Letter from Chip Northrup
We Will Do What We Can
All of the proposed cuts in federal spending are for programs that directly benefit people: Social Security, Medicare, the VA, FDA, EPA, FEMA, NPR, PBS, NIH, IRS, NEA, National Park Service, etc. The Military Industrial Superiority Complex, aka the Department of Defense (DoD), gets a proposed budget increase of more than $150 Billion—by eliminating most other departments—to over $1 trillion a year (Pentagon waste is costing taxpayers billions. But DOGE’s cuts are way off base | Katerina Canyon | The Guardian). Instead of cancer research, We the People get one new bomber. Instead of Medicare for all, we get one new aircraft carrier.
Musk’s DOGE hackers could only find .00008 of the DoD budget to cut, all for “woke” programs. No efficiency cuts for wasteful spending, no elimination of cost overruns, no cuts of obsolete programs. Just more DOGE Thought Police censorship.
A year ago, the Marines awarded a contract for $225 million in robotic moving targets, basically dummies on a Segway. Catch is, they didn’t have a training simulator to teach riflemen how to hit a robotic target—and they discovered that Marines couldn’t hit the dummies very well. At $2.65 a bullet (you read that right) missing a dummy at the range can get expensive. So the Marines invited us to demonstrate our company’s virtual reality marksmanship training simulator—which teaches riflemen how to hit moving targets. Now the Marines have a simulator that can teach trainees how to hit a virtual dummy before they blast away at an expensive real dummy at $2.65 a pop. So here’s to the Marines.
Meanwhile, we will do what we can. Until the next protest, boycott and election.
Chip Northrup
Cooperstown
