Written by 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.
Randy, after you get home from work tonight, please let us know what the mood at Boeing was like today. I’d hate to see people just resign themselves to defeat, when there’s clearly a short window of opportunity to keep this issue in the media spotlight.
I know there is talk of an appeal to the defense department, how likely do you see that working? This will be a real test to see how much clout our congressional team has!