‘Defense Industry Welfare Queens’

It is one of the Reagan Administration’s often-expressed concerns to get government off our backs. But who will get the “defense-industry welfare queens” off our backs if government won’t?

Taxes and our budget deficit could be greatly cut (thereby “getting the government off our backs”) if the government would only get heavily on the backs of the military/industrial cheats. But the way the government allows them to keep on getting away with it by the mild wrist-slapping guarantees that the Administration is not serious about getting off our backs.

Let the stockholders of the defense-industrial welfare queens suffer a serious profit loss because of the painful magnitude of government fines, and the stockholders and management will see to it that heads will roll and the safeguards against cheating will be built into the corporate structure. It won’t happen any other way!

What our responsible government leaders will not face is the deep-seated pervasiveness of corruption and cheating that is a part of all human nature. The greater the uncontrolled power, the greater the inclination to cheat.

Why do they want to crack down so harshly on social services to the powerless poor, and look the other way in the biggest deficit-spending area--the Billionaire Club of the military-industrial complex?

Of course the answer is very simple. One takes money from their pockets and stockholdings and those of their wealthy friends. The other puts money into their pockets and those of their wealthy friends at the gross expense of all, including the poor, whom they ignore and despise.

DONALD C. HAWTHORNE

Goleta