Talk about a golden parachute. This guy never even got on to the plane.

A man who was being groomed to take over as CEO of Lockheed, the nation’s largest defense contractor, has been forced to resign shortly before taking office. The reason — he was having a long-term extramarital affair with a “subordinate employee.”

But that’s not the scandal — the scandal is that you, the taxpayer, will pony up $3.5 million as a parting gift (or maybe a “partying gift”) even though he resigned in disgrace — or as the article below says, was fired.

Think of it as a golden parachute for a guy who never made it off the runway.

Here’s the story, thanks to William Hartung and Stephen Miles at the Huffington Post (my emphasis and some reparagraphing):

Last Friday, Lockheed Martin quietly announced that after having been groomed to take over for departing C.E.O. Robert Stevens this January, that would-be C.E.O. Christopher Kubasik would be resigning over a long-term extramarital affair with a “subordinate employee.” … [H]owever on Monday, the Washington Post reported that according to S.E.C. filings, Lockheed Martin will pay Mr. Kubasik $3.5 million in separation pay. In other words, for being fired for misconduct before he ever spent one day in the job as its C.E.O., the Pentagon’s largest contractor will be giving their former employee one heck of a going away gift.

The “Pentagon’s largest contractor” — that means you and I pay for Kubasik’s free ride. Here’s a little more on Lockheed’s management of the people’s money:

Lockheed Martin is now using taxpayer dollars to pay $3.5 million to someone they’re firing. This is tragically unsurprising for a company with Lockheed’s executive salary track record. Before being summarily fired last week, Mr. Kubasik was likely on pace to match the $9.5 million he made in 2011. Upon his promotion to C.E.O. he would have been eligible to earn something closer to the$25.4 million Robert Stevens earned in 2011. All told, last year Lockheed Martin paid their top 5 executives a combined $51.9 million.

Tales of the .001% — they watch out for each other, and no one else in the world. Remember this man the next time you see military fetishism coming from your local media mouths. You could pay for a lot of Pentagon sequesters just by cancelling the executive feeding trough (say I).

GP

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