By Rob Holbert Managing Editor

Technicalities rule the day

It’s good to see the technicality is making a comeback. After O.J. murdered his ex-wife and her waiter/friend and got off Scot-free, I thought the genre had reached its apex and others might be buffaloed away from attempting to operate in the shadow of the master.

Fortunately for those who refuse to accept a result no matter how foregone or correct, the art of the technicality appears to be alive and well – especially if you examine a couple of things affecting our favorite burg.

And what I mean by “technicality” is the efforts put forth by some to win the seemingly unwinnable by any means necessary, and in most cases, to do so gleefully. The biggest cases in point currently are Boeing’s ongoing efforts to wrest the Air Force Tanker contract from Northrop/EADS and the oh-so-Rev. Fleet Belle’s flailing about to hang onto his school board seat after being trounced in the recent run-off election by Levon Manzie.

Now I know these things might seem unrelated, but keep in mind I’m usually quite intoxicated when I write these little ditties, so it makes sense to me. Perhaps, I might suggest, a few drinks for you gentle reader, and you’ll be right there with me. I’ll wait. OK, now that you’ve got a few in you we’ll continue.

First let’s examine the tanker situation. Boeing has the contract given to them years ago, but screws everything up with some illegal, collusive activity that leads to a couple of folks going to the pokey and the government throwing the bid process back open. Enter Northrop/EADS, which offers a bigger, more capable plane that actually exists, a minor problem Boeing seems willing to ignore completely. The Northrop/EADS plane wins the bid hands-down. No real contest. They win almost every category. Instead of taking the loss with dignity and going back to work being late on every contract they have, the boys at Boeing start looking for technicalities.

Aided by their buddies in Congress and the humorously named Government Accounting Office, who, let’s face it, are the kings and queens of technicalities, Boeing manages to find some minor screw ups that now have forced the Air Force to re-evaluate the contract.

It strikes me as I write this that those unacquainted with this situation might read my brief description and think, “This clown really is drunk! I run the local Office Max and if those bastards over at Office Depot got a big contract we wanted, I’d sure as hell be looking at the small print.”

That might be a valid attitude, except for the fact that the Boeing plane is smaller, carries less fuel, fewer passengers and is based on a liner that is scheduled to be phased out. Oh yeah, and it also hasn’t been built! At a recent air show in England, Northrop/EADS trotted their plane out and flew it around for everyone to see. The boys at Boeing were left just offering to buy everyone another round of Guinness and showing some drawings of a plane they promise to build when they get the contract. Ultra lame. Then they came back and took out an ad in the Washington Post that was nothing short of a lie, saying their plane was the only one to meet the Air Force criteria. (I guess that’s why it wasn’t selected.)

Make no mistake, Boeing is willing to win this thing on even the most tenuous of technicalities, and they’ll sleep well at night doing so. What’s best for the country, the Air Force or the dudes and chicks flying these planes (I refuse to use the term “warfighter”) is irrelevant. Boeing refuses to look in the mirror and accept why they lost the contract in the first place.

And speaking of mirrors, that same attitude is reflected very nicely in the approach being taken by Fleet Belle as he attempts, with the minimum amount of grace and personal integrity, to hang onto a job that 66 percent of the voters just told him in unequivocal terms they don’t want him to have.

Instead of looking at the vote and realizing he captured neither the hearts nor the minds of his constituents and bowing out with grace and dignity, Belle is actively engaged in a weasel-like attempt to have Manzie’s victory tossed because some papers were filed late. Now from what I’ve been told, the reason Manzie and some others who ran in the primaries turned their financial forms in late is because someone at in the local Democratic party inadvertently told them the wrong for filing said forms.

In Manzie’s case, this meant he should have filed when he loaned his campaign some money. Instead, he filled out the form when he qualified in April. OK, it was technically wrong, but most of these folks are first-timers at this and they were told the wrong thing by a party official. But the spirit of the law wasn’t broken. Manzie’s records were there for months for people to look at. It’s not like he never filed them or tried to hide his financial history.

So Manzie beat Fleet Belle like a rented mule and Fleet still wants to disenfranchise the voters in hopes his cronies will be able to muscle others in the party into putting him back in office. At least that’s sure what it looks like to me.

In both of these cases there is still hope intelligent, thoughtful people may prevail. Hopefully the defense secretary will ultimately tell Boeing to shove it and award the contract to Nothrop/EADS. (Of course, then you’ll see Congress swing into action like Batman if that happens.)

Probate Court Judge Don Davis will look over all this business with late filing in the school board race next week to determine if Manzie and other late filers will have their victories bounced. Hopefully the ghost of Johnny Cochran won’t be in the courtroom and Davis will uphold Manzie’s victory and then will issue Belle a fine for wearing those ridiculously long pocket scarves he likes, just as a warning to others.

Let’s hope the technicality doesn’t enjoy a resurgence at our expense.

Rob Holbert is Lagniappe managing editor. Contact him at rholbert@lagniappemobile.com.

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