Photograph by SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg

A United States Air Force Global Hawk drone, manufactured by Northrop Grumman Corp., is displayed during a media preview in Seongnam, South Korea, in this file photo.

For companies like Northrop Grumman Corp. and Comcast Corp., it’s never too early to make political action committee contributions to future elections.

Federal Election Commission reports show company PACs made donations in December to candidates next facing the voters two years away. In some cases, those contributions went to candidates not up for re-election until 2016, Bloomberg News reports.

“Raising money never stops,” said Bill Allison, editorial director at the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based watchdog group. “That’s a huge part of the business of Congress.  Now, with super-PACs and outside spending groups, the pressure to raise money is just greater than ever.”

Many of the early donors, such as defense contractors Northrop and General Dynamics, will be directly affected by the automatic budget cuts — half from the Pentagon — scheduled to take effect next month unless Congress comes up with an alternative plan. Senate Democrats have proposed offsetting the cuts in part with higher taxes on wealthy Americans. House Republicans want to cut food stamps instead.

Read the full story here.

Original post is Corporate Political Committees Funding 2014 Campaigns by Political Capital.

Photograph by Paramount/Everett Collection

The Klingon Bird of Prey from “Star Trek: The Voyage Home.”

Which is the U.S. Navy talking, and which is Star Trek talking?

One of the descriptions below comes from the Navy’s words for the Littoral Combat Ship, or LCS, a fast boat from Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics designed to defeat threats such as mines, quiet diesel submarines and other fast surface craft.

The other comes from Star Trek’s manual for the inter-galactic, warp speed-capable Klingon Bird-of-Prey, a warship deployed by the Klingon Empire serving Klingon Defense Forces from the late 23rd century into the late 24th century.

1)  “Design philosophy has always centered on tried-and-tested methods and places great importance on the ability to mass-produce ships at great speed. The modular design means that the maximum number of ships can be produced at the fastest possible rate.”

2)   “Wargames and field experimentation have demonstrated the value of distributing combat power among modular-mission platforms — small surface craft with reconfigurable on- and off-board systems which are networked to warfighters.”

Which is the Navy, which is Star Trek?

Think first, then find the answer below:

2): Navy

Original post is Star Trek vs. Navy: Klingons vs. Lockheed Martin by Political Capital.

Now, it has a dance partner: CACI International Inc., which announced yesterday it had acquired IDL for an undisclosed amount.

IDL, based in Germantown, Wisconsin, had been telling potential  buyers “no” about once a week, Ed Silva, the company’s senior vice president, told Bloomberg News in a February 2012 interview.

The interest in the company came after it won one of 16 seats on the contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It picked up in November 2011 after the company won a $59 million order on the agreement.

“Having the spot on the contract absolutely gets you attention,” Silva said last year.

CACI isn’t the first company to buy its way onto the health contract. General Dynamics acquired Baltimore-based ViPS Inc. for $225 million in 2008 to get a spot on the deal. It got its second seat by purchasing Vangent Holding Corp., based in Arlington, Virginia, for $960 million in September.

Maricom Systems Inc., a Baltimore health-care technology firm, was bought in 2011 by Falls Church, Virginia-based Computer Sciences Corp. in part because of its spot on the deal.

Maricom’s seat on the contract was the “No. 1 selling point,” Chris Guckert, who was Maricom’s chief operating officer and who remained in his role after the sale, told Bloomberg last year. “It is the ticket to the dance and there are a lot of companies that would covet having that ticket.”

Original post is IDL Dances With CACI After Federal Health Contract by Political Capital.

Photograph by Kim Jae-Hwan/AFP/Getty Images

US M1A1 Abrams tanks are loaded onto a train during the Army Preposition Stocks operation drill at Camp Carroll in Chilgok, southeast of Seoul.

Defense companies would be hit hardest by automatic government spending cuts set to take effect at midnight, but investors aren’t panicking yet.

Shares of the 10 biggest Pentagon contractors rose 1.2 percent today as Democrats and Republicans remained at odds over a deal to forestall across-the-board spending cuts. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rallied 1.7 percent.

If no deal on the spending cuts is reached by midnight, reductions to domestic and national security programs totaling about $110 billion in 2013 will begin this week.

“Investors who are holding large positions in companies like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics — they realize that even in a sequestration environment these companies are not going away,” said Michael Lewis, managing director of the Silverline Group LLC, a consulting firm in McLean, Virginia.

While the deal being discussed on Capitol Hill would prevent tax hikes on all but the wealthiest households, it wouldn’t achieve what both parties set out to accomplish: sufficient deficit reduction to put the nation on a sustainable fiscal path.

The last-minute proposal is a greatly scaled-down version of a $4 trillion deficit-reduction package President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner previously considered. A Bloomberg Government analysis last month found that it would take a $9 trillion deal to ensure the country’s long-run fiscal soundness amid the demands of an aging population and rising health-care costs.

Original post is Defense Investors Stay Calm Heading for Cliff by Political Capital.