While interning with the Physicians for Social Responsibility’s Nuclear Weapons Abolition Program, I wrote a detailed report on the influence of the ICBM Lobby in Congress and the Pentagon, which is manifested quite abhorrently in both of these institutions’ handling of the “Sentinel” ICBM program.
You can find the report here, on PSR’s website.
This was the first project I undertook that called for a broader examination of political campaign contributions, involving days of sifting through OpenSecrets’ data and digging through various pieces of news and reports regarding the Sentinel missile. Thus, I’m quite proud of it.
Additionally, the research process necessitated investigating another driving factor in legislative decisions—one that arguably holds greater weight than campaign contributions, and one that I admittedly had not given much consideration before: job creation.
Legislators want to return to their constituents during their re-election campaigns and tell them, “Hey, remember those jobs that some of y’all got in the last two/six years? Yeah, you’re welcome.”
Sadly, as the report demonstrates, the destructive industries and systems that these new jobs may perpetuate is not as meaningful of a consideration to these legislators.
I also produced the above recording of the report.
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