The Myth of Military Money

The Myth of Military Money
by Julian Aguon
May 29, 2006
The Marianas Variety http://www.mvariety.com

PEOPLE of Guam: The transfer of thousands of U.S. Marines and their dependents to our island should give our moral outrage a new lease of life. And although it will have devastating consequences on all levels—social, moral, cultural, political and ecological—it seems as if only money matters. So, let’s start there.

Fact: Of the $10.3billion settled upon by the U.S. and Japan, we have yet to find exactly how much of this is going to be used to improve and upgrade local infrastructure, or in what ways. Will money go directly toward capital improvement projects or will they be spent unwisely on more privatization efforts like those we still see being pushed from the top-down at both the Guam Waterworks Authority and the Port Authority of Guam?

Fact: Military communities are self-contained communities. Their dollars stay mostly on base. Dollars that make it out will go where they always go —to the sex industry (porn shops, massage parlors, etc.) As case studies from various places indicate, one example being Hawai’i, U.S. military buildup does not benefit common people. The big bucks go to big businesses which are privileged over locally owned small businesses. Big, mainland-controlled companies make their money and leave. They receive corporate welfare. For example, they will be given qualifying certificates allowing them 20 years of tax evasion in exchange for participating in Guam’s economic development. Though these come with clauses requiring the training of locals to take over management of these businesses, this doesn’t happen. These companies are not subject to local accountability and do not pay their share of taxes. The locals they hire will not earn a living wage. Instead, we’ll get menial jobs at which we will earn too little to pay taxes and contribute to the general treasury.

Outside contractors brought here for construction projects resulting from the buildup will most likely work solely on base, remain unaccountable to us, and contribute nothing to our treasury. If we paid better attention, we would be making noise about the fact that U.S. Defense officials have already awarded two multi-million dollar contracts to two U.S. mainland-based companies for construction projects here on Guam. TEC Inc. Joint Venture, a company based out of Charlottesville, Virginia , has received a $40 million military contract to do work here, on Saipan and Hawai’i. Epsilon Systems Solutions Inc., a company based out of San Diego, California, was awarded $5.7 million to repair and upgrade naval berthing barges here and elsewhere. We are already seeing how this game works. So, where are our local players? Could local companies have done some of this work? These contracts are supposedly competitive, so where was the request for proposal? I blinked and must have missed it.

In the end, we must ask: Who benefits from this transfer, really? Perhaps the best way to find this answer is to look to the group pushing so hard for it —elite members of our business community, in particular, the local Chamber of Commerce. This group has been pushing the mass privatization of Guam as well. It is they, not the common people, who stand to benefit from this buildup. We must remember that the real engine of our economy is not the Chamber, but the relatively disempowered, locally-owned small business sector, the very sector that will be threatened by this transfer. What we are witnessing is a plan to keep the wealthy rich and the rest of us without. And we should not be surprised. People with almost only profit on the brain often have interests that endanger the true welfare of the wider community.

Our leaders are standing almost blindly behind this transfer, moving fast and against the wind of what small hope has survived in our hearts for some sort of decolonized future. It is more urgent than ever for those of us who know how to act and for those of us who are just plain tired to shake the sleep off.

Too much is at stake. And besides, the numbers just aren’t adding up.