The Miami Herald reports that, ”since 2009, more than 4,000 space jobs have been lost in the Cape Canaveral area as NASA closed out the space shuttle program.”

Enterprise Florida — a private-public partnership that supports Florida businesses — explains that “Florida ranks 2nd among states for aviation, aerospace, and space establishments, with nearly 2,000 aviation and aerospace companies employing some 83,800 workers.” According to Enterprise, this includes almost every major defense contractor, the Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Spaceport, and many U.S. military installations.

Accoridng to Space Florida, the state’s aerospace development organization, its partnership with Boeing will modernize Kennedy Space Center facilities to “provide efficient production and testing operations that optimize the company’s best practices from satellite manufacturing, space launch vehicles and commercial airplane production programs.”

The release from the governor’s office adds that Boeing will partner with, “NASA, Space Florida, Economic Development Commission of Florida’s Space Coast, Enterprise Florida, the Brevard County Board of County Commissioners and Brevard Workforce.”

Thus far in the current campaign cycle, tea partier Akin has received $91,500 from defense-related interest groups while serving on the House Committee on Armed Services, the House Committee on the Budget and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, according to data from the Federal Election Commission. That figure puts him in second among members of Congress in amount received from defense interests during this election cycle, after House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) and nearly $40,000 more than President Obama.

Meanwhile, Akin has started a ‘task force’ to increase federal contracts for defense companies based in Missouri, held numerous defense industry breakfasts and said that defense is a “vital, Constitutional responsibility of the federal government” while questioning the financial viability of Medicare.

Akin is currently campaigning for the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Claire McCaskill, whose pet issue since being elected in 2006 has been defense contract oversight and promoting transparency in government affairs. McCaskill currently serves as the chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight.

“The atti­tude in the mil­i­tary has been, too many times, ‘I want what I want, when I want it,’” McCaskill told the Kansas Monitor, promising to increase oversight of contracted military spending.

Their race will likely be an interesting microcosm of the role of special interests in elections, as McCaskill and Akin hold opposing positions on many social and fiscal issues, and most of their funding sources are similarly polarized.

Akin, the former Army combat engineer whose Missouri district is home to Boeing Defense, Space and Security, has made no secret of these ties. Of the top ten organizations that have donated to Akin in the past two years, three are defense companies.

After convening the St. Louis Defense Industry Task Force, which would “increase the profile of the importance of the defense industry” in Missouri, he boasted in a press release that he “will call on greater coordination and support between state, federal and local officials in actively supporting the strength of defense manufacturing in the St. Louis region.”

He has also held numerous defense industry fundraising events, eighteen in the past year, and has toured defense companies to show his support for their manufacturing base in Missouri.

Along with large contributions from different corporate interests, Akin is ideologically conservative. He has supported proposals to teach intelligent design in public schools, display the Ten Commandments on public property and retain references to God in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Any Americans who paid taxes last year– employed, semi-employed, unemployed, between gigs, recession-rattled Republicans, Democrats or independents– any American who paid taxes last year paid more than did all of the five corporations in the study, combined.

It will come as little surprise to residents of Colorado that, when it came to spending on ballot measures, the corporations unloaded 90 percent of their cash here and in California.

In 2008, ExxonMobil and Chevron gave a total of $2.4 million to a political committee called “Coloradans For a Stable Economy,” which was organized to defeat Amendment 58. The amendment sought to hike the amount of state severance taxes paid on oil and gas extracted in the state and, with the help of the generous giving of the corporations who would have had to pay the severance taxes, it failed.

In state races, the corporations gave nearly double the amount of cash to Republican candidates and causes than they did to Democratic candidates and causes. Most of all, however, they gave to incumbent candidates. Overwhelmingly, the corporate cash was well placed because, remarkably, in four out of five cases, it backed a winner.

From the report:

+ $17 million went to Republican candidates and party committees; $9.7 million went to Democrats.
+ 85 percent ($15.2 million) of the $17.9 million given to candidates went to incumbents.
+ More than three out of every four dollars given to candidates went to winners.
+ $2.4 million was given to candidates not up for reelection in the election during which the money was given.

Most all of the five corporations spent greater sums in Washington than in the states, seeking to influence federal laws. Chevron was the exception. The company gave $5 million to federal campaigns and $55 million to state candidates and causes.

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The report faulted DHS for a lack of oversight on the program, claiming “DHS has not been able to gain meaningful and proactive insight into potential cost and schedule performance shortfalls, and thus take corrective actions to avoid shortfalls in the future.” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced in March a plan to overhaul SBInet, removing $50 million in stimulus funding from the project until the department could determine the most cost-effective way to move forward. All spending on SBInet — except money being spent on a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona — was frozen.

Boeing was also criticized in the report, which said the company provided information to DHS that was “replete with unexplained anomalies, thus rendering the data unfit for effective contractor management and oversight.”

The SBInet project has been expensive so far: DHS has received about $4.4 billion in appropriations for SBInet since 2006, according to the Government Accountability Office report. It also has not proven very effective. Previous Government Accountability Office reports have pointed out failures in the system, including its inability to differentiate well between animals and humans.

Delays over the project have also caused major concerns. In June, Rep. Henry Cuellar, (D-Texas), chairman of a House Homeland Security subcommittee on on border issues, said SBInet would take 323 years to deploy across the southwest border at its current pace.

The Government Accountability Office Report recommended that DHS increase its oversight over Boeing’s progress on SBInet, including by creating baseline performance measurements for major tasks and tracking spending more closely.

First, here’s how the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law has benefited companies:

For every $100 the company spends on retiree drug benefits, Medicare sends it a subsidy payment of $28. On top of that, the companies got a rare double tax break. The $28 subsidy is tax-free, and the company was allowed to deduct the entire $100 as a business expense.

Under the new reform law, the 28 percent subsidy remains, and it remains tax free. “But companies will no longer be allowed to deduct the subsidy as if it were an expenditure of their own,” the Times writes.

Sounds reasonable, right? Not in the eyes of the companies that benefit from the current system. They’re claiming that the change will hobble their hiring abilities (i.e., lower their profits). And conservatives are listening.

“This added burden to corporate America would be significant at the best of economic times, but unfortunately we’re living in the worst of times — when every spare corporate dollar should be spent on retaining or hiring new employees,” an emblematic critic wrote recently for Townhall.

“Added burden,” of course, implies an initial burden. But, as Ben Armbruster of Think Progress recently pointed out, some of the companies making the most fuss over the elimination of their pet tax deduction are among those that pay the least to Uncle Sam. It’s tough to cry for Boeing when its actual tax rate, at 3.2 percent, is about one-sixth of a middle class family’s.

In a press briefing that just concluded, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said that if it receives “formal notification” from EADS as well as Boeing that they intend to bid, then the Defense Department will keep the bid open until July 10. That’s 30 days short of what EADS wants. Morrell called it a “reasonable period of time,” and sweetened the pot, adding that the Pentagon would compress its schedule for a decision on awarding the KC-X contract, keeping to a deadline of “early this fall.”

Asked if international politics played a role in the decision — EADS is the parent of French aerospace giant Airbus and French President Nicholas Sarkozy said that if the process was fair, “EADS will bid” during a White House appearance yesterday that was largely about cooperation on Iran — Morrell firmly denied any such thing. “Politics are not a part of this process,” he said, “Never have been, never will be.”

Legislators have an expectation that EADS, should it win, will build the KC-X in Mobile, Ala. A group of eight bipartisan friends of Boeing in the Senate wrote to President Obama today urging the Pentagon to side with the American company.

“ObamaCare will clip the wings of the American Dream(liner),” the Republicans say, citing estimates that the charge will reduce Boeing’s earnings by 20 cents a share in the first quarter of this year.

But before you shed tears for Boeing, consider some context. Boeing is the second largest government contractor in the country, with almost $11 billion in federal contracts in 2008 alone. It’s well on its way to winning a $40 billion deal to build an Air Force tanker. And Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), a long-time supporter of the Seattle-based company, was recently named head of the defense appropriations committee, which controls the purse strings of the Pentagon contracts that have treated Boeing so well.

As a result, the company isn’t exactly suffering. Indeed, its stock went from $35.58 a year ago to $73.53 yesterday — a jump of nearly $38, or 107 percent. Suddenly that 20-cent loss to help fund health reform doesn’t seem so disastrous, particularly considering the extent to which taxpayers have bolstered the company’s earnings over the years.

It’s a nuance that seems to be lost on the RSC.

The Hill’s Roxana Tiron lends context:

Dicks would take the gavel of the Defense panel as the Pentagon decides whether Boeing would win a $35 billion contract for a new fleet of midair refueling tankers. Boeing has been going head to head with a team made up of Northrop Grumman and EADS North America. The Pentagon is scheduled to issue a final request for proposals Feb. 23….

Defense insiders have called Dicks an unapologetic supporter of Boeing, particularly when it comes to the tanker program. Boeing would build the tanker aircraft in Washington state, where it has large commercial aircraft operations. Dicks has long opposed the tanker contract going to EADS, the parent company of Airbus — Boeing’s rival on the commercial market.

Dicks’ office claims that the Washington Democrat, while interested in the contract, won’t enter the fray any more than he already has following Murtha’s death, Tiron reports. Still, the relationship between Dicks and Boeing is a close one. The aerospace giant is the top contributor to Dicks over the course of his congressional career, giving more than $142,000 since the 1998 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That trend remains true this cycle, with Dicks already raking in $10,500 from the Seattle company, which makes him the sixth highest recipient in Congress, CRP notes.

Although the men did not sue the government directly, the Bush administration intervened in the case two years ago and convinced a judge to dismiss all claims on the grounds that allowing the lawsuit to proceed would reveal sensitive “state secrets” and endanger national security.

The plaintiffs appealed, and the Obama administration has adopted its predecessor’s position, arguing before the appellate court that allowing the five men the opportunity to prove their case would jeopardize national security. At the same time, the  administration claims it has ended the program of “extraordinary rendition,” whereby terror suspects are abducted in one location and sent to another country for interrogation, where they are likely to be tortured. The administration says it still renders suspects to other countries, but only for legitimate court proceedings.  Nevertheless, it has insisted that any information about the Bush administration’s program would pose a current danger.

That argument doesn’t sit well with the plaintiffs in the case, like Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British resident who says he was kidnapped by CIA agents in Pakistan and flown to Morocco and Afghanistan, where he was brutally tortured into falsely confessing to crimes he did not commit.

In court yesterday, American Civil Liberties Union attorney Ben Wizner, representing the five men, argued that it was absurd to suggest that allowing the truth about the program to come out, while still protecting any classified evidence, would endanger national security.

“The facts of this case are known throughout the world,” Wizner said. The Bush administration’s CIA directors had previously testified about the rendition program, and President George W. Bush had acknowledged it. As for the plaintiffs involved in the case against Jeppesen, the Swedish government has already apologized and offered to compensation one of the plaintiffs who was seized from Sweden, where he had sought asylum. The plaintiff claims he was taken to Egypt, where he was tortured with electrical shocks.

Whoever wins this round before the Ninth Circuit could still seek review from the Supreme Court.

Running through the list of situations that we’ve been reporting on in which the Obama administration continues to conceal evidence of torture — from the efforts of British resident Binyam Mohamed to seek justice for his “extraordinary rendition” and torture; to the administration’s continued efforts to dismiss cases alleging government-sponsored torture and illegal wiretapping by raising the “state secrets” privilege; to President Obama’s continued insistence on hiding photos of brutal detainee abuse — The Times highlights how President Obama, despite his grand promises of openness and accountability in the early days of his administration, has caved to Republicans and some conservative Democrats who want to bury the evidence of criminal and moral wrongdoing by the United States government.

“We do not take seriously the government’s claim that it is trying to protect intelligence or avoid harm to national security,” The Times writes. And it shouldn’t. As we’ve pointed out repeatedly at TWI, the outlines of our government’s abusive and in some cases criminal conduct is already well-known and can hardly endanger us further. Only by unearthing, acknowledging and accounting completely for the past can the new administration finally move beyond it to focus, unencumbered, on making sure it does not happen in the future.