In 2001 Bush vetoed, incredibly, a bill that would require Mexican trucks to meet the same safety standards as American and Canadian trucks.

A provision of NAFTA requires that all roads in the US, Mexico and Canada are open to truckers from all three nations.

In September of last year, the Bush Republicans launched a one-year pilot program to allow full access for Mexican trucks. The Senate immediately voted to withhold money need for the program from the Department of Transportation.

The use of Mexican truckers will, of course, result in huge savings for shippers. This passage from the investment website, seekingalpha.com, gives you a good idea:

The average US driver earns $.40 per mile, while the average. Mexican driver earns $.18 per mile.

But beside the immediate impact to the earning power of American or Canadian truckers, is the long-term impact on longshoremen and the ILWU.

The Kansas City SmartPort is a state-of-the-art transshipment hub located in the heart of North America. The SmartPort is at the center of rail lines and highways that spread to all North American ports, including the recently upgraded port of Lazaro Cardenas (which has an exclusive rail access with Kansas City Southern Railroad) and the planned Punta Colonet in Mexico.

Nobody, expects teamsters and ILWU’ers to be supplanted overnight. But the implementation of NAFTA and the slow motion re-orientation of our nations shipment grid – away from coastal cities, to Mexico and up through Texas should give every working person pause.

Read it all -

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/8...9794/358/512212

And -

http://www.dailykos.com/tag/unions

One of John McCain's most celebrated achievements in recent years was his crusade to block a Pentagon contract with Boeing for a new fleet of midair refueling tankers. Incensed over what he denounced as a taxpayer "rip-off," McCain launched a Senate probe that uncovered cozy relations between top Air Force officials and Boeing execs. A top Air Force officer and Boeing's CFO ended up in prison. Most significantly, the Air Force was forced to cancel the contract—saving taxpayers more than $6 billion, McCain asserted.

But last week, McCain's subsequent effort to redo the tanker deal was dealt a setback. Government auditors ruled that the Air Force made "significant errors" when it rebid the contract and awarded the $35 billion project to Boeing's chief rival, partners European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (or EADS)

The assumption within the Pentagon, the official added, was that McCain's letters were drafted by EADS lobbyists. "There was no one else that would have had that level of detail," the official said. (A Loeffler associate noted that he and Nelson were retained by EADS after the letters were drafted.)

read it all -

http://www.newsweek.com/id/142658

Consider this posted on our Union Bulletin Board at work!

In a move that will send economic shock waves across Kansas for generations, Hawker Beechcraft is planning to build a tip-to-tail aircraft assembly plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. The company expects to move from manufacturing small parts and sub-assemblies to full aircraft assembly after 2012.

The five-year plan, code named Project Pelican, is outlined in documents containing detailed instructions on how the company planned to conceal the scope of the plan from the public, the press and employees at Hawker Beechcraft's Wichita assembly plant.

“Never mention the potential of full aircraft assembly,” is among the covert marching orders for Hawker Beechcraft managers tasked with purchasing land, negotiating tax breaks with the Mexican government and hiring a workforce for as little as $3 an hour.

Instead, managers are instructed to frequently cite global competition and the need for “additional capacity other than Wichita.”

read it all -

http://www.ksworkbeat.org/Issues/2008-29/2008-29.html

We need more of this.........of course if we had pre free trade era tarriffs we would be OK........

U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) Issues Final Affirmative Vote on Antidumping and Countervailing Decisions on Circular Welded Steel Pipe From China

Today’s ITC decision marks the first time that a countervailing duty (CVD), or anti-subsidy, order has been imposed on a steel product from China, and the first time that a CVD case on China has resulted in a countervailing duty order since the Commerce Department began to initiate CVD investigations of Chinese imports in October 2006.


Chinese exports to the United States skyrocketed from 10,000 tons in 2002 to 750,000 tons in 2007 -- a 6,900 percent increase. As a result of the surge in subsidized and dumped imports, U.S. producers lost market share and suffered steep decreases in profitability over the period investigated. China imports created unfavorable economic conditions, causing U.S. pipe plant closure. Approximately 25 percent of the total workforce employed in this segment of the domestic pipe industry have lost their jobs since 2002, when the import surge began.


http://www.uswa.org/uswa/program/content/4670.php

Canadians Reject McCain’s NAFTA Plea
Continental Movement for Renegotiation Grows


“We have lost democratic control of energy under NAFTA and we may lose control over water, if the NAFTA-SPP agenda is allowed to proceed unchecked,” says Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, who highlighted the fact that Barack Obama has committed to renegotiate NAFTA, if he is elected president, and over 50 members of Congress in the US are currently supporting the recently introduced TRADE Act (the Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment Act), which calls for renegotiation of NAFTA and a slew of other unfair trade agreements. The Council of Canadians is calling on Canadian parliamentarians to support similar legislation.

Barlow adds, “NAFTA has destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs and given corporations unprecedented power to override local democracy.”

read it all -

http://www.rabble.ca/in_cahoots.shtml?x=72850

Homeless people living in cars and motorhomes across the US are being joined by a new breed: the middle class.

As mortgage foreclosures continue to rise, growing numbers of middle-class professionals are losing their homes and downsizing from four bedrooms to four wheels.

With numbers rising, New Beginnings, a homeless agency in Santa Barbara, California, has launched a safe parking scheme, whose aim is to provide a refuge of sorts for those who have nowhere to go other than their vehicle.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/26/usa.creditcrunch

Pat Roberts is out with a new ad in which he swears he will fight for the Boeing tanker contract (an issue of no small importance in Kansas). Jim Slattery notes that Roberts, given the chance, has failed to do this in the past:

Pat Roberts went up on the air yesterday with a new political ad saying he will fight to make sure the Air Force gets it right on the Boeing tanker.

What Roberts doesn’t say in the ad, is that he has failed to fight for Boeing and the tanker contract- twice.

In 2005, Roberts was a member of two committees that allowed a "Buy American" provision to be removed from the 2006 Defense Authorization Bill. The provision was specifically written to prevent EADS from winning the Air Force tanker contract over Boeing.

Jim Slattery, candidate for the US Senate said, "Had Roberts done his job in 2005, Boeing would not be in this position today."

Read it all -

http://www.slatteryforsenate.com/news/rele...ign_ad_using_t/

MEXICO CITY - Mexican auto unions are taking a cue from U.S. labor leaders by offering two-tier hiring schemes and salary cuts that bring already low wages down to near-Chinese levels.

As more automakers turn to Mexico, a big argument for the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 -- that Mexico's low wage rates would slowly rise to close the gap with U.S. wages -- seems to have been thrown in reverse.

"The pressure has not been to raise the Mexican wages up, it's been to push the U.S. wages down," said Ben Davis, the director of the AFL-CIO Solidarity office in Mexico City.

And now Mexican wages are being pushed down even more.

Wage concessions were apparently key to persuading Ford Motor Co. to direct many of the 4,500 new jobs involved in building Fiestas to the Ford plant in Cuautitlan, on the outskirts of Mexico City. Union leaders at the plant told the Associated Press they had agreed to cut wages for new hires to about half of the current wage of $4.50 an hour.

"We agreed to it," said Ford union leader Juan Jose Sosa Arreola. "We need to be more competitive. That's the truth. That's a reality."

The United Auto Workers union had hoped to preserve American jobs by offering a two-tier wage system last fall, cutting starting wages for new U.S. workers by half to about $14.20 an hour. But it hasn't worked -- the jobs are flowing to Mexico, where starting wages at some plants also have been two-tiered, to as little as $1.50 an hour with a lot less of the related pension and health care costs of U.S. workers.

With labor costs like these, Mexico is staying competitive with China, where an average worker at a foreign-owned factory or joint venture can make $2 to $6 an hour. While Mexican benefit costs run higher, Mexico may have already won the low-wage race.

Mexico also now has the advantage of a massive auto production platform based on experience with export plants and proximity to major markets that can't yet be beat in China, whose factories still produce mainly for its own domestic market.

http://www.kansas.com/news/nation_world/story/425354.html

An Alternative to Free Trades?

The global debate around free-trade and its consequences has evolved tremendously in recent years, from tiny circles of leftist critics into a broad international protest movement. Although the movement began to bloom in response to the policies of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the biggest demonstrations have been in response to the now-popular "bi-lateral" free-trade agreements that economically powerful countries sign with poorer nations. Once one has become conscious of the problems created by free-trade agreements, whether they are international or regional, an immediate task presents itself: finding a feasible alternative.

Yes, the trade policy advocated by most big business politicians is "free-trade," and yes, this policy has had devastating consequences for working and poor people worldwide, while filling the already-full bank accounts of the rich. But the issue of "free-trade" alone isn't sufficient to fully explain the vast social problems that plague so many countries.


http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...va&aid=7623

Free trade, I have no problem with it in theory. Theoretically, free trade allows the downtrodden in other countries to lift themselves up and improve their lives. We Americans have more than enough to share. And as long as our new trading partners are required to provide equivalent pay, benefits, on the job safety, environmental protections, yadda, yadda, yadda as are enjoyed by American workers (ha!), then trade would benefit and improve the lives of all.

Well, at least that's how NAFTA was sold/marketed to the American public in the 1990's....

We now know that the agreement is perverse and has been distorted by greedy business interests, and that all of our worst fears about NAFTA have come true. No one has benefitted except billionare CEOs and their cronies.

'Nough said. Destroy it and start again. The theory sounds good, but the practice sucks.

It has to be drstically reveised or elimintated and back to the pre-free trade area when the American middle class prospered.

What is obviously happening now as I have posted above is kiling both American and Canada' middle class and doing nothing to lift the Mexican workers economic prosperity............


- John McCain has changed his mind about the president's tax cuts and drilling for oil off the U.S. coast, but the Republican presidential hopeful says his advocacy of free trade is unyielding.

http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topst...pr/mccain_trade

"The manufacturing sector in general has been so decimated over I'd say the past 25 years that you have difficulty manufacturing certain things in Canada regardless of the price," (since NAFTA)



Hugh Thompson knows he's part of a dying breed, a Canadian manufacturer who still makes products that come with the red-Maple-Leaf emblazoned "Made in Canada" label.

The president of Cambridge Towel Corp., specializing in bathroom towels, rugs, shower curtains and other accessories, sells Canadian-made products through retailers such as Wal-Mart, The Bay, Zellers and Sears.

It's not because he's especially patriotic or because it's cheaper to make his products in Cambridge -- in fact about 30% of the company's line comes from China and India.

From iconic companies with a global reach, such as Research in Motion Ltd. and Bombardier Inc., to small family-owned operations with only regional appeal, Canadians who produce things are increasingly turning to cheap-labour factories in Asia or Latin America in order to be competitive

http://www.torontosun.com/Money/2008/06/29/6017051-sun.html

“McCain is out of touch with working people and their hardships,” said Dave Green, president of UAW Local 1714 in Lordstown.

The UAW criticized McCain for supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement and voting against raising the minimum wage.

http://www.vindy.com/news/2008/jun/27/amid...-to-stop-at-gm/

Well we already know that McCain is a free trade endorser so how can we insure Obama isin't? I am writing his staff a note....hope you do too............

There have been so many diaries expressing shock, disappointment, and even enough outrage to the extent that some will not work for Obama as hard as they once said they would. One key reason is Obama's flip on NAFTA. In this entry, I argue that Obama had no choice but to flip-flop, and those of us who did not see it coming were not closely following the campaign.

First, check out this video on Obama & Clinton and NAFTA
(you can see how Obama lies at what he says when he looks down, and boy is Russert a sharp questioner):Obama & Clinton on NAFTA

In the first part, Obama has always been a free trader. Why?

First, Obama's policy wonk team has always consisted of centrists, whether they be economists, foreign policy analysts, and domestic policy analysts (an Economist article highlights the main players of Obama's team, which has no lefties on board, including Austan Goolsbee who said Obama's opposition to NAFTA was "political positioning" to Canada, and anyone following the campaign would have known this before: Who's who in Obamaworld.). So yes, one can tell that his ideology was centrist from the start.

Second, Obama has made statements in support of globalization (please see Despite NAFTA attacks, Clinton and Obama Haven't Been Free Trade Foes.""). As this article makes clear, Obama has supported free trade agreements that received little press, such as Peru. As an international trade analyst, I can tell all first-hand that the Peru FTA, NAFTA, and Colombian FTA all contain similar labor & environmental standards, and all have a similar affect on US jobs. In addition, Peru and Colombia are not very different in terms of drugs, violence, and instability (Peru in fact is more unstable than Colombia, a country in which political parties are weakly institutionalized and have little ability to govern). So, if you were to support Peru, there's little reason to oppose Colombia--the union killings argument is a moot one because both Peru and Colombia have it (Peru: Death threats against union activities, and Colombia's union deaths have seen a marked decrease since the beginning of the millennium: Union deaths down, see Figure 1. Despite being cited by CATO, the information is factual). So it's pretty clear Obama is a free-trader.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/13/10...8203/317/550915

Here in Los Angeles a city inspectors bullitin went out warning us about structural steel tubing that is defective. It is in the schools that we just built. The tubing is from China. They are quite common, Mill Certifications and batch numbers are kept on file so that the problem will eventually be rectified before someone gets hurt.

Last February, the Hershey's chocolate plant in Oakdale, CA was closed. The operations were moved to Mexico. Boycott Hershey's chocolate.

Teamsters Union president James Hoffa and Jorge Gamboa, president of the National Petroleum Workers Union of Colombia, warn that ratifying the U.S.-Colombia “free trade” agreement would continue the long civil war that results in hostage-taking there.

The deal, they say, would let big multinational monopolies further cut Colombian workers’ wages and slash their few current on-the-job protections. Hoffa and Gamboa told a joint July 1 telephone news conference that if the trade agreement passes the U.S. Congress, thousands more Colombians will have no alternative but illegal coca cultivation to feed their families.

Coca cultivation and uncontrolled activity by right-wing paramilitaries financed by companies like Chiquita and Coca-Cola are widely acknowledged as major elements fueling the country’s on-going civil war. The paramilitaries have killed tens of thousands of Colombians, including 2,500 trade unionists, since 1991.

Gamboa explained the connection between the civil war and the U.S-Colombia Free Trade Agreement: “The paramilitaries receive money from the multinationals for murder of labor leaders. If the agreement is passed the companies will have even more incentive to continue paying the paramilitaries because the trade agreement would let them cut workers’ wages and violently suppress organizing drives.”

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/13354/

Patriotism is love of country, and it's also love of community. When our community is in danger, we rally together to fight for it.

The Machinists union is sounding the warning -- an early call to gather and fight for the aircraft industry, which is in danger of joining so many other industries in leaving for cheaper labor.

Aircraft has long been the lifeblood of Wichita. Many people can find "Rosie the Riveter" in their family tree, because Wichita churned out bombers during World War II.

When you walk down an assembly line, you can find third- and fourth-generation employees whose grandparents worked in the factories. The institutional knowledge in our work force is invaluable to the industry. Because of that, the industry is very healthy and profitable, and Wichita companies are innovative and put out high-quality products customers want to buy. One would think they wouldn't tinker with that success.

Yet it seems that some corporate leaders, with their eye on the bottom line above all else, don't understand this. An alarming plan, titled "Project Pelican," recently was discovered, detailing a Hawker Beechcraft plan to open a full final aircraft assembly facility in Chihuahua, Mexico.

Although Hawker Beechcraft is attempting to disavow the plan (July 1 Business), indications are it is on track to do that very thing. The company cites competition and being a global company as reasons. But to me, there is far more at stake here. What this is about is the future of the aircraft industry in Wichita.

When NAFTA was passed, the labor movement sounded the warning, which went unheeded. NAFTA proponents said the only jobs lost would be in low-skill industries.

Well, history has proved those predictions untrue, as factory after factory and industry after industry have shut their doors and left for cheap-labor havens such as Mexico and China.

The aviation industry is the last great American industry in which we indisputably lead the world. The good aircraft jobs in Wichita provide the ability to make a good living and raise a strong family. Aviation fuels a tax base that allows the city to be vibrant with good schools and services. In short, it makes Wichita a great city.

The skills that build these airplanes are American, and much of the technology on which these companies rely was developed with government funding. Wichita, in its wholehearted support of the industry, has built an entire infrastructure -- from a research center at Wichita State University to a soon-to-be-built National Center for Aviation Training -- so the city can provide the trained work force the industry needs.

There's no good reason for these companies to leave. The state and community put millions of tax dollars and incentives into these companies.

Some would say there's nothing we can do. I disagree. Americans are tired of the exodus of American industry, and we need to shake the rafters and demand that our legislators work to keep the aviation industry in America and in Wichita.


http://www.kansas.com/205/story/453860.html

Americans around the country are angry as they watch their jobs and livelihoods go overseas. Most recently, it was the award of a US Military contract to a foreign country. GVP Rich Michalski traveled to Pennsylvania to speak about this issue.

http://www.goiam.org/content.cfm?cID=12737

John McCain never could have anticipated that a deal pushed through in 2003, with his support and the lobbying efforts of his current campaign advisor Rick Davis, might cost the people of Wilmington, Ohio, 8,000 jobs.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/....xml&coll=2

In 2003, over the objections of members of Congress who "cited concerns about a subsidiary of a foreign company controlling a segment of air commerce in the United States," John McCain and Trent Lott prevailed in allowing the German-owned DHL to buy Airborne Express, and now, with 8,000 jobs at risk in Wilmington, the McCain camapaign says:

At the time of the merger, no one anticipated an impact on jobs in Wilmington.

Mary Houghtaling, who runs a hospice in Wilmington, Ohio, choked up as she told McCain of DHL's plans to close its domestic air hub in her town, a move that could throw 8,600 people out of work. "This is a terrible blow," McCain told her. "I don't know if I can stop it. That's some straight talk. Some more straight talk? I doubt it."

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/08...e_dhl_deal.html


On the bright side, McCain's senior advisor Rick Davis made a mint on the deal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8062502858.html

IMHO this topic deserves a seperate thread.

I watched the 2-2 hour Senate Armed Services Committee hearings in which they interviewed/questioned the GAO's investigation and report on this contract. It's interesting that Newsweek left out so many important points about the rebid of the contract. First of all, knowing the geographic area of the NG location, the political hanky-panky goes far beyond McCain, with McCain putting a gem in the handy political crown worn by Bob Riley...but, back to the contract. The plans Northrup submitted were for a plane that the Air Force can't use...the booms won't fit existing aircraft, the tankers won't fit existing military facilities, and the tankers are far too large to perform their mission.

Plodder....we are one. It will be official sometime in 2010. George says so.

http://www.google.com/search?q=north+ameri...lient=firefox-a
north american union - Google Search

Have at it!

Military aviation: Bidding war for US refuelling tankers creates transatlantic storm


American politicians expressed fury when the award went to Northrop and EADS, accusing the Pentagon of betraying American workers. The US accountability office found that the Pentagon had erred in changing details and mishandled negotiations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/1...airlineindustry

Trading Places: The Banker Edition

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/capit...-banker-edition

It's ironic that great American financial institutions—Citigroup and Merrill Lynch among them—are being bailed out by sovereign wealth funds from places like Kuwait, South Korea, and Abu Dhabi. For years, these institutions lobbied for free trade, arguing that this was a globalizing world, that free trade was the only path to prosperity, and that critics of free trade were fearmongers who wanted to put up walls.

You know the story. During the Clinton years of the early 1990s, as free trade debates swept Washington, Citigroup was a powerful cheerleader for the North American Free Trade Agreement. Robert Rubin, then a recent Goldman Sachs alumnus, was the chairman of the newly created National Economic Council and the biggest proponent of freer trade. As Washington found itself in a lobbying fight of epic proportions, the financial institutions weighed in on the side of free trade.

Now look what has happened. All of these houses are desperately seeking capital from sovereign wealth funds, which are, let's face it, the opposite of free trade—a government presence in the marketplace in its purest forms. It's amusing too that Alaska, which keeps sending the most conservative politicians to Washington, is the only state with a sovereign wealth fund. So the government interferers are bailing out the free traders.

It's not just that sovereign wealth funds are anathema to a free-market economy. Many of the funds are run by protectionist societies like China, and to a lesser extent, South Korea. For years we were told that protectionism could only be a path to ruin, and here we find ourselves being bailed out by the protectionists.

Given the state of American financial institutions, we ought to be grateful that someone is riding to the rescue even if it proves to be only a temporary fix. I have no objection against sovereign wealth funds. If a country is smart enough to accumulate a big bad surplus and wants to sprinkle it around the globe looking for great returns, I'm not, as the citizen of a debtor nation with a weak currency, going to start complaining.

What would behoove the free traders out there, the people who reflexively back every deal that comes before Congress, is to think hard about all of their bromides on what produces wealth. Obviously, there are a lot of countries that don't adhere to free-market principles and are doing very well, so well that our most prestigious banks go to them with tin cup in hand.

The banks themselves continue to be on the side of free-trade agreements—and that's their prerogative—but it's worth noting the irony of their being bailed out by these funds. One welcome casualty of the financial crisis should be the easy, blithe statement that free trade is a panacea.

Brazil’s Prime Minister revealed Wednesday that he plans to ask the World Trade Organization to impose punitive sanctions of $4 billion against the United States for government farm subsidies, according to Prensa Latina.

After the WTO failed to reach an agreement on trade reforms at the Doha rounds, Brazil challenged U.S. farm programs and cited them as illegal under global trade rules.

http://www.economyincrisis.com/


http://www.economyincrisis.org/articles/show/1707

McCain says No

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article...ESS01/808190360

Isn't this off topic here?

Hey look folks, we have a new moderator here!

I am soooo sick of people who are our representatives representing the interests of foreign interests. We should check their work record and find out who is representing us, keep them, who is representing them, jail them!

I don't think so since Free Trades and all of the ramifications of these deals have only hurt all except the Politicians and Big Biz leaders who have steered all in that direction.

We are hopeing (I am) that Obama will change that direction..................

Canada's largest progressive citizen's organization:
The Council of Canadians

Check out their campaigns section, lots of good information with international (ie. US) implications.

Aren't you satisfied with starting posts that violate Rule #3 of the board rules? "No member may spam or flood topics, or post a message with the sole intent to sow upset and discord." Now you're telling us what we can't post?

How's that Obama-Bayh ticket working for you?

Palin outsourced a $26 billion contract


So Gov. Palin awards a $26 billion dollar construction contract to a Canadian company and the U.S. taxpayer has to assume the risk of paying for the contract if the natural gas customers don't materialize?

But don't worry, the TransCanada CEO has his priorities straight.

Some Alaska state lawmakers... wondered what [TransCanada CEO] Kvisle meant when the Toronto's Globe and Mail quoted him saying, "Nothing goes ahead until Exxon is happy with it."

Harris fired off a letter to Kvisle on Monday afternoon seeking further explanation.

Harris wrote: "It is imperative that this statement be clarified and fully understood immediately. Any implication that Exxon Mobil Corporation some how has 'veto authority' is extremely disconcerting for not only legislators, but for many Alaskans."

How many $26 billion dollar infrastructure projects are there in the US? Do we have to outsource them to Canadian companies and then have the US taxpayers guarantee the payments?

It's not just TransCanada that lives to make Exxon happy.

It's McCain/Palin.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/29/10...6137/286/578405

<looking beyond reality> "I STILL DONT SEE ANY NORTH AMERIAN UNION."

baaaaaaa.

During the debate, Sen. McCain said, "I saved the taxpayers $6.8 billion by fighting a contract that was negotiated between Boeing and DOD that was completely wrong. And we fixed it and we killed it and the people ended up in federal prison so I know how to do this because I've been involved these issues for many, many years."

He didn't fix a damned thing. He introduced politics into a screwed up procurement and made things worse in terms of overall cost, schedule and readiness for a mission-critical Air Force development and production program.

In 2002, Boeing, the Air Force and Congress devised an approach to ‘lease’ 100 new 767s for $15.5 billion over six years with a $4.1 billion option to buy. The overall cost of the lease would have been greater than the purchase, but Congress didn’t give the AF the authority to buy the planes. So Boeing and the Air Force got creative and came up with the lease concept. Boeing would have borne all development risk and Boeing would have paid all development costs. Boeing profits would have been capped at DOD standard levels. It was not a lousy deal for the taxpayers, Boeing or the Air Force.

Some watchdog groups and Sen. McCain objected to the deal and got it killed. Beyond the 'lease' creativity, Boeing got really creative and bribed an AF procurement official and got caught

more

http://sclayton.dailykos.com/