How Can You Tell That the Pentagon is Desparate About the JSF

Because they are demanding that Lockheed Martin, rather than the tax payers, will have to cover at least some of the costs: (Paid sucscription required)

Prolonged delays in development of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are coming home to roost for Lockheed Martin, as the Defense Department moves to force the manufacturer to bear the cost of any changes to production aircraft that could result from the thousands of hours of flight testing that still lie ahead.

Even as development has fallen behind schedule, Lockheed has continued to produce aircraft and the resulting overlap, or concurrency, has driven up the cost of the initial batches of F-35s, forcing the cutback on procurement to cover the overruns.

Crying foul 10 years after his company signed the F-35 development contract, CEO Bob Stevens revealed last month that the government has failed to reimburse Lockheed Martin for up to $1.2 billion in costs associated with low-rate initial production (LRIP) Lot 5. And those bills may not be paid until the company agrees to negotiate what Stevens says is an “unprecedented” contract provision, called a concurrency clause, for the next production lot of aircraft.

Such a clause would place the burden of financial liability on the contractor team for design changes to the LRIP 5 jets that result from discoveries made during the ongoing flight-test program. Stevens declined to outline how much liability the government is intending to place on the contractors.

…………

But while progress is being made, an October memo signed by the Pentagon’s chief tester has added to cost anxieties, indicating it could require an additional 10 months to begin F-35 pilot training, which was expected to start in the fall. It is now more likely to begin next spring, at the earliest. Further delays in pilot training could increase costs for customers who will be required to operate older fleets for a longer time until F-35s can be accepted into service. The memo adds to concerns that testing on the aircraft is too immature to proceed with pilot training and operational use.

(emphasis mine)

The problem is that the Pentagon wants the contractor to cover the costs of the post production modifications required for the early-build airframes as a result of delays in the test program.

This is an indication of desperation on the part of the Pentagon, because this jeopardizes the general's lucrative post-retirement employment with the defense contractors.

This means that the program is in enough jeopardy that DoD feels the need to get tough with their future employers, which is kicking out a leg of the Iron Triangle.

I'm beginning to think that we won't procure any more of these than we did the F-22.

And Now We Have Deliberate Police Brutality in Oakland

And now the Oakland cops have gone postal on a protester, lacerating his spleen, and then they denied medical treatment for 18 hours, and it's another vet:

A former U.S. Army Ranger and Occupy Oakland protester was in intensive care on Friday after a veterans group said he was beaten by police during clashes with demonstrators this week.

The veteran, identified as Kayvan Sabeghi, was the second former American serviceman during the past two weeks to be badly hurt in confrontations between anti-Wall Street protesters and police in Oakland.

The group Iraq Veterans Against the War said Sabeghi was detained during disturbances that erupted late on Wednesday in downtown Oakland and was charged with resisting arrest and remaining present at the place of a riot.

Highland General Hospital confirmed that Sabeghi was a patient in the intensive care unit there.

Brian Kelly, who co-owns a brew pub with Sabeghi, said his business partner served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Sabeghi told him he was arrested and beaten by a group of policemen as he was leaving the protest to go home.

"He told me he was in the hospital with a lacerated spleen and that the cops had jumped him," Kelly said. "They put him in jail, and he told them he was injured, and they denied him medical treatment for about 18 hours."

These guys really don't have a frelling clue.

Occupy Wall Street went viral after the video of the unprovoked macing of protesters, and ramped up after they fractured a guys' skull, and now this.

BTW, there is at least one video of the incident.

I wonder when it will hit Youtube.

Matt Taibbi's Take-Downs are a Thing of Beauty

Case in point is his latest on Michael Bloomberg.

Go Read.

Some Insights into the Greek Debt Crisis

First, it appears that George Papandreou's suggestion as to a referendum scared the hell out of the (Conservative New Democracy Party) to the degree that it has forced them to support the bailout, which they had maintained for political advantage.

So I'm beginning to wonder if this was a ploy to defuse the opposition's well ……… opposition ……… to the debt deal.

The other thing that I find interesting is that both Greek PM George Papandreou and opposition leader Antonis Samaras were roommates in college, specifically at Amherst College, in Massachusetts.

They, like many other world leaders (Benazir Bhutto, Radcliffe '73, and Mikheil Saakashvili, Columbia George Washington University, come to mind) are the sons and daughters of their countries elites and products of the American post-secondary education, where they hang with the future Wall Street banksters and multinational executives.

It comes as no surprise then that they support the neo-colonial policies that devastate their countries, because they have been thoroughly inculcated in the belief systems of their de facto colonizers, and so for a (small) slice of what is extracted from their countries, they mortgage their countrymen's futures.

It's not limited to US Colleges, we find similar things with other leaders and Oxbridge in the UK, particularly amongst former British possessions in Africa.  (See Mugabe, Robert)

So what these countries are left with are battles between two groups of willing participants in the raping of their countries who are just fighting for the spoils.

It's no wonder that people are drawn to populists like Hugo Chavez, who are little more than punks.

I'm beginning to think that our current international norms for finance and economics are about as effective in making the world better as leeches and bleeding were for syphilis.

It's 6 Heshvan

The 35^th anniversary of the Worst Halloween Ever.

That is all.

The Big Picture is that the Current International Regime is Anti-Democratic

That is the big picture of the fact that Greek PM Papandreou started pushing for a referendum on the Greek bailout, and was forced to back down under international pressure.

When we look at both international financial policy, and international trade policy, it is predicated on the idea that ordinary people will never support these policies, because they are simply too stupid to understand the bigger picture, and see that these policies are too their benefits.

What the very serious people don't understand is just why the ordinary people don't like this.

The fact is that we are dealing with tribal issues, and the people at the top, the ones who make these policies, have very little meaningful interaction with the people who actually produce the stuff that makes the economy work.

They go from the equivalent of Phillips-Exeter to Harvard to Wall Street to Washington to Wall Street to Washington to Wall Street to Washington ………

The reason that people don't support these policies is because they see the effects on their lives of the policies that favor multinational corporations and mega-banks, and these effects are negative, while the policy makers, who roomed with the banksters and the executives to be at college, simply have no clue as to how the other half (actually 99%) lives.

The fact that this has been aggressively sold for decades, and a society which embraced the Snuggie^® with open arms has rejected these policies.

While it is true that the commons are not universally correct, the fact that the public has continued to be extremely skeptical despite a full court press does seem to indicate that there is a disjoint between the conventional wisdom and the reality.

After all, we have advertising firms that could sell snow to Eskimos with a 6 month campaign.

Not Enough, But a Step in the Right Direction

The European Central Bank, in the first meeting since Mario Draghi replaced the clueless Jean-Claude Trichet as president, the ECB has chosen to cut rates.

Seeing as how the whole world, and in particularly the increasingly desperate cluster f%$# that is the Euro Zone, are in the the midst of a liquidity crisis/debt overhang where cheap money won't do much.

That being said, the fact that Draghi did not wait a few months in order to save face for the ECB, and that he's actually warning of an upcoming recession indicates that he is a bit more of a "reality based" than your typical central banker, who typically only give a sh%$ about inflation.

It should be noted that this is actually a significant departure from prior ECB policy, because Draghi appears to be sending a message that he will, at least temporarily ignoring the (under the current circumstances absolutely absurd) 2% inflation target.