Category: Uncategorized

McCain Still Considering Tanker Deal

By MATTHEW DALY – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. John McCain said Monday that he hasn’t made up his mind on a $35 billion Air Force contract awarded to the parent company of French plane maker Airbus.

Read the story here!

In this letter, John McCain lobbies to remove the questionable European subsidies from consideration (they were a major strike against fairness of the Airbus offer), and he dismisses the importance of ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) rules, because these issues could interfere with Airbus bidding in the 100 billion dollar tanker contract. He also dismisses the Barry Amendment, which is in place to prevent the Department of Defense from procuring certain materials, like titanium, from foreign sources when domestic sources are available.

Click here to see the letter

Here’s more of the world view. This was just the lift our European competition needed…provided at US taxpayer expense.

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EADS you win

Published: March 3 2008 02:00 | Last updated: March 3 2008 02:00

The good old US of A can’t seem to win a trick at the moment. Its economy is cracking and the dollar is being trumped. Now its own air force has awarded a €35bn contract to build aerial refuelling tankers, not to Boeing, as widely expected, but to a team lead by EADS, the European aerospace and defence group. That EADS’s partner is LA-based Northrop Grumman seems to be no consolation to US politicians fuming over jobs.

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I know readers are probably getting tired of this topic…but I am still pretty hot about it. And as a senior councilman in the home of Boeing’s commercial headquarters, I’m going to follow this topic until this issue gets properly reviewed by congress.

Here is the article about Mike Sears, the guy that came from McDonald Douglas and embarrassed those of us working in Seattle by offering a job to an Air Force procurement agent. The question is, do we really want to harm the US aviation business, to the tune of tens of billions in lost contracts, tens of thousands of jobs, and immeasurable losses of competitive position and technology because of this guy?

Do we want to hurt our nation’s biggest exporter more, and significantly harm the one industry we have maintained dominance since the time of the Wright Brothers? We are not talking about making bullets or missiles here….there is no product as complicated as an airliner. Why would our congress want to sacrifice our position in this business because of a crime committed by a transplant from a defunct company 7 years ago?

Many of the reports on the internet and in the news make it sound as if John McCain continued meddling in the documents for this project, in a way that would assist Airbus, right up to the end. If this is true, I want to know how he justifies it.

Frankly, I don’t understand why we buy guns and bullets overseas when we have perfectly good manufacturers in the USA that could use the business. Just because other countries buy weapons from us, that doesn’t mean we need to buy from them. We are a super-power because we are excellent at making weapons, and we have a powerful economy. Once we start shopping around for weapons systems from foreign governments, we start to look like a third-world government. But worse, our own government is now telling the world that Airbus makes a better product, just because John McCain and freinds managed to score a subsidized airplane from a socialist government.

I love France…to me Paris is the most beautiful city in the world, and the people have always been friendly to me. But we do not need to give them tens of billions of taxpayer money, while we are still trying to fund the war in Iraq and trying to avoid a recession.

It is frustrating and foolish.

Click here fir the Reuters story

Here are some key quotes:

“Defense analyst Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group said it marked the first time in U.S. military procurement — and possibly worldwide — that a government had chosen “a foreign plane over a directly competing domestic product.”
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“The U.S. government is bringing an action against Airbus in the World Trade Organization and subsidies should have been taken into account” in this competition, Rep. Norm Dicks, a Washington Democrat, told Reuters.

McCain urged Robert Gates, before he was confirmed as defense secretary, to remove the issue from the terms of the competition, saying it could eliminate one of the bidders from the start.

“McCain wrote a very strong letter to Gates,” Dicks said. “Clearly it was on the side of Airbus.”

Dicks said the Air Force would face tough questions in Congress. “Here we are in a recession and the U.S. government hands such a big contract to the Europeans,” he said.

Quoted from the BBC: “The deal will also safeguard thousands of British aviation jobs, the BBC’s Andy Moore says. Wings will be made at factories in Bristol and in North Wales.”

Read the BBC report here

Yes…I think this famed geneticist just invented the tree.

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Famed geneticist creating life form that turns CO2 to fuel
Thu Feb 28, 3:56 PM ET

MONTEREY, California (AFP) – A scientist who mapped his genome and the genetic diversity of the oceans said Thursday he is creating a life form that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel.

Geneticist Craig Venter disclosed his potentially world-changing “fourth-generation fuel” project at an elite Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, California.

“We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy,” Venter told an audience that included global warming fighter Al Gore and Google co-founder Larry Page.

Story here