Lockheed Martin has one client: the US government. They make no products which are sold to the general public. But they employ an army of lobbyists who have Congress men and women in their pocket. They insist on funding Lockheed Martin products like the F-22 Raptor fighter plane even though it has proven to be a piece of shit that the Pentagon doesn't even want. They lobby for war and the weapons of war at every turn because it is profitable for Lockheed Martin and Wall Street demands higher and higher profits. And like Northrup-Grumman, their partner in crime, they run TV ads to lobby and convince the general public that they are the good guys looking out for our interests. Northrup-Grumman sells no products to the general public. Yet they besiege us with their TV ads. To what end? Here's why. They want the TV networks to be dependent on a huge hunk of cash from them. This makes it less likely that any of the news magazines like Meet the Press or 60 Minutes will ever do a critical study of their industry with the extra added benefit of creating a warm, fuzzy feeling in the general public for their industry which is war. There is the same rationale for the oil, coal and gas industries. Their TV ads essentially amount to lobbying the TV industry and the general public. This is in addition to the amounts of money they spend lobbying Congress.
This is from "Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex," by William D Hartung:
It is a striking ad. An intimidating combat aircraft soars in the background, with the slogan up front in all capital letters: 300 MILLION PROTECTED, 95,000 EMPLOYED. The ad—for Lockheed Martin's F-22 Raptor fighter plane—was part of the company's last-gap effort to save one of its most profitable weapons from being "terminated," as they say in standard budget parlance. The pro—F-22 ad ran scores of times, in print, on political websites, and even in Washington's Metro. One writer at the Washington Post joked that at a time when many companies had been cutting back on their advertising budgets, Lockheed Martin's barrage of full-page ads in February and March 2009 was the main thing keeping the paper afloat.
When an arms company starts bragging about how many jobs its pet project creates, hold on to your wallet. It often means that the company wants billions of dollars' worth of your tax money for a weapon that costs too much, does too little, and may not have been needed in the first place. So it is with the Raptor, which at $350 million per plane is the most expensive combat aircraft ever built. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has suggested that the F-22 needs to be cut because even with wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has never been used in combat. In fact, in its first "mission"—flying to Japan for deployment at a US air base there—the plane had technical difficulties and had to land in Hawaii, far short of its final destination.
So the plane is a piece of shit, but it creates jobs, jobs, jobs. And jobs are what the country needs, right? And more profits for Lockheed Martin and higher salaries for Lockheed Martin's CEO. Not to mention the lobbying industry. Those poor suckers need jobs too—desperately.
Hartung continues:
But Lockheed Martin insists that the Raptor's unique capabilities more thsn justify its huge price tag. For example, did you know that it is the "first and only 24/7/365 All-Weather Stealth Fighter"? That it has a radar signature "approximately the size of a bumblebee"? Or that it provides "first-look, first-shot, first-kill air dominance capability"? Lockheed Martin has a lot to say, and it is serious about selling you its most profitable plane. How else to explain the statement from the F-22 Raptor web page that, "when we meet the enemy, we want to win 100—0, not 51—49"? It is hard to take this claim seriously. The Raptor has never seen combat—and it may never do so given that it was designed to counter a Soviet plane that was never built—so at best the score is 0—0. But the statement has a grain of truth—it describes Lockheed Martin's lobbying efforts a whole lot more accurately than its fighter plane's mission success rate.
The company never reached its goal of 100—0 support in the Senate, but not for lack of trying. As soon as there was even a whimper of a possibility that the F-22 program would be stopped at "only" 187 planes—about what the Pentagon wanted, but only half of what the Air Force and Lockheed Martin were striving for—the company started racking up big numbers on its side. By early 2009, months in advance of President Obama's first detailed budget submission to Congress—which would decide the fate of the F-22—Lockheed Martin and its partners in the F-22 project (Pratt & Whitney and Boeing) had lined up forty-four Senators and two hundred members of the House of Representatives to sign on to a "save the Raptor" letter. A similar letter was sent by twelve governors—including prominent Democrats like David Paterson of New York and Ted Strickland of Ohio. R. Thomas Buffenbarger, the president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), also weighed in. The governors' letter reads as if it was drafted by Lockheed Martin, which it probably was. "We urge you," it begins, "to sustain 95,000 jobs by certifying continued production of the F-22 Raptor—a defense program that is critical to our defense industrial base." After describing it as "the world's only operationsl 5th Generation fighter" (a popular Lockheed Martin description of the Raptor), the letter returns to the jobs argument asking the President to "carefully consider the economic impact of your decision."
Ah, there it is—their ace in the hole— the jobs argument! How can we cut the bloated military-industrial complex without eliminating jobs and making the unemployment situation even worse? Think of all those college graduates—engineers and the like—who work in the military-industrial complex. Think of all those good middle class jobs! Why Lockheed Martin is doing us all a favor by hiring Americans when every other corporation is outsourcing jobs to China. Lockheed Martin claims that the F-22 program created jobs in forty-four states including 132 lobbying jobs in Washington, DC. But other "job creators" don't have the well-oiled lobbying machine that Lockheed Martin can bring to bear. It has a bevy of ex-Senators and ex-Congressmen in its fold ready to deploy at a moment's notice to all the watering holes in Washington, DC and even to the House steam room to argue with this Senator or that Congressman about the fact that the country needs the F-22 Raptor or whatever other piece of crap weapon Lockheed Martin is selling lest the economic and defense base of the country fall into disrepute and disrepair.
...Lockheed Martin pulled out all the stops, deploying Republican ex-Senator Matt Mattingly of Georgia and former House members like Democrats "Buddy" Darden of Georgia and G. V. "Sonny" Montgomery of Mississippi as paid lobbyists. From a luxury box at a Baltimore Orioles game to the steam room of the House gymnasium—fair game to ex-members like Montgomery and Darden—the urgent message went out that allowing funding to slip for even a few months might strike a devastating blow to our security and our economy. Representative James Moran (D-VA) was taken aback when Sonny Montgomery confronted him in the House steam room: "We sat on the sauna naked together and talked about the F-22.... That's the advantage former members have."
Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff has nothing on these guys. In fact Abramoff is coming forward, now that he's out of jail, and blowing the whistle on how the lobbying industry works. It's job security for ex-Senators and ex-Congressmen and their staffers. The promise of a lucrative job after the member or staffer exits Congress is enough to make the current House and Senate members drool at the possibilities. They can come back to Washington at triple their Congressional salary and use the same House steam room that they used before and sit naked chitchatting with their old buddies ... about the F-22 Raptor among other things. "Hey what did you think about that blonde who waited on us yesterday?"
But Lockheed Martin and their lobbyists never give up. They are a force of nature. Other forms of Federal spending—like education, health care, mass transit and weatherizing buildings—need to be cut so that dollars can be provided for Lockheed Martin and the military-industrial complex. These other prospects for Federal dollars lack the well-oiled lobbying machine of Lockheed Martin.
The F-22's growing cost caused its own concerns. It was so expensive that it threatened to crowd out spending on other combat aircraft. It was a question of blowing billions now on a plane with no clear mission or saving up some money to buy the planes of the future.
Why save up money when you have a cash cow in progress. A cash cow in the hand is worth two in the bush. And then there is the time honored boondoggle of the military-industrial complex—the cost-plus contract. The government pays all costs and then adds a fixed percentage profit over and above that so that Lockheed Martin's CEO and investors do not have to starve. This gives Lockheed Martin every incentive to run up the costs after they low bid and receive the contract. This is called "gold-plating."
At this point the plan was to buy 339 planes for a projected cost of over $62 billion—up from an initial proposal to buy 750 planes for a total price of $25 billion. That's less than half as many planes for well over twice the price. How could this happen? Unfortunately, all too easily. First, Lockheed Martin put in a low bid, knowing full well that the planes would cost far more than its initial estimates. This approach, known in the business as "buying in," allows a company to get the contract first and then jack up the price later. Then the Air Force [their partner in crime] engaged in what is known as "gold plating"—setting new and ever more difficult performance requirements after the plane was already in development. Last but not least, Lockheed Martin simply screwed up certain aspects of the plane's production, even as it gouged the Pentagon on costs for overhead and spare parts. ...this is a time-tested approach that virtually guarantees massive cost overruns.
And those cost overruns lead to higher profits because of the cost-plus contract. The tax paying public is being ripped off by the military-industrial complex to pay for the largest military budget in the world, more than all the rest of the world's military budgets combined. But don't forget about all those well paying middle class jobs it provides. Why the unemployment rate would go up by several points if all of a sudden the Pentagon's budget were to be cut in half back to the level it was when George W Bush came to office in 2000. So the US is stuck in an ever increasing spiral of militarization and mobilization for war simply because it provides so many jobs and such high profits. No rational conversion to a peace time budget could ever take place without a massive transfer by the Federal government of funds spent on war to funds spent on peaceful projects like health, education and welfare. Because the US can spend in an unlimited fashion on war and the preparations for war without any bloviating from the right wing, but as soon as it spends on health, education and welfare—well, that's socialism. The old socialism argument trumps everything, and we're right back to the point that spending on war is the only way to keep unemployment down and to create profits. That's capitalism, don't you know?
