Authored by Russell Mokhiber via Counterpunch.org,
Democrats want to make Donald Trump the issue in 2020.
If they do, they will lose again, the way they lost in 2016.
Instead, the 2020 election should be about corporate power in all of its manifestations, its hold on the culture, our country and both major political parties.
Take the case of the two Boeing 737 Max 8 airplane crashes — the Lion Air crash off the coast of Jakarta, Indonesia in October 2018 that killed all 189 on board and the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March 2019 that killed all 157 on board.
During his time as President of the United States, Barack Obama promoted the sale of Boeing planes — including the 737 Max 8 planes — around the world.
In November 2011, in Bali, Indonesia, President Obama announced an agreement between Boeing and Lion Air.
“For the last several days I’ve been talking about how we have to make sure that we’ve got a presence in this region, that it can result directly in jobs at home,” Obama said.
“And what we see here — a multibillion-dollar deal between Lion Air — one of the fastest-growing airlines not just in the region, but in the world — and Boeing is going to result in over 100,000 jobs back in the United States of America, over a long period of time.”
“This represents the largest deal, if I’m not mistaken, that Boeing has ever done. We are looking at over 200 planes that are going to be sold.”
In September 2014, Obama met with the Prime Minister of Ethiopia at the White House.
“We’re strong trading partners,” Obama said. “And most recently, Boeing has done a deal with Ethiopia, which will result in jobs here in the United States.”
“I’m expecting a gold watch from Boeing at the end of my presidency because I know I’m on the list of top salesmen at Boeing,” Obama said at an export forum at the White House in September 2013.
Of course, Obama got more than just a gold watch from Boeing when he left the White House.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Boeing donated $10 million to the Obama presidential library and museum in Chicago. And earlier this year, Obama dropped in to speak to a Boeing leadership retreat at a swank resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. Obama gratefully waived his $400,000 speaking fee.
While pushing the sale of Boeing planes around the world, the Obama administration was at the same time fast tracking a dangerous deregulatory process at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that effectively put the corporations in charge of the safety certification process — and that in effect put Boeing in charge of certifying it’s faulty MCAS software that led to the tragedies in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
The FAA certification system is known as the Organization Designation Authorization (ODA) program. Under that program, companies like Boeing can appoint their own representatives to act in the place of FAA inspectors.
In 2004, one of the unions representing FAA inspectors – Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS) – criticized the proposed ODA program as “premature and reckless.”
“Allowing the aviation industry to self-regulate in this manner is nothing more than the blatant outsourcing of inspector functions and handing over inherently governmental oversight activities to non-governmental, for-profit entities,” PASS wrote in its 2004 comments to the FAA.
Would a more independent FAA have prevented the two recent Boeing crashes?
Yes, says Paul Hudson of Flyer’s Rights.
“The ODA program has allowed Boeing to effectively self certify the MCAS software as safe,” Hudson told Corporate Crime Reporter.
“Boeing ‘s CEO, whistleblowers and FAA now admit they failed to properly test, fully connect, or even disclose MCAS, much less its deadly defects and overpowering features — not to the FAA higher ups, not to airline pilots or not even to its own test pilots.”
“Air travel has gotten much safer due to both safety regulation and technical advancements,” Hudson said. “But profit seeking over safety at all costs is destroying both safety and profits.”
“Some Boeing safety inspectors have summed up the current culture as ‘safety is king but schedule is God,” Hudson said. “I asked Boeing in December after the Lion Air crash to ground the Max. Boeing refused.”
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
The only thing most Americans care about is cost. How much is it? Can I get it cheaper? Same goes for American management and owners. Any way that the expenses can be reduced is a way to channel cash near ME, and I am all in favor of that.
Hell, we can save .001% fuel on every take off if we fly right on the edge, in a way that no pilot would. To ensure that no pilot WILL, we just introduce this neat software, and see to it that this software is the default position, with an inconvenient, unlikely series of steps required to disable it. That is no problem for a highly trained pilot at Southwest, but a lot less likely for Lion Air. Any way you cut it though, we save 12 gallons of JetA per takeoff, and that times 4 per day, times 360 days a year, times a 20 year lifespan, and at (insert JetA price here) per gallon, why… HUGE money. Buy Boeing.
What a couple hundred third worlders croaked because their pilots were ignorant, and the plane acted against their wishes, and they could not keep it in the air? Collateral damage, bro. Look at all the money we are saving. That is all we really care about.
Now isn’t that just fanfuckingtastic Obama an absolute failure that his shit load of shithole shit head ideas keep floating to the surface of the cess pool created by the first foreign exchange student community organizer mixed race black two term president !
Sadly we are stuck with his mud hut mentality in US HISTORY !
As Zach G asked Oblunder on his very funny “Between Two Ferns”….how does it feel to be the last Black President?
Remember, idiot Boeing moved their corporate Hdqtrs to Chicago. Chicago is a shit-hole location with high taxes, mayor Rahm (at the time), and home to you know who and his future library. Gold watch my ass, Boeing is completely owned by the Demos. They get what they deserve.
If the decision to waive government safety inspection was made on 2004, it would be Bush again. Never fails, Obama comes out smelling like a rose.
Not mentioned according to my read of this piece is the fact Boeing gave the MCAS system 4x the “authority” to move the trim than was acknowledged to the FAA, even with their “self-certification”. If they had told the FAA of this change, things could have ended differently.
This bullshit program needs to end across the board, and make safety the SOLE objective of the FAA, not cheerleading for the aircraft industry!
When Boeing and its subcontractor, yet unnamed here, suspended their IAM union steward for “insubordination,” which the US Supreme Court ruled long ago could not be demonstrated by a Union Steward face-to-face with Management, the National Labor Relations Board, under George Bush the younger at that time, assured the steward it would just be a paid vacation.
It was a vacation used to find other nonunion employment. A full six months later the punitive award of backpay to that union steward got deposited into a special savings account, which turned into some additional stock purchases,
However, the letters of support from workers in the shop were overwhelming and helpful, the NLRB agent told the steward. The agent did wonder why there were a few who did not send letters. The steward, being a bit of a newshound and bolstered by having found a conservative investigator at the NLRB, decided to ask one of them who’d not come to the defense of Fair Labor Standards Act principles.
The question was asked a nonthreatening manner in front of a union meeting with no one identified by name.
A man whom had known the steward for years told the steward he could not afford to lose his job. That prompted the other two to admit they could not afford to be without a paycheck for more than a couple weeks like the steward could.
The steward understood and it didn’t matter anyway, at that point. Boeing KNEW they would lose and have to pay the steward the back pay. But, by doing what they did, they taught every single person in that “workshop” that if you stand on principle to the powers that be, you will go hungry.
Yes. Boeing is evil, as are all the corporate entities our CongressCritters have Crawled into the gutter with to wallow like pigs at Animal Farm.
The thing is this: People need the jobs because they have bills to pay. And the inconvenience of land or sea travel is just too great to boycott flying.
The steward completely understood and told them all that if possible, the union itself would get sued. However, such a thing is almost not allowed by the laws of this land.
The Union is the problem as much as Management.
Guitar is Management; Banjo is Union.
Nobody wins.
Mean Mary is a badass, though.
Mean Mary is indeed a musical badass….
I have contacted my geetar pickin’ cuzin’ to see if she wouldn’t like to go see Mean Mary, who lives across the Big Muddy in Nashville. I think we could collaborate on some tunes.
Rule by corporations is not human friendly…
Interesting that there has been no discussion of removing the faulty system and going back a generation or so to something that works. I don’t feel safe enough to travel on any 737 flight, and now we see announcements of defects and production problems in the other models.
Atlas Shrugged slowly – then quickly – turns from fiction into prophesy?