WASHINGTON — During a contentious hearing Wednesday over the Air Force tanker deal awarded to Airbus parent EADS and Northrop Grumman, Rep. Norm Dicks said the Pentagon changed contract specifications to favor that team’s bid over Boeing’s so they wouldn’t drop out of the contest.
Click here for the story

(A bit graphic…don’t read if Hitchcock-type murder and acid bath cover-up stuff is too scary for you, or if profanity offends you too much )

This is a sad, wierd story about events which happened Saturday, fueled by jealousy and psychological issues near Fort Lewis. A woman soldier killed two fellow soldiers, a man and wife, and tried to destroy their bodies in the bathtub with acid afterwards. Then, she kidnapped their baby, (which she fortunatley did not harm).

It’s an incredibly tragic story. They are so young, barely more than kids really. They all have myspace profiles, which give some insight into their relationships.

Here is an analysis

And here is the article with the links to their Myspace sites.

Their story provides a cautionary local tale about jealousy and mental illness.

Lesson 1: if anyone finds themself becomming uncontrollably angry (or sad, or jealous)…they should go to their closest emergency room and ask for help.

Lesson 2: if you ever discover that a friend, or roommate, or colleague displays the symptoms of psychopathy discussed in the first link above, get away from them! Psychopaths come in all shapes and sizes, and can be remarkably likable and charming before they shoot you and try to disolve your body in acid.

This is good news. I’m glad that congress will examine this. This is a much better subject for congress than baseball players use of steroids.

If congress decides the tanker choice is the right thing for our counrty, then okay. I could live with that. But I am hopeful that our local aerospace workers may still win all or part of this work.
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Press Releases
For Immediate Release
03/03/2008
Pelosi: Congress Must Examine Air Force Aerial Tanker Contract to Northrop Grumman and Airbus

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued the following statement today on the Air Force’s decision to award a multi-billion dollar aerial tanker contract to Northop Grumman and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, the parent company of Airbus:

“The Air Force’s decision to award the contract for a much-needed modernization of the nation’s aerial tanker fleet to Northrop Grumman and Airbus raises serious questions that Congress must examine thoroughly:

* What are the national security implications of using an aircraft supplied by a foreign firm for this essential mission?
* Were the risks associated with choosing a conceptual design over a proven capability properly assessed?
* Was sufficient consideration given to the impact of the contract award on jobs in America and on our technological base?

“Given the ramifications of this decision for the United States, the Air Force must explain to Congress how it meets the long-term needs of our military and the American people.”

Link here

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.

Continue reading →

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.