lunes, 31 de marzo de 2008

Documentary about the Israeli Lobby

Here you have the complete documentary on one of the most powerful interest groups on earth. You can see how the israeli lobby owns Washington, specially in what concerns to the foreign policy. Mr McCain is one of the best friends of this group, but in the videos you may see also good old Obama in the AIPACs parties, watch it...

Israeli Lobby 1/5



Israeli Lobby 2/5



Israeli Lobby 3/5



Israeli Lobby 4/5



Israeli Lobby 5/5

European policy-makers know how to do it

Brussels looks more like Washington everyday. Just like former law makers in US go from public service to the corporate world in reward to their loyal service to special interest, comunitarian authorities find really profitable to favor corporate lobby....

Examples brought by Alter EU:

Jean-Paul Mingasson, former Director-General of the European Commission’s Directorate General (DG) for Enterprise and Industry (2002 – 2004) and for Budget (1989 – 2002) left the European Commission in 2004 to work as General Adviser to BusinessEurope (former UNICE), the confederations of European industrialists. During his office at the EC, Mr Mingasson was personally involved in the EU’s revised legislation for the regulation of chemicals in Europe: REACH, against which he begun lobbying as General Adviser to BusinessEurope.

James Currie, Former Director of DG Environment and responsible for Nuclear Safety and Civil Protection (1997-2001) has become, since then, a paid Non-Executive Director of British
Nuclear Fuels;

Leon Brittan, former EU Trade Commissioner, became a consultant on World Trade Organisation (WTO) issues at the law firm Herbert Smith, vice-chairman of the investment bank UBS Warburg and advisory director at Unilever just a year after leaving the European
Commission.

Info available at ater eu brouchure: here

domingo, 30 de marzo de 2008

The Buying of the President 2008

I really recommend you to check out this new project of the Center for Public Integrity, it is amazing. It has detailed information on the campaign contributions, the donors, the candidates, everything. Every report, on its original version, interesting links, bio, etc. It is really complete. What really called my attention was the Hanna Project, a really graphic history of the relations between campaigns and money in US history. Check it out

Politico.com: McCain ties with Banking Lobby

Not only that his campaign staff include former lobbyist from the aeronautical world, now we know that one of the most important persons of Mr. McCain´s campaign team is a former lobbyist that advocated against legislation that could have prevented the current financial crisis.

Politico.com has released an interesting note ("McCain guru linked to subprime crisis") about McCain´s friend and his ties with Banking Lobby:

The general co-chairman of John McCain’s presidential campaign, former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), led the charge in 1999 to repeal a Depression-era banking regulation law that Democrat Barack Obama claimed on Thursday contributed significantly to today’s economic turmoil.

“A regulatory structure set up for banks in the 1930s needed to change because the nature of business had changed,” the Illinois senator running for president said in a New York economic speech. “But by the time [it] was repealed in 1999, the $300 million lobbying effort that drove deregulation was more about facilitating mergers than creating an efficient regulatory framework.”

Gramm’s role in the swift and dramatic recent restructuring of the nation’s investment houses and practices didn’t stop there.

A year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the old regulations, Swiss Bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. Two years later, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS’s new investment banking arm.

Later, he became a major player in its government affairs operation. According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006.

During those years, the mortgage industry pressed Congress to roll back strong state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages.

For his work, Gramm and two other lobbyists collected $750,000 in fees from UBS’s American subsidiary. In the past year, UBS has written down more then $18 billion in exposure to subprime loans and other risky securities and is considering cutting as many as 8,000 jobs..... (See more)

jueves, 27 de marzo de 2008

Alter-EU warns on european rule-making process.

The european lobbyist resist themselves to public exposure. Alter-EU, the european watchdog for lobbying activities, is calling the attention on the current process of creating norms to control de lobby in Brussels

Commission’s Expert Groups dominated by industry

  • Brussels, March 25 – Industry lobbyists are dominating the European law-making process, campaigners warned today with the publication of a new report analysing the membership of a number of the European Commission’s Expert Groups. What is more, the Commission is not being transparent about membership of these groups researchers say, preventing public accountability.

ALTER-EU – a coalition of 160 organisations concerned with transparency within Europe – is calling on the European Commission to dissolve some of its Expert Groups because of the dominance of industry lobbyists.

Its report "Secrecy and corporate dominance - a study on the composition and transparency of European Commission Expert Groups" reveals that industry controls a number of the Commission’s most controversial Expert Groups, including advisory groups on issues such as “biotechnology”, “clean coal” and “car emissions”.

Expert Groups are established by the Commission to provide advice on the development of new laws and policies, giving group members considerable power over EU policies and legislation, the report says.

ALTER-EU warns that public interest may be at risk given the predominance of industry representatives on some Expert Groups. In a study of Expert Groups advising on some of the most controversial issues, it found that industry representatives made up more than 50% of the membership of one in four of the groups surveyed. Almost two thirds of the groups were unbalanced and just 32% of the groups were composed of members representing a wide range of interests.

Report author Yiorgos Vassalos of Corporate Europe Observatory said:
“Expert Groups are responsible for shaping policies on some of the most controversial issues being dealt with by the European Commission. Information about who has access in this crucial initial stage of decision making is not made public, but our research shows that industry representatives are playing an important role. These groups should act in the public interest, but it appears that some are being allowed to further their own commercial interests.”

Information about the make-up and work of the different Expert Groups is not currently published by the Commission, with an online register only including very limited information as to who is represented on the groups.

Using the “access-to-documents” directive, researchers were able to obtain more details, but crucial information was still refused for commercial, security or ‘privacy’ reasons.

The survey shows that the Commission failed to provide necessary information. In 34% of all cases, there was no reply at all to the information request while in another 34% the Commission only provided partial information.

Paul de Clerck of Friends of the Earth Europe said:
“The Commission seems unwilling to provide information about who is on its Expert Groups, and in some cases does not even appear to know whether groups exist or not. This reveals an appalling attitude to transparency and public accountability in the law-making process.”

The EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso promised last year to make information available on Expert Group membership, following pressure from the European Parliament. In February this year the European Parliament stepped up pressure and called for an investigation into the composition of Expert Groups following further concerns about the lack of transparency.

ALTER-EU says that Expert Groups dominated by industry should be dissolved and methods must be found to prevent privileged access of Expert Groups. The Coalition is also demanding immediate disclosure of Expert Group membership, as promised by the Commission for this year..
ENDS

Contact:
Paul de Clerck, Friends of the Earth Europe, ph: 32-494380959, email: paul@milieudefensie.nl
Yiorgos Vassalos, Corporate Europe Observatory, ph: 30-6973524282, email: yiorgos@corporateeurope.org

For the full report: http://www.alter-eu.org/en/publications/secrecy-and-corporate-dominance-...

Notes:

(1) The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) is a coalition of over 160 civil society groups, trade unions, academics and public affairs firms concerned with the increasing influence exerted by corporate lobbyists on the political agenda in Europe and the resulting loss of democracy in EU decision-making.

(2) For more details on the role of Expert Groups and the online register of groups see: http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regexpert/

(3) The European Parliament called for an investigation by the Commission in its "Report on transparency in financial matters" (2007/2141(INI))

(4) Summary findings from the report:

Access to Documents:

  • In 34% of the cases, the European Commission failed to provide any information about the Expert Groups;
  • In a further 34% of all cases the European Commission only provided partial information.
  • The Commission only provided a complete and satisfactory response
    in 32% of the cases.
  • In just 36% of the cases the European Commission provided information
    within the prescribed 15 working days.
  • In only 43% of the cases the European Commission provided names
    of organisations and individuals that were represented in Expert Groups.

Membership of the Expert Groups:

  • Over 25% of the Expert Groups surveyed appear to be controlled by corporate interests: more than half of all their members (including governments) are industry representatives.
  • In 64% of the Expert Groups studied, business interests appear to be over-represented: industry representatives make up more than 50% of the non-Commission and non-government members.
  • Only 32% of the Expert Groups sampled appear to have a more balanced allocation of stakeholders.
  • One Expert Group (4%) was unbalanced in favour of NGOs.

The report was based on a survey of 44 (out of more than 1200) Expert Groups that were chosen from a number of key policy areas that are particularly important both to the EU’s legislative role and the need for the wider public interest to be reflected in policy-making: environment, energy, agriculture, consumers, health, water and biotechnology.

The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation in the European Union, www.alter-eu.org

WSJ: The Farm Lobby strikes back

BOUNTIFUL HARVEST
Farm Lobby Beats Back
Assault On Subsidies
By LAUREN ETTER and GREG HITT
March 27, 2008; Page A1

With grain prices soaring, farm income at record highs and the federal budget deficit widening, the subsidies and handouts given to American farmers would seem vulnerable to a serious pruning.

But it appears that farmers, at least so far, have succeeded in stopping the strongest effort in years to shrink the government safety net that doles out billions of dollars to them each year.
[go to interactive]

"At some point, you have to step back and ask, 'Does this make sense for the American taxpayer?'" says Rep. Ron Kind. The Democrat from Wisconsin sponsored a measure that would have slashed about $10 billion over five years in subsidies -- and saw it get crushed on the House floor.

Grain prices are on a tear this year. On Wednesday, corn prices closed at $5.52 a bushel, up from about $2.20 in 2006, and near the all-time high of $5.70 set earlier this month. U.S. farm income, buoyed by demand for grain from rising middle classes around the globe and the biofuels industry, is projected to reach a record $92.3 billion this year. Still, farmers are expected to collect $13 billion in federal subsidies this year, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department, including payments for commodities, land conservation and emergency assistance.

A little more than a year ago, the stars appeared to be aligned for significant changes to the complex piece of legislation known as the farm bill, which allots billions of dollars to farmers and landowners to help stabilize grain prices, make products more competitive abroad and provide a plentiful food supply.
FARM FIGHT

• Tilling the Ground: As farm income is rising, Congress is finishing a bill that will provide farmers billions in subsidies.
• Sowing Seeds: Critics want major changes in the decades-old safety net. But they've seen powerful push-back from farmers and allies who say measures are needed to protect during cyclical downturns.
• The Harvest: Absent scaling back of support, farm subsidies will add to budget deficit and hinder trade talks.

President Bush wanted to cut subsidies. California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who had backed a high-profile effort to reshape the system in 2002, had become House Speaker. And a broad coalition of advocacy groups was assembling to press lawmakers.

But now serious reform is likely to be left behind like corn husks flung from a combine. As Congress tries to finish writing the new farm bill, the final tab is likely to be larger than the 2002 bill, which totaled more than $260 billion.

How did it happen?

Influential interest groups -- which had toyed with supporting changes -- cut deals to get their own piece of the action. Lawmakers who supported an overhaul peeled off as the debate moved into the election year. Historical alliances between rural and urban lawmakers proved difficult to untie.
[chart]

The agribusiness industry plowed more than $80 million into lobbying last year, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks spending on lobbying. Much of that was focused on the farm bill.

"We got rolled," says Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who worked closely with Rep. Kind. "The agriculture community circled the wagons."

Farmers and their allies in Congress say a victory is all to the good because the bill, which is typically renewed every five years, is designed to provide farmers with a safety net through cycles of boom and bust. The heady times of the 1970s, when crop prices soared as the Soviet Union gobbled up American grain, devolved into the farm crisis of the 1980s, leaving farmers buried in debt.

"We all know with the good times will come times that are less fortunate than now," says Dale Hadden, a grain farmer in Jacksonville, Ill., who recently traveled to Washington to talk with lawmakers about farm policy.

The farm bill has its roots in the Great Depression, when about a quarter of the U.S. population lived on farms and endured extraordinary economic hardship. As first conceived in the 1930s, the bill was designed to be a temporary boost to farm income.

It has since evolved into a thicket of hard-to-cut programs, providing payments and special loans to farmers to counteract swings in commodity prices and ensure market stability, as well as income. Subsidies flow to growers of corn, wheat and cotton, among other commodities. The legislation has also become a vehicle for funding food stamps, land conservation and school lunches, to name a few things, attracting supporters whose constituents have little or nothing to do with farms.
[photo]
Minnesota Corn Growers Association
Collin Peterson (D., Minn.) and Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) in August 2006 with Curt Watson, the former president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association.

That has helped create a powerful alliance that makes the farm bill difficult to challenge. The bloc helps ensure all programs in the legislation live on, when they might be vulnerable if considered separately. The 2002 farm bill tab was one of the most expensive ever, with a yearly payout that roughly totaled what the federal government appropriates annually for the Education Department.

Today, farmers make up less than 1% of the U.S. population, and agriculture production is dominated by large, industrial farms that have annual sales of $1 million or more. In 2006, average farm household income was $77,654, or about 17% more than average U.S. household income, according to the Department of Agriculture. Average farm household income is expected to be about $90,000 this year. Current law allows subsidies to farmers with annual adjusted gross income of as much as $2.5 million.

"If you're providing benefits to the wealthiest Americans, that's not a safety net," said Chuck Connor, deputy agriculture secretary and the Bush administration's lead farm-bill negotiator. "We felt that was fundamentally wrong."

Farmers argue that it's worth supporting a vital part of the U.S. economy. "What's important for the overall economy, and our piece of it in America, is maintaining strong production agriculture," says Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Costly Combines

Agriculture and related industries, including processed food and beverages, contribute about 5% of America's annual gross domestic product, according to the Agriculture Department. Farmers say critics who focus on millionaire growers don't account for how difficult farming can be, with unpredictable weather, foreign competitors who get government support and the large amount of money it takes to farm.

The price of a new combine, for example, can exceed $300,000. Costs for seed, land rent and fertilizer have been rising swiftly along with prices of wheat, corn and soybeans.
[chart]

"There's a lot of goodwill in the American public for the American farmer," says Ralph Grossi, president of the American Farmland Trust, a land conservation organization that has worked with the farm lobby on the farm bill. Farmers are seen as a "hard-working, salt-of-the-earth, core part of our culture."

An effort was made to overhaul farm programs in 1996, when grain prices were high. That year, Congress enacted the Freedom to Farm Act, which was supposed to give farmers more control over production and planting decisions, while moving away from federal support.

Those efforts were largely abandoned soon after the bill became law, when a downturn in the farm economy prompted lawmakers to pass emergency-relief bills. By 2002, when the next farm bill was being written, big changes were off the agenda.

At the time, President Bush, in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attack, applauded the "generous" bill. He said "the success of America's farmers and ranchers is essential to the success of the American economy."

Mr. Bush would later rue signing the 2002 bill, which hampered efforts to reach a deal in long-running global trade talks launched in Doha, Qatar, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. In those still ongoing negotiations, poor countries -- whose economies are often dominated by agriculture -- are complaining U.S. subsidies give American farmers unfair advantages in the global marketplace.

In January 2007, as Democrats took power on Capitol Hill, the administration proposed a sharp break with past farm bills. The plan emphasized the need for spending on ethanol and other biofuels, conservation and rural development. Most important, it proposed big cutbacks in farm subsidies.

The goal was to target more benefits at farmers who work the land and need financial assistance, while weaning benefits away from the well-to-do. Recent recipients include 92-year-old David Rockefeller Sr., heir to oil-baron John D. Rockefeller. He received $554,000 in subsidies from 1995 to 2005 for farm operations and land conservation in New York, according to a spokesman for Mr. Rockefeller and government data compiled by the Environmental Working Group, which is lobbying for an overhaul of farm programs. The spokesman says Mr. Rockefeller has reinvested about $600,000 into the community where his farm is located, and that his late wife, Peggy, loved to farm and raised cattle. "She was on the tractor and everything," he says.

Among other things, Mr. Bush proposed to end payments to producers with adjusted gross incomes greater than $200,000, instead of the $2.5 million under current law.

At the same time, disparate advocacy groups came together and began pressing for change. The loose-knit alliance included the National Black Farmers Association, which felt the subsidy system had ignored black farmers; the faith-based Bread for the World; and Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group advocating fiscal responsibility. "We decided to put on a game," says Washington lobbyist Rick Swartz, who organized the alliance.

Some groups argued that farm subsidies hurt poor, unsubsidized farmers in the developing world. Others argued the programs can't be justified with the federal budget deficit as large as it is. Still others blamed the commodities subsidized in the farm bill for contributing to obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Antipoverty group Oxfam America tapped into a grass-roots network around the country to raise awareness of the issue. It paid for television ads that ran in the nation's capital and in targeted states, including Minnesota, home to Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.

The farm lobby already was fighting back. Led by the American Farm Bureau Federation, with more than six million members nationwide, the pro-subsidy force includes trade associations representing farmers of corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans, sugar, rice and peanuts. Many of these groups have their own lobbyists and entire teams devoted to farm-bill strategy.

Equally important are the thousands of smaller farmers who take time off to travel to Capitol Hill to lobby.

Through the spring of 2007, roughly 3,000 Farm Bureau members came to Washington to lobby lawmakers as part of a well-organized "fly in." The farmers found receptive ears on the House and Senate agriculture committees that write the farm bill.

Soon after the Bush proposal was unveiled, Mr. Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, vowed "to make sure that we protect the safety net." His committee proposed to lower the income limit on payments to $1 million from $2.5 million, and to $500,000 for beneficiaries who don't earn at least two-thirds of their income from farming. He agreed to additional changes, including one that would bar farmers from collecting multiple payments by setting up affiliate corporate entities.

The safety net was essentially left intact. Basic support for commodity programs remained.

'Good First Step'

As the measure headed to the House floor in July, advocates of reform made a last-ditch bid for support, appealing to Speaker Pelosi. But the California Democrat sided with Mr. Peterson of the House Agriculture Committee. The year before, he'd ushered Mrs. Pelosi around a popular farm festival in Minnesota, where she mingled with farmers and ate pork chops on a stick.

To shore up support for the bill, especially among urban lawmakers, Chairman Peterson -- with the speaker's blessing -- made sure more money was added for nutrition and conservation, among other things. A Pelosi spokesman described the House bill as a "good first step toward reforming the farm bill."

As it became clearer the farm lobby wasn't going to be stopped, groups that had considered pushing for change focused on getting a piece of the pie. One such group is the United Fresh Produce Association, which, along with other fruit and vegetable groups, is likely to win specialty-crop producers up to $2.2 billion in aid for the first time.

"We were pulled in a lot of directions," says Robert Guenther, senior vice president for public policy at the United Fresh Produce Association. But at the end of the day, "we were most concerned about getting a foothold in the farm bill."

The National Black Farmers Association agreed to support the overall bill in return for language that would help members receive settlement money from the Agriculture Department in a discrimination lawsuit.

"We are upbeat about that," says the association's president, John Boyd, who once traveled about 200 miles in a wagon pulled by two mules from Baskerville, Va., to Washington to raise awareness about farm policy. "But we lost the bigger fight, which is the subsidy fight."

The House bill passed by a vote of 231-191 in July. The Senate bill, passed in December, would eventually ratchet down the income cap to $750,000. Like the House bill, it proposes to bar farmers from collecting multiple payments, among other changes. Key members of the House and Senate are hoping to negotiate a compromise package by mid-April.

Mr. Bush has vowed to veto both bills, a threat that gives him leverage in negotiations to wring concessions on reform. At the same time, Mr. Bush is dangling the prospect of $10 billion in new spending, in return for congressional support for more aggressive changes. As an inducement, the White House has suggested it could raise its proposed income cap to $500,000 from $200,000.

But farmers are standing fast. A group of Farm Bureau members from Iowa traveled to Washington earlier this month to give lawmakers "a dose of in-your-face reality," says a spokeswoman.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120657645419967077.html?mod=hps_us_pageone

viernes, 14 de marzo de 2008

Alter-EU: What about the european lobbyists?

All are actively engaged in the EU decision-making process. Who are they? On whose behalf are they lobbying? At what price?It is now three years since the European Commission embarked on its transparency initiative. With the imminent launch of a lobbying transparency register and a code of conduct, it is crunch- time for EU lobbying transparency. Or should be.But the latest news on the register being developed by the Commission secretariat is far from reassuring. It may eventually not even contain lobbyists’ names, and only very general and limited information on how much money is spent trying to influence EU decisions.... (See more)

Politico.com: Senators do not want to kill the golden eggs duck

It sounds like a joke, but it is not. The good old law makers will not kill their most valuable source of money and power, is a fact. Once again, while the attention of the public is in the presidential race, "Senate traditionalists and small state senators teamed up to crush the politically popular push to attach an earmark moratorium to the congressional budget resolution." (See more on Politico.com)

For those who are not familiar with the term "earmark".....

According to wikipedia "In public finance, an earmark is a requirement that all or a portion of a certain source of revenue, such as a particular tax, be devoted to a specific public expenditure. For example, in the United Kingdom a tax on televisions (known as the television licence) is directly allocated to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Earmarking bypasses the normal procedure by which tax revenue is pooled in a general fund and then allocated among various government spending programs as opposed to a specific program"

Critics argue the ability to earmark Federal funds should not be part of the legislative appropriations process [3]. Tax money should be applied by Federal agencies according to objective findings of need and carefully constructed requests rather than being earmarked arbitrarily by elected officials. Supporters of earmarks however, feel that elected officials are better able to prioritize funding needs in their own districts and states and that it is more democratic for these officials to make discreet funding decisions than unelected civil servants. Critics counter that elected representatives have too much of a vested interest in their own districts and do not have the Nation's interests as a whole in mind when making these decisions with taxpayer money.

martes, 11 de marzo de 2008

Technorati

Technorati Profile

ALTER-EU rings alarm bell over Commission backtracking on lobbying transparency

Brussels, 13 February 2008 – Today, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) has sent a letter to Commission President Barroso, expressing grave concerns over the development of an EU lobbying transparency register which is to be launched by the Commission this spring. In the letter, ALTER-EU warns that it will reconsider support for the European Transparency Initiative if the Commission would indeed backtrack from key promises it has made in the context of the European Transparency Initiative.... More on: Alliance for Lobbying Transparency & Ethics Regulation

Politico.com: Biotechnology industry is afraid of competititon

The Biotechnology industry is really a non-partisan sector. It contributes with millions of dollars to both parties in Congress, and is planning to spend much more this year. They really take care about politicia´s health and welfare even thought they are very bad boys who want to take away all the laws that protects them from competition from generic drugs industry.

I will let Patrick O´connor tell you more details about this, in his piece "Biologics build lobbying army for '09", at Politico.com

WSJ reports on the Lobby War Boeing v. EADS and Northrop Grumman

Boeing to Protest Air-Force Tanker Award

By AUGUST COLE and J. LYNN LUNSFORDMarch 11, 2008; Page A3
Boeing Co. said it plans to protest the Air Force's decision to award a $40 billion contract for aerial refueling tankers to a team comprising Northrop Grumman Corp. and the parent company of rival Airbus.

The move sets up a protracted political fight over the use of foreign contractors for U.S. military jobs.

• Protest Planned: Boeing plans to file a protest over a $40 billion U.S. Air Force tanker contract won by Northrop Grumman Corp. and Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co.
• The Debate: The contract award has set off contentious debate over whether U.S. jobs will be sacrificed. Boeing said its team "found serious flaws" in the process.
• Biding Time: The Government Accountability Office has 100 days to review the protest, which could lead to a rebid.
Boeing said it will file a formal protest today for the first time this decade, asking the Government Accountability Office to review the Air Force's decision to give the contract to Northrop and European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. (See related article.)
"Our team has taken a very close look at the tanker decision and found serious flaws in the process that we believe warrant appeal," said Boeing Chairman and Chief Executive Jim McNerney in a statement. "This is an extraordinary step rarely taken by our company and one we take very seriously."
The decision to go with a European-designed Airbus A330 jet, rather than Boeing's 767 model, has set off a contentious debate over whether U.S. jobs will be sacrificed as a result. Boeing's supporters in Congress have gone on the attack against the Air Force decision.
Some Boeing backers have even suggested that the situation could hurt Republican presidential candidate John McCain, whose investigation of a previous tanker deal scuttled a contract award to Boeing and forced rebidding of the contract.
At the same time, the protest is a risky move for Boeing because it could delay delivery of tankers that an important customer -- the Air Force -- says it badly needs. Tankers are vital to the Air Force's ability to move materiel and troops during wartime, and for refueling warplanes striking targets far from home. The tanker program is the No. 1 weapons-buying priority for the service, officials have said.
The Government Accountability Office takes as long as 100 days to review the objections under a company's protest and issue a report. The GAO's findings have sometimes resulted in rebids. That was the case in a $10 billion Air Force search-and-rescue helicopter contract that was twice protested by Lockheed Martin Corp. and United Technologies Corp., parent of Sikorsky, after Boeing won it in 2006. A winner is expected this fall.
Boeing said it spent three days reviewing the Air Force's decision following a briefing it received from military officials Friday. Boeing said a "rigorous analysis" led it to conclude that a protest was warranted. "Based upon what we have seen, we continue to believe we submitted the most-capable, lowest-risk, lowest most-probable-life-cycle cost airplane as measured against the Air Force's request for proposal," Mr. McNerney said.
Northrop said in a statement late yesterday that the competition was the "most rigorous, fair and transparent acquisition process in Defense Department history" and that it wouldn't comment further until it learned more details about Boeing's planned protest.
The Air Force also declined to comment before seeing the official paperwork. Earlier in the day, an Air Force spokeswoman said the contract process was "fair and transparent."
Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that while the tanker contract was "not going to be the first contract I've seen protested," he is concerned about the potential delay in getting the planes into service. "I would hope that we could get through this as rapidly as possible," he said. "I need those tankers. That's a real military capability that I've got to have."
Boeing declined last night to provide specific details about its planned protest. However, it hinted at some of its concerns yesterday afternoon in an update it released prior to the decision to pursue an appeal.
Northrop Grumman via Associated Press
The first KC-45A aerial refueling tanker taking off.
Citing its Friday briefing with the Air Force, Boeing said it believes it fared well under the Air Force's five main criteria to evaluate bids. For example, Boeing said it received a top rating for its aircraft's "mission capability," the No. 1 factor, and said it scored very similarly in other areas to the Northrop offering. The company said subjective assessments and changes to an important analytical model contributed to the loss.
"We have serious concerns over inconsistency in requirements, cost factors and treatment of our commercial data," said Mark McGraw, the head of Boeing's tanker effort, in the statement.
In particular, Boeing said the Air Force had sought in-depth cost information on the company's modified 767 tanker offering, which is the product of work by the company's commercial and military divisions. This posed a challenge as the level of detail needed for the government's cost analysis was more than what the commercial side could offer. Boeing said the Air Force was satisfied with the data, though they were less extensive than the government expects under military contracting.
Boeing also said the Air Force made changes in its model that allowed a bigger plane to stay in the competition.
Northrop, based in Los Angeles, countered that its offering won because of its cost, past performance on other contracts, the airplane's capabilities beyond refueling and how the plane fared using a complex model assessing the plane's performance on military missions. The debriefing was "rigorous and deliberative," Northrop said. Air Force officials walked Northrop executives through their proposal yesterday to explain why it won.
Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.) applauded Boeing's decision, saying: "The Air Force's shortsighted decision to place the future of America's aerospace industry and national security in the hands of an illegally subsidized foreign competitor is simply wrong for America."
Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, whose state will have the first Airbus assembly facility in the U.S., said lawmakers should hold back from interfering in the process now. "Though I am sure there will be a great deal of rhetoric following Boeing's official protest, I firmly believe that we should follow standard contracting protocol and keep the Congress out of the procurement business," he said.
The Air Force's attempt to run an unusually transparent contracting process for the tanker was in part a result of a $23 billion contract in 2003 to lease at least 100 Boeing tankers. That lease deal failed after illegal job negotiations surfaced between an Air Force acquisitions official who oversaw Boeing contracts and a senior Boeing executive. The official, Darleen Druyun, and Boeing's former chief financial officer, Michael Sears, served time in federal prison.
--Yochi Dreazen contributed to this article.
Write to August Cole at august.cole@dowjones.com and J. Lynn Lunsford at lynn.lunsford@wsj.com

viernes, 7 de marzo de 2008

Music Lobby has suicidal tendences?

The music industry has been lobbying the the governments all around the would for decades. They want ti make us see that listen to a song without paying the rights is a felony. It is not. Intellectual property rights are not natural or constitutional rights. They are nothing more than a interference in our liberties, justified only if it is strictly necessary to the goal of fostering invention and creativity. Nevertheless, it need to be strictly justified and is not a matter of property or poor musicians dying in the streets.
They even want to commit suicide, lobbying so radio stations would be forced to pay fees for playing their songs. Are this guy completely out of their mind? They want to kill all the free publicity and marketing they recieve for being played at the radio?. Who knows what they want. Besides more and more money earned by decree.

Check out "Broadcasters, artists sing different tunes on Hill", at Politico.com

jueves, 6 de marzo de 2008

European Lobby Awards

Do not miss the European Lobby Awards

Politico.com: Poor baby Boeing is being punished by bad Uncle Sam

Boeing, Uncle Sam´s favorite corporate nephew, is crying loud because she lost a 40 billion dollar candy. It was taken by the european EADS. She thinks it is not fair that the mean Air Force nullify her contract just because they caught her giving jobs to Air Force officials that were in charge of the contract process. Poor Boeing.


Check out this article from Politico.com to see how the bad Air Force treats the good baby Boeing and gives away her candy to those europeans liberals that pretend to be against the war but would lick the floor of the Pentagon for a bit of Boeing´s candy. Bad europeans! The article: Planes, pain and lobbying deals

www.politico.com