Wow. Just when you thought things couldn't get much weirder, along comes the Breaking News that Former Washington Governor Gary Locke is the new pick for Commerce Secretary.

I thought that Gary Locke was a good governor. However, he is not without his own baggage. Chief among that baggage is a certain closeness with the interests of (currently corrupt) Boeing management. That would be a good thing if Boeing had an ethical, law abiding, and competent management. However, that is currently not the case. So, if Mr. Locke gets the post and acts in any way to support that mismanagement as he has done in the past, that would be a very bad thing indeed. Note that there is a very large difference between supporting the currently corrupt management at Boeing and supporting the employees of Boeing. I would support anything Mr. Locke does to support the interests of Boeing workers as long as that action in no way supports the current cadre of corrupt Boeing management.

So, the Gary Locke choice is indeed problematic, as he is potentially at least the second "corrupt Boeing management mole" in the Obama administration, after Four Star General and former Marine Core Commandant and NATO Commander James L. Jones, who used to be on the Boeing Board of Directors (Being on the Boeing Board of Directors does not mean you support corrupt Boeing management, of course, but it certainly is not an indicator that you don't, by far).

There are problems with other supposedly "people friendly" and corporate corruption adverse Democratic politicians from Washington State (my state) than Gary Locke. Our two Washington State Senators, even though "people serving" Democrats, are known in certain circles as "the Senators from Boeing." In my experience, it is a moniker they both have earned. The fact that Boeing management is corrupt doesn't seem to color their support of that management in any way. In fact, they both would rather turn their heads and let innocent whistleblowers be fired and/or imprisoned on false charges by Boeing, Boeing's outside counsel, and the King County Prosecutor's Office rather than lift a finger to do their basic jobs and oppose Boeing management lawbreaking and illegal Boeing whistleblower retaliation.

That isn't to state that they are not better than a Republican would be in opposing such white collar crime in Boeing management, however there doesn't seem to be as much of a difference as there should be between them and the hypothetical "government of, by, and for corporations" Republican type of Senator on this issue.

Another problem with the Gary Locke choice is that Gary Locke's family lives in China--family which he is still close to and visits in China occasionally. How will this affect the Obama administration's holding of China to account for their numerous crimes in this country and repression in their own country? It is common knowledge that China has hundreds if not thousands of spies in the U.S. that steal U.S. technology rather than attempt to develop it from scratch themselves in order to help their military and commercial interests. Boeing's illegal transfer of technology that it doesn't own, from programs on its military side to the "white world" commercial side of the company, where it is accessible to such spys and even outsourced to China by Boeing doesn't help matters at all.

Commerce Department export licensing is obviously a cruel joke on our national security. Many things are kicked to that hopelessly industry biased agency that should be licensed instead through the much tougher State Department ITAR controls. Will Gary Locke remove this historical bias from the Commerce Department or make it worse due to his family ties and Boeing mismanagement bias?

Let's just hope that Gary Locke has the ethics with which to deny corrupt Boeing management overtures and lawbreaking and keep the U.S. safe from it's most potent potential enemy, the country his family immigrated from--China. Hope may be all we have in this matter that these two men are not "Boeing corrupt management moles," and instead will choose to protect our country's interests in its very survival rather than the very narrow interests of corrupt Boeing management.

This just in: Things are worse than I thought at first:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/62676.html

'Fred Kiga, who was Locke’s chief of staff from 2001 to 2004, said Locke was a big hit in Asian countries.

“The trips I went on, he was a rock star,” said Kiga, who now is Boeing’s vice president for global corporate citizenship and its main liaison for state and local governments. “First, he was good looking and intelligent. And he was the first Chinese-American governor on the mainland U.S.”'

Looks like both Kiga and Locke cashed in, with Kiga perhaps cashing in in the more questionable way by joining Boeing management detailed so well here. Locke joined a law firm with a good reputation after his stint as governor, however, he appears to have been promoting trade with China at that firm. What he specifically was doing there will be critical to cover in his confirmation hearings. For instance, was he trying to get past export law requirements for clients? If that was so, the committee should just vote no.

An appearance of bias is almost as damning as smoking gun proof of such bias. Here we obviously have at least the appearance of bias that would interfere with his critical duties as Commerce Secretary--especially in the case of China.

I voted for Gary Locke twice and he and his family are indeed nice people. That is not what we need in a Commerce Secretary, however. We need instead someone that is without any possible bias that may interfere with the discharge of their national security critical duties in the post and is without any possible bias toward the perhaps already highly ethically compromised Boeing V.P. and perhaps others that Locke used to work with in government before they chose to cash in at Boeing.

Is Kiga ethically compromised after whatever period of time he has been suckling up to corrupt Boeing management as part of his V.P. job? I can't say without more detailed research I don't have time for.

But, in a clumsy analogy I am perhaps famous for among people who know my writing, would you take your dog back home after it spent the night in the kennel in "The Thing" Sci-Fi movie remake that had an alien possessed dog in that kennel? No? I understand.

Of course, I'm not inferring that Boeing management are possessed by aliens--they are just mostly eminently corrupt.

I'm not inferring that Gary Locke cannot perform the job as Commerce Secretary well. However, considering his past with Boeing, promoting trade with China, coolness toward Taiwan's predicament, and his close Chinese heritage, he will need our help to ensure that he does do that job well--especially in all matters related to China or Boeing.

President Obama could have easily made a less problematic choice, I believe. Now tax problems and Republicanism aren't looking so bad after all.

End of blog.

Of a more personal side note to do with the unlikely and extremely peripheral "relationship" between me and Gary Locke to do with the 787 site selection debacle Boeing put Washington State through in 2003:

I don't know if Gary Locke is up to speed on the whole 787 site selection debacle. I fear his ego may have shielded him from the truth on that matter. He may actually believe that he was the reason the 787 was sited in Everett, Washington rather than the anti-union Boeing Board of Directors' preferred location of anti-union Charlotte, North Carolina. If he believes he is the reason, he is of course wrong, per Boeing's belief. According to Boeing, I am the sole reason the 787 was sited in Washington, even if they had the former Boeing executive in charge of the mismanagement-addled 787 program prevaricate in an interview with my attorney before trial that he had feared the opposite was the case. This was when The Seattle Times broke the news that Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Alan Mulally (and team) preferred Everett (even though the BOD had the final say and had anti-union bias for another site). This is the article they pinned on me for being the source of the "closely held" site selection recommendation by Mulally and his mismanagement team. It is perhaps of interest that I never have met Mulally, unless you count attendance in a crowd watching him at the 777 Rollout in Everett and a speech he gave to employees at the Propulsion Systems Division of Boeing as "meeting him." Every reporter on the planet at the time would likely do almost anything to get that info, but only one reporter, Dominic Gates of The Seattle Times, managed to uncover that critical story and share it with all Boeing employees.

I never did ask for anything (or was offered anything) from The Seattle Times for the stories which I was one of the sources for (some of which are noted on my website, (www.thelastinspector.com). I received not so much as a free subscription. My sole reason for contacting The Seattle Times was to bring the still installed corrupt Boeing management and corrupt FAA management to justice for their crimes against public, air crew, and military personnel safety and our national security as noted elsewhere on this blog and as noted on my main website.