Word: laird
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Former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird estimates that at least 100,000?and perhaps as many as 250,000?military families could be eligible for welfare. Says Colonel Eliot: "When 16% of the Air Force can qualify for food stamps, patriotism doesn't make it as a motivator." Military base commissaries are taking in over $10 million annually in food stamps. Complains a paratroop sergeant in Alaska: "If the Government can give me $71 a month in food stamps, why can't it give it to me in salary...
...held a seminar that brought together five of the nation's experts on the subject: Morris Janowitz, 60, Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago and one of the nation's few academics to study the military as a distinct group within society; Melvin Laird, 57, who as Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1973 led the fight for the all-volunteer force, and is now the Washington-based senior counsellor on national and international affairs for the Reader's Digest; Senator Sam Nunn, 41, the Georgia Democrat who is chairman of the Committee...
...Laird: While it is true that in the first three months of 1980 the Pentagon came very close to its particular recruiting goals, the quality of people that it took is not the quality that is needed in the 1980s...
...Laird: The major manpower problem that we face is that those with the highest aptitude who are in their second, third and fourth terms of service are not staying in the military. And some of the poor performers are staying...
Even so, some of Ford's closest advisers doubt that he can win via the primaries at this late date. House Minority Leader John Rhodes fears that his old friend would only fracture the party by campaigning. Melvin Laird, former Defense Secretary and longtime Ford confidant, also believes that Ford should not plunge into the remaining primaries but gamble instead that neither Reagan nor anyone else will win on the first ballot. Says Laird: "I think his best chance, the way I add it up right now, is that the convention has to turn...