Military Facts Abput New Mexico •• The Federal government spends $3,213 per person in New Mexico, placing New Mexico third in the U.S. for per capital federal expenditure. • The per capita income for New Mexico is $6,582, placing New Mexico 42nd on the national per capita income ladder. • • The Department of Energy is the single largest federal spender in New Mexico, and the Department of Defenst is third. ·•over 58 percent of.the research . grants received at the University of New Department of E~ergy The Department of Energy (DOE) is the biggest federal spender in New Mexico, pumping $893,838,000 into the economy in 1979. New Mexico ranks fourth in the U.S. for DOE spending, but not because of the state's abundant energy resources. Before understanding the specific role of the DOE in New Mexico, some background on DOE is useful ... Most Americans do not realize that the DOE carries the Key to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Many assume that the nuclear weapons complex is handled entirely within the massive network of the Pentagon. But the same federal agency which people look to for energy supply and conservation is also fully Mexico are from the three armed services, with 57 percent of these defense ·grants coming from the Air Force. • New Mexico is the site of Los Alamos Scientific Labs and Sandia Labs, two of three government-owned laboratories that design nuclear weapons. • The New Mexico economy earns at least $1 billion annually for defen'se-related research and development. • New Mexico State University ranks 10th in the U.S. of all universities ~ngaged in research, development, ~esting, and evaluation with the Department of Defense, which puts it in the top 3 percent of such institutions. responsible for the building of nuclear bombs. In 1946, Congress felt that nuclear weapons should be under civilian, not military, control. This does not, • however, limit DOE to nuclear weapons: DOE is involved in all types of war-making equipment, from jet fighter pilot masks to rifle barrels for tanks .... In addition to the 28 percent of DOE's budget allocated for atomic energy defense activities, many DOE energy programs have other defense applications. It is impossible to quantify this extra percentage, because these activities are interspersed throughout DOE. But areas of potential defense applications include activities in energy, i.e., silicon fuel cells and batteries; certain centralized solar applications; and, development of hydrogen as a solid fuel. In fact, line at ca. $13,000 annual income. At the same time, less than one percent of the adult population could be called ''wealthy'' (as defined by Fortune magazine and adjusted for inflation at $75,000 annual income). When it comes to wealth holdings (con-, sumer durables plus stocks, bonds, savings accounts, insurance policies-in short, economic power) the discrepancies become even more pronounced. That top one percent of 1 • the population controls one third of wealth holdings, while the bottom two-thirds of the population control only eight percent. These sobering statistics make for heavy duty visual impact on the poster. The poster would have to be 100 feet long, the authors add, to place all of the nation's millionaires in at the proper scale! The Guideboo~ rightly cautions that it is something of an illusion to lump most July 1981 RAIN Page 19 • 28 percent of the entire Department of Energy budget is allocated to nuclear defense programs_. • Defense-related reservations in New Mexico comprise almost 4 percent of the New Mexico land base. • One of the nation's largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons is _maintained under the Manzano Mountains near Albuquerque. -From New Mexico, The1Military, and The Bomb the DOE program office for the MX missile is in its solar programs division, because the missile will be solar-powered on its tracks. Within DOE's Defense Programs is the Division of Military Applications (DMA), the liaison between DOE and DOD on all nuclear ·weapons matters. This includes weapons research and development, testing, production, storage, and readiness assurance, as well as transporation of strategic nuclear materials and weapons. It is through DMA . that New Mexico enters the nuclear weapons scene. From New Mexico, The Militdry, and The Bomb Americans into some amorphous middle class. It obscures vast differences in lifestyles, community, working congitions and political outlook. The distribution of economic power in the U.S. simply does not meastue up to our democratic political ideas: economic democracy is a remote goal. With Reaganomics chewing at our heels, the prospects aren't good! But there are more transparent economic shifts afoot-ones that even high quality indicators like Social Stratification can't seem to do justice, Selfreliance, bartering, household economies, resource conservation, cooperatives-these trends are alive and well, and they may yet provide the way out of all those mind-numbing debates over them that's got and them that don't. Reagan will certainly provide us with some unwitting inspiration. -Steven Ames
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