ANCHORS AWEIGH With the names
Linda Lingle and Mitt Romney on the ballot next week if you missed
this
recent "Wired" article about John Lehman- the former
Secretary of the Navy, current adviser to Mitt Romney and the brains
behind the Superferry- this would be a good time to peruse it. As the
article says:
"Lehman invested in a
government-backed “Superferry” in Hawaii — a business that
ultimately failed, but not before boosting the standing of Austal
USA, an Alabama shipbuilder that constructed the ferry service’s
ships. Austal USA’s rising fortunes in turn benefited international
defense giant BAE Systems, which then bought up shipyards owned by
Lehman in order to work more closely with Austal USA. "
It's especially ingratiating to see
that, historically, this is the final narrative on the Superferry-
that it was never intended as a transportation system but was always
a demonstration project for new a line of Navy vessels designed
simply to line Lehman's pockets and, tangentially, allow Linda Lingle
to suck up to the ultra-conservatives in the Republican Party.
Many chided us at the time for being
critical of some some Superferry opponents, among them Kahoon Paik
and Jerry Mander whose so-called "definitive" book, the
Superferry Chronicles, failed to expose this connection (which we
detailed at the time along with Joan Conrow in her USS Superferry
series) and rather used corporate media article to paint a picture
without the military connection.
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