The Tweeter in Chief keeps getting his way.
Two companies with local ties recently caught the unwanted attention of the reality TV star (who also happens to be the most politically powerful person on Earth). General Motors has come out looking good. Strong. Durable. Dependable. The other company? Not so much, which is kind of funny considering this little shop makes high-powered weapons of mass destruction. Allegedly.
About a month ago is when The Donald first aimed his flipping thumbs at Lockheed Martin, saying the cost of the Fort Worth manufacturer’s F-35 program was “out of control.” He went on to say, we mean “tweet,” that he asked competitor Boeing to “price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!” Never mind that Boeing’s fighter does not have stealth capabilities and has been flying since the 2000s. Never mind that the F-35 Lightning II is the most advanced piece of weaponry ever conceived. (And never mind that it hasn’t seen a mission yet and is about $200 billion over-budget.) Donald was simply pulling one of his real estate moves, a tactic that wily adolescent boys have been practicing in different situations for generations: “If you don’t let me know now that you’ll go to the prom with me, I’m gonna ask your arch nemesis, Debbie Swansonsteemer.”
What did Lockheed do? CEO Marilyn Hewson flew to Trump Tower last week and promptly kissed Donald’s ring.
“We had the opportunity to talk to him about the F-35 program,” Hewson gushed afterward to the press corps that had gathered in the tony hotel lobby, probably smoking a cigarette, “and I certainly share his views that we need to get the best capability to our men and women in uniform, and we have to get it at the lowest possible price.”
Hewson also said that Lockheed would be adding about 1,800 workers in Fort Worth.
No one here is anti-jobs or pro-inflation. The problem is that – despite the fact that 3 million more people voted for the other person – we have a president who appears to have a phobia of complexity, a “leader” who has absolutely zero compunction reducing otherwise thorny issues to 140 characters or fewer. Almost as offensive, this guy lofts his barbs not in face-to-face meetings or even telephone calls but from the cozy embrace of his billion-dollar penthouse suite. As long as his prey keep acquiescing to his Twitterhetoric, Donald Trump is going to keep tweeting, and the more he keeps tweeting, the less inclined he’s going to be to stop and think.
Crazy, but stopping and thinking probably comes in pretty handy when you’ve got an entire nuclear arsenal at your disposal.
Good thing the good folks at General Motors have apparently seen an episode or two of The Apprentice. They’re not going to let Don the con’s smooth moves fool them. In response to Donald’s tweeting that he would impose a “big border tax” on Chevies coming to the United States from Mexico, GM CEO Mary Barra said Trump’s threats will not affect her company’s production plans. At all. As part of regular updating, and not having anything to do with some orange egomaniac’s mean tweets, GM also announced it will invest $1 billion in its factories, including in Arlington, where more than 4,000 employees work at an assembly plant. Arlington is also home to GM Financial, a unit with 3,400 employees. A big reason Texas has been a jobs leader is NAFTA, and while Trump and most of his supporters think the North American Free Trade Agreement merely means displacing U.S. jobs, it actually is a way for companies in the United States, Mexico, and Canada to share resources to keep prices low: for us and for them. Then again, complexity isn’t Donald’s forte.
fake news from the MSM —
Pentagon, Lockheed near deal on $9 billion F-35 contract . . .negotiations are poised to bring the price per F-35 below $100 million for the first time
no engine That’s a contract with Lockheed for ninety F-35 prototype airframes in Lot 10. You want an engine with that? The engine from Pratt is government-provided and bumps that “F-35 price” up another twenty million plus.
no gas This is the “flyaway cost,” not a price. The Pentagon doesn’t buy F-35 prototypes with a single fixed-price contract, but buys them with many contracts to cover excessive costs and profits for these sweetheart deals. A rule of thumb is that the “flyaway cost” even including the engine represents only about half of the total purchase price, called the unit acquisition cost. Flyaway cost does not include the helmet display system, support and training equipment, technical data, technical support manpower, initial spare parts or even the gas and lubricants to make an F-35 usable. It also does not include the upgrades and fixes that testing and other flying experience reveals to be needed.
no audit The Pentagon in Lot 9 has provided contracted funds under about twenty contracts to Lockheed and Pratt for hardware, software and initial support which average out to $200 million per aircraft delivered. Since F-35 prototype manufacturing has never been audited by the Defense Contract Audit Agency the Pentagon doesn’t have a clue as to where those dollars actually ended up, whether for hardware or support or whatever, nor where they will end up in Lot 10. The Pentagon hasn’t even been able to negotiate a mutually-agreed contract for manufacturing Lot 9 airframes, so the baloney is thick.
no sense Even Bogdan doesn’t buy this fake news. Bogdan Sep 15, 2014: “How much does it cost to buy an F-35? And I’ve got to tell you, you can measure that in so many different ways it’s not funny. We put out a SAR every year and in the SAR we’ve got a PUC and an APUC, which if you’re not an acquisition guy, that is just a crazy way of measuring things.”