John McCain, Boeing and American Decline

Francis Schaeffer once told a reporter that it was a "terrible" thing to see one's country decline so rapidly during one's lifetime. It never occurred to me that I might live to see another period in our history like the 1970's when Jimmy Carter's administration crushed what was already a fragile economy and people waited in gas lines and built homebrew ethanol stations to survive the cost of gasoline.

I thought the 1970's marked a new and final low in the chapter of American decline, but sadly I was wrong. It appears that America is headed for a new decline: one from which we may never recover. This new decline is brought about by an odd combination of ultranationalist empire builders like George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld coupled with the ultraegalitarianism of bankers and what is very likely the most incompetent congress in the history of our nation.


In a nutshell, the Executive branch has stretched our military to the breaking point and embedded our nation in generations-long conflicts in several countries (not just Iraq, but Afghanistan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and even now with AFRICOM - somewhere in Africa). The bankers have plundered a gullible and selfish American population in a mortgage-back securities scam that dwarfs the junk bond scandal of Milken and friends. All the while, the congress spends its time in sycophantic interviews with baseball players, ignorant that the executive branch is usurping even more of their Constitutionally-derived power.

What does this have to do with Boeing and John McCain? Well, the current flap over a contract granted to EADS to supply the U.S. Airforce with tankers is sympomatic of the American decline I mentioned earlier. Initially, Boeing was let this contract without a bid, which suited the Congress because they wouldn't be forced to worry about all those nastly legal, contractual terms and the possibility of having to actually discuss national security escaped them.

Along came John McCain, who for all of his faults is as honest as the day is long. Senator McCain noticed that the executives at Boeing seemed to be spending alot of time with a woman at the Air Force department. He also noticed that the amount of money they agreed to build the aircraft for and the amount they were receiving were grossly disparate - in his words, nearly $6 thousand million worth. So, Senator McCain investigated Boeing and uncovered a contract-padding scam which sent a Boeing executive and an Air Force executive to the Federal hooscow for a brief interlude (probably until they could prepare for a congressional campaign). So, McCain became somewhat of a hero, trumpeting his pork-sniffing aptitude and crowing about how he successfully saved the taxpayers lots of money, which he truthfully did.

Fast forward a bit, remembering that the Air Force is still in need of a gas station that flies. Only now, they cannot dole out contracts based upon Shrimp Cocktails and pajama parties, they have to actually send out an RFP (Request for proposal) to qualified entities. Because France, England, Germany, Japan (and China) are given special status by our government, they were qualified to submit a bid for this RFP. France was the only nation with the capability to submit a bid, through its European subsidiary AirBus, who has a military branch called EADS.

When the Air Force reviewed the proposals from Boeing and EADS, there apparently was no comparison and EADS won. This is grating to some in Seattle (home of Boeing) because their company actually helped the government write the specifications for the new plane!

There will be much political hand-wringing and the infantiles in Congress will hold hearings so they can tell their constituents they worked hard "for America", but the truth is that the Air Force actually did the right thing. The RAF and the French use the EADS tanker and I am glad that we will too.

Finally, the American decline portion of this story comes from the fact that Boeing was so greedy and stupid that it blew a free, no-bid deal for more than $40 billion. This is analagous to the few hurricane Katrina evacuees who robbed markets in Houston while they were receiving Federal aid from FEMA.

America, my country, has become a fat, lazy cow which has grown tired of chewing its own grass and has wandered into a neighboring field, wherein lies a poisonous weed (egalitarianism).
We have feasted off of this weed and are now feeling its ill effects. We should thank McCain and those who worked to bring us the best deal. And if Boeing cared a bit about the country that has given it so much, they would begin to demand quality from their executives and workers and be prepared for the next contract. For those who are myopically bent on French-bashing, please try and remember your first grade history lesson. If it were not for the French, America would still be an English colony.