I get really tired of reporters who fail to recall (or review) their own archives. From the Navy Times comes this nugget-of-misdirection:
"Planners had originally scheduled the amphibious assault ship Makin Island, under construction in Pascagoula, Miss., to be delivered Nov. 14. But in April the company announced shipwide wiring problems that would require extensive rework, delay its progress and cost as much as $360 million. Northrop Grumman agreed to bear that charge, rather than pass it on to taxpayers."Two things deserve note. First: The planners "originally" scheduled the Makin Island to be delivered in May. 2008. San Francisco--before SECNAV Winter cited San Francisco's apparent "anti-military" sentiment to move the ship's commissioning ceremony somewhere else--was planning a commissioning ceremony for the summer of '08. So the ship is at least a year behind schedule. (UPDATE: Tim Colton pipes up with the exact info on the delay--21.5 months)
Second. About that offer to repay taxpayers up to $360 million--for damage done by untrained workers after Katrina? Nice thing to do, right? Selfless, right? Well gosh...the gesture kinda wilts once somebody recalls that Northrop Grumman shook down taxpayers for $530 million dollars to, as Navy Times wrote back then, "minimize storm related construction delays" with LHD-8.
And that's Northrop Grumman, SECNAV Winter's former employer. Sheesh!
We're getting played for suckers. And I don't like it when newsmen help out. Ya'll can do better than that.
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