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The Expansionist
Sunday, January 30, 2005
 
European Symbol for the American Presidency. The Bush Administration has put the lie to its patriotic pretensions and revealed its black, globalist heart: the helicopter that carries the President of the United States is to be a European design with key European components. It would be assembled in Europe too if Congress didn't restrict defense purchases as to require some American input. What next? An Airbus Air Force One? Mercedes or Rolls-Royce limousines for the President and U.S. diplomats worldwide rather than Caddies or Lincolns? Replacement of the dollar by the euro? American flags for the White House and Capitol proudly bearing the label "Made in China"?
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The Financial Times, British equivalent of The Wall Street Journal, yesterday reported the deal thus. (Comments in brackets and italics are mine.)

AgustaWestland, the Anglo-Italian helicopter maker, last night won a contract to build the new US presidential helicopter fleet, dealing a blow to American rival Sikorsky, which has flown the president since 1957.

AgustaWestland, owned by Finmeccanica of Italy, and Lockheed Martin, its US partner, received a $1.7bn (£901m) contract to build more than 20 helicopters, in a competition that was seen as a litmus test for whether European companies could increase their defence business in the US. * * *

Richard Aboulafia, an analyst at the Teal group, said: "This is big news. It is the first time the US defence market has been open to a foreign helicopter. There is clearly a growing two-way street in US arms procurement." The decision was a major victory for Tony Blair, prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, his Italian counterpart, both of whom supported President George W. Bush's war in Iraq and lobbied him over the deal. * * *

Mr Blair believes the Bush administration is now more willing to reach out to America's European allies and particularly participate more forcefully in the Middle East peace process.

In awarding the contract for Marine One, the name given to the presidential helicopter, the Navy rejected Sikorsky's argument that the president should fly in a helicopter that was 100 per cent US-made. John Young, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said: "This decision truly reflects the best value and capability for the American taxpayer who is funding it, the marines who will operate it and the future presidents who will fly in it." [I'll tell you this much: if I were elected President, I wouldn't set foot in it unless Britain and Italy joined the Union!]

But the decision angered some lawmakers. Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat senator from Connecticut, home to Sikorsky's parent company United Technologies, said: "The Navy's decision today on the Marine One contract is not just disappointing — it is outrageously wrong."

Imagine that! I actually agree with Joe Lieberman about something!
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By contrast with the Financial Times's open recognition that this was a European coup, CNN and The Washington Post pretended that American company Lockheed Martin was the contract winner. CNN.com's headline was "Lockheed Martin to build Marine One". Its story quoted, of all people, New York Senator Hillary Clinton (!) as favoring the deal:

"The US101 will provide the president of the United States with a state-of-the-art-helicopter ... an Oval Office in the sky," said Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York.

Imagine that! The 'Oval Office' is to be European!
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I have always hated that witch and hope this puts the last nail in the coffin of her presidential ambitions. Oh, she is posing as a champion of New York workers, since a small part of the helicopter contract will be fulfilled Upstate, but a small local boost at huge national cost is not the kind of thing a U.S. Senator should be praising, least of all one who aspires to President.
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By contrast, another woman legislator, Connecticut's Representative Rosa DeLauro, said, in the same CNN story:

"'Made in America' should mean something .... The Defense Department has some explaining to do." [The Defense Department? Don't you mean the President who was just re-elected? Can anyone believe that such a deal could have been made without George W. Bush's active assent?]

For the winner the contract means millions of dollars in federal research funds, and a potential edge when the Pentagon looks to replace hundreds of search and rescue helicopters in coming years.

The Washington Post, under the headline "Lockheed Team Wins Redesign Of Marine One", reports that only

Sixty-five percent of Lockheed's aircraft will be built in the United States; the transmission will be built in Italy and the blades in the United Kingdom.

Let's be clear here: Lockheed Martin is not the "US partner" of AgustaWestland. It is the Trojan Horse by which Europeans are sneaking past American government procurement restrictions on foreign purchases. It is an economic Quisling selling out Americans because it years ago lost its own technological edge.
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How big is this contract, and future contracts that might be awarded to "Lockheed"? The BBC reports:

Victory for the Anglo-Italian design is expected to help Lockheed's bids for up to $6bn in upcoming defence contracts.

A US Air Force contract for up to 194 top-of-the-range helicopters is expected to be negotiated in 2006.

And the US Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security [note the irony? our Homeland Security is to be in the hands of Europeans!] are reported to be searching for a supplier for about 200 helicopters.

Lockheed spokesman Mike Drake denied his firm's product would be a European product: "The helicopters will be built in Texas and customised in New York and maintained in the US," he said.

Bull. 35% of every plane, including its technological heart, would be built in Europe and merely assembled by Americans in English-speaking maquiladoras, no more dignified than the assembly plants in Mexico that line our southern border. It is appropriate that the major part of these maquiladoras will be in Texas. Texas. Why does that sound familiar? Texas. Hmm.
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In Texas, Lockheed can take advantage of low wage rates driven down by the easy availability of Mexican labor, since U.S. Government contracts require wage rates that are competitive LOCALLY. That means that if you put plants in low-wage areas, a rich Government contractor can pay its workers the same crappy wages everyone around them makes. As for Owego, New York, it is in the depressed "southern tier" of counties along the Pennsylvania border, so again employers can take advantage of the economically distressed.
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I did some searches at Salary.com, comparing wage rates in manufacturing for my own metro area, Newark, New Jersey, as against Owego, New York and Amarillo and Fort Worth, Texas, the three localities where the U.S. portion of the helicopter manufacturing contract will be performed. In descending order, Owego pays 91% what a Newarker could expect to make, Fort Worth pays 88%, and Amarillo 81%. In actual dollar terms, a "Floor Assembler I" can expect $26,298 in Newark, $24,009 in Owego, $23,238 in Fort Worth, and $21,535 a year in Amarillo. A "Floor Assembler III" could expect $38,928 in Newark, $35,540 in Owego, $34,399 in Fort Worth and $31,875 in Amarillo, the same 91%, 88%, and 81% of Newark pay rates. And Newark isn't even at the top of pay rates. A Floor Assembler I could expect to make $26,415 in Queens, an Outer Boro of New York City; $27,069 in Oakland, California (a semi-depressed area across the bay from San Francisco), $27,325 in Manhattan, NYC, and $27,559 in San Francisco proper.
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Fully 35% of the value of each helicopter will go to Europeans, whereas 0% of the tax moneys to pay for it comes from Europeans.
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Bush's war can now be seen as not just catastrophic to Iraqis but also hugely costly to Americans, not just in the $200 billion and more already anticipated in direct costs, but also in Dubya's opening U.S. defense procurement to Europeans to bribe them to help us out of his quagmire.
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He can't win European "allies" to his side by appeals to principle — because he betrayed our shared principles — so now he's trying to bribe them by sending BILLIONS of dollars of defense contracts to Europe, now, and probably elsewhere later.
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He's pretending that it is in American taxpayers' interest to buy the 'best' helicopter, even if it is from Europe. The decision was justified on the basis that the European copter would have more room for electronics. Oh? Earlier this month the Europeans showed off the new Airbus "superjumbo" airliner, the A380, capable of carrying almost twice as many passengers as Boeing's 747 at a cost (Airbus claims) "up to one-fifth below" that of the 747. Surely the Bush Administration should replace the 747 with the A380 as Air Force One if it is a superior plane, shouldn't it?
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No. The A380 hasn't flown so much as an inch (oh, sorry: millimeter — we're all going to have to adopt European measures ere long), so we don't even know IF it will fly, much less how efficiently it will run. And the President doesn't need a passenger capacity of 555 (the standard configuration) or 800 (the most that airlines can cram aboard the superjumbo). But even if the A380 really were to prove a superior plane, should the President of the United States make a European plane into Air Force One? I don't think so.
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How is it in our interest to send BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars to European companies and show the President of the United States flying around in a European plane? Are we a banana republic with no prestigious aerospace industry of our own?
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Taxes are moneys taken by force out of the pockets of working people, who are struggling to remain "working people". Under the globalist Republicans, those dollars stolen from Americans are now to be shipped off by the billions to Europe, along with our jobs!
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If defense and other GOVERNMENT contracts are to be thrown open to the whole world, let us be clear, there will be nothing left for American workers. Everything will go overseas. Everything. There is NOTHING the U.S. can produce more cheaply than China, India, even Europe. Nothing.
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The Republicans don't care about Americans. Capital has no country, profit no nationality, greed no patriotism. Dubya is a "true-red Amurican" — if that sounds odd, it should; the phrase is "true-blue American", and the Blue States are the very heart of this country. Dubya wraps himself in the flag — a flag that may soon be made overseas, even for military brigades all over the planet as his Administration pursues a policy of worldwide aggression for globalism — and the redneck fools he got to vote for him three months ago are now being sold out for people who will work even cheaper than ignorant Southerners.
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January 28, 2005 is another date that will live in infamy: the day the President of the United States threw open American defense contracts to foreigners.
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It is appropriate that the map that networks have used in recent presidential elections show Republican-won states in red. Red for redneck, red for redcoats. The British are coming! The British are coming! And George Bush has thrown open the gates, not to admission of Britain as several states of the Union, but to invasion by European companies who will now carry off American taxpayer dollars by the planeload.





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