Lockheed Vindicated
By Late Nite LeRoy
September 3, 2000
Maybe about 15 years ago now you may remember the RIM news beating the drum about Lockheed charging $500 for a toilet seat. The Lockheed employee newspaper for months afterward preached to the choir, their employees, the reason for the price. The Pentagon had made such demanding manufacturing specifications and tolerances that it was impossible for anyone to make them for less. This was the same story for the multi-thousand dollar coffee maker for the C-5a cargo transport plane. It had to survive a crash. I guess the clean up crew's union demanded fresh coffee to clean up the remains if America's largest airplane at the time ever crashed.
A few weeks ago I was criticized as being vulgar for pointing out that Los Angeles honestly did NOT have any ordinances regarding public urination until shortly before the Democratic convention. Somebody at the Metropolitan Transit Authority has since then over reacted. I refuse to ride the multi-billion dollar Los Angeles subway boon doggle, so I'm not clear if public rest rooms were not built into it at all, or if it was determined they didn't have enough, I've heard conflicting stories. But an MTA decision WAS made to purchase some outside units for permanent use. And of course a rented Andy Gump unit won't do for the Los Angles gold plated rabbit hole, so a contract was negotiated which provided these new, high tech, self cleaning toilet stalls for no cash. What was paid was an agreement to allow billboards to be placed along LA freeways.
Sounds OK so far, until competing billboard companies cried foul. It seems billboard locations near an LA freeway bring a premium price. I've heard of $10,000 a month or much more. So it was calculated that the contract was worth $50 million dollars if it had been put out to bid. Divide that by the number of outdoor toilets they got for swap and each stall comes to over $200,000.
A letter to the LA Times pointed out the last NASA mission to Jupiter cost considerably less than the LA subway which currently connects down town to Universal City. And that price was before they added these toilets.
Lockheed should be honored for preventing such waste of citizens' tax money.
--LateNiteLeroy
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