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."
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