Regardless of whether velcro would admit he was wrong or not (I believe that he would), some of us others might be interested in seeing your sources, for our own edification. I wouldn't ignore the challenge just because of velcro.
I'm not ignoring it because of Velcro. It's a nonsense challenge. The only real claim I can see that I made is that I saw multiple sources say that it was a cost plus contract. It's not terribly material one way or the other. In fact the original "contract" appears to be a series of incremental contracts (you can see announcements of pieces if you search for the terms year by year). You can also look at politifact, or several other sources that have a link to the original contract terms that were released. It's clear that the final costs were largely an unknown, and that the individual year by year projections were capable of upward adjustments as they are awarded.
Here's the budget document itself,
http://www.i2insights.com/library/defense_budget-documents/fy2017-defense_budget/3600F/3600F-0401319F-R.pdf. Which again, is a projection as the future sub-contracts had not all been assigned, and based on history would certainly come in at higher values. It's also very likely that this project will continue past 2021, which means this chart would have gotten longer.
While it's certainly possible to award later pieces to other contractors, there's a cost to do so where you don't retain the prior knowledge going back.
So is this what you want "two sources" for as Velcro likes to challenge? What should be common knowledge on how the contract works - for anyone interested? Or the specific claim about the cost plus? Not sure how I was searching when I found those references the first time. If you search for it expressly, it comes up as a question on the new contract which is often presented as for a fixed price, but for which experts seem to be expressing doubt because they don't believe Boeing would even consider a contract that isn't cost plus (which should lead to implications about the prior contract, but hey, inductive reasoning doesn't seem to be in fashion on here).
Or are you looking for me to provide two sources that somehow have been written on Velcro's bad math and logic? I'm not aware that anyone in the national media has made that a priority.
I'm happy to respond to a troll when I feel like it, but it's not always entertaining, sometimes it's more entertaining just to call them out as being a troll. For goodness sakes, he's written more directly nasty things to me than I have ever have to him. Most of it setting arbitrary and childish demands that if I don't "answer to his satisfaction" prove to the board what a cad I am. Lol. If you guys want to think I'm a cad go ahead. However, as always, I'm happy to expand on an argument and provide additional explanation, but I'm not anyone's research monkey.
So to respond to his "facts":
According to Trump, it started at $4.2B.
Is this intended to be a quote or are you claiming it as a proof of substance? The total, as I said before, would have been an estimate of the costs, as the contract literally, provided for future sub-contracts for which the final prices were not yet set (only the target budget) and if you look at the budget document, the end point and additional costs were still not included (meaning there could be additional costs past the limited term of the budget).
It's actually very possible, that Trump could have had a source that gave him the 4.2 number, and even that it was far off from a then current estimate, and that the final bill could end up 5, 6, 10 billion as this runs over time.
It is now documented fixed price at $3.9B.
That is the announcement. However, I note there seems there is skepticism that Boeing would agree to a hard fixed contract.
This represents a change from an open ended contract that would certainly increase in cost over time, to a closed in one with a fixed budget. That would literally create a savings.
Trump said he saved over $1B.
Again this is a "quote" sortof. Whether its true substantively or not we can't verify. Certainly possible given the potential realities from your first two "facts". But as I've repeatedly said, we have no ability - with information in the public record - to determine if its accurate.
The Air Force does not know where the $1B number came from
Is this an official position of the Air Force? The only references I saw on this were ambiguous. In any event, if the Air Force answered based on their
budget then they could make this claim. They may not, however, have been aware of the projections that Boeing and the deal negotiators were working with.
Or is this just induction from the Air Force's announcement of the no bid contract?
The White House website says millions, not $1B in savings
Does it? Looks to me like they say $1.4 Billion.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-air-force-one-contract/. Maybe I'm missing the correction?
I note it also specifically states the original contract was cost plus, if you really want to get into my "claims".
Pretty much Velcro cherry picks "quotes" and then acts as if they are proof of substance, notwithstanding that there is easy to find information (and an entire history of cost over runs on government contracts) on the substance. It's not clear why Trump's pre-Presidency cost estimate, should be given such weight in any event, or why he'd believe that after becoming President Trump would not have a better understanding of the real costs.
Honestly I've wasted enough time on this. The long and short of it, WE don't have insight into whether Trump saved us money or not, neither does Velcro. But there is every reason to believe that a fixed price contract results in savings over one that is not. Of course, that's entirely dependent on it actually being fixed price and not just another overrun approved model. And in my view, Velcro's only real "doubt" about the numbers comes from his belief that
everything Trump says is a lie.
He has no substantive proof of the actual current cost estimate before the negotiation, and that is a
necessary fact to determine the veracity of Trump's claim on cost savings (hence it can not be proven FALSE or true on the record we have).