F-22: "Shovel Ready" or Just Shoveling Bull****
As Matt Cooper pointed out earlier this week at TPMDC, Lockheed Martin and its allies pushing the Obama administration to buy more F-22 aircraft in part because it is allegedly a "shovel-ready" project that can create (or at least preserve) jobs now. The company's own documents, and an interview with a key union official at its Georgia facility -- a main production site for the aircraft -- tell a different story.
According to Lockheed Martin's most recent annual report, as of December 2007 the company had a backlog of 81 F-22s. That means that whether or not the Pentagon spends another dimeon the system, there is likely to be production for at least another two and one-half years. So much for "shovel ready"! In truth, nothing will change in the short-term if Congress or the White House refuse to pony up billions more for the F-22 now. Production will still continue through December of 2011, according to Jeff Goen, an official with the International Association of Machinists who is based at the F-22 plant in Cobb County, Georgia.
So, Lockheed Martin and its partners in the project are essentially manipulating immediate economic fears to get money that won't make it's way into the economy until late 2011. Somehow the company's slick adds and letters to Congress fail to make that clear. Do the dozens of Senators and one hundred-plus House members who have signed onto "save the F-22" letters to President Obama know this? Do they care?
I do not know about the GOP, but the Democratic office-squatters really don't care.
If you are one-man or one-woman political party or committee Baron, you cannot go wrong throwing money at the big defense lobbies. They are bi-partisan and not anti-labor. They are all for any sort of minority set-aside, real or fake charity, and professional patronage or legalized nepotism that any particular committee member wants to extract from them.
Democrats have no defense plans, authorities, or priorities at all. They have not connected what money is spent on with what it is not available for: body armor, mine-resistant vehicles, and so on.
So, how does anything there is no lobby for get funded? How can one have progressive military preparedness that is driven exclusively by retrograde lobbies?
As far as I can tell, the "black budget" is for stuff the military may need but Congress does not want to publicly vote on and the rest of the defense budget is for whatever Congress has not given a serious thought to for going on a half century now.
So, even criminal convictions, such as in the Boeing Tanker Deal, have no significant impact on the budget categories, entire programs, or funding titles.
Bills are "marked up": They are not deliberated and nothing is decided. Congress is ritual, no responsibility at all.
If people are sick of us by November of next year, we -- I am a Democratic Party official -- will get wiped out like we were in 1994. The GOP is more irresponsible than we are. But, they have figured out that if you oppose the stimulus, say, collectively you can protect your shipyard or your government-owned contractor-operated money-sink individually better than Democratic suckers and whiners who support everything, none of it well.
February 20, 2009 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, Lockheed's "shovel ready" programs are just another example of "shoveling shit" by a defense contractor.
Heh, do they care? I doubt it. I'm an old, old man and I can say, sadly, that I've never been so cynical about our government, nor in our news media to perform.
February 20, 2009 3:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sadly, a large percentage of the US doesn't really want to know, but is likely ok with, say, 'selling' Israel with fighter jets and cluster bombs (paid for with US aid money), as long as it provides jobs for Americans.
February 20, 2009 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you go back to the press released by Lockheed, you will find they do not claim thousands won't loose their jobs on March 2nd. The money requested is to start advanced orders of materials and parts to keep the plant and suppliers operating past the 183 now on order.
If the suppliers are allowed to stop production, restarting the production would be hidiously expensive and difficult to do.
How can anyone watch what Russia and China are doing and not think we have to be prepared for a slugfest with them.
February 21, 2009 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Joe asks:
Where would this slugfest with Russia or China take place?
February 21, 2009 3:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't know where exactly but there sure wouldn't be much left afterwords.
February 21, 2009 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would say on a basketball court, but we might get beat there. So, perhaps on a hockey court, but that's just another free form street fight, so who knows the result of that. How about, on a football field?
No? Maybe we can beat them at chess now?
February 22, 2009 12:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is a way in which production could be manipulated to increase economic activity now: most fighter aircraft production lines operate incredibly inefficiently, with very little work done in parallel. So if you wanted those planes from late 2011 built by the middle of 2010, you could put on more shifts and buy some more production tools and do that in a fairly straighforward fashion.
Then, of course, in mid-2010 you'd have to fire all those extra workers unless you wanted to keep building a plane no one really needs more of in ever-increasing quantities.
February 23, 2009 9:40 AM | Reply | Permalink