The Boeing Corporation’s current assault on the very foundations of the United States economy and governing system exposes the worst of the Corporate Oligarchy now ruling the nation. Boeing was created and owes its existence from government taxpayer funds. The only source of income for the company began with mail contracts beginning in the 1920s. Subsequently, the military buildup during the 1930s and World War II funded the entire Boeing operations to become a major economic factor in this country. Following WWII, Boeing continued to prosper from defense contracting to build the air forces fleet patrolling the world during the Cold War. In the 1960s Boeing became prime contractor for massive ICBM missile contracts to build the Minuteman Missile Complex throughout Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. Add on participation in the Space Race to the Moon and the profits generated from the multiplicity of defense contracts filled the Boeing accounts to overflowing. The Vietnam War/Invasion expanded the revenue base for all defense contractors.
Competition for these contracts became less and less as the revenues from these trillion dollar projects necessitated cooperation between the companies with each gaining pieces of the huge pie. Why compete when everyone could benefit without the expenditures to compete for every component of the monstrous Military Industrial Complex? The civilian commercial airplane market was a pittance compared to the defense contract revenues. The management came up through the ranks of the designers, engineers, and craftsmen responsible for the creation of all of the equipment and systems to fulfill defense contracts. They were builders, not stock manipulators.
After Vietnam, the Space Race, and the Cold War disappeared into history, the age of monopoly creation began with Boeing and their fellow, defense contractor participants joining with the anti-government forces of Conservatism to reduce all competition for government revenues. All social programs were to be slashed and burned if possible while maintaining and expanding the expenditures for the Military Industrial Complex. At the same time all regulatory aspects of the financial system were removed to allow for the consolidation of all economic entities into giant economic monoliths. Monoliths wallowing in the wealth generated by defense contracting. The deregulation of the airline industry followed by the Reagan destruction of financial regulation and union busting set the stage for merger mania by all economic entities. Large corporations swallowed up competitors with tactics of manipulation of the stock market system. The Federal Reserve(led by Ayn Rand acolyte Alan Greenspan) joined with its fellow financial institutions to demand government remove all restrictions on banking and stock market operations. The resulting Bush/Cheney-aided crash set the stage for elected Corporate agents, i.e., Democrats and Republicans acting as one ideological unit to orchestrate the bailout and further consolidation of the economy into pyramids of power ruled by a few. Returning the nation to the class segregation of the 19th Century Robber Baron era led by the descendant corporations of those same thieves. (For an excellent historical summary, read the “American Prospect” trilogy of Harold Meyerson led by the “The Forty Year Slump”).
During the subsequent merger mania of the 1990s, Boeing absorbed all of its domestic competitors to form the present monopoly. The list of acquisitions and mergers is a litany of the Military Industrial Complex since WWII. Components of Hughes Corporation, Rockwell International, McDonnell Douglas Corporation, Hawker de Havilland/Boeing Aerostructures Australia, et. al. completed the current monopoly ruling aerospace, defense contracting, and commercial airplane production.
At the same time, the management devolved from design and engineer builders to paper shufflers and financial manipulators whose allegiance was solely to Wall Street and the paper shareholders including themselves. Golden compensation packages were created and approved for management by Board members identical in philosophy and devotion to personal wealth accumulation looted from corporate resources. All management focus was to enhance stock prices through policies detrimental to all aspects of production dominated by the attempted destruction of the work force unions through intimidation and blackmail. Phony cost savings to hide the losses inherent to the mismanagement and incompetence of the CEO-led management team were to be gleaned from the destruction of worker wages and benefits through destroying the union. All of it orchestrated with the blackmail policy of moving production to other states and foreign countries.
These management policies were aided and abetted by elected officials, mainly from Washington State, holding key congressional seats controlling defense contracting, and willing to sell their souls for the massive campaign contributions from Boeing Management and their lobbyists. After the formation of the current Boeing monopoly, the current management began the blackmailing of federal and state officials with threats of moving production facilities to other, non-union states. The first threat was carried out by moving Boeing headquarters from Seattle to Chicago with barely a whimper from the elected officials.
W. James McNerney, is the poster boy for the worst of the Corporate Oligarchy. McNerney can be considered the Osama Bin Laden of the Corporate Oligarchy. He and his complicit Board of Directors, made up of agents from the worst of the Wall Street Investment Banker, Hedge Fund terrorists of the Corporate Oligarchy, proclaim war on their own working classes. Their terrorist tactics against their own corporate workers and product creators is designed to cover up their own culpability and incompetence in massive errors in design and production of recent commercial airplanes. His blatant and criminal threats against his own work force, the entire population of the State of Washington, and the federal government of the United States should find him sitting in a jail cell in Fort Leavenworth. No Mafia Don has issued more criminal threats against the nation and its population than this Boeing terrorist. His identical threat wording could be found in Al Qaida proclamations to destroy the great evil that is worker union existence.
Headlines in the compliant Corporate Media daily blare the latest threats from this terrorist and his spokespeople demanding all bow to his edicts. Immunity from any local, state, or federal Corporate taxation combined with demanding the “winning” State builds brand new facilities from taxpayer funds and bonds to be turned over to Boeing’s sole use without cost with no worker rights to wage and benefit compensation. The Washington State Governor and Legislators fall to their knees and, immediately, grant more tax exemptions for the Boeing Corporation in a few days. All other legislation needs months of analysis and debate, but Boeing legislation flies through with non-existent dissent. These elected leaders carry the appellation of Democrat, the party of the people, while selling out their own working voters to the edicts of the Boeing Corporate Dictator. The other States, mostly in the Old South, and Republican dominated don’t even wait for the edict. They, immediately, pass all the tax exempt packages and bond proposals without one thought to the consequences.
Standing beside the Washington Governor is the Congressional delegation led by Senator Patty Murray, another DINO(Democrat-In-Name-Only) urging the State legislators to grant these exemptions and the worker unions to accept the destruction of their own compensation benefits to add to the Boeing Corporate Management golden compensation packages. Shortly thereafter, Murray performs the same service for the entire Corporate Oligarchy as she, laughingly, sells out the entire nation with the worst budget proposal in the history of the nation. She, herself, is immune from any consequence as she will retire to her own multi-millionaire estate or be awarded with some other golden compensated, government job for her devotion to the care and preservation of the traitorous Corporate Oligarchy over the health of the rest of the United States population. She led the voices of outrage when the Air Force procurement people selected a European entity to build the new Air Force refueling tanker. Every patriotic, flag-waving artifice filled the media as the Boeing management demanded a reopening of bidding and contract award to make up for their bidding incompetence. The Defense Department obeyed and awarded the contract to Boeing. Boeing immediately outsourced production facilities to foreign, non-union contractors violating all of the patriotic claims. Followed by the threats to move production to the non-union, Old South States still operating as plantations for all corporate interests.
A recent revelation of one of the parts cargo planes getting stuck in Kansas in the wrong air field by a contract pilot completely clueless as to where he was and how he landed in the field. The same article revealed the use of a USAF Military Base by Boeing to aid in the transportation of parts from foreign counties. Apparently USAF Bases throughout the world are regularly used to provide low cost facilities for the movement of non-union produced commercial parts for Boeing airliners from foreign contracts. Huge Boeing contracted planes flying parts around the globe using USAF facilities to support the entire commercial operation. All adding to the environmental effects from the unnecessary fossil fuel burning in the atmosphere and outsourcing the jobs to China, Korea, Japan, Israel, Italy, etc. Boeing management performing solely for its own slobbering Corporate greed against any and all patriotic fealty to the United States, its taxpaying citizens, and especially to any union working classes. Management incompetence exemplified by the 787 Dreamliner debacle of non-fitting parts saved from complete disaster by those evil, undeserving Washington Machinist Union members. Management never paid one penny in penalty for this ultimate in bonehead management, and eventually received raises and bonuses while they continued to terrorize the union workers and all U.S. citizenry.
The only heroes and true American patriots in this travesty are the Machinist Union members who, overwhelmingly, rejected the blackmail threat from McNerney while their elected officials sold them down the free trade river. Unfortunately, they are in the same position as the United Auto Workers of the 1960s. The UAW leadership led by George Meany joined with management to support the Vietnam War and aid in the election of Richard Nixon in 1968 after the key assassinations of the political leaders of the people made his political resurrection possible. Now, the similar traitorous Machinist Union leaders wallowing in their own golden compensation in Washington, D.C. attempt to coerce their workers into accepting a union-busting proposal from the Boeing Management predators. Traitorously setting a vote that few of the workers want to continue to aid the destruction of their own income source. Every union throughout history has succumbed to similar traitors whose dues-generated wealth puts them into the same class as the management. They forget where they came from and who put them in their positions. They should all be thrown out and their own pensions pulled for their traitorous actions against their own brothers.
Meanwhile Obama and the rest of the Washington, D.C. DINOs continue to provide daily photo ops and nonsense pronouncements devoid of any actions against the assaults on the very foundations of democracy and human rights by the evil that is the Corporate Oligarchy. An Oligarchy composed of the Hedge Funds, the Energy/Oil Monopoly, Federal Reserve Deregulated Investment Banking System, and Billionaire Barons perched atop the pyramids of power constructed by a paper system of greed completely separate from any need for product and service creation and operation. Just a system of buying, looting, and selling the remnants to leave the human detritus to fend for themselves by “pulling up their boot straps” disconnected from any boots.
Boeing stocks are riding high based based on wild proclamations of billions of airliner sales from Middle East Oil Potentates. Sales announcements boost stock prices and reward management bonuses without any need for one airliner to be built. No announcement of how much Boeing stock is owned by the same Potentates. The greatest money laundering system ever created based on empty rhetoric and paper promises without any need for actual production. Actually producing any airliners has no relation to the massive looting based on the sales figures alone as management rakes in their bonuses and stock traders wallow in fees generated from overpriced, bloated stock prices unrelated to actual production. By the time these generations of airliners are scheduled to be delivered, the management and stockholders will be long gone to their multi-millionaire mansions scattered throughout non-taxpaying sheltered nations. The workers and tax-paying public will be left to pick up the pieces as the entire system implodes from this system of greed and criminal actions looting the corporation and the nation. Boeing is not too big to fail. Defense contracts are the only base propping up the entire corporate pyramid. The airliner production could disappear in a heartbeat if the buyers fail to honor the sales just as occurred in the past.
Key questions fail to appear within the Corporate Media. Who really owns the majority of Boeing Stock? Which Investment Houses control the majority of stock? How many union pension funds own Boeing stock? Why does the entire Federal government allow these terrorists to continue to threaten the entire nation?
2013 closes out with McNerney’s massive media campaign continuing to fill the headlines with threats of the dire consequences for the Boeing union workers and the Washington population as a whole if his demands are not met with a positive vote in the phony election orchestrated by the union management traitors. Wall Street rewards every threat with escalating Boeing stock prices. Elected officials demand union workers sell out themselves and all future union members by approving the criminal management threats. The Corporate Media is filled with the utterances of Boeing Management and the Quisling legislators with no union or anti-management voices allowed in print or on the air.
Happy New Year! to all of you union members soon to join the rest of the indentured servants to the Corporate Oligarchy if you approve this death knell for all United States union and citizen rights.
