Lockheed lobbyist Ann Elise Sauer goes to work for the federal govt.

McCain has a history as a vocal critic of Lockheed Martin programs. Before Sauer’s appointment, McCain referred to the beleaguered F-22 as an “expensive corroding hangar queen” and labeled the F-35 program “a scandal and a tragedy.”

More recently, McCain announced that he will be joining Lockheed Martin and other Pentagon contractors in their fight to avoid defense sequestration -– a potential consequence of  last year’s Budget Control Act that could reduce defense spending to approximately 2007 levels.

“I have to admit I was shocked when we learned this,” Danielle Brian, POGO’s executive director, said of Sauer’s appointment.

“For at least a decade, McCain has had no peers in the Congress when it comes to oversight of major defense contractors,” Brian said. “I don’t see how he can possibly continue this legacy given this staffing decision, and that is terribly disappointing,” she added.

McCain has called attention to what he has described as potential pitfalls of the revolving door between the defense industry and the government. In a December 15 Senate speech, McCain said:

“To be clear, the military-industrial-congressional complex does not cause programs to fail.  But, it does help create poorly-conceived programs — programs that are so fundamentally unsound that they are doomed to be poorly executed.  And, it does help keep them alive — long after they should have been ended or restructured.”

Sauer and a spokesman for McCain did not respond to requests for comment.  A Lockheed spokesman declined to comment.

Among the questions the McCain spokesman left unanswered: Whether Sauer will recuse herself from any matters involving Lockheed.

Because the Armed Services Committee helps set the Pentagon’s budget, it is unclear how the Republican staff director could avoid matters that affect the company.

Sauer is one of the more vivid examples of the revolving door between the defense industry and its overseers in government.

Before her career of more than 10 years at Lockheed, she worked in the Senate for more than two decades, ultimately as a senior aide to McCain, according to a Sauer biography on a web site associated with the National Defense Industrial Association.

When she left Lockheed in January 2011, she was “Vice President, Acquisition Policy, Logistics, and Budget,” according to the biography.

Lobbying Disclosure Act records show that Sauer was a registered Lockheed lobbyist during most of her time with the firm.

“At various times, she was responsible for managing the corporation’s senior-evel [sic] interfaces with senior Executive and Legislative Branch officials on a wide array of programs and policy issues,” the Sauer biography says.

A LinkedIn profile for Sauer says: “I held several senior positions in the Government Relations office, including management of marketing and lobbying teams covering a broad array of the corporation’s areas of interest.”

After leaving Lockheed, Sauer ran her own consulting business, which “provided advisory services to major defense corporations,” the biography says. Sauer’s financial disclosure form lists BAE Systems paying her $55,000 in consulting fees. A BAE Systems spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Sauer’s story marks the second time in as many months that POGO has reported on a Congressional armed services committee staffer having financial ties to a major defense contractor. Last month POGO’s Dana Liebelson reported that, before joining the House Armed Services Committee, Thomas MacKenzie was a Northrop Grumman lobbyist and held between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of the company’s stock.

As the article notes, this bag of shit worked for the Dept of Defense’s biggest contractor. She shouldn’t even be allowed near a government position, much less a friggin oversight position.

Its the fucking fox guarding the henhouse people.

Thanks Obama you fuck. So much for the transparency you promised in 2008, you lying sack of shit. Don’t tell me that you couldn’t stop this bullshit if you wanted to..after all, you are the President and in charge of the federal government mutha fucka.

As a Pro Publica write up notes, this cunt received a huge chunk of fucking change from Lockheed Martin:

The revolving door swings regularly in Washington, but the size of the compensation package Sauer received from Lockheed when she left the company is notable. A financial disclosure form shows the defense giant gave Sauer $1.6 million in compensation around the time she took a buyout in January 2011.(emphasis mine)

The Pro Publica writeup is worth your time to read as well. When she left Lockheed Martin, the bitch, who was Lockheed’s Vice President, went to work as a lobbyist..then..wait for it…for John McCain as a staffer as one of the writeup’s notes.

Remember, LH’s CEO Robert Stevens went to the hill last month and threatened to layoff over 100,000 people if the DOD cuts went through on Jan 1st. What a nice gun to the head of all those idiot congress critters who approved those cuts when all that bullshit went down about balancing the fucking budget. Remember….that fucknut Jonh Boehner said he got all he wanted in that deal..and now the fucker is crying in his beer about these defense dept cuts looming large on the horizon.

Some background on Sauer from the Pro Publica writeup:

Sauer, who has spent much of her career on Capitol Hill in various capacities, is a specialist on the federal budget. She spent 23 years as a Senate staffer, including 14 years with the armed services committee, and a stint as McCain’s legislative director. She left Capitol Hill to join Lockheed in 2000. (Sauer did not respond to a request for comment.)

Sauer spent a decade at the company, rising to be Lockheed’s Washington-based vice president for acquisition policy, logistics, and budget. For most of the time, she was a registered lobbyist who lobbied in the Senate and elsewhere, according to disclosurefilings.

“She was the corporation’s federal budget expert,” according to her bio posted on the site of the group Women in Defense, “responsible for tracking and analyzing the federal budget, both defense and non-defense. At various times, she was responsible for managing the corporation’s senior-level interfaces with senior Executive and Legislative Branch officials on a wide array of programs and policy issues.”

She briefly started a military consulting firm specializing in “federal budget and fiscal policy information and insights.” Sauer’s financial disclosure, which is required of senior congressional staffers, lists $55,000 in consulting fees paid by another defense giant, BAE Systems.

Her financial disclosure forms show her final payments from Lockheed included $660,000 in salary and bonus, $769,000 in deferred compensation, and $232,000 in “retired pay.”

Rogers, the McCain spokesman, said that Sauer’s compensation was made up of pay from the buyout program, “normal annual incentive compensation” and “significant deferred compensation.”

Lockheed declined to comment.

Sauer’s case has a precedent. Last year, the House Armed Services Committee hiredThomas MacKenzie, a Northrop Grumman lobbyist who received a large bonus from the company before starting his job on the Hill.

I really would like to meet up with her in a dark alley some night and take all my frustrations out on her..not threatening her..just wanna give the cunt an earful of all the shit she has helped pull on the American Taxpayer.

And now, she is overseeing a company she worked for and made a shit load of cash off of..simply amazing.

What else is amazing is that we have to depend on alternative media like Pro Publica and non-profit oversight sites like POGO to get this type of information on who’s running our govt and spending our fucking tax money, like the the F-22 and F-35 fighter jet programs that Lockheed Martin built and which are  huge friggin clusterfucks and always have been.

Thanks Cunt.