

He was chairman of the art departments of the Cooper Union and Indiana State University, and vice president and provost of the Rhode Island School of Design. He taught at the New School for Social Research, the Pratt Institute, the Cooper Union, New York University, Queens College, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

#BATTLE OF THE BULGE MASSTRANSIT WINDOWS#
His many commissions for murals and stained-glass windows were produced for a wide variety of clients. His furniture designs were featured in books published by Furniture Forum as well as in House & Garden and House Beautiful magazines. He exhibited frequently and founded the Stewart-Marean Gallery and the Stewart Studio-the latter for the design and execution of his commissioned mosaic furnishings and murals. Stewart moved to New York City in 1949 and had his first solo exhibition in 1950. He served as an infantryman during World War II and saw combat in the Battle of the Bulge. After the war he earned a bachelor of fine arts degree at Yale University (where he studied with Josef Albers and Willem de Kooning), studied architecture at Columbia University, and earned a master’s degree and doctorate from New York University. By age nine, he was taking classes at the High Museum School of Art, and by the time he was in his teens he was apprenticed to the sculptor and painter Steffen Thomas. But with the White House battling on multiple fronts-health care, global warming, the economy-the big question is how hard Obama will fight to bring real change to the Pentagon.Atlanta-born Jack Stewart (1926–2005) began private art lessons when he was seven. What’s more, a 2007 study based on Bureau of Economic Analysis data finds that other forms of public spending-health care, education, and mass transit-all create more jobs than military spending (below).įixing the DOD will take more than a few weapons cuts. Lockheed says that the F-22 is responsible for 95,000 jobs and $12 billion in economic activity, but the real jobs figure is likely around half what Lockheed claims. The industry has even stopped defending weapons programs on their merits, instead claiming that cuts would cripple the economy.

(See “ Out of Service.”) Defense firms also ensure that as many congressional districts as possible are addicted to a steady diet of pork Lockheed Martin claims its F-22 fighter jet-a dud targeted by Gates-has plants or vendors in 44 states. None of this should come as a surprise when oversight of defense contractors has been perfunctory-or even turned over to other contractors. Missed deadlines are also SOP: 72 percent of programs are delivered late. If that trend continues, the average overrun will reach 46 percent by 2018. On average, weapons systems cost 25 percent more than initial estimates, and overruns have risen at an average of nearly 2 percent a year. Our overruns on these weapons to date exceed the entire GDPs of Norway ($256 billion) and Israel ($201 billion).Īnd if history is any guide, that $296 billion will grow. China, the world’s second-biggest single defense spender after the United States and supposedly such an existential threat that it justifies our exorbitant weapons programs, spends less than a third of what the Pentagon wastes. That $296 billion, for perspective, is more than the annual military budget of any other nation on the face of the Earth. A big chunk of that-$296 billion, to be exact-is cost overruns that have already accumulated. So where to start? In March, the Government Accountability Office calculated that existing major weapons commitments will ultimately cost $1.6 trillion. Cynics might point out that Washington pols have been making pledges like that since the Pentagon was created yet with the economy in crisis and the deficit out of sight, Pentagon profligacy seems like the perfect budget-cutting target. Add in things like the supplemental spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, and the total is more like $780 billion.) Earlier this year, Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates made headlines when they announced a major crackdown on DOD spending, including a promise to slash several troubled weapons programs. (And that’s only the official defense budget. Somewhere in the middle regions of Barack Obama’s Herculean to-do list is a task that’s defeated many of his predecessors: taming the runaway $534 billion Pentagon budget.
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