Trump vows to impose ‘lifetime’ ban on F-35 officials seeking defense industry jobs, by Tony Bertuca. Trump really doesn’t like the F-35, or corruption:

President-elect Donald Trump continued his public criticism of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter during a Thursday night speech in which he promised to impose a “lifetime ban” on Pentagon acquisition officials involved in the aircraft contract from subsequently working in the defense industry.

Drain the swamp.

“Take a look at the F-35 program,” he said during a speech in Hershey, PA. “The people that gave out those contracts — give me a break. We’re going to impose a lifetime ban on people that give these massive contracts out, or even small contracts. You want to work for the United States, you work for the United States. You are not going to work for the people that build these planes.” …

The establishment mounts a limp defense:

Andrew Hunter, a former Pentagon acquisition official who now works as an analyst for the Center for Strategic and Intentional Studies, tweeted Thursday that Trump’s concerns for defense contractor conflicts of interest is “touching,” and told Inside Defense that existing ethics laws are adequate to prevent such conflicts and already amount to a lifetime ban. …

However, Hunter noted, current rules do not prevent a government official who worked on the F-35 from ever working for Lockheed.

Most commonly when this happens you might see someone going to work in a different business unit,” he wrote. “For example, someone who worked on F-35 might go work the part of Lockheed that does space or maritime systems.”

Hunter said imposing a lifetime ban would be bad for the Pentagon and bad for the defense industry.

Sure. Bad for the bribery of government procurement officers by offering cushy jobs.

But Mandy Smithberger, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project On Government Oversight, said government ethics laws are not only inadequate because of how subjectively they can be applied, but also cynical in that Washington culture “thinks you’re a total schmuck if you don’t go through the revolving door.” …

“I am disappointed by so many news stories that take as fact that you can’t attract quality people if they can’t cash out on their public service later,” she continued. “I think it’s an extremely cynical and unfair characterization of why people go into public service.”

The F-35 is a good example of awful public policy brought about by corruption.

There are some major policy announcements in his victory lap speeches.

hat-tip David Archibald