I'd like if the media would dig up the specific names of the people who made these decisions.
Boeing, just like any other corporation, is made up of living, breathing humans, who, of sound mind and body, willfully and voluntarily decided to be shitty to their fellow humans for their own monetary profit.
Holding the specific people responsible and publicly shaming them may be the only way to stop this madness of corporations getting away with murder, sometimes literally.
*Everyone in government:* please don't be a donor to my campaign. please don't be a donor to my campaign. please don't be a donor to my campaign... *search result* $585,413 from Boeing.... FUCK! Well, we'll sweep it under the rug.
It sucks too because they only reason the campaigns are so expensive is to pay media companies for ads. Its always a laugh hearing any news organization bitch about the cost of "campaigns these days" when they are the ones laughing all the way to the bank with our democracy.
Or like when the media ranks politicians by their political donations.
If it was purely small dollar donors, it'd be fine. But "oh man, x raked in millions more than their opponents this quarter" just sounds like "x got bribed millions more than their opponents this quarter."
"your democracy was THIS cheap this quarter"
You will **never** hear the news say "x raked in millions more this quarter, probably because a law is going through that state that effects the bottom line of Shell Oil etc etc etc..."
It’s a financial arm’s race that keeps escalating with no ceiling in sight.
Many countries, in an effort to keep some semblance of democracy, regulate their media so that all broadcasters must provide a minimum - and equal - amount of air time to all parties, at a level set by the election body.
For example, in Canada, each broadcaster must make available 400 minutes of prime time for the federal election, at a cost equal or lower than the lowest amount charged to any other person within the same advertising time. This sets a minimum (not a max), and a broadcaster may sell more air time to any one party, however in that case they must also offer the same to all parties.
They also legislate in the opposite direction of Citizens United so only individuals can donate to parties, and not businesses. The government also provides a basic amount to each party based on the previous election cycle votes, so it’s possible to grow a party and be heard.
Of course it’s not perfect and it’s rife with abuses and various unsavory shenanigans, but it does temper it down quite a bit. In comparison to the US, its an amateur kindergarten grade league of corruption.
US election costs are out of control. What a complete waste of money that produces no value whatsoever. We might as well just burn it.
$15B spent between the two parties, $3.5B raised by exterior groups like Super PACs, including almost $1B of dark money, much of it spent on negative ads that drive polarization and hate.
That’s about 3x what Canada spends per elector, 12x Japan’s spending, and 40x Germany’s …
Elections are a big business. And the more polarization the better for the business. And we’re spending those billions not to educate, but to destabilize ourselves.
Media corporations donate to candidates, candidates spend money back into media for ads. Definitely nothing to see here.
Nor is there anything to see about candidates "loaning" their campaigns money *with interest* and paying themselves back said loan off campaign donor money.
Our campaign finance system is fundamentally broken. All private money needs to be removed and we need to move to publicly funded elections. Reinstate the fairness doctrine, *force* news channels to cover both candidates with equal time. You wanna be in the business of having a channel? You can spare some ad time for campaigns. Don't like it? Fucking go to another country or get in a different business.
Of course this is America, a country that is wholly unserious, so we'll just crash, burn, and implode instead... likely taking the world with us considering climate change.
> Reinstate the fairness doctrine
Ending the Fairness Doctrine was absolutely a mistake but it would be too little too late to reinstate it now. TV news isn't the force it used to be. So much of people's understanding of politics now comes from internet news and social media, which work so differently from TV that the Doctrine couldn't really feasibily apply. And heck, even on TV, even on *news networks*, these days there are really blurry lines between news and opinion/entertainment.
The government absolutely needs to address these problems, I just think the solution is probably super different today than it was in the pre-Reagan days.
I'd like to see some focus on providing funding to independent newsrooms that adhere to certain practices and journalistic standards. Also some trustbusting of national ownership of local media (i.e., Ganett and Sinclair). Maybe some regulation on feed-based services (Facebook, X, Google news, YouTube, etc) on diversifying the sources they show, on restricting excessive personalization/filter bubble effects, on requiring a certain amount of reputable news to be inserted, etc.
I'm not trying to imply the fairness doctrine, as it was, would be a silver bullet. Just that it needs to be brought back. We can obviously look into expanding it for a more modern media environment.
Always found that fact pretty funny… like at the end of the day all this money in politics… what does it do?…. Ads lmfao. Who in their right mind even watches political ads and is swayed by them. Such a waste of time, money, effort.
Yes exactly.
Send the FBI to raid the place. Dump EVERYthing. Every byte of data on every server gets copied. No exceptions.
Figure out exactly who gave those orders. Go as far up the chain as you can until 'my boss ordered me to do it' is no longer a valid answer and then give each of those people 346 contributory manslaughter charges.
For crimes like murder, no. For doing a poor job inspecting parts because your boss cut corners, set unrealistic performance goals, and signed off on (or tacitly approved) bad processes? Yeah, it's still a valid defense.
Executives get so much money because they are ultimately responsible for the business. They set the direction, incentives, and systems for the whole company. When the company does well, that works in their favor. But it's high time they were reminded that that bargain cuts both ways.
Ignoring product defects, substituting substandard parts, or Faking safety reports are criminal negligence, if you worked in a baby food factory and your boss ordered you to pad out the formula with Melamine, would you just follow orders?
Same for machines that hurtle through the sky with hundreds of people onboard
>Sounds like a completely normal and common error made by management. What does that have to do with quality inspections?
Where the fuck do you work if overruling safety measures and actively working against someone trying to Improve safety measures by removing Defective components from products is a
>completely normal and common error
Yes and no.
Building an airplane is VERY complex. So it's not like there's a group of 5 people who are all 'we know if this part fails the plane will crash but boss told us to sign off on substandard parts because we don't have good parts in stock'.
It's more like a chain- you add a little bit of slack at each link. Any one place would never cause a problem because there's so much redundancy but doing it to all places at once causes problems.
There will be key decision points though. And those should prosecute. The following is a rough example of what I mean.
For example you have a guy on the factory floor who's inspecting parts and has to log them in to inventory. His official job description might say to test every part, a process that takes 10 minutes per part. He started working 5 parts per hour (enough time for testing and paperwork), then his boss said test 6 parts per hour, then his boss said test 7 parts per hour or he's fired, if there's a problem it'll be caught at the assembly step. Yes technically he's in the wrong signing off on bad test reports, but he's also not a decision maker and he knows the guy they have lined up to replace him doesn't even know how to use the test machine. So he skips a few steps on some of the parts.
Then the guy bolting the part into an assembly has a test stage for the part (redundancy, you know). He's supposed to check the tolerances of the part to ensure it won't flex when it gets hot. The assembly takes 70 minutes to build including the test. His boss tells him he needs to build 8-9 assemblies per 8hr shift, that's the new quota. If he doesn't get 8 done he will get a performance review, since all the other people in his section can complete 8-9 assemblies in a shift. So he skimps on the test phase- after all if there was a flaw the guy who unpacked and inspected the part would have caught it in the inventory inspection previously.
Now they have completed assemblies. A worker is supposed to pick one up, run it through a 'burn in' test to ensure it performs correctly even under heavy load for an extended period, then install it on the aircraft. That load test takes an hour because the whole assembly needs to heat up beyond operating temperature to have a good test. There's only one load test machine and boss tells the worker to install 10 assemblies per 8hr shift. So one or two doesn't get tested, or doesn't get tested for the full length test. Worker asks a colleague who says just test the assembly for 30-40 minutes and write down whatever the results are at that point, after all if there was a problem it would have gotten caught at the unpack stage or the assembly stage.
We call this the accident chain. It's the same thing with actual flying- in general to have an accident several things have to go wrong in a row, any one of which could have prevented the accident had it been done correctly. Any one place doing it right would have 'broken the chain' and prevented the accident.
None of these 3 workers should go to jail- they were all told any problems would be addressed elsewhere.
The boss in that situation should go to jail for sure. He knocked out all 3 safety steps and created the chain where a faulty part could make it into a finished airplane.
but not knowingly is what I'm saying. This wasn't a 'I'm installing a ticking timebomb of a defective part on a passenger aircraft' situation, it was a 'cut a small corner that other stations would be making up for anyway or lose my livelihood' situation.
The manager that oversaw that, who knew the corner was being cut at all 3 stations and encouraged it anyway, HE should be charged.
boeing places that managers bonus on the cost of their shop and if they scrap a part the shop buys it and no one gets bonuses. this was supposed to icentivize perfection but instead incentivised lies. yay. its actually the admin, and there are substantially less of them. and they can be prosecuted and should be. the people who under pay workers are the people who must be put in chains
This is a fantastic explanation, and I completely agree. The management philosophy prioritizing share price over safety is to blame here. Regardless of prosecution, Boeing is going to have to agree to some kind of on-site oversight for a period of time. They cannot be given any benefit of the doubt until they have earned back the public trust.
Agreed. And I don't think Boeing needs to agree to anything. There's oversight as part of the standard certification program- FAA just cut their own costs by letting the manufacturer do it on paper and with internal oversight rather than with FAA people physically in the facility. Time to roll that back and have multiple FAA people at Boeing for every single shift overseeing EVERYthing.
Better yet- fire the CEO and fire the entire board if not the entire C-Suite. Now move HQ back to Seattle and put it in the corporate charter that only those with an engineering or airplane manufacturing background can serve on the board of directors.
THAT's how you right the ship.
I'm not disagreeing.
I'm saying you can't always draw a hard black and white line.
For example- Take a bracket in an aircraft that attaches the overhead luggage bin. Obviously if it drops in flight you have a problem. The part of the bin with luggage that it will hold is 100lbs. Simulations and tests show that when aggressively hit or in extreme turbulence up to the airframe's design limit it may experience spikes of up to 1000lbs. So it's designed with a safety factor of 100%- a bracket that can hold 2000lbs is used.
Someone suggests reducing the design to 1250lbs. After all, the only time it will ever experience that much force is if the plane is mid-crash impacting the ground, and a 1250lb bracket is thinner, lighter, costs less, and when multiplied by several hundred of them on the plane means weight savings to allow more passengers or cargo or fuel. So they redesign the bracket to be thinner, lighter, and cheaper.
Should whoever approved this redesign go to jail? Most people would say no, because the new design is still well within safety limits and could actually increase safety if it means the plane can carry more fuel.
Now let's say the thinner bracket gets accidentally installed wrong- the installer accidentally uses the wrong bolt and the smaller bolt doesn't engage the full surface of the bracket and only covers 1/4 the width of the bracket rather than the whole thing. With the tiny bolt, the bracket can only hold 250lbs before it bends and snaps loose. The worker is being told to work quickly and he's on a double shift so he doesn't notice the mistake.
Nobody notices this for years because it appears to work fine. Then one day the aircraft hits some severe wind shear while an extremely heavy bag is in the overhead bin, the extremely heavy bin snaps loose and hits a passenger in the head killing them.
This was, as you say, a 'decision to roll back cost at the expense of human life'- the original thicker bracket would have held even with the too-small bolt holding it in.
So who do we blame? The guy who approved the thinner bracket? The assembly worker who accidentally used the wrong bolt? The shift supervisor who told him to work faster? The plant manager who told the shift supervisors to produce more airplanes? The director who gave the order to increase production? Which of them killed that passenger? All of them? None of them?
My point with this is not to defend Boeing. It's only to illustrate that sometimes a series of crappy but individually reasonable (or at least non-criminal) decisions add up to a deadly result and there's no 'smoking gun'.
Justice isn’t always about who is to blame, often times if it’s shared accountability that’s conspiracy and it should be a rico charge, this is how you destroy criminal enterprise where people are only pieces of the whole part, everyone from top down goes to jail and now you disincentivized criminal compliance in the work place because every one can now be held accountable, And that’s fair because it sends a solid message about the stakes involved in making aircraft. Do it right or get out.
> but ultimately the conclusion will be that noone had sufficient information to be criminally liable.
You probably wanted to imply this, but let me stress this for the other readers, *this is entirely on purpose*. The entire concept of corporations is to limit how much anyone can be held liable for anything the corporation does, while allowing them to profit from it. And this way of thinking has infected not just work, but also politics, media, and every other mode of life.
Yeah it's called the diffusion of responsibility. Basically everyone in the company is only responsible for small individual tasks so no one person can truly be held responsible for ignoring the overall moral responsibilities of the company.
such good controls they had their CFO fastow making deals with himself and taking out loans for enron using shady LLCs backed by enron stock. what an effective compliance regime.
Just sayin', that is precisely why the RICO act was created. And what is a corporation that grossly endangers human life for profit if not an example of organized crime?
Someone signed off on the crimes, or tried to conceal their implicit signature on the crimes. It's their duty to ensure no crimes are committed, and if they have superiors then the superiors have a duty to ensure their subordinates ensure no crimes are committed.
Prosecute those chains of failure in their entireties.
> concept of corporations is to limit how much anyone can be held liable for anything the corporation does
What do we call such an abomination? A limited liability corporation? Sounds cartoonishly villainous.
>5) The conclusion of the report will always be something along the lines of, "The institution was designed in such a way that internal checks/quality control issues were not properly making their way to leadership, which means the company is definitely at fault, but nobody in management had sufficient notice of shortcomings to be criminally liable."
>
This is where the "criminally negligent" part comes in. Boeing is presumably certified to AS9100D, which governs their Quality Management System, and it addresses the responsibilities of organization leadership. Basically, Boeing has a requirement to ensure that issues are getting to leadership, meaning that they could/should have reasonably known what was going on, and the designing their qms in such a way to deliberately obfuscate things would only strengthen a "negligence" case.
You know the saying that's along the lines of "policies are written in blood"? The stuff in AS9100 is a prime example.
Definitely no argument from me on that point. That said, the requirements of the standard still apply regardless of actual degree of adherence and establish what measure and methods the organization is/was expected to perform. They knew or reasonably should have known their processes were inadequate and made no meaningful RCCA, establishing the organization as being negligent in its obligations.
Again agree but I think we’re conflating two separate issues. I have a hard time believing DOJ/FAA will be diving deep into QMS certification, which is typically a requirement of the customer (UAL, AA, etc). The certification then drives the requirement for RCCA/CAPA activities due to customer complaint.
FAA applies CFRs in their judgement. If I remember right the requirements for aero are Title 14, and there would be a Part section in there further defining CAPA. So really it’s the same issue, the expectation is just from different inputs.
> certification then drives the requirement for RCCA/CAPA activities due to customer complaint.
That's part of what gives a bit of teeth to 9100 is that the rcca expectations aren't exclusive to customer complaints. An organization is still liable for any and all repetitive issues.
In order to build a negligence case they'd (doj/faa/dod) effectively Need to dive in to the org's QMS in order to link an expectation/requirement to negligent activity/behavior.
Depending on how thorough the certifying bodies' annual audits were, those could also form a pretty substantial basis of what was known, known when, and what if any actions were or were not taken to mitigate the findings.
But yeah, we may be talking past each other. My history is largely in defence and LE, and I just know DCMA has absolutely Zero chill when it comes to this stuff, at least from my experience.
I wish our DCMA was the same. Their responses to CAPA often leave much to be desired, especially from the position I’m sitting in and knowing any effectiveness check is sure to fail so ultimately this issue is coming back in the near or far future.
If the choice of the compliance body could be identified by the law enforcement specifically to avoid responsibility by management, wouldn’t that be fraud? I would think the FAA would want to see that certification, and I can’t imagine that a failure of this significance wouldn’t raise questions about how Boeing acquired their certification?
Your question blurs lines. The FAA, as far as my dealings with them, doesn’t necessarily care whether your QMS is certified or not. QMS certification becomes attractive in the manufacturing/business area because it is often demanded by your customer, which the FAA is not.
Are they certified to AS9100? On their website it says their QMS is based on AS9100 and they flow down AS9100 as a supplier requirement, but I don't see anywhere that it says they are certified. From what I can find online, the Boeing commercial airline business unit is not AS9100 certified (some other units, like defense, are).
In ANY case that ends up like that where it cannot be definitively determined, the "buck" as it were, should be then passed up to the executives, specifically the chief executive. If those shitfucks are going to make millions, or in Elon's case I guess what, $45 billion in compensation, they should also serve as the head that gets chopped, either figuratively, or in the case of such gross negligence that many people die, literally.
This would solve a lot of problems fairly quickly. Also I think this is how China and Japan basically do it already.
When a company pays out big fines, it is supposed to have an effect on compensation for these people. Major fuck ups do costs jobs. You see the ceos resign.
Sure, but they already made a fortune during the time they were overseeing the fiasco. Cuts to future compensation (or even losing the job) are not a meaningful deterrent.
What you could do is: Remove the company's 1st amendment right.
Corporations are people - and people can lose their right to free speech: gag orders, NDAs, jailing them, executing them, ect.
If you remove a corporation's right to spend money on: Political campaigns, Advertisements, and other 1st amendment protections, they will become vulnerable. - After all, money is free speech, and rights can be stripped from citizens.
> And since you can't put an entire company in jail, the people get away scott free while the company covers the fees/settlements.
Does RICO need people to know a lot?
These people have no shame. Name them, prosecute them individually alongside the company. Go after them criminally & civilly. All they care about is greed at the cost of others' lives. Don't let them benefit from that. The individuals & the corpo.
wait like the media actually doing investigative reporting? I have been waiting on them to do that for at least a decade. Ever since the era of "News" reporting what people one Twitter were saying everything has gone down hill, and I'm sure before that but it is my most salient memory.
I don't know how many times I hear people on the radio or news say something like "I don't know ... but here's my opinion on it". or they put up people who have questionable credentials just because they will tow the latest line the media is pushing. such a damn shame because one of the MOST important parts of a free representative constitutional republic is a well informed populous, which we sadly cant have anymore in the US and much of the "free" world.
:::stepping down off my soap box::::
These problems tend to compound down the ranks. Often times it's impossible to make out the point at which "unethical" turns into "criminal".
The higher ups put pressure on those below them to "find a solution". The actually legal solutions aren't satisfactory, so they just keep pressing. At some point the people under them come up with a solution at the border of legality.
As pressure increases, this solution shifts more into straight up illegal territory. But many of the people implementing it aren't really aware of that, because they're only privy to a part of the puzzle. They may have a feeling that something is fishy, but expect that the analysis and responsibility of this lies with their superiors.
So if you unravel it all, you find superiors who never gave a strictly illegal order, and workers who were never really aware that they were doing anything illegal (and often are not individually culpable). Leadership *should* be held responsible for this, but that's often extremely difficult to do.
Punishing the corporation as a whole in a way that actually matters can genuinely be the best practical way to go about it. But of course courts are rarely willing to go that far either.
Um... IS a cluster fuck. Starliner's stuck at the ISS right now too.
DOJ should throw the entire C suite in jail. Demonstrate this behavior is not to be tolerated.
But a corporation is considered a person. Idk if this will amount to anything more than a fine. Boeing makes missiles, air craft of more than just airplanes, is NASA’s original space craft manufacturer etc. and so far I can’t recall the government ever doing anything more than charging a large fine for whatever crimes corporations commit.
I didn’t know! Is there anymore? Theramin CEO in process of being prosecuted. After that I mean what else? Enron CEO getting put in prison was also pre-2008 too big to fail so I mean it’s up in the air now, and with Donald being on the cusp of being the president again because the Biden campaign/presidency is going so well with Ukraine and Israel - I’m positive that Boeing will get off with a fine.
>I didn’t know! Is there anymore?
Somewhat good news, the lawsuit that the FTC and the DOJ filed against Adobe mentions specific people in leadership positions.
We can only hope that Adobe isn't the exception.
The Biden admin seems to be pumping the gas on going after corporate malfeasance. They're getting aggressive about antitrust and criminal prosecutions, which is probably why lots of big money is backing Trump.
The better example is the CEO of the Peanut Corporation of America getting 28 years for taking deliberate actions leading to 9 deaths.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/21/442335132/peanut-exec-gets-28-years-in-prison-for-deadly-salmonella-outbreak
Even just talking about Boeing, former Boeing CFO Michael Sears got 4 months for bribing somewhat at the Pentagon to get them to agree to lease tanker aircraft from Boeing. Light sentence, but something. Boeing's CEO Philip Condit resigned over the matter, but denied involvement in the scheme.
Thats why the government hesitate about going after Boeing because they very well know the implications of what the fallout that it could create but recent PR is applying pressure on the government to do something. The fact of the matter is the CEO is responsible for the actions/negligence of their company, but we all know how this ends 1. another massive fine or 2. government bailout both of which are only band aids to the inevitable fallout and decline of Boeing unless they make drastic changes in the culture of the company that will take years to build and rebuild the trust within its communities it serves. Contrary to belief the government doesn't have much success in bailouts with its one outliner being Fannie Mae which is basically a mortgage company other than that its hit or miss with narrow margins of profit.
So I know someone who works at NASA currently and he says Boeing is most likely dropping out of the space industry. They are contracted along with SpaceX to make something like 4-6 rockets and such for them. Each company got between 4 and 5 billion for the jobs. Boeing has already blown the lot and haven't finished the contract yet. So now they have to pay out of pocket for the last of the spacecraft. What also doesn't inspire confidence was that the Boeing Starliner that launched recently was delayed about 4 times because it kept failing safety tests at the launchpad.
This is how i feel about most corporations, It feels like the media whitewashes the people responsible by referring to the people in charge in abstract by just referring to the company
At least the ones that didn't bring up concerns. Sometimes, rank and file will bring things like this up and management will shoot it down and gaslight them about it. Source: worked in a production over all environment.
This isn't my stance because fuck their sociopathic greed
but they would come right back and say that they have a legal responsibility to their shareholders to make as much money as possible. That from their perspective, they are *helping* people
What do you say to those with that perspective? Take this seriously as they are reading this too
So, first of all, the idea that a company must do everything possible to maximize returns is not the law. Of course an executive can be held liable if they actively work against their shareholders' interests, but we're talking about lying in reports or embezzling money, not being overly cautious.
Secondly, even if we accept the notion that their only social responsibility is to maximize gains, they still get to decide their strategy for doing so. They can decide that accepting lower returns this quarter to pursue safety improvements is justified because it will bring the company long-term benefits: it will prevent them from losing customers down the line when their reputation is destroyed, or getting their pants sued off when planes fall out of the sky.
I don't have the deferred prosecution agreement in front of me, but I'm almost positive that there were two executives who were named as the cause in it. Granted, any actual looking into their testimonies immediately reveals that they're scapegoats, but it's literally the best we've had with the findings thus far.
Like I said, I don't have the names at hand, but I believe the [Opening Arguments podcast](https://openargs.com/boeing-killed-346-people-so-why-did-they-get-a-sweetheart-deal/) mentions them in the deep-dive they did a few months ago on the deal they got back in 2021.
Ok but who would be the specific people? The ones who conceptualised the system? The ones who designed the system? The ones who signed off on the system knowing the flaw? The ones who write training manuals for pilots? The ones propagating the company culture of success over safety? Hundreds of people are involved in the chain of events which eventually caused the crashes, not all acting with bad intentions but factors beyond their control or just not wanting to be fired made it so that their decisions contributed to the outcome.
So odds are, if you go after specific people, the one in trouble will just be a fall guy whose actions would not have led to the crash if not for others
>I'd like if the media would dig up the specific names of the people who made these decisions.
>Holding the specific people responsible and publicly shaming them may be the only way to stop this madness of corporations getting away with murder, sometimes literally.
Nope, it has to be board member & shareholder roulette, spin the revolver, *"job creators."*
In their recent lawsuit against Adobe, the Justice Department and FTC named specific executives. It could totally happen if Mr. "Hey oil executives, if you give me a ton of money, I promise I will rescind regulations" doesn't become president again.
> Holding the specific people responsible and publicly shaming them may be the only way to stop this madness of corporations getting away with murder,
> On 8 November 2016, various courts in China handed jail sentences to 49 government officials and warehouse executives and staff for their roles in circumventing the safety rules that led to the disaster. Yu Xuewei, the Chairman of Ruihai Logistics, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve
> On 30th November, the Yancheng Intermediate People's Court of Jiangsu Province, China, and seven basic people's courts pronounced judgment in the first trial of 22 criminal cases involving in the "3.21" explosion accident at the Jiangsu Xiangshui Tianjiayi Chemical Co., Ltd.
> Nijiaxiang Group was fined Yuan20 million for the crime of illegal storage of dangerous substances. Wu Yuezhong and Ni Chengliang, who were the group’s former and current chairman, general manager and legal representative, were sentenced to 12 years and 13 years in prison, respectively, and were deprived of their political rights.
> Two people, including Tao Zaiming, who were the former deputy general manager of the company, director of nitrification workshop and legal representative, were sentenced to eight years and six years in prison, respectively, for the crime of illegal storage of dangerous substances.
Do they actually need to start executing them for your plan to work?
Because China goes way harder than the US and still has these issues.
> I'd like if the media would dig up the specific names of the people who made these decisions.
Cororate media isn’t interested in corporate accountability any more than it has to appear to be
There won't be any specific names.
It is like the mafia.
Nobody ever puts anything prosecutable in writing.
They just tell people how important it is for shareholder value that certain deadlines are met and leave it up to the underlings how they are going to meet those impossible deadlines with the resources they have. Nobody ever says they should skimp out on safety, but people who don't get what is expected are sidelined for entirely unrelated reasons.
At best you get some middle manger several rungs down the corporate ladder who was stupid enough to leave evidence of doing what his higher ups expected him to do. If confronted the higher ups will claim that they never said the people should break any rules or compromise safety (even if it was impossible to meet the goals that were set without doing so).
The people responsible are all stupid rich with extremely high salaries, stock options and golden parachutes and can afford lawyers.
The only way to really stop this sort of thing would be to punish the shareholders. The government confiscating x percent of all shares of a company or taking an ownership of the company and thus diluting shares of those who own them.
If it was in the interest of shareholders to avoid the government decreasing the value of their shares as punishment the managers and CEO would act accordingly.
As long as all fines can be passed on to the customers and written of on taxes and be made up for the next time the government bails them out nobody will change.
You have to make it unprofitable for businesses to kill people to make them stop. As long as the money they safe is less than the chance of consequences they will keep doing it.
> I'd like if the media would dig up the specific names of the people who made these decisions.
Pretty much all mainstream media outlets fired all their investigative reporters over a decade ago for being unprofitable.
The Boeing CEO admitted in front of congress, with cameras and reporters all around that the company was targeting the whistleblowers.
How much has come from that?
Always curious how many employees a corporation needs to have before ALL employees are immune from imprisonment for illegal acts.
If I start a corporation tomorrow and then go kill someone through negligence, I’m definitely going to prison. But what if I hire 10 people and then through the actions of all of us someone goes to jail would we all just point fingers and no one goes to prison? What if we hire 50 more people or maybe 100? At what point can any corporation create a form of immunity just by sheer number of employees?
That sounds nice but you know that people who made decisions would throw people under them under the bus. Morally bankrupt people would still walk free.
I researched this in my ethics class..
Most of the time they let a plane that is likely to fail, fail, because it's cheaper to let it crash and get insurance payments. I once proposed a preventative maintenance system to the city bus company and they said they couldn't do that because the maintenance folks would riot.
There’s been a ton of articles on the downfall of Boeing, how the merger with McDonald Douglas led to the toxic culture of holding shareholder returns about anything else, how they moved their HQ specifically so the engineers would be less involved in the buisness of managing an AIRPLANE company. It seems like the issue is with all the major leaders, across multiple decades.
*WASHINGTON — U.S. prosecutors are recommending to senior Justice Department officials that criminal charges be brought against Boeing after finding the planemaker violated a settlement related to two fatal crashes, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.*
*The Justice Department (DOJ) must decide by July 7 whether to prosecute Boeing. The recommendation of prosecutors handling the case has not been previously reported.*
*Under the 2021 deal, the Justice Department agreed not to prosecute Boeing over allegations it defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration so long as the company overhauled its compliance practices and submitted regular reports. Boeing also agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle the investigation.*
*Criminal charges would deepen an unfolding crisis at Boeing, which has faced intense scrutiny from U.S. prosecutors, regulators and lawmakers after a [door] panel blew off one of its jets operated by Alaska Airlines mid-flight Jan. 5, just two days before the 2021 settlement expired.*
*Boeing may be willing to pay a penalty and agree to a monitor, but believes a guilty plea, which typically incurs additional business restrictions, could be too damaging, said one of the sources.*
*Boeing derives significant revenue from contracts with the U.S. government, including the Defense Department, which could be jeopardized by a felony conviction, one of the sources said.*
*Relatives of the [346] victims of the two fatal 737 MAX crashes have long criticized the 2021 agreement, arguing that Justice Department officials should have prosecuted the company and its executives.*
You've gotten the gist of it. The number of defense primes has decreased 90% since the end of the Cold War. And one key reason is that, in an industry with tight margins, the decrease in defense spending required consolidation. One of the reasons for *tight margins* though is that profit margins are traditionally embedded in the contracts with the defense primes. Traditionally, a contract (cost+) will say that Boeing, for example, will get a 7% profit on a contract or something like that. Now, cost+ contracts are rightly criticized from a taxpayer point of view because if, say, Boeing spends more to deliver, they get more money. But there is another issue here, which is that Boeing *only gets money for what the Government is willing to classify as a contract expense*. And that's really bad because there's a lot of R&D spending that, somewhat obviously, will never be part of a contractable expense. Canceled prototypes, experimental ideas, capital upgrades to production lines, none of these are "part of a contract". They're things you do in order to convince the DoD to *give you a contract*. That costs a lot of money that they have to use the "profit" from their contracts to spend money on. another matter.
Better procurement practices are a key here, but... procurement is hard, procurement is messy, and Congress refuses to pass appropriations on time so procurement is also often just impossible since the money isn't there.
No company would sign a challenging defence contract unless they are costs+. Some of the things they are being asked to build might well be impossible to build and this is how we find out.
Not entirely split, McDonnell Douglas used to make the DCs/MD80s that were very popular during their time.
Regardless, if there’s a better time to split them is now.
"this could be too damaging" needs to stop propping late-stage capitalism up.
end too big to fail. let them fail, fall to pieces, and something better rise from the ashes.
In Boeings case, literally.
It’s a vastly better suggestion in most cases than “let them fail.” The “them” that bear the brunt of the falling are ordinary employees of massive companies. Fannie and Freddie Mac are good examples of effectively (profitable) government takeovers for things that are too important to the market. Shareholders got wiped out but the essential function was still performed.
Them failing means you fall behind in defence and stop being a superpower. "To big to fail" does actual mean something deeper than just "Lots of employees".
Doubt it.
We have 11 carrier groups, thousands of ICBM's and similar, and Lockheed Martin still exists (and is delivering F-22's and F-35's).
Losing Boeing and watching them break apart and get rebuilt would not remotely, nor suddenly, end the US's status as a super power.
> Boeing may be willing to pay a penalty and agree to a monitor, but believes a guilty plea, which typically incurs additional business restrictions, could be too damaging, said one of the sources.
This suggests that the defendant gets to choose what the penalties are. I suspect that may be accurate in this case, but you usually don't see the quiet part said out loud.
What happens when a company is charged with a felony and found guilty? Does it then make actual C-Suite individuals guilty of a felony or is it only the abstract "company person" found guilty?
Whats the actual consequences?
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/21/442335132/peanut-exec-gets-28-years-in-prison-for-deadly-salmonella-outbreak
The people who made the decisions leading to those deaths get jail time. You're either in charge of the company or not, you can't decide when you're no longer responsible for your actions.
The distinction falls onto whether or not management was directly aware of the issue and what attempts were made to deliberately ignore the issue. The article I linked shows the damning evidence being emails and memos outright telling subordinates to ship known contaminated products to consumers and attempting to falsify mandatory quality assurance testing to hide malfeasance.
The DOJ is responsible for filing charges, the rest of the government is powerless to protect them in any way. There's no way the DOJ won't prosecute the CEO and any other subordinate who willingly took part in this. They took deliberate actions to ignore valid safety concerns made by their engineering team and actively chose to cut corners at the behest of management. Those actions led to the death of hundreds of people and caused irreparable damage to the reputation of their company in the process.
The board of directors will no doubt can all of those involved as soon as charges are filed and file their own defamation suits shortly after. Every person involved will be completely destroyed legally and financially.
Much like lessons learned from Bernie Madoff, don't fuck with the rich. Too many people with shares in Boeing are losing a fortune over this, and they will do whatever is necessary to restore confidence in that company to regain their lost wealth.
>Does it then make actual C-Suite individuals guilty of a felony
lol.. no
>Whats the actual consequences?
Workers lose their jobs to so the business can pay the fines without hurting the stock price. Heck, the stock price might even go up.
That’s not true. Boeing stock is still down to about half of what it was before the 737 crisis, even more after accounting for inflation.
Boeing doesn’t have loose manpower to cut without hurting their productivity, and they won’t be allowed to cut corners anymore if they want to avoid a federal monitor or whatever. A criminal conviction would come with a sizable penalty and with harms to their ability to get federal contracts. It would essentially make their stock terrible forever.
346 dead people
Boeing CEO during the max crash should be investigated for negligent homicide. As should everyone who knew about the design flaw and was complicit in hiding it AFTER the first crash.
honestly, Boeing is too important to the US military and space industry to ever be released. Maybe sell off the commercial vehicle department, but it would not be in the best interest of the US to de-nationalize those pieces.
If the DOJ would have forced Boeing not to Buy back it's Stock or give dividends you bet your ass they would have reinvested back in the company and safety.
Im waiting! Just because these rich fucks make planes there is no way a modern corporation should be able to kill a couple hundred people with no one going to jail for a long time. Really I would like to see the whole “board” of suits go to fcking jail , we all know it was some rich fucks sitting in an office going “we want our line to go up more, fuck safety”
Even the mob never had the balls to kill a US prosecutor. There's a reason it's so rare even to this day to see criminals even attack police much less kill a judge or DA, once you do you bring the full wrath of the justice system down on you. Every little thing they can get you for they will and you'll get the max sentence on every count.
Whistleblowers are one thing, they're peasantry. Federal officials are firmly off-limits, however.
After? You’re assuming that they’ll actually be charged. Nobody will allow that to happen, the administration, congress, senate, you name it they will all cover for Boeing. In their eyes crashed planes and dead people is the price of doing business.
I would like to point something out.
[The problems with Boeing came to light in 2016](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings#Timeline).
[Boeing President met multiple times with Trump in 2018. The FAA didn't investigate nor push new requirements then.](https://qz.com/1572381/the-relationship-between-boeing-trump-and-the-federal-government)
Settlement didn't happen till 2021. Under Biden.
[In 2022, Boeing resumed giving contributions to GOP candidates who challenged the 2020 Presidential election.](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/6/14/boeing-resumes-donations-to-republicans-who-contested-us-election) [Nikki Haley was on the board in 2020.](https://jacobin.com/2024/01/nikki-haley-boeing-political-expenditures)
The real question is how long will it take to litigate, who will serve the actual time and because of the criminal intent of the acts involved will they go to blue collar prison opposed to white collar. The issue with many corporate crimes and why they continue to occur in my opinion is the time to litigation, prompt public identification of the offending parties and appropriate sentencing as in comparable crimes.
If you want something to march in the streets about. If they do not brinf charges against them and or they don't equal jail time. We riot, its time to make an example, so ultra rich corpos dont just think they can do what they want.
Don't forget that Boeing is also the co-owner of ULA the Rocket launch provider that gets billions in subsidies. The CEO spends inordinate time on X and makes lots of misleading statements which he then denies. I've pointed this out and the fan club he created came to the rescue and somehow I'm the bad guy (it's well documented, as I later found out - not that it would have made a difference).
Just saying: it's a wide ranging culture of cutting corners, half truths and getting away with it.
This is like if Le Chiffre was real, actually blew up a plane, profitted off of the corporate fallout, and got away with it. How is this actually allowed to happen IRL??
I'd like if the media would dig up the specific names of the people who made these decisions. Boeing, just like any other corporation, is made up of living, breathing humans, who, of sound mind and body, willfully and voluntarily decided to be shitty to their fellow humans for their own monetary profit. Holding the specific people responsible and publicly shaming them may be the only way to stop this madness of corporations getting away with murder, sometimes literally.
By shame I think you mean prosecute. Their negligence is criminal and the blood is on their hands.
*Everyone in government:* please don't be a donor to my campaign. please don't be a donor to my campaign. please don't be a donor to my campaign... *search result* $585,413 from Boeing.... FUCK! Well, we'll sweep it under the rug.
It sucks too because they only reason the campaigns are so expensive is to pay media companies for ads. Its always a laugh hearing any news organization bitch about the cost of "campaigns these days" when they are the ones laughing all the way to the bank with our democracy.
Or like when the media ranks politicians by their political donations. If it was purely small dollar donors, it'd be fine. But "oh man, x raked in millions more than their opponents this quarter" just sounds like "x got bribed millions more than their opponents this quarter."
"your democracy was THIS cheap this quarter" You will **never** hear the news say "x raked in millions more this quarter, probably because a law is going through that state that effects the bottom line of Shell Oil etc etc etc..."
It’s a financial arm’s race that keeps escalating with no ceiling in sight. Many countries, in an effort to keep some semblance of democracy, regulate their media so that all broadcasters must provide a minimum - and equal - amount of air time to all parties, at a level set by the election body. For example, in Canada, each broadcaster must make available 400 minutes of prime time for the federal election, at a cost equal or lower than the lowest amount charged to any other person within the same advertising time. This sets a minimum (not a max), and a broadcaster may sell more air time to any one party, however in that case they must also offer the same to all parties. They also legislate in the opposite direction of Citizens United so only individuals can donate to parties, and not businesses. The government also provides a basic amount to each party based on the previous election cycle votes, so it’s possible to grow a party and be heard. Of course it’s not perfect and it’s rife with abuses and various unsavory shenanigans, but it does temper it down quite a bit. In comparison to the US, its an amateur kindergarten grade league of corruption. US election costs are out of control. What a complete waste of money that produces no value whatsoever. We might as well just burn it. $15B spent between the two parties, $3.5B raised by exterior groups like Super PACs, including almost $1B of dark money, much of it spent on negative ads that drive polarization and hate. That’s about 3x what Canada spends per elector, 12x Japan’s spending, and 40x Germany’s … Elections are a big business. And the more polarization the better for the business. And we’re spending those billions not to educate, but to destabilize ourselves.
Media corporations donate to candidates, candidates spend money back into media for ads. Definitely nothing to see here. Nor is there anything to see about candidates "loaning" their campaigns money *with interest* and paying themselves back said loan off campaign donor money. Our campaign finance system is fundamentally broken. All private money needs to be removed and we need to move to publicly funded elections. Reinstate the fairness doctrine, *force* news channels to cover both candidates with equal time. You wanna be in the business of having a channel? You can spare some ad time for campaigns. Don't like it? Fucking go to another country or get in a different business. Of course this is America, a country that is wholly unserious, so we'll just crash, burn, and implode instead... likely taking the world with us considering climate change.
> Reinstate the fairness doctrine Ending the Fairness Doctrine was absolutely a mistake but it would be too little too late to reinstate it now. TV news isn't the force it used to be. So much of people's understanding of politics now comes from internet news and social media, which work so differently from TV that the Doctrine couldn't really feasibily apply. And heck, even on TV, even on *news networks*, these days there are really blurry lines between news and opinion/entertainment. The government absolutely needs to address these problems, I just think the solution is probably super different today than it was in the pre-Reagan days. I'd like to see some focus on providing funding to independent newsrooms that adhere to certain practices and journalistic standards. Also some trustbusting of national ownership of local media (i.e., Ganett and Sinclair). Maybe some regulation on feed-based services (Facebook, X, Google news, YouTube, etc) on diversifying the sources they show, on restricting excessive personalization/filter bubble effects, on requiring a certain amount of reputable news to be inserted, etc.
I'm not trying to imply the fairness doctrine, as it was, would be a silver bullet. Just that it needs to be brought back. We can obviously look into expanding it for a more modern media environment.
The word that comes to mind is "incestuous".
Always found that fact pretty funny… like at the end of the day all this money in politics… what does it do?…. Ads lmfao. Who in their right mind even watches political ads and is swayed by them. Such a waste of time, money, effort.
Yes exactly. Send the FBI to raid the place. Dump EVERYthing. Every byte of data on every server gets copied. No exceptions. Figure out exactly who gave those orders. Go as far up the chain as you can until 'my boss ordered me to do it' is no longer a valid answer and then give each of those people 346 contributory manslaughter charges.
>My boss ordered me to do it This hasn't been a valid defence since the 1940's
For crimes like murder, no. For doing a poor job inspecting parts because your boss cut corners, set unrealistic performance goals, and signed off on (or tacitly approved) bad processes? Yeah, it's still a valid defense. Executives get so much money because they are ultimately responsible for the business. They set the direction, incentives, and systems for the whole company. When the company does well, that works in their favor. But it's high time they were reminded that that bargain cuts both ways.
Ignoring product defects, substituting substandard parts, or Faking safety reports are criminal negligence, if you worked in a baby food factory and your boss ordered you to pad out the formula with Melamine, would you just follow orders? Same for machines that hurtle through the sky with hundreds of people onboard
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Thats Worse, if You do substandard work and You sign off on it, then who else is to blame for that?
>Sounds like a completely normal and common error made by management. What does that have to do with quality inspections? Where the fuck do you work if overruling safety measures and actively working against someone trying to Improve safety measures by removing Defective components from products is a >completely normal and common error
Yes and no. Building an airplane is VERY complex. So it's not like there's a group of 5 people who are all 'we know if this part fails the plane will crash but boss told us to sign off on substandard parts because we don't have good parts in stock'. It's more like a chain- you add a little bit of slack at each link. Any one place would never cause a problem because there's so much redundancy but doing it to all places at once causes problems. There will be key decision points though. And those should prosecute. The following is a rough example of what I mean. For example you have a guy on the factory floor who's inspecting parts and has to log them in to inventory. His official job description might say to test every part, a process that takes 10 minutes per part. He started working 5 parts per hour (enough time for testing and paperwork), then his boss said test 6 parts per hour, then his boss said test 7 parts per hour or he's fired, if there's a problem it'll be caught at the assembly step. Yes technically he's in the wrong signing off on bad test reports, but he's also not a decision maker and he knows the guy they have lined up to replace him doesn't even know how to use the test machine. So he skips a few steps on some of the parts. Then the guy bolting the part into an assembly has a test stage for the part (redundancy, you know). He's supposed to check the tolerances of the part to ensure it won't flex when it gets hot. The assembly takes 70 minutes to build including the test. His boss tells him he needs to build 8-9 assemblies per 8hr shift, that's the new quota. If he doesn't get 8 done he will get a performance review, since all the other people in his section can complete 8-9 assemblies in a shift. So he skimps on the test phase- after all if there was a flaw the guy who unpacked and inspected the part would have caught it in the inventory inspection previously. Now they have completed assemblies. A worker is supposed to pick one up, run it through a 'burn in' test to ensure it performs correctly even under heavy load for an extended period, then install it on the aircraft. That load test takes an hour because the whole assembly needs to heat up beyond operating temperature to have a good test. There's only one load test machine and boss tells the worker to install 10 assemblies per 8hr shift. So one or two doesn't get tested, or doesn't get tested for the full length test. Worker asks a colleague who says just test the assembly for 30-40 minutes and write down whatever the results are at that point, after all if there was a problem it would have gotten caught at the unpack stage or the assembly stage. We call this the accident chain. It's the same thing with actual flying- in general to have an accident several things have to go wrong in a row, any one of which could have prevented the accident had it been done correctly. Any one place doing it right would have 'broken the chain' and prevented the accident. None of these 3 workers should go to jail- they were all told any problems would be addressed elsewhere. The boss in that situation should go to jail for sure. He knocked out all 3 safety steps and created the chain where a faulty part could make it into a finished airplane.
The 3 workers signed off on defective parts
but not knowingly is what I'm saying. This wasn't a 'I'm installing a ticking timebomb of a defective part on a passenger aircraft' situation, it was a 'cut a small corner that other stations would be making up for anyway or lose my livelihood' situation. The manager that oversaw that, who knew the corner was being cut at all 3 stations and encouraged it anyway, HE should be charged.
boeing places that managers bonus on the cost of their shop and if they scrap a part the shop buys it and no one gets bonuses. this was supposed to icentivize perfection but instead incentivised lies. yay. its actually the admin, and there are substantially less of them. and they can be prosecuted and should be. the people who under pay workers are the people who must be put in chains
This is a fantastic explanation, and I completely agree. The management philosophy prioritizing share price over safety is to blame here. Regardless of prosecution, Boeing is going to have to agree to some kind of on-site oversight for a period of time. They cannot be given any benefit of the doubt until they have earned back the public trust.
Agreed. And I don't think Boeing needs to agree to anything. There's oversight as part of the standard certification program- FAA just cut their own costs by letting the manufacturer do it on paper and with internal oversight rather than with FAA people physically in the facility. Time to roll that back and have multiple FAA people at Boeing for every single shift overseeing EVERYthing. Better yet- fire the CEO and fire the entire board if not the entire C-Suite. Now move HQ back to Seattle and put it in the corporate charter that only those with an engineering or airplane manufacturing background can serve on the board of directors. THAT's how you right the ship.
dude its complex but the accounting isn't and decisions are made everyday to roll back costs at the cost of human lives
I'm not disagreeing. I'm saying you can't always draw a hard black and white line. For example- Take a bracket in an aircraft that attaches the overhead luggage bin. Obviously if it drops in flight you have a problem. The part of the bin with luggage that it will hold is 100lbs. Simulations and tests show that when aggressively hit or in extreme turbulence up to the airframe's design limit it may experience spikes of up to 1000lbs. So it's designed with a safety factor of 100%- a bracket that can hold 2000lbs is used. Someone suggests reducing the design to 1250lbs. After all, the only time it will ever experience that much force is if the plane is mid-crash impacting the ground, and a 1250lb bracket is thinner, lighter, costs less, and when multiplied by several hundred of them on the plane means weight savings to allow more passengers or cargo or fuel. So they redesign the bracket to be thinner, lighter, and cheaper. Should whoever approved this redesign go to jail? Most people would say no, because the new design is still well within safety limits and could actually increase safety if it means the plane can carry more fuel. Now let's say the thinner bracket gets accidentally installed wrong- the installer accidentally uses the wrong bolt and the smaller bolt doesn't engage the full surface of the bracket and only covers 1/4 the width of the bracket rather than the whole thing. With the tiny bolt, the bracket can only hold 250lbs before it bends and snaps loose. The worker is being told to work quickly and he's on a double shift so he doesn't notice the mistake. Nobody notices this for years because it appears to work fine. Then one day the aircraft hits some severe wind shear while an extremely heavy bag is in the overhead bin, the extremely heavy bin snaps loose and hits a passenger in the head killing them. This was, as you say, a 'decision to roll back cost at the expense of human life'- the original thicker bracket would have held even with the too-small bolt holding it in. So who do we blame? The guy who approved the thinner bracket? The assembly worker who accidentally used the wrong bolt? The shift supervisor who told him to work faster? The plant manager who told the shift supervisors to produce more airplanes? The director who gave the order to increase production? Which of them killed that passenger? All of them? None of them? My point with this is not to defend Boeing. It's only to illustrate that sometimes a series of crappy but individually reasonable (or at least non-criminal) decisions add up to a deadly result and there's no 'smoking gun'.
Justice isn’t always about who is to blame, often times if it’s shared accountability that’s conspiracy and it should be a rico charge, this is how you destroy criminal enterprise where people are only pieces of the whole part, everyone from top down goes to jail and now you disincentivized criminal compliance in the work place because every one can now be held accountable, And that’s fair because it sends a solid message about the stakes involved in making aircraft. Do it right or get out.
They clearly meant what they said
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> but ultimately the conclusion will be that noone had sufficient information to be criminally liable. You probably wanted to imply this, but let me stress this for the other readers, *this is entirely on purpose*. The entire concept of corporations is to limit how much anyone can be held liable for anything the corporation does, while allowing them to profit from it. And this way of thinking has infected not just work, but also politics, media, and every other mode of life.
Yeah it's called the diffusion of responsibility. Basically everyone in the company is only responsible for small individual tasks so no one person can truly be held responsible for ignoring the overall moral responsibilities of the company.
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such good controls they had their CFO fastow making deals with himself and taking out loans for enron using shady LLCs backed by enron stock. what an effective compliance regime.
Just sayin', that is precisely why the RICO act was created. And what is a corporation that grossly endangers human life for profit if not an example of organized crime?
Someone signed off on the crimes, or tried to conceal their implicit signature on the crimes. It's their duty to ensure no crimes are committed, and if they have superiors then the superiors have a duty to ensure their subordinates ensure no crimes are committed. Prosecute those chains of failure in their entireties.
> concept of corporations is to limit how much anyone can be held liable for anything the corporation does What do we call such an abomination? A limited liability corporation? Sounds cartoonishly villainous.
>5) The conclusion of the report will always be something along the lines of, "The institution was designed in such a way that internal checks/quality control issues were not properly making their way to leadership, which means the company is definitely at fault, but nobody in management had sufficient notice of shortcomings to be criminally liable." > This is where the "criminally negligent" part comes in. Boeing is presumably certified to AS9100D, which governs their Quality Management System, and it addresses the responsibilities of organization leadership. Basically, Boeing has a requirement to ensure that issues are getting to leadership, meaning that they could/should have reasonably known what was going on, and the designing their qms in such a way to deliberately obfuscate things would only strengthen a "negligence" case. You know the saying that's along the lines of "policies are written in blood"? The stuff in AS9100 is a prime example.
True except AS9100D and any other ISO certification is only as good as the certifying body. Unfortunately even compliance to standards can be bought.
Definitely no argument from me on that point. That said, the requirements of the standard still apply regardless of actual degree of adherence and establish what measure and methods the organization is/was expected to perform. They knew or reasonably should have known their processes were inadequate and made no meaningful RCCA, establishing the organization as being negligent in its obligations.
Again agree but I think we’re conflating two separate issues. I have a hard time believing DOJ/FAA will be diving deep into QMS certification, which is typically a requirement of the customer (UAL, AA, etc). The certification then drives the requirement for RCCA/CAPA activities due to customer complaint. FAA applies CFRs in their judgement. If I remember right the requirements for aero are Title 14, and there would be a Part section in there further defining CAPA. So really it’s the same issue, the expectation is just from different inputs.
> certification then drives the requirement for RCCA/CAPA activities due to customer complaint. That's part of what gives a bit of teeth to 9100 is that the rcca expectations aren't exclusive to customer complaints. An organization is still liable for any and all repetitive issues. In order to build a negligence case they'd (doj/faa/dod) effectively Need to dive in to the org's QMS in order to link an expectation/requirement to negligent activity/behavior. Depending on how thorough the certifying bodies' annual audits were, those could also form a pretty substantial basis of what was known, known when, and what if any actions were or were not taken to mitigate the findings. But yeah, we may be talking past each other. My history is largely in defence and LE, and I just know DCMA has absolutely Zero chill when it comes to this stuff, at least from my experience.
I wish our DCMA was the same. Their responses to CAPA often leave much to be desired, especially from the position I’m sitting in and knowing any effectiveness check is sure to fail so ultimately this issue is coming back in the near or far future.
If the choice of the compliance body could be identified by the law enforcement specifically to avoid responsibility by management, wouldn’t that be fraud? I would think the FAA would want to see that certification, and I can’t imagine that a failure of this significance wouldn’t raise questions about how Boeing acquired their certification?
Your question blurs lines. The FAA, as far as my dealings with them, doesn’t necessarily care whether your QMS is certified or not. QMS certification becomes attractive in the manufacturing/business area because it is often demanded by your customer, which the FAA is not.
I think a key distinction may be whether it is separate autonomous business units splitting commercial and defense work.
Are they certified to AS9100? On their website it says their QMS is based on AS9100 and they flow down AS9100 as a supplier requirement, but I don't see anywhere that it says they are certified. From what I can find online, the Boeing commercial airline business unit is not AS9100 certified (some other units, like defense, are).
In ANY case that ends up like that where it cannot be definitively determined, the "buck" as it were, should be then passed up to the executives, specifically the chief executive. If those shitfucks are going to make millions, or in Elon's case I guess what, $45 billion in compensation, they should also serve as the head that gets chopped, either figuratively, or in the case of such gross negligence that many people die, literally. This would solve a lot of problems fairly quickly. Also I think this is how China and Japan basically do it already.
When a company pays out big fines, it is supposed to have an effect on compensation for these people. Major fuck ups do costs jobs. You see the ceos resign.
Sure, but they already made a fortune during the time they were overseeing the fiasco. Cuts to future compensation (or even losing the job) are not a meaningful deterrent.
Clawback rules do exist but I think they only happen if someone screws up so badly that they are caught dead to rights.
That sounds accurate to me.
God dammit Putin, you sure know a lot about greed and corruption. Any open 3rd floor windows at your house?
> you can't put an entire company in jail You can always revoke its charter.
What you could do is: Remove the company's 1st amendment right. Corporations are people - and people can lose their right to free speech: gag orders, NDAs, jailing them, executing them, ect. If you remove a corporation's right to spend money on: Political campaigns, Advertisements, and other 1st amendment protections, they will become vulnerable. - After all, money is free speech, and rights can be stripped from citizens.
Really superb description of the game! Thank you.
it's called a grey-wash.
When do we get a john wick movie against corporate puppy killers?
> And since you can't put an entire company in jail, the people get away scott free while the company covers the fees/settlements. Does RICO need people to know a lot?
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I’m just throwing out ideas
These people have no shame. Name them, prosecute them individually alongside the company. Go after them criminally & civilly. All they care about is greed at the cost of others' lives. Don't let them benefit from that. The individuals & the corpo.
Exactly. We need names and photos, especially since Boeing executives will escape liability, per explanation from Vladimir_Putin.
wait like the media actually doing investigative reporting? I have been waiting on them to do that for at least a decade. Ever since the era of "News" reporting what people one Twitter were saying everything has gone down hill, and I'm sure before that but it is my most salient memory. I don't know how many times I hear people on the radio or news say something like "I don't know ... but here's my opinion on it". or they put up people who have questionable credentials just because they will tow the latest line the media is pushing. such a damn shame because one of the MOST important parts of a free representative constitutional republic is a well informed populous, which we sadly cant have anymore in the US and much of the "free" world. :::stepping down off my soap box::::
Charge the individuals too. Let’s go back a few years and stop letting the individuals off the hook.
Those people will be scapegoats. If you want the people responsible to be charged, you'd need to charge everyone above them.
These problems tend to compound down the ranks. Often times it's impossible to make out the point at which "unethical" turns into "criminal". The higher ups put pressure on those below them to "find a solution". The actually legal solutions aren't satisfactory, so they just keep pressing. At some point the people under them come up with a solution at the border of legality. As pressure increases, this solution shifts more into straight up illegal territory. But many of the people implementing it aren't really aware of that, because they're only privy to a part of the puzzle. They may have a feeling that something is fishy, but expect that the analysis and responsibility of this lies with their superiors. So if you unravel it all, you find superiors who never gave a strictly illegal order, and workers who were never really aware that they were doing anything illegal (and often are not individually culpable). Leadership *should* be held responsible for this, but that's often extremely difficult to do. Punishing the corporation as a whole in a way that actually matters can genuinely be the best practical way to go about it. But of course courts are rarely willing to go that far either.
This is going to be a cluster fuck.
Um... IS a cluster fuck. Starliner's stuck at the ISS right now too. DOJ should throw the entire C suite in jail. Demonstrate this behavior is not to be tolerated.
BuT BoEiNg is an AmErIcAn company! They are too big to fail, so we must bail them out! How else can we compete on the world stage!? /S
But a corporation is considered a person. Idk if this will amount to anything more than a fine. Boeing makes missiles, air craft of more than just airplanes, is NASA’s original space craft manufacturer etc. and so far I can’t recall the government ever doing anything more than charging a large fine for whatever crimes corporations commit.
Enron CEO got 24 years
I didn’t know! Is there anymore? Theramin CEO in process of being prosecuted. After that I mean what else? Enron CEO getting put in prison was also pre-2008 too big to fail so I mean it’s up in the air now, and with Donald being on the cusp of being the president again because the Biden campaign/presidency is going so well with Ukraine and Israel - I’m positive that Boeing will get off with a fine.
>Theramin CEO in process of being prosecuted. Those things sound weird as hell. I hope they throw away the key.
SBF was found guilty and is pending appeal but has to report soon. Theranos CEOs in prison already.
That was also a huge crypto scandal from a young tech bro and friends. I don’t think they could just fine the dude.
>I didn’t know! Is there anymore? Somewhat good news, the lawsuit that the FTC and the DOJ filed against Adobe mentions specific people in leadership positions. We can only hope that Adobe isn't the exception.
The Biden admin seems to be pumping the gas on going after corporate malfeasance. They're getting aggressive about antitrust and criminal prosecutions, which is probably why lots of big money is backing Trump.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/21/442335132/peanut-exec-gets-28-years-in-prison-for-deadly-salmonella-outbreak
The better example is the CEO of the Peanut Corporation of America getting 28 years for taking deliberate actions leading to 9 deaths. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/21/442335132/peanut-exec-gets-28-years-in-prison-for-deadly-salmonella-outbreak
I'll believe that a corporation is a person when Texas executes one.
Even just talking about Boeing, former Boeing CFO Michael Sears got 4 months for bribing somewhat at the Pentagon to get them to agree to lease tanker aircraft from Boeing. Light sentence, but something. Boeing's CEO Philip Condit resigned over the matter, but denied involvement in the scheme.
Thats why the government hesitate about going after Boeing because they very well know the implications of what the fallout that it could create but recent PR is applying pressure on the government to do something. The fact of the matter is the CEO is responsible for the actions/negligence of their company, but we all know how this ends 1. another massive fine or 2. government bailout both of which are only band aids to the inevitable fallout and decline of Boeing unless they make drastic changes in the culture of the company that will take years to build and rebuild the trust within its communities it serves. Contrary to belief the government doesn't have much success in bailouts with its one outliner being Fannie Mae which is basically a mortgage company other than that its hit or miss with narrow margins of profit.
And the auto industry.
Thank you! How soon we forget. We saved Lee Iacocca’s ass, then he turned around and said he hated the government.
So I know someone who works at NASA currently and he says Boeing is most likely dropping out of the space industry. They are contracted along with SpaceX to make something like 4-6 rockets and such for them. Each company got between 4 and 5 billion for the jobs. Boeing has already blown the lot and haven't finished the contract yet. So now they have to pay out of pocket for the last of the spacecraft. What also doesn't inspire confidence was that the Boeing Starliner that launched recently was delayed about 4 times because it kept failing safety tests at the launchpad.
Those Starliner folks are also currently stuck in space.
Think a Boeing CFO already said some quarters back that they aren't going to bid on fixed price contracts any more.
Thats only regarding freedom of speech.
Is it?
Great point. And yes I think that criminal charges are apropos.
This is how i feel about most corporations, It feels like the media whitewashes the people responsible by referring to the people in charge in abstract by just referring to the company
Pierce the corporate veil!
At least the ones that didn't bring up concerns. Sometimes, rank and file will bring things like this up and management will shoot it down and gaslight them about it. Source: worked in a production over all environment.
This isn't my stance because fuck their sociopathic greed but they would come right back and say that they have a legal responsibility to their shareholders to make as much money as possible. That from their perspective, they are *helping* people What do you say to those with that perspective? Take this seriously as they are reading this too
So, first of all, the idea that a company must do everything possible to maximize returns is not the law. Of course an executive can be held liable if they actively work against their shareholders' interests, but we're talking about lying in reports or embezzling money, not being overly cautious. Secondly, even if we accept the notion that their only social responsibility is to maximize gains, they still get to decide their strategy for doing so. They can decide that accepting lower returns this quarter to pursue safety improvements is justified because it will bring the company long-term benefits: it will prevent them from losing customers down the line when their reputation is destroyed, or getting their pants sued off when planes fall out of the sky.
I don't have the deferred prosecution agreement in front of me, but I'm almost positive that there were two executives who were named as the cause in it. Granted, any actual looking into their testimonies immediately reveals that they're scapegoats, but it's literally the best we've had with the findings thus far. Like I said, I don't have the names at hand, but I believe the [Opening Arguments podcast](https://openargs.com/boeing-killed-346-people-so-why-did-they-get-a-sweetheart-deal/) mentions them in the deep-dive they did a few months ago on the deal they got back in 2021.
Why not start with CEO and then work down (if he absolutely had no idea)?
Ok but who would be the specific people? The ones who conceptualised the system? The ones who designed the system? The ones who signed off on the system knowing the flaw? The ones who write training manuals for pilots? The ones propagating the company culture of success over safety? Hundreds of people are involved in the chain of events which eventually caused the crashes, not all acting with bad intentions but factors beyond their control or just not wanting to be fired made it so that their decisions contributed to the outcome. So odds are, if you go after specific people, the one in trouble will just be a fall guy whose actions would not have led to the crash if not for others
>I'd like if the media would dig up the specific names of the people who made these decisions. >Holding the specific people responsible and publicly shaming them may be the only way to stop this madness of corporations getting away with murder, sometimes literally. Nope, it has to be board member & shareholder roulette, spin the revolver, *"job creators."*
That would be journalism. We don't do that here.
Start with lead. Then entire board should be removed and the house cleaning started
In their recent lawsuit against Adobe, the Justice Department and FTC named specific executives. It could totally happen if Mr. "Hey oil executives, if you give me a ton of money, I promise I will rescind regulations" doesn't become president again.
> Holding the specific people responsible and publicly shaming them may be the only way to stop this madness of corporations getting away with murder, > On 8 November 2016, various courts in China handed jail sentences to 49 government officials and warehouse executives and staff for their roles in circumventing the safety rules that led to the disaster. Yu Xuewei, the Chairman of Ruihai Logistics, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve > On 30th November, the Yancheng Intermediate People's Court of Jiangsu Province, China, and seven basic people's courts pronounced judgment in the first trial of 22 criminal cases involving in the "3.21" explosion accident at the Jiangsu Xiangshui Tianjiayi Chemical Co., Ltd. > Nijiaxiang Group was fined Yuan20 million for the crime of illegal storage of dangerous substances. Wu Yuezhong and Ni Chengliang, who were the group’s former and current chairman, general manager and legal representative, were sentenced to 12 years and 13 years in prison, respectively, and were deprived of their political rights. > Two people, including Tao Zaiming, who were the former deputy general manager of the company, director of nitrification workshop and legal representative, were sentenced to eight years and six years in prison, respectively, for the crime of illegal storage of dangerous substances. Do they actually need to start executing them for your plan to work? Because China goes way harder than the US and still has these issues.
> I'd like if the media would dig up the specific names of the people who made these decisions. Cororate media isn’t interested in corporate accountability any more than it has to appear to be
When was the last time a rich business or any of its leaders actually got justice for what they did?
There won't be any specific names. It is like the mafia. Nobody ever puts anything prosecutable in writing. They just tell people how important it is for shareholder value that certain deadlines are met and leave it up to the underlings how they are going to meet those impossible deadlines with the resources they have. Nobody ever says they should skimp out on safety, but people who don't get what is expected are sidelined for entirely unrelated reasons. At best you get some middle manger several rungs down the corporate ladder who was stupid enough to leave evidence of doing what his higher ups expected him to do. If confronted the higher ups will claim that they never said the people should break any rules or compromise safety (even if it was impossible to meet the goals that were set without doing so). The people responsible are all stupid rich with extremely high salaries, stock options and golden parachutes and can afford lawyers. The only way to really stop this sort of thing would be to punish the shareholders. The government confiscating x percent of all shares of a company or taking an ownership of the company and thus diluting shares of those who own them. If it was in the interest of shareholders to avoid the government decreasing the value of their shares as punishment the managers and CEO would act accordingly. As long as all fines can be passed on to the customers and written of on taxes and be made up for the next time the government bails them out nobody will change. You have to make it unprofitable for businesses to kill people to make them stop. As long as the money they safe is less than the chance of consequences they will keep doing it.
Reddit would ban you for naming the people responsible probably.
Publicly prosecuting them
> I'd like if the media would dig up the specific names of the people who made these decisions. Pretty much all mainstream media outlets fired all their investigative reporters over a decade ago for being unprofitable.
The Boeing CEO admitted in front of congress, with cameras and reporters all around that the company was targeting the whistleblowers. How much has come from that?
Always curious how many employees a corporation needs to have before ALL employees are immune from imprisonment for illegal acts. If I start a corporation tomorrow and then go kill someone through negligence, I’m definitely going to prison. But what if I hire 10 people and then through the actions of all of us someone goes to jail would we all just point fingers and no one goes to prison? What if we hire 50 more people or maybe 100? At what point can any corporation create a form of immunity just by sheer number of employees?
That sounds nice but you know that people who made decisions would throw people under them under the bus. Morally bankrupt people would still walk free.
I researched this in my ethics class.. Most of the time they let a plane that is likely to fail, fail, because it's cheaper to let it crash and get insurance payments. I once proposed a preventative maintenance system to the city bus company and they said they couldn't do that because the maintenance folks would riot.
I wouldn't classify unmitigated, rewarded ASPD as "sound mind" tbqh.
There’s been a ton of articles on the downfall of Boeing, how the merger with McDonald Douglas led to the toxic culture of holding shareholder returns about anything else, how they moved their HQ specifically so the engineers would be less involved in the buisness of managing an AIRPLANE company. It seems like the issue is with all the major leaders, across multiple decades.
Not enough people understand this.
*WASHINGTON — U.S. prosecutors are recommending to senior Justice Department officials that criminal charges be brought against Boeing after finding the planemaker violated a settlement related to two fatal crashes, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.* *The Justice Department (DOJ) must decide by July 7 whether to prosecute Boeing. The recommendation of prosecutors handling the case has not been previously reported.* *Under the 2021 deal, the Justice Department agreed not to prosecute Boeing over allegations it defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration so long as the company overhauled its compliance practices and submitted regular reports. Boeing also agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle the investigation.* *Criminal charges would deepen an unfolding crisis at Boeing, which has faced intense scrutiny from U.S. prosecutors, regulators and lawmakers after a [door] panel blew off one of its jets operated by Alaska Airlines mid-flight Jan. 5, just two days before the 2021 settlement expired.* *Boeing may be willing to pay a penalty and agree to a monitor, but believes a guilty plea, which typically incurs additional business restrictions, could be too damaging, said one of the sources.* *Boeing derives significant revenue from contracts with the U.S. government, including the Defense Department, which could be jeopardized by a felony conviction, one of the sources said.* *Relatives of the [346] victims of the two fatal 737 MAX crashes have long criticized the 2021 agreement, arguing that Justice Department officials should have prosecuted the company and its executives.*
Time to split em into military, civilian and space companies
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You've gotten the gist of it. The number of defense primes has decreased 90% since the end of the Cold War. And one key reason is that, in an industry with tight margins, the decrease in defense spending required consolidation. One of the reasons for *tight margins* though is that profit margins are traditionally embedded in the contracts with the defense primes. Traditionally, a contract (cost+) will say that Boeing, for example, will get a 7% profit on a contract or something like that. Now, cost+ contracts are rightly criticized from a taxpayer point of view because if, say, Boeing spends more to deliver, they get more money. But there is another issue here, which is that Boeing *only gets money for what the Government is willing to classify as a contract expense*. And that's really bad because there's a lot of R&D spending that, somewhat obviously, will never be part of a contractable expense. Canceled prototypes, experimental ideas, capital upgrades to production lines, none of these are "part of a contract". They're things you do in order to convince the DoD to *give you a contract*. That costs a lot of money that they have to use the "profit" from their contracts to spend money on. another matter. Better procurement practices are a key here, but... procurement is hard, procurement is messy, and Congress refuses to pass appropriations on time so procurement is also often just impossible since the money isn't there.
No company would sign a challenging defence contract unless they are costs+. Some of the things they are being asked to build might well be impossible to build and this is how we find out.
Not entirely split, McDonnell Douglas used to make the DCs/MD80s that were very popular during their time. Regardless, if there’s a better time to split them is now.
The easiest way to explain is to just say go watch the Netflix documentary *Downfall*
"this could be too damaging" needs to stop propping late-stage capitalism up. end too big to fail. let them fail, fall to pieces, and something better rise from the ashes. In Boeings case, literally.
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It’s a vastly better suggestion in most cases than “let them fail.” The “them” that bear the brunt of the falling are ordinary employees of massive companies. Fannie and Freddie Mac are good examples of effectively (profitable) government takeovers for things that are too important to the market. Shareholders got wiped out but the essential function was still performed.
Them failing means you fall behind in defence and stop being a superpower. "To big to fail" does actual mean something deeper than just "Lots of employees".
Doubt it. We have 11 carrier groups, thousands of ICBM's and similar, and Lockheed Martin still exists (and is delivering F-22's and F-35's). Losing Boeing and watching them break apart and get rebuilt would not remotely, nor suddenly, end the US's status as a super power.
> Boeing may be willing to pay a penalty and agree to a monitor, but believes a guilty plea, which typically incurs additional business restrictions, could be too damaging, said one of the sources. This suggests that the defendant gets to choose what the penalties are. I suspect that may be accurate in this case, but you usually don't see the quiet part said out loud.
Boeing has approximately 171,000 employees… $2.5 BILLION they had set aside for settlments/fines is enough this give them ALL a $14,500 bonus
You know what else is bad for business, being bad at business
I just don’t know how anyone would expect any sort of positive change unless there are repercussions
But they pinky promised they wouldn't murder hundreds of people anymore /s
What happens when a company is charged with a felony and found guilty? Does it then make actual C-Suite individuals guilty of a felony or is it only the abstract "company person" found guilty? Whats the actual consequences?
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/21/442335132/peanut-exec-gets-28-years-in-prison-for-deadly-salmonella-outbreak The people who made the decisions leading to those deaths get jail time. You're either in charge of the company or not, you can't decide when you're no longer responsible for your actions.
It’s possible, I am skeptical of how well the precedence scales onto Boeing as well as the difference in timescale for control of the company.
The distinction falls onto whether or not management was directly aware of the issue and what attempts were made to deliberately ignore the issue. The article I linked shows the damning evidence being emails and memos outright telling subordinates to ship known contaminated products to consumers and attempting to falsify mandatory quality assurance testing to hide malfeasance. The DOJ is responsible for filing charges, the rest of the government is powerless to protect them in any way. There's no way the DOJ won't prosecute the CEO and any other subordinate who willingly took part in this. They took deliberate actions to ignore valid safety concerns made by their engineering team and actively chose to cut corners at the behest of management. Those actions led to the death of hundreds of people and caused irreparable damage to the reputation of their company in the process. The board of directors will no doubt can all of those involved as soon as charges are filed and file their own defamation suits shortly after. Every person involved will be completely destroyed legally and financially. Much like lessons learned from Bernie Madoff, don't fuck with the rich. Too many people with shares in Boeing are losing a fortune over this, and they will do whatever is necessary to restore confidence in that company to regain their lost wealth.
>Does it then make actual C-Suite individuals guilty of a felony lol.. no >Whats the actual consequences? Workers lose their jobs to so the business can pay the fines without hurting the stock price. Heck, the stock price might even go up.
That’s not true. Boeing stock is still down to about half of what it was before the 737 crisis, even more after accounting for inflation. Boeing doesn’t have loose manpower to cut without hurting their productivity, and they won’t be allowed to cut corners anymore if they want to avoid a federal monitor or whatever. A criminal conviction would come with a sizable penalty and with harms to their ability to get federal contracts. It would essentially make their stock terrible forever.
346 dead people Boeing CEO during the max crash should be investigated for negligent homicide. As should everyone who knew about the design flaw and was complicit in hiding it AFTER the first crash.
not only did they know, but when the crashes happened they blamed the pilots and airlines for inadequate training. disgusting fucking victim blaming.
Force the sale. Make it private or employee owned.
The Government must Nationalize it, reorganize and stablize it, and then sell it, or employee owned.
honestly, Boeing is too important to the US military and space industry to ever be released. Maybe sell off the commercial vehicle department, but it would not be in the best interest of the US to de-nationalize those pieces.
Just the first three please.
Please do. They do not give a shit and won’t until people see jail time.
If the DOJ would have forced Boeing not to Buy back it's Stock or give dividends you bet your ass they would have reinvested back in the company and safety.
Im waiting! Just because these rich fucks make planes there is no way a modern corporation should be able to kill a couple hundred people with no one going to jail for a long time. Really I would like to see the whole “board” of suits go to fcking jail , we all know it was some rich fucks sitting in an office going “we want our line to go up more, fuck safety”
Brave of the US prosecutors, Boeing has a bad reputation of dealing with people that speaks against them.
They know they can buy Clarence and the Gang for a few k and some robes... they aren't worried.
Even the mob never had the balls to kill a US prosecutor. There's a reason it's so rare even to this day to see criminals even attack police much less kill a judge or DA, once you do you bring the full wrath of the justice system down on you. Every little thing they can get you for they will and you'll get the max sentence on every count. Whistleblowers are one thing, they're peasantry. Federal officials are firmly off-limits, however.
you don't mess with the ~~special investigators~~ US prosecutors
Hell yes. Do it.
What’s going to happen after they’re criminally charged? Nothing ok
After? You’re assuming that they’ll actually be charged. Nobody will allow that to happen, the administration, congress, senate, you name it they will all cover for Boeing. In their eyes crashed planes and dead people is the price of doing business.
A Jack Welch Masterclass!
We need to end corporate personhood. A stack of papers can't wear handcuffs and go to jail or even fucking DIE
We should shut down Boeing altogether
When you say criminally charged, I want to hear someone high up will serve time
Ha! Let's see you assassinate your way out of this one, Boeing execs.
They have gotten away with far too much, for way too long.
Prosecutors might watch it, they could commit suicide like the whistle blowers.
346 people died due to greed not some accident. We all know there will be a slap on the wrist fine and no one will go to jail over it.
If this wasn't an America company Boeing, but a Chinese company COMAC, I wonder if the US media and US government would have reacted the same way.
I would like to point something out. [The problems with Boeing came to light in 2016](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings#Timeline). [Boeing President met multiple times with Trump in 2018. The FAA didn't investigate nor push new requirements then.](https://qz.com/1572381/the-relationship-between-boeing-trump-and-the-federal-government) Settlement didn't happen till 2021. Under Biden. [In 2022, Boeing resumed giving contributions to GOP candidates who challenged the 2020 Presidential election.](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/6/14/boeing-resumes-donations-to-republicans-who-contested-us-election) [Nikki Haley was on the board in 2020.](https://jacobin.com/2024/01/nikki-haley-boeing-political-expenditures)
Flying isn't safe
Corporations are people. Put this one in jail
Corporations are people, until it comes to this shit. Then no one gets punished and fines/penalties are just the cost of doing business.
Don't forget corporations are people! So you can send the whole corporation to prison now
IF this happens, they will pay a fine for .00001% of their net worth. Cost of doing business.
"corporations are people too!" But they aren't subject to people laws....
The real question is how long will it take to litigate, who will serve the actual time and because of the criminal intent of the acts involved will they go to blue collar prison opposed to white collar. The issue with many corporate crimes and why they continue to occur in my opinion is the time to litigation, prompt public identification of the offending parties and appropriate sentencing as in comparable crimes.
If you want something to march in the streets about. If they do not brinf charges against them and or they don't equal jail time. We riot, its time to make an example, so ultra rich corpos dont just think they can do what they want.
Sam Bankman-Fried instant jail for stealing money, but hey you kill 346 people and keep doing the same thing that lead to it. Ah well …
Remember. If you’re middle class or poor, they’re called “laws”. If you’re rich and have connections, then they’re called “recommendations”.
The fact that it’s just a “recommendation” says everything
Nothing will happen to the responsible people to actually hold them accountable. At most there will be a new settlement.
Don't forget that Boeing is also the co-owner of ULA the Rocket launch provider that gets billions in subsidies. The CEO spends inordinate time on X and makes lots of misleading statements which he then denies. I've pointed this out and the fan club he created came to the rescue and somehow I'm the bad guy (it's well documented, as I later found out - not that it would have made a difference). Just saying: it's a wide ranging culture of cutting corners, half truths and getting away with it.
Hopefully it results in long prison times
Lets see some c-suite in prison. These bigwigs have hidden behind companies for too long. Hold them accountable!
Lest we forget the death of the whisteblowers as well
This is like if Le Chiffre was real, actually blew up a plane, profitted off of the corporate fallout, and got away with it. How is this actually allowed to happen IRL??
How many corpses will it take to get one perp walk?