Delegate Purkey Lending a Hand to Lockheed Martin

This must be reassuring to the major brokerage firm that just placed Lockheed Martin among its highest recommended investments. And, apparently it is not just LMT that Purkey offers patronage. Pointing out Neil Randolph who had just given a presentation to the breakfast gathering of Republicans, he told the audience he was very much involved in helping him and his firm (Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)) become more involved and attuned to the legislative process in Richmond. He told us that he'd brought Mr. Randolph to Richmond to help him learn how they can become more of a legislative player. Later he would say he had done the same for LMT.

Now, SAIC is a company with over 10,000 employees in Virginia and 44,000 worldwide. And it took Bob Purkey to make them aware of the legislative process. Okay. And surely LMT wouldn't know how to influence policy without the assistance of Delegate Purkey. Who needs lobbyists when you have Delegates?
Purkey says he met with the Lockheed Martin people and that they told him that that day they had the need for 1500 graduate level engineers. At another meeting he attended, he heard from a larger group of employers that in Virginia today there is a need for some 10,000 such skilled workers. Purkey likes to work with an average starting salary of $80,000 to explain the revenues that the state could realize from their employment. Then he goes on to discuss the shortage of nurses and how we have to reach out to skilled workers from Korea, the Philippines, and Asia to fill the ranks. This, as always, leads him to a comment about the high percentage of foreign nationals in American graduate engineering programs (he says 60%).

There's a figure of 3000 that he likes to use when he discusses the green card holders who fill the jobs in ship building and ship repair here in Hampton Roads. These are jobs, he says, that pay 60, 80, even 100,000 dollars a year and we cannot get the people to come into those fields and work those jobs. He also says he met with the CEO of another major international corporation that wants to build a $400 million dollar facility in the Hampton Roads area that would employ 5000 people. They are not coming, he told the audience, because the workers are not available. This he gives as evidence that we have a worker shortage.  He says that we should talk to people who run the hospitality and agricultural industries. "Look at the poultry industry in this state and the rest of the nation."

Listening to Delegate Purkey try to discuss lifting the Republican tent flap is disquieting. That morning's discussion seemed all part of an attempt to pander to his audience, calm the natives' lust for rounding up migrant workers, distracting them from a local Republican cause celeb. It seemed an attempt to say how the immigrant workers' aspirations are just like ours. These audiences are often mesmerized by the Republican math. They are still hearing $80,000 salaries when the discussion has turned to migrant workers processing poultry. They don't question why Lockheed Martin is spending so much money on commercials locally (and certainly elsewhere) to, frame their public image; and not one of those commercials asks for engineer applicants. Nor would they ever find it curious that Delegate Purkey is working so hard on behalf of industry rather than his constituency. Worse, Delegate Purkey doesn't appear to recognize the conflict of interest that just might exist.

Cross posted at VBDems.org - Blogging our way to Democratic wins in Virginia Beach! Go RK!

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