"Corporations are people, my friend."If Boeing 787 Dreamliners fall out of the Sky, then it's up to consumers to have the freedom to choose whether or not they would fly on them! The Free Market does everything better! Governments interfering, by grounding all 787's, is just Socialism.
Regulations are Marxist. Caveat Emptor!
It appears the problems with Boeing's 787 are more than just minor winkles to be ironed-out and are indicative of a deep-seated flaws stemming from a desire to skimp and do all facets of production on the cheap.
Corporations don't want a Free Market. Boeing, especially doesn't want a Free Market. They want the semblance without the substance.
Boeing exists because of the machinations, under-handed deals and Government contracts especially over the last decade.
In 2001, Boeing moved it's Corporate HQ to Chicago, Illinois. Boeing brought all of 500 employees from the Seattle Sprawl Complex because then Governor George Ryan pushed the Illinois Legislation for a 20 year property tax exemption and $56,000,000 in tax subsides from the city and state. Boeing now has the backstop of special tax structures crafted for Corporate Welfare to fall back if they somehow incur a tax liability.
Boeing has repeatedly pulled stunts like this before. On January 4 2012, Boeing announced it was moving Air Force tanker work out of Kansas to other U.S. plants and closing its Wichita operation next year.
In 2008, Boeing asked Kansas officials to help win a $35 billion contract for 18 Air Force tankers. Wichita's Mayor Carl Brewer says Kansas had a long history of coming through for Boeing. Boeing received 650 tax breaks over the last 30 years and $3.5 billion dollars in bonds from Kansas.
One Boeing press release claimed 'Tanker Win Would Bring 7,500 Jobs, $388 Million to Kansas.' However, after securing the $35 Billion Dollar contract from the US Government and and getting special tax dispensations from Kansas Boeing continued their Race-to-the-Bottom and left the workers in Kansas high and dry.
What Corporations want from Government are negligible taxes, lax financial laws and no regulations.
It's part of the Myth of Self-Regulation. When Corporations are allowed to regulate themselves they use their connections in Government to receive Special dispensations and unfair advantages.
Corporations allowed to regulate themselves use shoddy construction materials and eliminate safe-guards and safety systems as was demonstrated with BP's Deepwater Horizon platform.
Corporations allowed to regulate themselves, lie and have actors pretend to be Doctors to promote the benefits of their products, as Tobacco Giants did for decades.
The Republican Party has been propagating the Myth of Self-Regulation for decades. Basically, that if the insidous government wasn't strangling Businesses with onerous regulations the engine of Capitalism would operate at 100% efficiency. It's as big a fraud as Perpetual Motion Machines. And designed for the same reason; to dupe and swindle Americans and transfer billions from the Poor to the Rich whom the Republicans slavishly serve.
Boeing has been my ex-military husband's second career. And oh the changes we have seen there...things were run one way before the merger with another airplane company; and a whole 'nother way afterwards.
ReplyDeleteWe are both glad he will retire from there in a few more years, possibly before another Presidential election.
He doesn't work the civilian side like Dreamliners....but we both think that part of that issue and many other is that Boeing began out-of-house contracting many parts of planes, something they NEVER used to do. Like those troublesome lithium batteries of the Dreamliner, for instance; all made abroad in Japan.
Notions like Quality Control and workplace morale become passe when the Corporate Cost-Benefit analysis is tuned to squeezing as much luche out of any particular contract as possible.
ReplyDeleteSo Boeing has been fraudulently overbilling the US Government on contracts has been seeking to move operations to Right-to-Work States and off-shoring manufacturing.
All so the CEO and Board can "earn" a few extra millions to hide in the Cayman Islands.
Oh and Boeing's CEO W. James McNerney, Jr. is on Fix the Debt’s CEO Council.
Yep, and don't I know it. I TOLD my husband the HQ would leave the Pac Nor'west about three years before it happened.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, though? On the "fraudulent overbilling"? At least on the military side, it is not really fraudulent nor intended as overbilling. Part of it is sheer stupidity on the government's part....they send documents the size of "War and Peace" on projects...demands that must be catered to....and every demand costs man hours. And then, the military and government types CHANGE their minds like a woman in a bad 60's sitcom...requiring MORE man hours to make those changes.
Also, some of the price quotes, on planes for instance? The government says, "Ok, what will it cost to make 60 of these." So Boeing (like any manufacturer) averages the price based on that number...it takes in all those "compliance hours", factory set up, and all the rest. Then the government, after awarding the contract, says "Oh, btw, lets just make two dozen, not five." Thing is, all the set up, all the compliance....all THAT, it is the same for 24 or 60....so it UPS the unit price. And then the bean counters scream about being over-billed, which is both dishonest AND disingenuous of them.