Well that's it - those jobs are gone now!
Burnt Orange Report 2/13/10Michael McCaul's Negligence Causes Sealy BAE Systems Plant to Lose 3,000 JobsKey Points
1. BAE Systems lost their appeal with the Department of Defense on their contract to build military trucks called Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (Source: Houston Chronicle) The contract was the largest federal contract in the 10th Congressional District.
2. The appeal came after an announcement last December about the contract loss (Source: "Michael McCaul Drops the Ball, Loses 3,000 Texas Jobs")
3. When it was first announced that BAE Systems would lose the contract, there was proof that no written communication -- or really any efforts -- had been made by Michael McCaul, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Senator John Cornyn, or Governor Rick Perry to protect the contract and keep it in Texas. (Source: Lone Star Project & Austin American-Statesman)
Remember we have a very good Democratic candidate in Ted Ankrum running against this loser McCaul. This is Ted Ankrum on that same BOR thread:
Sealy News Voter's Guide by Ted Ankrum, McCaul's opponent
Please let me quote from my piece in the Sealy Times Voter's guide, which was published on Feb 10, before the final Army decision:
"The top challenge facing this District is jobs and I'll talk about that, in general, in your next question. But in Sealy, the biggest problem is British Aerospace's loss of the tactical truck contract. Just because you are a Congressman doesn't mean you know much about how the Defense Department and other federal agencies really work. If I had been the Representative, I would have known that the only large Defense contractor in the District was competing for a new generation of tactical trucks and I would have known what was happening about that contract. I would have found out that Oshkosh was sharpening it's pencil to give a very competitive bid and jacked up the management of British Aerospace to do the same. Instead, your Congressman was oblivious and British Aerospace was coasting on eight years of past history, rather than looking to a new environment. Oshkosh produces a good tactical truck that the troops in Afghanistan love. It's a capable company that deserved to be taken seriously by British Aerospace. Oshkosh offered a better deal for the American taxpayer, and no amount of after-the-bid protests by Congressman McCaul is going to change that. He, and the British Aerospace management team, were asleep at the switch. The people at the Sealy plant can make a truck that is as good or better than anything from Oshkosh but it's got to be competitive and Congressman McCaul didn't alert the management that the old days were over. The protests will run their course and the Sealy workforce may get another chance. But if they don't, does Congressman McCaul know that the Quadrennial Defense Review is going to recommend buying a new generation of more fuel efficient tactical trucks? That is the Sealy workforce's way forward and I can help. I spent two years in logistics at the Pentagon at the full Colonel-level. I know how it works."
Not two days after this piece appeared in the Sealy newspaper, the Army did exactly what I expected and upheld the award to Oshkosh. Anyone who knows anything about the Defense procurement process knows that after-the-fact political lobbying is never effective, unless the bidding process was crooked, as in the Boeing refueling tanker award. Mr. McCaul is a lazy Congressman who should have been riding point on the front end of this procurement. Instead, he just took the campaign contributions from British Aerospace and did nothing. Woops, he did do something: He blamed the Democrats for sabotaging Texas. I would suggest that this says quite a lot about the effectiveness of Republican leadership in Texas, and it's time for a change!
Ted's web site:
http://www.ankrum2010.com/Sonia
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