Watchdog Workshop: Tracing the state and local subsidies behind your hometown military contractors

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMkde-upjMsHdU0FUgaodr8Ym67DlG9nu0s

Decisions about the defense industry are not just made at the national level (i.e., what happens in Congress, the White House and the Pentagon) but also at the local level. State and local governments hand out taxpayer money in subsidies (in official jargon, usually called “economic development incentives”) to military contractors that can increase contractors’ profits to the detriment of taxpayers and the loss of other opportunities for local investment in jobs and economic development.

In this workshop, you will hear real-world experiences about how to dig into subsidies your local or state governments are handing out to military contractors and learn what kind of information can be gleaned from those contracts.

Presenters

Pat Garafolo is the director of state and local policy at the American Economic Liberties Project and Fight Corporate Monopolies. He is the author of “The Billionaire Boondoggle: How Our Politicians Let Corporations and Bigwigs Steal Our Money and Jobs,” and writes the Boondoggle newsletter on Substack. He was previously an economic policy editor and reporter at several publications.

Taylor Barnes is Inkstick Media’s field reporter for the military-industrial complex and an Equity Rises grantee with the Ploughshares Fund. Her work has been published in local and national media outlets, such as Southerly Magazine, Facing South, Responsible Statecraft and The Intercept. She has received awards and grants from the Sidney Hillman Foundation, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Leonard C. Goodman Institute for Investigative Reporting, the Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace and the Associated Press. She has been a guest speaker at the Forum on the Arms Trade, World Beyond War, Code Pink, the Valley Labor Report, and the Things that Go Boom! podcast. She is based in Atlanta.