We hope the BDC has lots of koin left in it’s koffers. You know the BDC – the Brunswick Development Corporation – on which Johnny Protocols is focusing like a lawsyer. Hard to pronounce, but that’s a combining form of lawyer and laser. And JP wants to bring them to an even higher level of superior service to the public interest.
The reason we bring this up is because there is disturbing news on the street this morning. Just the sort of thing that the BDC loves to engage in remedying, using that money of theirs that, you know, isn’t public, but isn’t private either. For lack of a better term, it’s municipal government squish money. Or maybe slush money would be better, since it reminds one of ‘slush funds.’
A friend passed along this BDN article link this morning. Shortly thereafter, another friend passed along this Mainebiz link, which refers to the BDN article.
You might recall that we posted on Klapmeier and Kestrel in the past, and you can review those efforts here. We invite Johnny Protocols to do so in particular, though he might find the essays driven by ‘personal and political’ agendas, which is the filter he views everything through. Well, mostly everything.
Our reporting included this now classic, and even prophetic passage:
Because one of the bitter disappointments of the golden years is finding out just how gullible one has been, and almost always learning that lesson via government, politicians, and the myriad parasites and cronies that love to rub shoulders with them while picking the publics’ pockets.
Our earlier reporting included the photo at the top, which we remarked shows a total disregard for the flight patterns at BNAS. The plane is going crosswise to the runways. Perhaps we should all have seen that as a harbinger of what was to come.
We thought as we studied the Kestrel news back then that the business case didn’t make much sense or hold much water. They were planning on selling the planes at $3 million each as we recall. And if you had a generous mark-up of $250,000 on each, that would take selling 400 planes as an absolute minimum to recoup an initial investment of $100 million, with no return at all on that money, and no money to pay for a damn thing, including any labor.
But what do we know? We’re not in the aviation business; we just deal in flights of fancy and idiocy. So we didn’t think to do a business case analysis. Maybe Scott Howard did; can someone contact him?
Which makes the current dilemma Kestrel finds itself in a perfect match for the BDC, which doesn’t seem to dwell on business cases either. You might recall as well that BDC recently gave MRRA a grant of $250,000 to help in its ‘economic development.’
So let’s get to the essence of the current news:
Kestrel CEO Alan Klapmeier confirmed Wednesday that his startup company is behind on rent payments, has been late with paychecks and that Kestrel employees in Brunswick are currently without health, life and dental insurance after the company failed to pay premiums.
You really should read the rest of the BDN article….it’s breathtaking, actually. A horror story, we would think.
It includes this bombshell:
At an aviation industry conference in late July, Klapmeier said the company needs to raise $125 million to see the aircraft through FAA certification, according to Aviation International News.
He needs another $125 freakin’ million dollars before he can sell a single one? Wow! Sounds like a really solid investment to us. At least for BDC, which really prefers to give money away anyhow.
All we can say is that it’s a damn good thing no one else makes a single engine private aircraft. The sooner Klapmeier gets to market, the sooner that glaring deficiency will be corrected.
And the sooner we can all start rolling in the economic growth, or whatever else is covering the local pastures.
By the way, has anyone seen Jim Horowitz lately? Is he still hanging out with FLee Bailey? We’re just wondrin’.
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