Richie Waves

U.S. defense cut could cost billions to implement | Reuters

Evola

If we had a sitting president with even one vertebrae for a spine, he'd order all the billions of dollars in fees and penalties for breaking the multi-year contracts waived by executive order. Not even considering half the shit they're sold is of poor quality and/or doesn't work right to begin with.

Kara Spengler

So do you mind explaining how he would do that, no matter what the state you think his vertebrae are in?

If the government signed a contract that specifies you need to pay a fine if you break it guess what? If you break it you pay a fine.

BTW, an executive order extends no further than the executive branch of the US government. It means nada to a private company.

Next.

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Evola

Yes I know that if I break a contract I pay a fine. The government however can pretty much do anything it wants, including telling these war profiteers where they can shove their billions in fees and penalties. Where there's a will, there's a way.

Kara Spengler

Forget legalities since you obviously had. Do you have ANY idea what that would do to our participation in a world economy? Or even one that is just within our borders?

Talk about a sore loser.

Chip Midnight

Yeah, because a government that refuses to honor contracts would be so awesome. I can't wait to live in a country like that. In fact the government should just demand private industry do shit for it for free under penalty of imprisonment if they refuse. Who needs this democracy stuff? Let's replace the president with a king.

Joshua Nightshade

Yeah the US breaks contracts and then magicks away the associated fines. Nothing says, "I want to do business here" like the belief that your contract is just one executive order away from being toilet paper.

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Evola

C'mon, government forgets legalities all the time, for themselves and others. Where it can't be forgotten, they're rewritten. That's the nature of the beast, like it or not.


They're spineless because it's a hell of a lot easier to bend and fuck over the American people than the military industrial complex, the international banker complex, and other "special" interests, whose sole intent is to siphon as much money out of our countries as is possible*, selling our country out from under us and looting us clean, where the American people are largely defenseless and won't defend themselves in any case.


re: the world economy, we've been sent off to go down with the Titanic. Getting ourselves out of it before it finishes sinking, and rebuilding our country, would be best for us. Without the people who put our country into this mess of endless wars and debt etc. to begin with. I'm sure that would produce a lot of sore losers too, but contrary to popular belief, war profiteers don't make for a strong military, let alone a strong country. Let them go the route of that Michael Marin guy for all I care.


*I would add murdering and poisoning much of the rest of the world as well, at least as far as the military industrial complex goes. USA #1! USA #1! WOO HOO! USA! USA! USA! Let it be someone else, they're just gonna take the majority of their business to China or whoever else will take them in when there's nothing left of America to make it worth their while to stay anyways, and leaving us to clean up their mess.

Evola

I'm not arguing they should do shit for free, they should be paid for the work actually done. The government not honoring the contracts by cutting defense spending is what has them in a tizzy to begin with.

Richie Waves

Half these companies wouldnt exist only for the US government.

Void

scale and repercussions.... you're missing them.

you don't like profiteering off of destruction... we get it, right there with you...

but you don't build an assembly lines, do R&D testing, and hire gobs of workers to only to make a 2, 1, or no end items.... and that's what those penalties represent.... security to make up those costs over time. it doubly worse if you've already made the products, since they cannot be sold to anyone else.

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Evola

I get this too, and generally agree, but they make more than enough profit to cover their losses from non-payment of these fees and penalties. Much of that money made by selling us a lot of crap we don't really need, other than them producing and selling us the "need" for it themselves. (and/or to fight on behalf of foreign entities, as they're agitating against Iran and Syria now, neither of whom are any threat to the US, any more than Iraq was.) It's a racket, as such they're not entitled to our money and we shouldn't be made to be obligated to give it to them. They should be thankful for what they've already gotten. America can't afford to keep their gravy train going anymore. It's been running too many decades as it is.

Joshua Nightshade

Who's talking about military contractors? It sends a concerning message to any company in any industry that has anything to do with the government. If suddenly the government decides it's going to break a toilet paper contract and poof the fines attached to that (which any other private companies or individuals would have to pay) then toilet paper producers will think twice about making deals with the government.

Anyway, what Evola seems to be missing is that even if the fines for breaking the contracts add up initially they will even out over time in terms of not having future business with those companies.

Paying an early termination fee now but not obtaining future business still means you save money in the long term.

Cindy Claveau

Solution: when it comes time to sign new contracts, refuse to add the termination fees. If you're not buying new weapons or investing in new technology, there's no tooling costs any more.

I'm over-simplifying but I don't understand why we need $6.5 million in new contracts every day when our military budget is larger than the next 20 largest budgets in the world already.

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Evola

I can't disagree with this, it's just I think we all know this is never going to happen. Both their greed and sense of entitlement is too high to even allow it, with too many others(near entirety of politicians) bought and paid for in their service. Also, the current fees and penalties are probably rather exorbitant as well, if it's to the tune of billions of dollars - they'll try to milk as much as they can out of it.


I'd point out that the government got away with doing far worse to private companies getting them to go along with the conversion to "war production" than non-payment of fees and penalties, during ww2. They didn't have a problem touching that sacred cow of "private enterprise", when it served them best. Sauce for the goose and all, it wouldn't hardly be the end of the world the military industrial complex would paint it out to be.

Chip Midnight

Exactly. I can tell you from first hand experience what happens when the government decides not to pay its bills. I watched a very good friend of mine lose the photo processing lab and photography studio business he'd spent half his life building when Gingrich decided it would be a swell idea to shut down the government just to say fuck you to Clinton and the Democrats. Doing business with the government is difficult and risky enough already and it isn't just evil giant corporations that get burned when Uncle Sam decides it can ignore its obligations.

Jopsy Pendragon

boo hoo. They can join the ranks of the unhappy librarians, teachers, firemen, policemen, postal workers, city employees, NASA employees, , etc, etc, et-fucking-cetera.

The government has lawyers and I've seen the utter mind-blowing nuttyness that's involved in being a defense contractor... it's ream after ream of shark-eat-shark clauses and counter clauses.

They'll figure it out, but not on the cheap. But better pay a little extra this year than stay locked into a deadweight project for the next 5-10 years.

Of course, the loss of all those jobs won't help stimulate the economy any. *sigh*

Evola

If toilet paper companies aren't charging $30 for a roll of single ply tp, and selling the government 300x more than it could actually ever need, they should have nothing to worry about, despite any cries to the contrary. If they are charging that much, because their lobbying and campaign contributions etc allowed them to get away with it, and services have to be continually cut to foot the bill, then that's another matter. The honest companies have more to worry about with the US going bankrupt at the hands of the dis-honest ones, and unable to just print more money, where nobody gets paid. Wouldn't be difficult to explain to the business sector. If it is that difficult to grasp, the government can help some jobless entrepreneurs start a tp company to manufacture and sell them tp. There's no shortage of those around these days, always someone who will step up and do it.

Joshua Nightshade

Good luck with that.

eighthdwarf Checchinato

What, our big regular custumer who we've ripped off so gladly for decades because they've come to us anyways because of their silly hobby, considers to stop buying from us, the monopolist regarding that hobby? Oh we so have to sue and fine them!

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Jahar Aabye

There's also the fact that the government would not be cancelling allnof their contracts with these companies, so they'd still have some defense and non-defense contracts. There are few things more dangerous than having to rely on people you've just screwed over.

And these companies don't just make military equipment. Boeing and EADS most definitely make civilian equipment, including aircraft that almost all of us have flown in, most likely.

So if you're the President, flying around in the Boeing-built Air Force 1, which requires spare parts and maintenance from Boeing, you're not gonna screw Boeing over by refusing to pay your part of a contract.

Oh, and there are international repercussions as well: EADS is partly owned by several European governments. Now would be an exceptionally bad time for a mutually suicidal trade war.

That doesn't mean that contracts shouldn't be cancelled if need be, just that you really need to honor those contractual obligations because you need those contractors for other things.

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Kara Spengler

Let me guess, you would not be calling the president spineless for doing military cuts if they took place during the Bush administration, right?



*HUGS* Yeah, anyone that does business with the government has a LOT of investment in it. They staff up whole divisions under the assumption they will have the contract for decades, and a lot of those people would not even be employed there if the contract was with anyone else.

Much is made of the $500 hammer stories and such. Having worked on various government contract I find them a bit hard to believe. The various regulations track every nickel of a given contract.



Exactly! As you point out these companies are not solely in the business of building weapons. One of the companies I have been with working for the executive office was Northop Grumman on a computer services contract.

Evola

I'm hardly a fan of the Bush family. Spineless doesn't even begin to describe them.

Amber Guity

Excellent job of overgeneralizing government contracts. It is far more complicated than that. Unfortunately, our government employs probably 10 people to manage the contracts for toilet paper, with several more that write the specs the tp manufacturer has to meet, as well as the paperwork for all the government rules and regs for billing, shipping and packaging. The tp manufacturer may not actually make that much profit off of each roll.

As for equipment and weapons, have you ever tried to build anything to mil-specs? It's not easy and it's certainly not cheap.

The military needs to do the same thing that the government in general needs to do, which is CUT THE WASTE. Streamline operations, reallocate resources and seriously adjust their strategy. The problem is that no one wants to be the odd man out, the one who gets cut.

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Evola

Right, noone wants the gravy train to stop.



I don't know about TP companies profits, but the military industrial complex is doing fine. Though they themselves wouldn't agree with that - in this LA Times/Bloomberg News article from February, Northrop's profits were up 80% in the 4th quarter. They called the results and forecast "disappointing".


Northrop profit rises 80% - Los Angeles Times