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Last March President Obama announced that he wants the U.S. to be one of Brazil’s “best customers” for their oil, although the U.S. has eight times more petroleum resources than does Saudi Arabia if only we’d drill for it.
Now the Obama government is awarding a $1 billion contract to a Brazilian aircraft manufacturer—Embraer–instead of American Hawker Beechcraft Corp., which has two years and $100 million invested in a light attack aircraft’s development.
All the more remarkable is the Brazilian company, Embraer, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Justice Department for possible violations of the Corrupt Practices Act.
Hawker Beechcraft said in a press release Dec. 30, 2011, it had learned that the government had quietly announced the previous week that the award had been made to the Brazilian manufacturer Embraer, instead of Hawker Beechcraft.
This was called, in restrained language, an “example of the Air Force’s lack of transparency,” by Hawker Beechcraft CEO Bill Boisture. It “now seems even clearer that the Air Force intended to award the contract to Embraer from early in the process.”
The AT-6 is a “world-class light attack aircraft that has been evaluated and proven capable through a multi-year, congressionally-funded program” working closely with the Air Force and with an investment of $100 million to “meet the Air Force’s specific requirements… Every fixed-wing pilot in the United States military today is trained on this airplane,” Boisture added.
Last March, Obama on his Latin American trip pledged to work with his counterpart, Dilma Rousseff. He said:
We want to help you with the technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely. And when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.
The Obama Administration gave its approval for a giant oil storage facility, movable in the event of a hurricane. The approval for using this facility was given to Petrobras, the huge nationally owned Brazilian oil company. Instead of giving equal competition to American oil companies, Obama stymied the U. S. industry with meritless moratoriums last spring. He gave special benefits to Petrobras for that company to drill in American oil reserves while American oil crews were sitting on their heels, unemployed because of the moratorium.
As for the Embraer contract, while outsourcing this to the Brazilian company would create only 50 jobs in the U.S., Hawker Beechcraft says its AT-6 plane would open up about 1,400 jobs at 181 companies in 39 states. The manufacturing parts and supply chains all would remain in the U. S. Rep. Barack fooled us into thinking that he wanted to create jobs in America. Justifiably, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan) blasted the Administration’s decision Dec. 27.
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