Boeing...Boeing...Gone

Boeing recently endorsed the reelection of Sen. Patty Murray:

Sen. Murray has been a true advocate and champion for the Boeing Co. and for our 75,000 Washington-based employees throughout her three terms, and therefore we support her in her reelection bid.

That undoubtedly made more than a few Boeing workers chuckle.

Those 75,000 Washington based employees of Boeing only make up 45% of the company's workforce.  What was the percentage when Murray took office in 1995, before Boeing moved its corporate headquarters to Chicago in 2001?  On Murray's watch, Boeing has made an inexorable exodus from increasingly business-unfriendly Washington.


You see, despite Murray's grandstanding on the Pentagon's EADS contract, she did nothing when the real crunch came last year, when Boeing selected Charleston, SC as the site of its second 787 assembly line.  Murray didn't get directly involved in talks between the aircraft manufacturer and the machinists union.   

And when Boeing made its inevitable decision to leave, the "Mom in Tennis Shoes" scolded, "It's a corporate company with a board and stakeholders that don't share the culture of a family that we grew up with."
Despite not sharing her "family values," Murray is all too willing to endorse any checks Boeing may write her, a la Goldman Sachs (Boeing and its employees have donated $74,550 to Murray this cycle.)

Meanwhile, the pain continues for Washington workers as jobs that should have been created here continue to hemorrhage away, again on Murray's watch:

Boeing Co. said on Thursday that it will make the interior for some of its new 787 airliners in North Charleston, S.C.

Boeing said it will buy land from Stone Mountain Industrial Park Inc. for the facility, which will be about 10 miles away from a 787 assembly operation in North Charleston. Terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Construction is expected to begin in the fourth quarter, and the plant should be running by early 2012, Boeing spokesman Tom Brabant said.

Boeing Protest Of Tanker Deal Upheld

Now this is a shocker!

The news was almost as unexpected as the decision by the U.S. Air Force earlier this year to award a $35 billion tanker deal not to The Boeing Co. but to a team that included the parent of Airbus.

In a decision that many experts had predicted would be highly unusual, the Government Accountability Office on Wednesday sided with Boeing in its protest of the tanker decision.

"Our review of the record let us to conclude that the Air Force made a number of significant errors that could have affected the outcome of what was a close competition between Boeing and Northrop Grumman," the GAO said. "We therefore sustain Boeing's protest."

The GAO, which is the investigative arm of Congress, recommended the Air Force reopen talks with Boeing and the team of Northrop and European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. and hold a new tanker selection process. The Congressional agency used particularly strong language in saying the Air Force made mistakes in seven critical areas, according to a defense expert.

"I can't imagine that with this many errors identified by the GAO that the Air Force will be able to escape holding a new competition," said Loren Thompson, a noted defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a public policy research group in Arlington, Va.