Pay a visit to your local job destroyers: Pacific Northwest Defense Coalition

The war profiteers are here. They are probably in your town and they are certainly in mine, in Portland, Oregon, land of tall trees, pure mountain water, the wide blue Pacific, volcanic towering peaks--and bloodsoaked bank accounts.

One brazenly war profiteering group is located at 2828 SW Corbett Ave and calls itself Pacific Northwest Defense Coalition. PNDC is a membership association of Pentagon contractors devoted to making profits from whatever they can make or provide that the Pentagon wants. Your contracting company can join for as little as $500 if you have 10 or fewer employees, with membership fees rising as a function of the numbers you employ.

Naturally, the Pentagon contract system is perfect for such a group. The profits for the elite owners of these corporations are astronomically high and the equipment is generally quite expensive, which totals out as a capital-intensive sector of the economy. A labor-intensive sector creates the most jobs per $billion spent (and provides actual goods and services that we need), so all other sectors are job creators and the "defense" industries are job destroyers. Indeed, Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier, researchers from the Political Economy Research Institute note in a May 2012 analysis in The Nation that "spending on clean energy, healthcare and education creates so many more jobs overall—as much as 50 to 140 percent more" (p. 17).

Say it: Pentagon spending destroys jobs. DoD contracts are job losers. The defense industry cuts our labor force. Yes, the $700+billion we the workers fork over to the military every year means that unemployment rates are higher because that money spent anywhere else in the economy would create more jobs.

So if you get some time this coming Wednesday, September 11, 2013, please bike or walk or bus or even drive to visit this PNDC office to inform them that many of us wish to unwelcome them in our town until they stop seeking blood money, until they decide that bullets and bombs are not the work of good citizens. I believe the peace bikers will be there at about 1:45 or 2 p.m. or so and they would love to have you with them. If they come out and tell you to "get a job" you know what to do.