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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

Pay to Play on the Right

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  May 26th, 2010 at 07:30 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I have taken the unusual step of deleting a post from the front page.

The post related to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and a dispute over the engine for it.

The Obama Administration and Pentagon support a Pratt & Whitney effort to stop General Electric from making an alternative engine. Citizens Against Government Waste is highlighting this as an abuse.

ABC News has the story here and it is rather anti-GE and anti-the alternative engine.

I knew there was something I was supposed to remember about the story, but I couldn’t put my finger on it, so I highlighted it because Citizens Against Government Waste is spotlighting this issue.

Well, I should have dug around RedState.

Turns out Streiff has done yeoman’s work documenting the pay-to-play scam CAGW has entered into with Pratt & Whitney.

On CAGW’s action alert page there is no mention at all of the fact that Pratt & Whitney is paying CAGW for this effort.

I get it. Lots of organizations will go in on an issue when they agree about the issue and the other entity involved is willing to help cover costs. But that should at least be disclosed.

Likewise, the Heritage Foundation has raised serious issues about giving Pratt & Whitney a monopoly on the engine. Unlike CAGW, Heritage is not getting bought off to make a case.

More troubling, it looks like Brian Ross and ABC News bought the CAGW spin hook, line, and sinker, but having never mentioned getting the story from CAGW despite a lot of their story mimicking CAGW bullet points, GE has a point by point rebuttal that actually makes a lot of sense.

But the overall issue here is this one: Citizens Against Government Waste could be an honest broker, but is lining its pockets with corporate money by taking on an issue in pay-to-play without disclosing it.

I can’t treat a group like that credibly. Neither should you.

Pay-to-Play happens a lot on the right and I try never to recommend conservatives involve themselves with organizations that do it. I’ll be adding CAGW to that list.

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COMMENTS

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  • SteveLA

    The other issue that PW probably does not want to see much discussion on is the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) aspects.

    JSF is being sold to something like a dozen US allies, and the sales potential for those countries is a probably bigger than the direct DoD sales. There’s also the aspect with FMS that some countries have deals with GE or PW or who ever for their national flag carriers and going with one over the other ties into those commercial arrangements.

  • klondike

    a lengthy shower is going to be necessary.

    I’m not looking forward to this.

  • JadedByPolitics

    then it would have been fine but really from now on when I see Citizen’s Against Government Waste I will truly KNOW they mean someone who is not paying them is the problem and NOT REALLY Government Waste. Once again it shows that the problems inherent for the next couple of election cycles is a CLEANSING of all these “insiders” and affiliated groups to be made irrelevant.

    It really BURNS ME that G.E. would benefit at all because that is a company I would like to see #FAIL because of their lies and collusion with Government entities to get RICHER off the backs of hard working Americans for their “climate” CRAP! but it appears CAGW is just as slimy as they are!

  • From ME to You

    I guess that’s why ABC is piling on!!

  • kowalski

    I’ve read both posts and I trust you guys.

    I didn’t like this whole CAGW/Pratt&Whitney connection since I started having the ads pop up in my browser and I think Streiff really did an excellent job tracing it all back. At the very least, this work raises some serious questions about how P&W conducts its business.

  • SteveLA

    Great pictures over on Gizmodo…

    If you’re in DC, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum out at Dulles has one of the two prototypes that flew in the fly off on display, the vertical take off variant actually.

  • Return to Revolution

    who owns 50% of NBC. Comcast-NBC-GE = corporatist axis of evil. At least Comcast’s CEO doesn’t acutally work for the WH, though one of their execs (former Rendell goon David Cohen) raised millions for Obama in 08 and remains an enthusiastic advocate of fascism, even as they fight the FCC over net neutrality. But I digress…..

  • paramedichess

    Erick,
    Thanks for posting this. Too often we on the right have done the same thing that those on the left often do, which is to look the other way when those who agree with us have questionable ethics. If we are to regain power and use it for the benefit of the American people, and not just our friends, we must hold our political allies to the same (or even a higher) standard than we hold our political enemies.

  • txgho1911

    Understood RollsRoyce had an alternative engine deal done. Was that strictly for the VTOL variant with the fan turbine?

  • Locked and Loaded

    touting a GE/Rolls Royce engine, and advising listeners to call their congressman.

  • Locked and Loaded

    touting a GE/Rolls Royce engine, and advising listeners to call their congressman.

  • earlgrey

    I am pretty sure it was on an FM (non talk radio station).

  • leehazel

    The advertising for this GE/RR engine started showing upon the Internet this week.

  • chuckl

    There is more to this than the political consideration. The political decision has been made to place all of our Military air defense, except for the F-22s already built, onto the F-35. If we use only one engine supplier, we are betting our security that this engine will never have a defect that requires grounding the fleet. This is not a good bet for 20 plus years.

    Budget analysis has indicated that the second engine option would be more likely to reduce engine costs than to increase them.

    Based on performance considerations, I would prefer seeing the F-22 returned to production and at least the originally planned 750 produced. At least the F-22 would have a chance against the Sukhoi T-50 which is planned for production numbers exceeding the F-35 and will be sold to our enemies.

    For several comparisons see the following U
    RLs:

    http://www.ausairpower.net/DT-SuperBug-vs-Flanker.html

    http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Raptor.html

    http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-040309-1.html

    http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-300309-1.html

    There are many links embeded in these articles for additional information.

  • From ME to You

    It’s not super fast it’s not super maneuverable. It can do a lot of things but none of them very well. It does come in several ‘flavors” though, so it can do some ground support, but not as well as the A-10 and it can do some air superiority but not as well as the F-22.

    It does have the STOL/VTOL capability in one variant, it does that better than the AV-8, but that limits its range and payload capacity as well as its maneuverability so that makes it a better target!

    Having more than one engine design means you have to carry twice the amount of spare parts wherever you goor you have to really watch your force structure to ensure that ALL the aircraft you deploy to any one area ALL have the same engines as well as the personnel you deploy are trained on the same engine that are on the deployed aircraft.

    The other alternative is to create Air Force bases with aircraft having only one or the other engine on the aircraft assigned. Talk about a nightmare!

    I agree that if in the future a problem with the engine does come up it would affect the fleet but I hardly believe that they would suddenly start failing in large numbers.

    Engines are not used until failure but are removed and replaced on rigid schedules prior to failure. Engines that are removed are inspected and anything that shows anomalous wear or imminent failure is replaced. Repair histories are rigorously maintained and any trend is quickly looked into. The Air Force figured out a long time ago that routine maintenance was cheaper than repairing catastrophic failures. Pilots are averse to having the engines quit on them in flight and the Air Force hates picking up crashed airplanes.

    And…no one is stopping GE from developing an alternative engine. If they want to do that they can do it on their dime not ours.

    They would, of course have to reverse engineer the weight and balance requirements to match those of the current engine design. As well as the geometry of the engine so that it fits in the current design of the engine compartment and ensure that the thrust is consistent with the current design of the aircraft to maintain its published flight characteristics.

    Looks like GE is looking for a billion dollar bailout!