Boeing's mission: soaring profits, not soaring planes

Boeing’s ubiquitous 737 is the most produced passenger plane in history with 10,565 manufactured and another 4,600 in the production queue. But after two horrific crashes of the latest 737 MAX version, production has halted and 400 sit gathering dust rather than passengers. We're still learning of the incredible mendacity, greed, recklessness, indeed contempt for the flying public in the pursuit of earning extra billions so top executives could earn extra millions, 346 dead passengers on two doomed planes be damned. First flown 51 years ago next April, he MAX was one iteration of the 737 too many. Rather than take the time and care to engineer a new design, Boeing simply expanded the 737 beyond its inherent capabilities. They added gigantic new engines for efficiency to quickly surpass European rival Airbus. But the engines made the MAX was so bottom heavy it was prone to nose up stalling. Boeing Biggies came up with a quick but deadly fix, the bizarrely named Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) which pushed the nose down if it detected a stall. But to rush the MAX to Profit Heaven they barely mentioned MCAS to both the FAA and the airlines, figuring it would never malfunction and assuming if it did, pilots could disable it. The first happened, the second didn’t...twice. We know from FAA forced disclosures that warning bells from Boeing engineers and pilots were going off and being ignored by the guys at the top. Result? 346 dead Boeing customers.

The 737 MAX catastrophe is not just the result of capitalist corporate gluttony. The FAA, indeed many American regulatory agencies, are being drowned in the bathtub of governmental destruction of sensible oversight, enabling the gargantuan US economy to fly high causing unsuspecting citizens to go underground forever. So overworked was the FAA that the agency deferred some of the 737 MAX scrutiny to Boeing itself, a case of the fox guarding the henhouse. Now, those chickens are coming back to roost with a vengeance. Boeing will lose, rather than earn many billions from their unconscionable malfeasance. Hundreds of 737 suppliers with suffer, some even disappearing. Also disappearing will be a half of a percent in US GDP in the first quarter, 2020, already projected a meager 2% before the Boeing Boondoggle.

We do not need a sick, capitalist culture revering profits over people so a chosen few can live in a gluttonous fantasy world. Nor can we thrive with a government bent on putting itself out of business to foster that distorted way of life. Boeing puff piece ads are touting how truly sorry Boeing officials are that 346 passengers were killed on their watch. What they are truly sorry for is the loss of their 2019 bonus or their job. And the next time presidential contenders proclaim the need to dump unnecessary governmental regulations, ask them if that includes the regulations that could have prevented two Boeing jets from diving to their demise.

US perpetual war heads to outer space

While Trump is saving a few billion cutting food assistance to millions, he's using some of the gargantuan $ 738 billion in 2020 defense spending to create a sixth branch of the armed services ... the Space Force. It establishes, according to Trump, "space as a war fighting domain guaranteeing that the United States will dominate in that environment just like all others." If that's true than we can expect the US to expand its current earthly perpetual war into outer space.

Oh yes they did

Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pushed back against criticism of the military that they've been lying about both progress and need for the Afghanistan war during its entire 19 year duration. This information has come out in the bombshell Afghanistan Papers published by the Washington Post after years of effort to get Uncle Sam to cough them up. All 3,509 US and allied soldiers were killed in vain as the Afghan war was both ary and unwinnable. However, it will go on till the US figures out a way of withdrawing with a shred of its integrity and honor in tact. This ensures more US soldiers will die in vain.

Milley offered this bit of nonsense which adds no value to the debate on how urgent it is we leave Afghanistan: “I don't think anybody has died in vain, per se, If anyone's death was in vain, I could not look at myself in the mirror. ”Milley is likely ignoring mirrors like Dracula.

Letter to Trib's Steve Chapman on Trump tax cut fraud column

Steve, good column on the Trump tax cut fraud ('Trump's tax cut was a massive fraud, December 22 Trib). All of us in the real world knew it was a fraud from the get-go. But didn't your editorial board absolutely love it and is still singing its praises? Just wonderin '.

And don't your colleagues on the board ever listen to you when you point out the lunacy of our immoral and failed regime change wars all over the world?

Walt Zlotow
Glen Ellyn