Raytheon

Raytheon Technologies joins the club. It is now an official member of the military-industrial-congressional complex as it plans to move its corporate headquarters from Waltham, MA to Arlington, VA to better curry favor with Pentagon brass and the defense industry’s paymasters.

CEO Greg Hayes, who joined Raytheon with its 2021 acquisition of United Technologies, likes the Virginia location because it increases the company’s “agility in supporting US government and commercial aerospace customers” and is a “convenient travel hub.”

Forget the agility bit. Hayes will soon be able to look out his office window and gaze at the Pentagon, which is near the new HQ. Images of sugarplums will be dancing in his head.

Boeing beat Raytheon to the punch on May 5 when it announced that it was dumping Chicago as its headquarters for Arlington. The Windy City hardly got to know Boeing, which moved there in 2001 after 85 years in Seattle.

Boeing CEO David Calhoun didn’t stress agility as a reason for the move. He said northern Virginia makes sense due to “its proximity to our customers and stakeholders.” He left out "Congressional patrons."

Calhoun also believes the Arlington area is brimming with engineering and technical talent, as if Chicago is some backwater.

Once Raytheon and Boeing settle in at their new digs, the nation’s five top defense contractors will be located in the military-industrial-congressional heartland.

Northrop Grumman is based in Falls Church, VA. General Dynamics calls Reston, VA home. Lockheed Martin is headquartered in Bethesda, MD.

The consolidation of the Big Five defense contractors is a dream come true for DC PA and lobbying communities. Let the good times roll!

What a tool…. Former US Open champ Graeme McDowell, who ditched the PGA Tour in favor of Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf, told the London media he isn’t very troubled about being used by the Kingdom in its effort to “sportswash” the killing of DC Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The CIA has determined that Saudi Arabia’s leader Mohammed bin Salman ordered the hit on Khashoggi.

Calling the “Khashoggi situation” reprehensible, McDowell said, “But we are golfers. If Saudi Arabia wanted to use the game of golf as a way for them to get to where they want to be and they have the resources to accelerate that experience, I think we’re proud to help them on that journey.”

Asked about Saudi Arabia’s lousy human rights record, McDowell said: “If we tried to cure geopolitical situations in every country in the world that we play golf in, we wouldn’t play a lot of golf.”

How do you sleep at night, Graeme?

The endless stream of mass shootings in the US can’t be referred to as “random violence,” according to an essay by Michael Tomasky, editor-in-chief of The New Republic. He calls it “fascist violence” designed to trigger emotional worry that keeps citizens on edge and under tight control by the state.

Tomasky believes that Republicans and the right wing tolerate high levels of violence. If they didn’t, they would do something about it.

“This tolerance of such high levels of violence makes it, in essence, sanctioned by the state, or perhaps the states.”

Instead, Republicans talk about mental health, or how we abandoned God, to wriggle away from having to confront the violence at hand.

“Republicans venerate a level of violence in our society that the majority of us find intolerable and appalling, and understand intuitively how that violence advances their agenda by giving their rabid base something to rally about,” he wrote.

Texas governor Greg Abbott signed 22 laws last year to weaken gun regulations and tweeted how he was disappointed that the Lone Star State ranked second in gun purchases.

More guns, more chaos is his “solution” to the mass shooting epidemic.