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Your Democracy in Action

Started by Will Wilkinson · 9 months ago

On NPR this morning I was listening to some Congressmen bloviating about the terrible injustice inherent in the Air Force’s decision to give a contract to build re-fueling tankers to EADS, a French company the Air Force says promises the most high-quality aircraft. The level of caterwa ... Continue reading »

9 comments

  • Eric Blair

    1 year ago

    This is why either term limits need to be put in place for Congress, or perhaps, using an idea of Arthur C. Clarke's, people should be drafted for a couple of years to be legislators.

    How worse could it be?
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  • Matthew

    1 year ago

    Seriously, he has a point. Maybe in a single instance it would be more efficient to buy jets abroad than from the US. But individual cases add up to trends, and it would be disastrous for our military to depend on foreign materials, given that it's primary role is to defend the US from any possible invader.
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  • TGGP

    1 year ago

    Matthew, do you think we are going to be in military conflict with France? If it did occur that France stopped selling us planes, would we not be able to get them elsewhere? Or do you think that some malevolent force will make the seas unsafe for shipping?
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  • Pithlord

    1 year ago

    Great post.
    reply
  • shecky

    1 year ago

    I heard that story too.

    Made me laugh. It reminds me of a story a few months ago about an uproar in Switzerland. Apparently the bid for next generation of Swiss Army knives was possibly going to a company outside Switzerland. Maybe even gasp CHINA! Folks were having conniptions. Rending of clothes. The whole bit. How could the Swiss Army forsake Swiss jobs and place the fate of Swiss defenses on a foreign vendor?!?
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  • John Thacker

    1 year ago

    The contract that won is a joint proposal between EADS and Northrop Grumman, anyway. Northrop Grumman is a US company, for what it matters.

    And calling EADS a "French company" is as accurate as calling Airbus one. It's really the same type of company (and intimately related to Airbus)-- a European company obtained by merging German, French, and Spanish defense contractors. Its headquarters are in the Netherlands, but also in France and Germany.
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  • Matt

    1 year ago

    I agree that this is pretty terrible behavior and should be shamed. What I wonder, though, after reading the post, is whether, if you had the model of democracy presented originally by Bentham and later by people like Robert Dahl if this sort of behavior can be seen as bad at a very deep level. On that account all democracy is is a device for agregating preferences and letting various interest groups struggle for power in a non-violent way. That seems to be happening here. Of course even on that account it makes sense to use the rhetoric of the common good and the like to try to stop this sort of behavior when it's not to one's own (or one's interest goup's) advantage, but it's just rhetoric. Now, to my mind the Bentham/Dahl account of democracy is a pretty impoverished one, but it's probably still the most popular account for political science types. On that account can anything be said agains this behavior that's not just rhetoric? I'm curious to know.
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  • Sam Hutcheson

    1 year ago

    Not sure if the Air Force was wearing the white hat here or not, but the back room politiking here came down to fully ordering from Northrup Grubman -- a strategy favored by congress critters from the northeast and other states where NG have manufacturing centers -- and the deal that was made -- favored by southern congress critters because the planes will be machined in Europe but assembled in AL and MS.

    It's all pork.
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  • John Thacker

    1 year ago

    but the back room politiking here came down to fully ordering from Northrup Grubman — a strategy favored by congress critters from the northeast and other states where NG have manufacturing centers — and the deal that was made — favored by southern congress critters because the planes will be machined in Europe but assembled in AL and MS.

    Umm, no it didn't. There was no bid or offer to "fully order from Northrup Grubman(sic)". Northrop Grumman's proposal was always made in conjunction with EADS; Northrop Grumman does not have large plane manufacturing capabilities necessary for a tanker. There was absolutely no possible bid to manufacture in the Northeast or anywhere else by NG. The only other bid on the tanker contract was the proposal from Boeing, which would have been largely produced in the state of Washington, though the 767 has Italian and Japanese suppliers as well.

    This is the same contract that Boeing tried to bribe their way into a no-bid contract a few years ago, offering jobs to the Air Force contracting agent, her daughter, and her son-in-law. That's why Boeing's CEO resigned and their CFO spent a few months in jail. (I understand that some overheated Congressmen, including Speaker Pelosi, are attacking Sen. McCain for leading the investigation that exposed the bribery.)

    The NG/EADS proposal was for more larger tankers for less money overall (and per plane, obviously). It is for a tanker that has been delivered and tested successfully in several deployments, unlike Boeing's converted 767 tanker project that has not been delivered anywhere in the world yet. Boeing is unable to argue the merits of the tanker itself, so it is left to argue that, in Boeing's view, the US government should subsidize Boeing rather than supposedly let EADS and European governments subsidize the US military by selling planes too cheaply.
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