This will be a volatile issue in the upcoming campaign...it’s not just
Washington, but Kansas and Tx...states McCain needs.
McCain was right in going after the 6billion contract that was rife with corruption. But in the politicized news cycle that won’t matter. People are losing jobs and it will resonate.
I personally disagree with the EADS contract for 3 main reasons:
1) With the economy slowing we will have billions of useless stimulus spending (The Boeing contract would be useful military stimulus spending)
2) Large military contracts should be kept on US soil for national security reasons. We need the capacity to buil our larger defense projects right here. When you lose that ability...it’s is very expensive to get it back.
3) Outsourcing: Just how far can we push the free trade outsourcing of the American economy? Now that Defense projects are included, I see a creeping erosion of military, intelligence and high tech outsourcing to unprecedented levels.
60% is still being built in America and will probably employee as many people as Boeing would have. This is nothing but the Air Force getting more bang for their buck. Boeing seems to think they can continue to add 40% bribe money to their bids and not get called on it but this time it didn’t work. This also has to do with the Boeing “virtual fence” that they scammed the government on.
Agreed. Boeing sokd a major manufacturing facility in Wichita to a Canadian firm about 2 years ago -- a lot of folks here blame McCain for that and I don't think I'd be going too far out on a limb to say it was one of the reasons Huckabee took Kansas in the primaries.
Many Kansas congresscritters are out there calling for investigations on the Airbus deal... all of them republicans.
I wouldn't be suprised if Kansas went blue in the general.
It was a $23 billion lease. The lease was competititvely priced, but it was naturally rather expensive compared to buying the planes. The whole point of the lease was to get the planes faster and in service faster with lower upfront costs. Of course one of the things embedded in the cost of a lease is interest. One thing government cand do cheaper than anyone else is borrow money. People will accept T-Bills with lower interest rates than corporate bonds, because they are perceived as being almost zero risk. A lease imbeds the cost of borrowing money from the private sector into the lease payments.
Another part of the lease cost was that it included the cost of Boeing developing the tanker variant rather than amortizing across the whole production run. A big part of the problem is that tankers tend to be long lasting capital goods that have lower utilization rates than equivalent vintage commercial aircraft. Paying that much for 100 planes on a ten year lease doesn't make much financial sense for the federal government compared to an airline that can use similar equipment to generate income. After the lease, the federal government still doesn't own the planes. For an airline, that's not a problem, because they could lease newer planes with better capabilites, and they can also fully deduct the cost of the lease from their taxable income each year rather than having to amortize a fleet over a much longer period than they actually want to have a fleet in their service. The federal government doens't pay income taxes, so the deductbility of lease payments is of no benefit to them.
Yes there was corruption involving a Boeing employee and an Air Force officer who was offered a job at Boeing while she was working on the procurement contract for the lease of 767 tankers. Boeing also gave her daugter a job. What does get forgotten in all this is that if the offered lease or a renegotiated lease or purchase agreement had accepted, the USAF would already have about 100 new tankers that are much more capable than the KC-135 tankers they would have replaced, and they would be in use today in Iraq and Afghanistan not ten years from now.
The tankers are going to be built right here in Mobile, AlSome of the parts are going to come from overseas, just like some of the parts of boeing planes do..
All good reasons why the leftist media was accurate in pushing McCain as a candidate - they KNEW he was a loser and he’s proving it every day.
He’s a disgrace.
Everybody seems to forget that the contract went to partnership with Northrop-Grumman.
Spending money on Boeing and only Boeing does not strengthen America's defense industry as a whole.