helps the warfighter or saves scarce taxpayer dollars. Instead career politicians from both parties persist with their “it’s-all-about-jobs” mantra while the troops and taxpayers remain an afterthought in both theory and practice.
It’s important that we review history within the context of the announcement. Earlier BRACs that took jobs away from Wright Patt were forgotten long ago. The 906th F-16 Tactical Fighter Group and 4950th Test Wing were both national treasures in providing warfighting capability, and those departures lost more jobs than the 178th in Springfield could ever hope to create, but it did help Springfield’s favorite son Dave Hobson get re-elected at least six times. And what about NAFTA, pushed by Republicans and signed into law by Bill Clinton that sent hundreds of thousands of Ohio jobs offshore? Republicans Portman, Kasich and Austria , and Democrats Strickland and Brown all seem to lose their memory when it comes to accountability for those one-sided trade deals except when it comes to blaming the other side.
It’s hard to tell who screams loudest when the Obama administration bails out banks, financial institutions and automobile manufacturers, but of course it’s a different story when Obama borrows and sends the proceeds to career politicians and their special interests who have caused the mess in the first place and now desperately need talking points as the 2010 election approaches. It’s tragic that the Dayton Daily News continues to sacrifice its journalistic integrity by enabling the same bad-actor politicians to systematically dismantle freedom and economic opportunity for future generations of Americans.