Should the U.S. government be building more nuclear weapons? Residents of Kansas City, Missouri don’t appear to think so, for they are engaged in a bitter fight against the construction of a new nuclear weapons plant in their community.I grew up in Kansas City. I lived there from age 4 until I was 19. For the last 5 years or so of this period, I lived less than one mile from the sprawling Bendix Plant. I was only vaguely aware of what they manufactured at Bendix (now Honeywell). I knew it had something to do with nuclear weapons, but I wasn't sure exactly what. Few of my compatriots knew what they did within the factory's walls either.
The massive plant, 1.5 million square feet in size, is designed to replace an earlier version, also located in the city and run by the same contractor: Honeywell. The cost of building the new plant — which, like its predecessor, will provide 85 percent of the components of America’s nuclear weapons — is estimated to run $673 million.
~ from The Latest Nuclear Weapons Plant by Lawrence S. Wittner ~
This is the building Honeywell and the Kansas City City Council wants to replace.
In a world trying to wean itself from nuclear weapons, you have to wonder WHY a new manufacturing plant is needed. What's the point in manufacturing parts for nuclear bombs that your country has pledged not to build?
It should be obvious why the Kansas City government is behind this measure. It holds the promise of more jobs and, with good paying jobs few and far between, who cares if those jobs may result in the deaths of thousands or millions of faceless foreigners and/or serve as the impetus towards the destruction of a habitable planet?
In fact, the carrot of the potential for more jobs has whetted the council's appetite so much that they are willing to give away the store to land them!
In addition, as the journal Mother Jones has revealed, “the Kansas City Council, enticed by direct payments and a promise of ‘quality jobs,’ . . . agreed to exempt CPZ from property taxes on the plant and surrounding land for twenty-five years.” The Council also agreed to issue $815 million in bond subsidies from urban blight funds to build the plant and its infrastructure.So, the city will shell out close to one billion dollars to get the plant up and running. It will forgo 25 years of property tax payments that could be used to fund vital city services. And the kicker is that in 20 years the company will be allowed to purchase the facility for $10 (no misprint -- Ten Dollars). All this to land, at most, 100 additional jobs.
You want to know how bad things are in this country? This story tells it all.
Getting rid of nuclear weapons won't stop rouge states from trying to make them (North Korea) and MAD makes nuclear states very reluctant to ever use them, and using one against a non-nuclear state would cause mass outrage and publicity that no country wants. But I don't know why we would ever need 10,000 warheads, or even 100 for that matter. Making more seems pointless and stupid.
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