Government Industry Archive

Update — It was reported yesterday that Congressman Visclosky will relinquish his Chair of the House Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee while the grand jury investigation into PMA goes on. If you remember subpoenas were served to Visclosky for records at his Congressional office and campaign. The circling around Congressman John Murtha (D-PA) by Federal investigators and the news...

More...

The Federal Executive branch employs a great deal of people. They travel a great deal as well. A reform from several years ago was to issue credit cards for travel to these employees similar to what many large companies do. The Associated Press writes about a report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) on abuse of travel credit cards by Federal employees. The misuse of the cards...

More...

Right after passing Boeing to become the world’s larges aerospace company EADS continues to state that the decline in airline orders for its products will affect its earnings and revenues. Reiterating what it said in early May when the quarterly earnings report came out that airlines are restructuring their orders for airliners and this is causing uncertainty. At the annual shareholders...

More...

This article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette discussing how Federal grant to upgrade police equipment for Monongahela, PA from Congressman Murtha shows how even little pieces of money add up. It is starting to emerge that a company MountainTop Technologies located in Murtha’s hub of Johnstown and started by a friend and donor was used to manage thirty-six million dollars in various...

More...

The U.S. Army made two announcements in the last week as they move to reform their multiple battle command systems. The Army has suffered by having a variety of systems for different missions and levels of command that were not properly integrated. First the Army is establishing a new engineering organization to support acquisition in general. This will be called the System-of-Systems Systems...

More...

Update — The United States’ debt rating was reaffirmed by Moody’s today. The company feels that “the U.S. economy’s long-term resilience and key role in global affairs should bolster its ability to resume a strong performance” when ever the current downturn ends. England has been informed by Standard & Poor’s (S&P) that they might be facing a...

More...

The new Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu has announced their first budget. Unlike most countries across the globe struggling with finances they propose to raise taxes, run a large deficit, and increase defense spending significantly. This is counter to the trends where defense spending is taking whacks across North America, Europe and Asia. Israel, though, is a special case with...

More...

President Obama looks set to name former astronaut and U.S. Marine Corps General Charles Bolden the director of the National Air and Space Administration (NASA). In many ways this is a good choice. He worked as a deputy director there, has flown on shuttle missions, and has leadership abilities. This choice also highlights another problem faced by government when finding these kind of...

More...

QinetiQ is a company formed when the British government privatized their defense test and evaluation centers and work. The company absorbed various facilities and most of the former civil service work force. As such they are very reliant on spending by the Ministry of Defence on the work done at the places they used to own and operate. The company has also looked to get in on the expansion of...

More...

Like the United States, Britain is facing a massive increase in their deficit spending that in the long term will be unsustainable. The Gordon Brown government has invested in borrowing to keep up the required social spending while considering tax increases to rates over fifty percent on the richest earners. Not only this approach to budgeting has raised the ire of the population there has...

More...