Caspar Weinberger: Please be seated. This will be brief, as [...]]]> The Pentagon is famous for overpriced and underperforming weapons systems.  There was a hilarious film about it with Carey Elwes as an Air Force Lt. Colonel serving as a Pentagon watchdog and Kelsey Grammar as the program manager for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

Caspar Weinberger: Please be seated. This will be brief, as I’m needed at the Oval Office. I’d like to call your attention to this morning’s New York Times. If you’ll turn to the editorial page? It essentially says that every weapon we produce is an over-priced piece of junk. Now, that’s not news, critics have said it for years. What was news to me touched on our supposedly “spectacular” Sergeant York Anti-Aircraft Gun. It says there that when the Sergeant York proved incapable of hitting airplanes, we test-fired it at hovering helicopters. When it failed to hit hovering helicopters, we test-fired it at stationary targets, and it missed those. Now is this possible, General Keane?
General Keane: There was a problem with the proximity fusing. 
Caspar Weinberger: According to this, one missile locked on to a ventilation fan in the latrine, and destroyed the latrine! Were we test-firing at latrines that day?

The film was an amusing inside look at how large programs are run at the Pentagon.  It was based on a true story, too.

What the film shows is how so many of the decisions around big weapons systems are based on the politics of Capitol Hill.  The current aircraft conflict is no different.  And it’s costing us a fortune.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, an average A-10 cost $13 million in 1994 dollars, when production was at its peak; at the same time, the F-35 program, which hadn’t yet built a single jet, already cost between $28 and $38 million per jet. (More recently, investigators pegged the F-35′s cost as closer to $110 million to $150 million per plane, not including weapons systems, which cost another $184 million per unit [PDF]. In other words, the cost of one F-35 is roughly twice what the federal government spends on NPR and Planned Parenthood in a year. And the military wants roughly 2,500 of these planes.)

Twice the cost of NPR?  Twice the cost of Planned Parenthood???  WTF????

The real driver in this decision is political: A relatively cheap and low-tech aircraft doesn’t help the Air Force justify

huge future budgets; the luxury price tag of the F-35 does. And Congress wants the F-35, like, really bad. So bad that “budget hawk” congressmen like John Boehner were stepping over each other to get funding for an alternative engine the plane doesn’t even need.

Our national priorities catastrophically screwed up.  How can we possibly justify this weapons system when we’re facing such challenging economic times?

At the American’s for Prosperity Bund Rally in Waukesha on Saturday (full details here), the audience was subjected to the Randian vocal stylings [...]]]> [UPDATE: I have issued a correction and apology to Dr. Nerenz. My assertions regarding his academic bona fides were incorrect and I would like to correct the record accordingly]

At the American’s for Prosperity Bund Rally in Waukesha on Saturday (full details here), the audience was subjected to the Randian vocal stylings of “Dr.” Tim Nerenz*, CEO of Oldenburg Group Incorporated and libertarian blogger.  ”Dr.” Nerenz is one of those loud, boorish libertarians who are possessed of that unwarranted sense of their own moral and intellectual superiority to the unwashed masses.  Listening to him is like listening to John Galt explain why selfishness is a virtue while riding on a train funded with government money (Atlas Shurgged is “Dr.” Nerenz’s favorite book).

The speech “Dr.” Nerenz gave at the Bund Rally is available from his website.  I’d like to focus on a small part just to give you a clear line-of-sight to the disingenuousness of his methodology.  His talk was about how the world used to be so much better when everything was run by old white men (like himself).  He opened his talk with an excerpt from a previous blog post he’d written called Downward Wisconsin (interesting side note, my brother-in-law forwarded me this post back in November asking if I knew who the author was.  I did not know then, but I sure know now!)

We used to make things here in Wisconsin.  We made machine tools in Milwaukee, cars in Kenosha and ships in Sheboygan.  We mined iron in the north and lead in the south.  We made cheese, we made brats, we made beer, and we even made the napkins to clean up the beer we spilled.  And we made money.

Yes, we made things here in Wisconsin at one time.  It was the heyday of American manufacturing.  But now?

Reality check: here are our top 10 employers in Wisconsin today:

Walmart, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Milwaukee Public Schools, U.S. Postal Service, Wisconsin Department of Corrections, Menards, Marshfield Clinic, Aurora Health Care, City of Milwaukee, and Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs.

That is where a century of progressivism will get you.  That and a $3.6 billion structural deficit.

Ahh, the implication that we no longer make things here, we just service the bloated government bureaucracy.  This got a loud round of applause from the TeaZombies and other ConserviCretins in the audience too drunk on AFP KoolAde to have noticed that they’d been duped.  But did you see the switch he pulled off there?  Were you able to follow the magician’s hands as he waved them about hoping you wouldn’t notice the lie?  Let’s break it down.

The first quote simply lists some products that were (and, for the most part, still are) made in Wisconsin in the indeterminate past.  But the second quote is all about who the top employers are in Wisconsin today.  We have no idea who the top employers were in the first quote, “Dr.” Nerenz has not provided them.  But we are supposed to assume that the list of current top employers somehow magically maps back to the past list of manufacturing employers.  Now, for all I know, that list may just be a list of top employers.  But who knows?  ”Dr.” Nerenz has not provided us the information we need to evaluate it.  He has presented the information and hoped his gullible audience will make the (il)logical leap and connect the dots he wants them to connect.  Apples, meet oranges.

But wait… It gets better.

My favorite bit of hypocrisy comes from research I did on “Dr.” Nerenz’s business after the Bund Rally.  Nerenz is an avowed libertarian.  He talked at the rally about how his company opened a new relationship with the Chinese and he received “no support” from the government to do so.  All he wants is for the government to “stay off my back.”

Of course, like most libertarians, he misses the obvious, hidden-in-plain-view support he and his business receive from the government.  Little things like an educated workforce supported by tax money.  Or fire and police service.  Or sewer and water.  Or roads.  Or trains.  Etc., etc., etc.  I could go on, but you get the point.  This libertarian blind spot is huge.  Yet this isn’t even the best example of his hypocrisy.

It gets even better…

Since 2006, Nerenz’s company, The Oldenburg Group Incorporated, took in more than $36 Million in US Government contracts.  Dirty, filthy government money.  Most recently, Oldenburg was awarded a $25 Million US Navy contract.

Oldenburg Group, Inc.*, Kingsford, Mich., is being awarded a $25,376,459 firm-fixed price, cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for manufacturing and installation support of slewing boat davits for LSD 41 and LSD 49 class Navy ships. Work will be performed in Kingsford, Mich. (93.4 percent); Norfolk, Va. (5.1 percent); San Diego, Calif. (1 percent); and Sasebo, Japan (0.5 percent). Work is expected to be completed by September 2016. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured via the Navy Electronic Commerce Online website, with four offers received.  The Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division, Philadelphia, Pa., is the contracting activity (N65540-11-D-0010).

Unfortunately, Oldenburg is a private company so publicly available information about their financial situation is scant (no 10-Ks for instance), but obviously they rely heavily on contracts from the Federal government, that most hated of institutions, for a large piece of their revenue.  According to the Manta database

Oldenburg Group Inc in Rhinelander, WI is a private company categorized under Industrial Trucks and Tractors. Our records show it was established in and incorporated in Wisconsin. Current estimates show this company has an annual revenue of $20 to 50 million and employs a staff of approximately 100 to 249.

So a $25 million government contract would represent a substantial part of their revenue plan, or so it would seem.  ”Dr.” Nerenz, the citizens of America pay your fucking salary!!!

I applaud Oldenburg for growing their business in Wisconsin, but the hypocrisy of their CEO is difficult to swallow.  Credit where credit is due, “Dr.” Nerenz.  You and your business thrive because of direct government support, not in spite of it!

* The reason I put scare-quotes around the “Dr.” is because “Dr.” Nerenz received his Ph.D. in Business from an institution of questionable academic merit, Northcentral University (a for-profit private college).  The Ph.D. in Business program requires nothing more than the completion of 60 credit-hours.  No dissertation is required.

By contrast, a Ph.D. in Business from the University of Wisconsin are significantly more rigorous.  I expect “Dr.” Nerenz took this modern-day correspondence course to enhance his C.V. rather than his knowledge.  At least when Dr. Newt Gingrich calls himself a “Professor,” he’s not lying.  ”Dr.” Nerenz?  Really? I think not…

Under the new law signed by President Obama, any suspect who is a member of [...]]]> Why am I not surprised President Obama signed this into law?

President Barack Obama signed a wide-ranging defense bill into law Saturday despite having “serious reservations” about provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.

Under the new law signed by President Obama, any suspect who is a member of al-Qaida or “associated forces” and involved in planning or attempting to carry out an attack on the United States or its coalition partners would be subjected to military custody. Individuals placed in military custody – including U.S. citizens – would not have the same rights to legal counsel as if they were in the custody of regular law enforcement officials.

Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s mercurial and enigmatic leader, has died. He was 69.

Kim’s death was announced Monday by state television from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but appeared [...]]]> According to ABC news, North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il has died.

Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s mercurial and enigmatic leader, has died. He was 69.

Kim’s death was announced Monday by state television from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but appeared relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state media.

The leader, reputed to have had a taste for cigars, cognac and gourmet cuisine, was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease.

The news came as North Korea prepared for a hereditary succession. Kim Jong Il inherited power after his father, revered North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, died in 1994.

In September 2010, Kim Jong Il unveiled his third son, the twenty-something Kim Jong Un, as his successor, putting him in high-ranking posts.