Kingston sponsored a $2.4 million earmark in this year's defense bill for a ProLogic project to provide military aircraft at the Townsend range and to give Savannah Combat Readiness Training Center an electronic network so that Marines and Air National Guard can share information, even while airborne. With the latest earmark, Kingston has poured a total $5.5 million into the project since 2006.
ProLogic, like most private contractors that benefit from earmarks, has generated substantial donations to lawmakers, particularly appropriations committee members. A computerized study of federal election records by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics found that ProLogic's executives and employees have contributed $411,600 to congressional campaigns since 2005. Of that total, $20,500 went to Kingston's re-election campaigns and his political action committee.
I won't editorialize on the second part of the quotation above, but I did think it important to include it in order to show how the process works. Hopefully improvments like these and others that are already ongoing will keep aircraft coming here to train for the forseeable future.
Mac McCormick, KF4LMT
kf4lmt@comcast.net
