- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
The investigation is tied to an incident on an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Boeing also told a Senate panel that it cannot find a record of the work done on the Alaska plane.
Sadly nothing Boeing has done is criminal in the US even though it absolutely should be. It’s just the bog standard corporate pursuit of profit at the expense of all else. Cutting corners, ignoring safety, rushing everything, and all with fewer people to do the work than are necessary. If Boeing is found criminally guilty for that half the corporations in the US are in trouble.
No, this is just political theater, much like the TSA is. Boeing has fucked up enough that people are starting to take notice, so this is just a little reminder to them that they need to stop fucking up quite so publicly. The executives will sweat a little, temporarily improve things, and then go right back to their usual bullshit in a year or two when things calm down. Worst case scenario they’ll put out a series of BP style “We’re sorry” videos where they emphasize how much quality and safety supposedly mean to them.
While mostly true, the TSA was also a stealth jobs program for flunkies who couldn’t get jobs anywhere else (and to help Bush pump his jobs numbers, which were abysmal). You kind of have to be a motivated fucking idiot to spend every day undermining the fourth amendment and acting like you’re doing a service to society. Especially with all the evidence of TSA agents using their authority to just outright steal shit. They’re not hiring the best, and everyone knows that they hire the worst of the worst for these jobs, so it’s hard to even call it “theater” anymore when everyone sees right through it. Hypernormalization.
While you’re correct in your assessment, I’d like to remind people to not be assholes to TSA when they’re going through security. They’re people just trying to do their jobs like the rest of us. It’s a shit job with no recognition and a ton of public contact. The agents aren’t there because they want to stomp on your rights; they have bills to pay and people to take care of.
Being assholes to them is irrational, they can be more of a nuisance to you than you can be to them. However I disagree people doing those jobs deserve any respect, doing evil because it’s a job and it pays and they can’t think of anything better… that doesn’t mean it suddenly becomes acceptable. The pawns don’t feel like they’re responsible for abuses.
I doubt that you know whether Boeing has or has not broken any laws.
OK, well nothing there’s anything public about anyway. It’s always possible they’ve been embezzling or I don’t know, running a drug smuggling ring out of their warehouses, but nothing they’ve probably done is illegal. Remember this is all just a response to the multiple accidents related to manufacturing defects in their planes. At this moment the worst charge they’re looking at is maybe criminal negligence.
Cover up is where I’d put money. Supplying a federal agency with falsified documents or otherwise lying would start getting into criminal territory. Though I agree that we, the public, have no evidence of that.
He didn’t say illegal, he said criminal.
They’re being investigated under “Conspiracy to Defraud the United States”, which does have criminal penalties.
Now, that’s a prison sentence of up to 5 years. People died because of the decisions by Boeing executives, and countless others were put at risk. There should be a whole lot more here that they should be charged with, but probably won’t.
And when was the last time that the US sent to jail anybody in the C-suite of a major US company?
In the US (and not only) the Law might be on the book but it’s most definitelly selectivelly applied and all we’ve seen when it comes to the top people in such “too big to fail” companies is settlements with no admission of guilt.
I don’t disagree. I also think people should present the VW Diesel Emissions scandal accurately.
Oh yeah, that stuff was a complete total disgrace and partly why I wrote “In the US (and not only)”.
Protecting C-suite types in big companies is almost always how things work in Western Nations, even the supposedly more honest ones.
What is your point?
The FAA and the DOJ are not the same as TSA. Not at all.
An enterprising DA should charge a corporation with murder under the personhood standard established by citizens united and go for the death penalty . Revoke their ability to exist in the state.
If someone bought off that the bolts were reinstalled they can get in trouble for falsifying inspection records.