A troubling trend seems to be emerging in the defense industry—outsourcing national security to foreign companies.
We recently learned that two defense companies are competing for a proposed American attack aircraft contract: Hawker Beechcraft of Wichita, Kansas, and a Brazilian company named Embraer. One particularly disturbing fact is that Embraer receives subsidies from the Brazilian government, which has publicly opposed the War on Terror and American efforts against Iran and Venezuela, but now seeks to profit from that same U.S. commitment to military strength. Another troubling item is an unconventional clause in the potential Embraer contract known as the “Golden Share” clause. Under that provision, the Brazilian government would be empowered to shut down the operation at any time during the production or maintenance of the aircraft. Alarmingly, the United States would have no means for recourse on the matter. That’s not very “golden” for American interests.
Additionally, awarding the contract to Hawker Beechcraft would sustain an estimated 1,400 domestic jobs, whereas Brazil’s Embraer would offer only 50 final assembly positions. Moreover, the Hawker Beechcraft AT-6 is based upon an aircraft already in wide use by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) and other American allies. Consequently, that familiarity and logistical infrastructure advantage would allow for substantial cost savings over the new aircraft’s life cycle. This is particularly important at a time when the Defense Department seeks cost control measures.
Americans just witnessed a similar episode between Boeing and foreign company EADS, and outsourcing defense to foreign companies is simply bad policy. America cannot afford to jeopardize domestic jobs or our national security.
CFIF Senior Fellow Troy Senik takes President Barack Obama to task in a column for The Daily Caller today, arguing that the commander-in-chief has the power to bring down gas prices, but won’t. Instead, Obama would rather enrich a semi-socialist state like Brazil while America’s economy sputters.
In fact, gas prices are up 67 percent since President Obama took office a little more than two years ago. Lest you think this analysis one-sided, during the same period in President Bush’s tenure gas prices increased by only seven percent.
Yet that doesn’t seem to bother President Obama much. Earlier this month, he said that we can’t drill our way out of our energy problems. That is like suggesting you can’t medicate yourself out of an illness.
From Charles Krauthammer on the Right to Peggy Noonan in the middle, denunciation of President Barack Obama’s handling of the war in Libya is expected. But tough talk from a reliable liberal like Eugene Robinson? Now, that’s progressive.
Robinson has done his best to keep up with Obama’s ever-shifting views on military involvement in Libya. No more. Today, Robinson apparently can’t interpret the blizzard of mealy-mouthed talking points flying out the White House press office. So, he’s asking for a little clarity:
So what the hell are we doing? I realize that President Obama and his advisers have answered this question many times, but I feel it’s necessary to keep asking until the answers begin to make sense.
What’s that you say, Mr. Robinson? Obama isn’t making sense? Welcome to the club.
When every opposition group voted down his austerity budget earlier this week, Portugal’s prime minister resigned. Now, the European Union is preparing to bail out a third member nation in just over a year. (The other two are Greece and Ireland.)
While the Portuguese mess probably won’t have an immediate fiscal impact on the United States, the EU’s crisis of federalism could soon be felt over here.
States like Illinois and California are teetering on the edge of insolvency after spending like a bunch of reckless European countries. Because of the EU’s shared currency and the effects a default would have on the rest of the federation, the EU feels pressed into covering the costs of some members’ excess.
The same thinking seems likely to migrate across the Atlantic. Members of Congress are mulling options like bankruptcy for failing state governments, though that risks undermining state sovereignty. Also, bailouts run the risk of prolonging hard decisions, as well as deepening the dependency of states on the feds.
There are no easy answers, but there are some necessary decisions. Time will tell if those in Sacramento and Springfield can come to better resolutions that the parliament in Lisbon.
In fact, it’s not even close. Using aggregated data compiled from 148 nations during the years 2007 through 2010, survey subjects were asked, “Ideally, if you had the opportunity, would you like to move permanently to another country, or would you prefer to continue living in this country? To which country would you like to move?” The United States was the runaway leader, with more than three times as many respondents as the next closest countries (Canada and the United Kingdom). The U.S. led with 24%, Canada and the U.K. were far behind at 7% each, with France at 6% and Spain at 4%. In fact, America was named as the top potential destination by as many people as the U.K., France, Spain, Germany and Italy combined. So much for that supposedly superior European model.
A damning study that shows the true cost of President Barack Obama’s disastrous domestic energy policies:
The study, “Domestic Vendor Spending Outside the Gulf” found that approximately $1.3 billion of the $1.8 billion in shallow water vendor spending was concentrated in 7 states:
Additionally, the survey found a nationwide economic impact. Shallow water expenditures were made in 219 congressional districts — including 102 congressional districts with expenditures of $1 million or more, 32 congressional districts with expenditures of $10 million or more and 7 congressional districts with expenditures of $75 million or more.
Refusing to issue new permits for deep and shallow water drilling only increases the costs of gasoline and natural gas to consumers and destroys jobs across America. Along with financial boondoggles like ObamaCare, the president’s willful refusal to increase domestic energy supplies is likely to be a huge liability in his reelection bid.
In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses the national debt crisis, Congress’ addiction to excessive spending and the Democrat’s budget plan. Giachino warns that without serious and immediate action to right the nation’s fiscal ship, America is destined to a future of higher taxes, greater inflation and a lower standard of living.
In an interview with CFIF, Professor Kori Schake, research fellow at the Hoover Institution and an associate professor of international security studies at the United States Military Academy, discusses the Libya campaign and the Obama Administration’s sudden change of direction.
It’s nice to see liberal members of the Obama regime getting in a dust-up over whether the president’s Libya bombing is legal.
Today’s combatants are Senator John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the chamber’s Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN) whose thinking on foreign affairs is usually in lock-step with Kerry’s.
Until, that is, President Obama forgot to ask Lugar’s permission before going to war. As one of then-Senator Obama’s earliest Republican admirers, Lugar takes pride in his status as elder adviser to a young president. Trouble is, Obama no longer needs Lugar for anything.
And as Lugar is finding out, that includes setting aside procedural niceties like declaring war or getting congressional authorization for military action. (Far better to go the Lugar-approved route of U.N. permission slips.)
Thanks, Senator. He couldn’t have done it without you.
At the rate Senator Claire McCaskill’s (D-MO) is having to write checks to cover her growing tax fraud scandal, it may be time for her supporters to organize a fundraiser or two for the rainy days ahead.
Only days after announcing she owed $287,000 in back property taxes for a private plane she owns with her husband, McCaskill now says she really owes $320,000.
It’s amazing to see such a quick escalation.
Less than a week ago McCaskill went from one contested $1,200 political flight to refunding the U.S. Treasury for $88,000 in suspect trips. Now the hit on her bank account is over $400,000 with seemingly no end in sight.
In a break with tradition, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will hold public news conference four times a year, in the U.S. central bank’s latest move to boost transparency and improve communications after its policies came under attack.
Earth to Ben: policies like quantitative easing (i.e. printing more money) come under attack because they devalue the dollar through inflation. Explaining that reality – or denying it – in more detail won’t make the policy more attractive. If anything, it will doom any chance of getting re-nominated for your position.
In the continuing debate over the size and cost of government, Democrats are fond of saying that there’s not much in the way of waste when it comes to federal employment. In a piece up on the Daily Caller today, Chris Moody begs to differ:
The Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs needs someone to run the Facebook page for the Dept. of the Interior and they’ll pay up to $115,000 a year. Over at the Dept. of Defense, they’ll drop nearly 50k a year for a new mail room clerk, plus the glorious benefits that comes with government work.
In Washington, D.C., there are more than 1,000 openings this month alone. These include a “student internship” program at the Federal HousingFinance Agency that pays the equivalent of $48,304 a year; a $155,000-a-year gig at the Peace Corps to ensure the agency is complying with Equal Opportunity Employment standards; and a similar job at the Dept. of Transportation that promises nearly $180,000 a year.
Needless to say, this is an unquestionable example of Washington excess. But it has implications for the private sector too. After all, what college kid will want to take the risks of creating the next world-changing company when he can make six figures a year — with total job security and lavish benefits — at taxpayer expense?
As developments in the Middle East and a wayward monetary policy send gas prices consistently north, President Obama — no friend of hydrocarbons he — seems to be turning over a new leaf on the topic of oil exploration. The only problem? He wants other countries to do the heavy lifting so that we can then import the black gold. An editorial in today’s Investor’s Business Daily has the POTUS dead to rights:
Now, with a seven-year offshore drilling ban in effect off of both coasts, on Alaska’s continental shelf and in much of the Gulf of Mexico — and a de facto moratorium covering the rest — Obama tells the Brazilians:
“We want to help you with the technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely. And when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.”
Obama wants to develop Brazilian offshore oil to help the Brazilian economy create jobs for Brazilian workers while Americans are left unemployed in the face of skyrocketing energy prices by an administration that despises fossil fuels as a threat to the environment and wants to increase our dependency on foreign oil.
Despite some of the more emotional pleas for energy independence, there’s nothing inherently wrong with importing fuel from foreign sources. In fact, developing new oil production anywhere lowers the price everywhere. However, someone might want to tell President Obama that this maxim applies to U.S. sources as well.
Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn.” Today’s guest lineup includes:
4:00 p.m. CST/5:00 p.m. EST: Megan Brown, Partner, Wiley Rein (Washington, DC), Supreme Court Update;
4:30 p.m. CST/5:30 p.m. EST: Professor Kori Schake, Fellow, Hoover Institution, Libya;
5:00 p.m. CST/6:00 p.m. EST: Joseph Callawart, Author, “The World of Saint Paul” and Israel;
5:30 p.m. CST/6:30 p.m. EST: Mark Meckler, national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, Federal Budget and Government Spending.
Listen live on the Internet here. Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.
Forget all the media salivating for the 2012 presidential campaign. The Missouri Republican Party is launching its first attack on Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill’s liberal use of taxpayer money.
Over the weekend, the Missouri GOP printed a full-page ad in the Springfield, MO News Leader demanding that McCaskill explain why she paid the U.S. Treasury $88,000 for flights on one of her husband’s private jets. McCaskill continues to claim that only one of the flights was for a purely political reason (and thus ineligible for taxpayer reimbursement), yet her check covers 89 trips.
Since McCaskill’s seat is seen as a great pickup opportunity for Republicans, don’t expect the Missouri GOP to let the self-styled accountability watchdog off the leash easy.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2012 campaign cycle!
If at first liberals don’t succeed, they plead their case to a friendly judge. Last Friday, a Wisconsin judge granted a temporary restraining order to block publication of the state’s recently passed union law. (State law requires the Secretary of State to publish the contents of the law to the public in order for the law to be valid.)
The law’s opponents claim Wisconsin Republicans violated the state’s open meetings law by negotiating the substance of the bill outside the normal committee hearing process. The judge says all Republicans have to do is re-pass the bill with adequate notice (i.e. 24 hours instead of 2).
Where were these process-conscience Democrats when their federal counterparts rammed through ObamaCare while violating almost every legislative procedure? Where was the outrage when the Reid-Pelosi gang used the budget reconciliation process and ‘deem-and-pass’ to thwart deliberation? At least Wisconsin Republicans gave their absentee opponents a heads-up.
As a thank-you to its most famous customer, Amtrak is renaming the train station in Wilmington, Del., after stimulus “sheriff” Vice President Joseph R. Biden — after the project received $20 million in stimulus money and came in $5.7 million over the initial announced budget.
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