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Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

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Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#471

Post by zdw »

bluGill wrote: post #350
zdw wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law being so wide ranging, complicated, and subject to interpretation based on previous decisions (in may jurisdictions) it's practically impossible to know definitively every law that applies to you, even for an expert. Now, knowing what the law is in specific, narrow areas that you're operating in, or with sufficient budget to hire experts, that's something different, and might be closer to knowable.

I fully agree with you, but that doesn't change anything about my statement. Even if you don't know what the law is you are still responsible for following it correctly.

Maybe the point I was trying to make is whether the statement is practical and/or reasonable or not.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#472

Post by WorkerBee28474 »

abeppu wrote: post #405
abeppu wrote: post #399

> If the deal is accepted, it could complicate Boeing’s ability to sell products to the U.S. government as a felon, though the company could seek waivers. About 32% of Boeing’s nearly $78 billion in revenue last year came from its defense, space and security unit. My understanding is that getting security clearance involves a bunch of checks and statements about your character, and having a federal felony conviction…

Also in the "corporations as people" x "criminal justice system" vein, I would be in favor of moving towards a standard where, if a person convicted of the same crime would receive a prison sentence, a company should be forced to cease operations for an equivalent period, and put all its assets into frozen fund which can only be used to pay out debts/obligations, and which earns no interest.

That sounds like a great way to make 145,000 Americans unemployed.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#473

Post by swozey »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #470
swozey wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was homeless at 17 in high school before going into the Marines in 2002. I know what having negative money is like, health problems or not. That doesn't change the fact that it comes from absolute privilege to tell someone that they should just quit their job because you don't agree with the ethics or morality of work they're doing. If you HAVE the privilege, the savings, the good health not needing COBRA, etc, the…

I disagree again, and I would much rather be homeless than have ME/CFS, I'd still make that trade today. You clearly don't know what it means to have ME/CFS and I don't begrudge that, hardly anyone does. I would rather you be homeless than have you be part of making an airplane unsafe and I will judge you for that. I don't care how hard life is for you and I don't expect others to care how life has been for me - if y…

What absolutely weird replies. You clearly are the victim of the world, sir. Nobody has worse problems than you!

None of this was a competition, super strange to make it so and not just recognize not everyone can quit their job today, nod your head and agree.

Because that is a fact.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#474

Post by runarberg »

underlipton wrote: post #430
philwelch wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest share of convicted inmates in the US were convicted of violent crimes such as murder, rape, robbery, or assault. Simple marijuana possession makes up a tiny share. And less than half of the violent crimes committed in the US lead to a conviction.

Couple of things: 1) Citation needed. Particularly if you're talking about federal inmates, state, or both. 2) It's disingenuous (re: primacy bias) to lead off with murder and rape, which account for a far smaller portion of "violent" crime than robbery (which I assume includes burglary, in which the victim and perpetrator don't make contact) and assault (which, again, does not require the victim and perpetrator to p…

Here is the official statistic for federal inmates:

https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

To summarize, 44% of current federal inmates are there for drug-charges. The second most category is weapons charges at 22%. So a good 2/3 of current federal inmates are there for non-violent crimes. Sex offense is third most common at 13% I’m sure many are there for illegal sex work or consumption rather than for sexual violence. A whopping 4.6% is in federal prison for immigrating (which isn’t even a crime; unless this category includes human trafficking, which I would call a violent crime).

EDIT: As for all US prisoners, here is the data I found (see table 16 on page 29):

62% are there for violent crimes and 12.5% for drug charges. Note that many large states—such as California—don’t imprison for drug possession any more, and this table does not include sentences shorter than 1 year. This methodology of counting current prison population is biased for more serious crimes with longer sentencing, as most crimes have shorter sentencing but serious and especially violent crimes have longer sentencing and thus are over-represented among the current prison population at any one point in time.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/p22st.pdf

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#475

Post by cjbgkagh »

swozey wrote: post #473
cjbgkagh wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree again, and I would much rather be homeless than have ME/CFS, I'd still make that trade today. You clearly don't know what it means to have ME/CFS and I don't begrudge that, hardly anyone does. I would rather you be homeless than have you be part of making an airplane unsafe and I will judge you for that. I don't care how hard life is for you and I don't expect others to care how life has been for me - if y…

What absolutely weird replies. You clearly are the victim of the world, sir. Nobody has worse problems than you! None of this was a competition, super strange to make it so and not just recognize not everyone can quit their job today, nod your head and agree. Because that is a fact.

What part of "I don't expect others to care how life has been for me" did you not understand?

I would like to think that even without ME/CFS I would still hold such views.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#476

Post by TaylorAlexander »

tomp wrote: post #446
ilyagr wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scop... Somewhat opinionated, but clearer explanation: https://jacobin.com/2024/06/supreme-court-corruption-thomas-... Perhaps somebody finds a better overview.

Supreme Court simply limited the (in their opinion overbroad) lower court's interpretation of the law. Congress is free to fix the law.

So what you’re saying is “it's now legal for the judge and everyone else involved to get a nice present from Boeing, as long as it happens afterwards!”

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#478

Post by tsunamifury »

bumby wrote: post #451
tsunamifury wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea and with challenger only one engineer raised the alarm while a large group of well meaning engineers overrode him. This is reality. Decisions aren’t kill/not kill.

Yeah we both agree that the decision isn’t “kill/not kill”. It’s much more ambiguous and murky, especially when dealing with low probability events. That’s why it takes expertise, but it doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be accountability for those “expert” decisions. Other engineering domains already have this, there isnt anything that makes these decision inherently different.

When you criminalize the role either no one will take the role or an incompetent patsy will. I dont know when HN became a bunch of keyboard jockies white knighting what they'd do... but reality is a very different story.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#479

Post by maeil »

abeppu wrote: post #405
abeppu wrote: post #399

> If the deal is accepted, it could complicate Boeing’s ability to sell products to the U.S. government as a felon, though the company could seek waivers. About 32% of Boeing’s nearly $78 billion in revenue last year came from its defense, space and security unit. My understanding is that getting security clearance involves a bunch of checks and statements about your character, and having a federal felony conviction…

Also in the "corporations as people" x "criminal justice system" vein, I would be in favor of moving towards a standard where, if a person convicted of the same crime would receive a prison sentence, a company should be forced to cease operations for an equivalent period, and put all its assets into frozen fund which can only be used to pay out debts/obligations, and which earns no interest.

Garnish valuation increase and dividends for X years, just like wage garnishing. At the end of every quarter, if the market cap of the company has increased by $X b/million, $X b/million has to be paid as a fine to the government. This means that effectively the share price cannot increase during the period, only go down.

Of course, this needs to be done retroactively, starting from the time the illegal act is believed to have been committed. Now it wouldn't be sensible to just "destroy" market cap, but there's an obvious solution here. Looks like the 737 MAX was announced in Aug 2011, when Boeing's market cap was around $50B. Currently it's $114B. You issue new shares, roughly 1.28x as many as the current number of outstanding shares. The government gets all of them and by law is made to sell 20% of them per year. It's only after 5 years, when all of the shares have been sold, that the X years of market cap garnishing starts.

I'm sure there's a loophole or two that I missed, but this can all be accounted for. A simple, DMA-like "spirit of the law"-clause works well enough, as we're seeing with Apple suddenly being very quick to accept the Epic store in Europe.

Suddenly a whole lot of people will start caring. Sure, it would be great to jail those responsible too, but with that alone you will eventually end up with boards full of fall guys. You need the above to long-term successfully prevent this kind of socially destructive behavior.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#480

Post by abeppu »

t_mann wrote: post #456
abeppu wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the DoD should make clear that the funds previously marked for Boeing would be open for new firms even if staffed by former Boeing employees -- provided diligence checks find no involvement by those parties in the current fraud case. Boeing, if it had no prospects of continued DoD contracts, would naturally want to offload teams and facilities dedicated to that work. If this situation was handled right, it co…

> the funds previously marked for Boeing would be open for new firms even if staffed by former Boeing employees > delivering a very clear message to shareholders and C-suite officers that this sort of conduct will not make them rich And the best way to make that point is to create new investment opportunities that will make some former employees of the same company and many of the same investors rich?

1. Boeing investors should take a substantial haircut. If those investors subsequently in on new firms, good for them (though initially these new firms may be private). I see no reason they should expect to "get rich" from the investment. The top institutional shareholder is Vanguard whose involvement will have been minimal and whose future behavior is unlikely to change. But Boeing execs whose compensation is largely in stock packages should take a really large hit, and any shareholders who are more apt to be more activist will be more likely to express concern about this kind of conduct sooner.

2. I have to expect that plenty of employees who did not become dead whistle-blowers were not involved in fraud, or poor engineering practices. Certainly a great many long-time Boeing employees expressed concerns about the deterioration of engineering-first culture.

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