WASHINGTON – Are our guys in Washington taking to heart the chorus from Kenny Rogers’ “Coward of the County” and deciding it won’t mean they’re weak if they turn the other cheek after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) rendered its tanker judgment recently?
If you’re sitting somewhere and trying to figure out what the hell I’m writing about – earlier this month, the GAO concluded there were “significant errors” in math the Air Force used in a Feb. 29 decision to determine Northrop Grumman would assemble the Air Force’s new fleet of refueling tankers in Mobile.
Since the GAO’s statement came out, new life has been breathed into the Boeing side on Capitol Hill. Although the GAO’s statement is non-binding, last week, Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback of Kansas, along with Rep. Todd Tiahrt (Kan.) introduced a bill that would force the Air Force’s hand. It would prohibit the Defense Department from awarding the contract unless the Defense Department chose to outright award the tanker to Boeing, or they decided to recompete the tanker contract using criteria favorable to Boeing.
Sounds not only like an aggressive move, but dirty pool, huh? Lou Dobbs, eat your heart out.
Rep. Jo Bonner was kind enough to offer a statement immediately after Tiahrt’s bill was introduced.
“Today, one of our colleagues introduced the KC-X Recompete Act, and its message is clear: if the warfighter wants a new tanker to replace its 50-year-old fleet anytime soon, it has one choice, Boeing’s KC-767,” Bonner said in a statement from his press secretary. “That Act tells the warfighter – take the 767 – take it or leave it – or face years of delay to conduct a new competition.”
Granted, the hometown team is outnumbered two-to-one since the Boeing side has representatives from Washington state and Kansas, but thus far the return-fire has come in the form of rhetoric, and not the Tiahrt-style politics inside the halls of Congress.
“There is no equivocation about which plane the Air Force wants – and desperately needs – Northrop Grumman’s KC-45,” Bonner said. “Some in Congress have repeatedly tried to preempt regular order and take this decision away from the warfighter.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions was asked if he, Bonner and Sen. Richard Shelby should be more aggressive in the wake of the GAO decision in the fight with Tiahrt and company.
“Look – I don’t agree with that one bit,” Sessions said. “The whole concept from the beginning, that our delegation believed in, was that this was a superior aircraft – the Northrop Grumman/EADS aircraft in this state. We worked hard to make sure that the Air Force, which I have oversight over as a member of the Armed Services Committee, gave a fair, objective hearing to the merits of the two aircrafts, did not allow politics of a domestic air carrier to sway the day and change the outcome and they stayed firm. They did just what we asked them to do and we won this aircraft.”
It could be a hard public relations fight ahead – especially in the hands of conservative Southern legislators who are in safe seats to go up against Washington state senators that won’t pull any punches with populist rhetoric about keeping jobs at home and are always politically vulnerable.
SCOTUS Update: You Have the Right to Bear Handguns
Just think, all this time I thought it was a constitutional right to have a firearm, but that wasn’t affirmed until last week by the Supreme Court.
In a landmark 5-4 decision, with the majority opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court finally cleared up what the Second Amendment means.
“After a dismal record of judicial activism in recent weeks, it’s nice to see the Court affirm a right that’s actually in the Constitution,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, the former Alabama Attorney General said. “In doing so, the Court issued a strong holding that the Second Amendment protects the right of Americans to possess firearms for lawful purposes like recreation, hunting, and self-defense.”
The decision struck down a handgun ban in the District of Columbia – and one has to wonder, if handgun bans work – why has crime exponentially increased since the ban in the District?
It only took 217 years for the courts to clear up the confusion. So don’t fear all you Libertarian-minded folks – no one is going to come to your house and pry your gun from your cold dead hands.
Just Drill Damn It
No one likes $4-a-gallon gas, but our fearless leaders on the majority side of the aisle in Washington don’t seem to get it.
The Democratic Party insists high gas prices are a demand problem and not a supply problem (they just don’t grasp supply-side economics on any level). They’re often reluctant to even discuss open up federal lands for oil exploration and drilling leases. The claims for not doing so are environmental, not enough in these unexplored areas to make a difference, “big oil” isn’t using what they got and our “addiction to oil” won’t be cured with more oil.
As a former resident and frequent visitor to Alabama’s Gulf Coast, seeing oil rigs was a commonplace anytime you flew over the gulf, went deep sea fishing or when you took the ferry from Ft. Morgan to Dauphin Island.
But, the argument for not drilling more off the Florida coastlines is that it would hurt their tourism industry. But are Orange Beach and Gulf Shores suffering? The crowds still flock to Dauphin Island, even if they are drilling for oil and gas just miles away. In fact, real estate along the Baldwin County coastline is probably going a little higher than in a lot of locations along the Florida coastline to the west of Panama City, heading around the panhandle and down toward Tampa.
The last U.S. oilrig disaster was in 1969 off the California coastline near Santa Barbara, but trying to imagine a California beach in 1969 – I imagine they were too stoned to care.
Contact Jeff Poor at jeffreypoor@yahoo.com.
Archives
Beltway Beat
