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Boeing workers vote to strike

washingtonpost.com

481–490 of 578 posts

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) That’s still losing. 2) I’m not sure the military was doing just fine in all of those. Vietnam comes to mind, but also Afghanistan—reading the Afghanistan papers, the brass seems to have given up on any kind of actual goals or accountability in favor of a system that let them continually cycle officers through and let them claim they succeeded at their mission (funny, they all keep achieving their mission, but fac…

I'm with you 100% on point #2. Disagree on point #1. We occupied Afghanistan for 20 years. We operated with nearly absolute impunity in all population centers, through all trade routes, and all agricultural areas. Our casualties were a minuscule amount our total forces. Our culture completely transformed theirs (in a way that old school hardliners lament publicly). We killed a huge number of Taliban (and foreign figh…

>Can you tell articulate what the political goal of the war was?

The goal was to eradicate the Taliban, remove terroristic sentiments, rebuild Afghanistan, bring the country to 21st century democratic standards, and prevent future 9/11s.

Did we achieve it? Hell no.

Verdict: We lost. Over 20 years of bloodshed and misery on both sides for fucking nothing. We failed on every single fucking count. Every. Single. Count.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#482
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Boeing’s lead corporate criminal defense law firm is Kirkland & Ellis. Cox, the lead prosecutor in the Boeing case, left the Justice Department earlier this year. And last month she joined Kirkland & Ellis as a partner in its Dallas office. It looks like the firm bought the prosecutor, resulting in a win for its client. How could this be prevented, though? Politicians can't be trusted with oversight like this--they…

Can't a law be passed that states prosecutors legally cannot consult or assist in cases or for defendants they were involved with during their tenure as a prosecutor for X years after they leave their position?

Restricting them too much is a double edged sword because a lot of people use government work as a stepping stone even if they don't go to work for people they directly deal with. Making it too hard to find a job after can make good lawyers never go into public service because they couldn't get the cushy private gig afterwards.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment I'm replying to said that and it was said frequently about Vietnam. What they didn't do is use the clear language I used and instead blamed the public for not wanting to spend every last penny on a pyrrhic victory as if that isn't attrition.

I agree that the dollar cost is real attrition too. Vietnam and Afghanistan were so wildly costly because we made the (political) choice to limit how we could engage the enemy, while our enemies were not limiting themselves Vietnam: limiting Cambodia ops, the DMZ, limiting bombing of N Vietnam Afghanistan: limiting Pakistan ops, focusing on creating a stable democracy rather than killing Taliban then leaving We made…

>then blamed the military for those poor choices.

Also the military.

A war effort involves the entire country: The entire economy beyond just the military industrial complex, all branches of politics, and the military including both officers and rank-and-file soldiers.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder who these folks who graduate with excellent STEM degrees are who can't land a job. I had a similar experience with my graduating class in undergrad computer science at a no-name state university. Of the graduating class (significantly smaller than when we started), I don't know of a single person who couldn't find some kind of gainful tech related employment - including the few folks who somehow could…

I suggest you come over to the UK. I know several guys with postgraduate STEM degrees and 10 years of development experience who can’t even get interviews. It’s very bad here.

Job postings that don't respond to inquiries about the role are a waste of your time, and it's possible to spend all day every day applying to them. Job postings without a method of contact are probably some kind of scam.

The easiest step, IMHO, is to start by ignoring employers who use a service to filter applicants.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An armed conflict between Israel and Hamas-led Palestinian militant groups[ad] has been taking place in the Gaza Strip and Israel since 7 October 2023. > The United States has given Israel extensive military aid and vetoed multiple UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions. > United States provided advice and intelligence to Israeli forces during the raid, through its "hostage cell" stationed in Israel. The attack…

By that measure what the hell was bombing Suleimani? Or moving our recognised capital of Israel to Jerusalem? Or arms to Saudi Arabia during their war with Yemen? Neither Trump nor Biden started a war. They had wars happening around them that we were to various degrees involved.

Here's a (kind of?) objective take: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...

By my quick count, Obama (awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) started seven wars, Trump started zero wars, and Biden so far started one war. All three Presidents were involved in a war started by a predecessor.

So, yeah. Trump started no wars, and he is the most rejected POTUS by the Powers That Be(tm) for that and other reasons.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#486
post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes with the perception of corporate greed. Boeing stocks have shot up, profits are not being shared, and those profits came at a cost of safety, and it isn't as if market share had not still declined against Airbus. I wouldn't be surprised if a machinist used to be able to go home, proud of the work they have done, and now, it is not so.

Unless you are talking about a very specific period in the last ten years, Boeing's stock has not "shot up". It is barely up over the last decade in a period when the total US market has nearly tripled.

Boeing stock is worth 4x what it was 15 years ago.

It had gone up almost 10x from 2010 to 2020, then they got hammered by the obvious.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#487

Boeing spent $43B on stock buybacks between 2013 and 2019 while paying their CEO ~$30M/year. > To support its share price, the company under McNerney poured billions into stock buybacks instead of investing profits into the kind of research and development needed to stay competitive. McNerney decided not to spend billions of dollars building a new plane to replace the 737. Instead, Boeing tweaked and updated the exis…

> Boeing spent $43B on stock buybacks between 2013 and 2019

Stock buybacks should be illegal or at least very difficult to do. They provide short-term gain to shareholders (and the executives who authorize them to prop up the stock price on which their bonuses depend) but can be extremely damaging to the company long-term (by which time the CEO is out anyway, and shareholders may have reaped their profits and moved on), with workers, and the local economy, left paying the price. The worst kind of capitalist poison.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#488
post #445

A lot of people here seem justifiably angry at Boeing management's total destruction of an engineering corporate culture. It's unclear to me if fixing that is what the machinists are demanding or if they just want normal union things like being paid more and working less. No hate if they are optimizing for that, unions don't exist to serve corporate culture. Just want to be clear-eyed about what the union is seeking…

> A lot of people here seem justifiably angry at Boeing management's total destruction of an engineering corporate culture. It's unclear to me if fixing that is what the machinists are demanding or if they just want normal union things like being paid more and working less. Let's not be naive here. People are going to strike on what they are incentivized to strike on. Not the goodness of their hearts.

They should want to influence the company to ensure they can keep their jobs, at the higher pay they want, indefinitely. There's a clear incentive: without the corporate culture fixed, they'll go from on strike to laid off when Boeing goes bankrupt before they can get the full raise.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#489
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen how much lambasting Boom Aerospace gets every time they come up? Starting a new aerospace company isn't for the faint of heart!

Well, Boom is not any aerospace company, they want to make supersonic planes. Supersonic travel is expensive and environmentally unfriendly, and it will probably always be, because it requires more energy, because physics. All that for the minor advantage of saving a couple of hours on select flights. What it means is that it is a privilege for the wealthy (because it is expensive for what you get), at the expense of…

> and environmentally unfriendly

That's international flight in general.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#490
post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it went right into the little shelf in many Canadians' heads of "Canadian companies destroyed by the USA". Mauldite en soit trestoute la lignye.

Trying to translate your last sentence to English gives "Mauldite in itself very all the ligny". Trying to autocorrect it gives "Maudit soit toute la ligne" which apparently means "Damn the whole line". So... am I close? :D

Very!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Roy_Engloys

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