Would You Write To Obama To Spare Your Job?

Posted on February 9th, 2009 9:52am by Dave Moore
Filed under Business, Local News

The makers of the F-22 Raptor (some of whom live in Fort Worth) have written a letter to Barack Obama – and are circulating an Internet petition - to convince him and members of Congress to fund the air-superiority fighter. The one hook that they have is that this plane is a government program, versus banks, which shouldn’t be. I know that newspaper publishers could make a compelling argument for a bailout, saying that they play a crucial watchdog role over government. Heck, my friend who sells overhead cranes could make a compelling argument about the importance of the American manufacturing sector. Where does this stop?

13 comments

  1. I suppose we will discover that this evening, eh? Get your popcorn ready, Big D.

    @ 10:01 am on February 9, 2009

  2. I find when I feed my watchdogs to keep them from starving their loyalty to me alone increases exponentially. Good dogs.

    @ 10:24 am on February 9, 2009

  3. If you live in Fort Worth, there is no stimulus as important as funding for Lockheed Martin. We’re talking thousands of jobs.

    @ 10:25 am on February 9, 2009

  4. How can this be? GOP Chairman and former government employee Steele says that “Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job.”

    @ 11:12 am on February 9, 2009

  5. Bud: There are lots of employers that could potentially cut thousands of jobs in Fort Worth. What makes Lockheed so special? This is the problem with bailouts in general: everyone thinks their job is worth saving. And if the only purpose of the bailout is to save jobs, then everyone is right in a general sense. But everyone’s job cannot be saved, so some will unfairly benefit and others will unfairly be left out in the cold. To add insult to injury, those who are left out will someday have to pay back the borrowed money used to save other people’s jobs but not their own.

    @ 11:23 am on February 9, 2009

  6. @Joe- My wife will cringe when I write this: Newt Gingrich had it right yesterday. You can’t have capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down.
    http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=5903025

    @ 11:41 am on February 9, 2009

  7. Excuse me, Dave, but this is not an either/or thing. Bush worked the capitalism angle until he’d milked it dry. Then he installed the socialism part for the bankers. If we hit rock bottom then we might get socialism, but that’s a very long way off. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but if it does you shouldn’t forget the folks who made it so.

    @ 12:23 pm on February 9, 2009

  8. You cant compare any of these industries to banking. Lockheed is important to the economy. The construction industry is important to the economy. Banks RUN the economy, they needed the bailout. Everyone else has to cut back and make it work

    @ 12:30 pm on February 9, 2009

  9. Joe, I think you’re conflating the bank bailout and the economic stimulus package. The bailout is designed to make the government overpay for junk assets so that stockholders and banks don’t lose money; the stimulus is designed to slow the economic downfall by increasing government spending and creating jobs.

    @ 12:31 pm on February 9, 2009

  10. I happen to know someone personally who is involved in this project. So I hope she gets to keep her job — which actually only goes to underscore your point. Everybody is only two or three degrees removed from a job they consider worth saving. So where, indeed, does it stop?

    @ 1:20 pm on February 9, 2009

  11. Keynes is rolling in his grave.

    @ 2:43 pm on February 9, 2009

  12. @Dave Moore

    What are we willing to do to our children tomorrow in order to reclaim yesterday for ourselves today?

    Anything.

    @ 3:27 pm on February 9, 2009

  13. Ann,

    Kudos on the Moody Blues quote!

    @ 10:07 am on February 10, 2009