In a great victory for freedom and democracy, the DOD has announced it will require all boot camp recruits to use their shoe allowance to buy only American shoes! And in a great victory for socialism, they’ll only be able to buy one company’s ugly government-subsidized shoes.
The deal is this: Recruits who enlist in the Navy, Army, and Air Force are given an athletic shoe allowance of about $80. Until recently, they could use it on whatever shoes worked best for them. But thanks to heavy congressional lobbying and knee-jerk patriotism, the DOD has okayed a new rule requiring the enlistees to buy American.
Sounds great—more money and more jobs for Murkans! How much? Roughly $180 million a year, by one estimate. Except there’s only one firm that currently comes anywhere close to making a shoe entirely in America: New Balance. (And even they concede that “Made in the USA” doesn’t mean what you think it means: “1 out of every 4 pairs of shoes we sold in the USA was made or assembled here. Where domestic value is at least 70%, we label our shoes “‘Made in the USA.'”)
In other words, the military just made a competitive bidding process into a no-bid, one-shoe-fits-all process. All to support “America.”
Funny thing is, the military didn’t want to do this, in part because “Narrowing the recruit’s choice to one or two manufacturers, as they select a shoe for rigorous initial entry training will, ‘limit the choices available and may result in more injuries,'” according to a DOD spokesman just two months ago. But politics interceded on New Balance’s behalf, again.
If you’ve been in the military for any amount of time, you know New Balance has long gnashed its teeth on the ample gubmint teat. In addition to the footwear allowance, military recruits (and officer candidates) get issued go-fasters, running suits, and other gear that more often than not comes from the Massachusetts-based sneaker company.
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Story: http://gawker.com/pentagon-to-force-military-recruits-to-buy-ugly-sneaker-1568717303