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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

#521

Post by philwelch »

runarberg wrote: post #474
underlipton wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rath…

> Here is the official statistic for federal inmates

Federal inmates are a tiny minority of inmates in the United States, because the vast majority of crimes are prosecuted at the state level. There are about 147,000 convicted federal inmates compared to over a million held in state prisons and 103,000 convicts held in local jails.

> This methodology of counting current prison population is biased for more serious crimes with longer sentencing

This strikes me as an attempt to move the goalposts, given that we're several comments deep into a thread which started with the claim that "95% of US inmates are on plea deal".

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

#522

Post by jjav »

tomp wrote: post #485
ilyagr wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you think it will take for Congress to fix the law? Until then, the ancestor poster's interpretation of "Don't worry, it's now legal for the judge and everyone else involved to get a nice present from Boeing, as long as it happens afterwards!" is more or less correct AFAICT (though I'd appreciate more educated opinions).

This ”congress is too slow” is an oft-repeated trope but completely wrong. What people like you don’t understand is that slowness is a feature, not a bug ! The first COVID relief bill was passed in less than a month. Because it had broad support and was urgent! Laws that have broad support are passed quickly. Laws that lack broad support are passed slowly or not at all. That how lawmaking should work!

> Laws that have broad support are passed quickly. Laws that lack broad support are passed slowly or not at all.

> That how lawmaking should work!

Yes, agreed!

However, there is another category of laws, those which have very broad support from The People, but don't benefit the politicians (such as, a law restricting bribes).

Such laws will never pass.

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

#523

Post by abeppu »

t_mann wrote: post #487
abeppu wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 largel…

The investors who got rich through Boeing have cashed in a long time ago. What you're suggesting would be much more interesting to them than Boeing is today. You're basically saying 'this handful of companies is virtually guaranteed to share contracts worth billions per year among them'.

> The investors who got rich through Boeing have cashed in a long time ago.

I don't know which investors you mean, and what you mean by "a long time", but I think people that cashed in a long time ago should be able to invest in new firms. Many people say the culture and safety issues at Boeing stems from the McDonnell Douglas merger which was admittedly a generation ago now. But if the estates of Frank Shrontz or Thorton Wilson or the great great grand kids of William Boeing want to invest in a new firm -- good for them? None of them were involved in the period when this fraud occurred, and if they had actually cashed out long ago then they weren't even shareholders in a position to pressure Boeing officers to do anything different.

But there's also no reason they would have any kind of leg up over anyone else in making such an investment today.

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

#524

Post by bumby »

tomp wrote: post #485
ilyagr wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you think it will take for Congress to fix the law? Until then, the ancestor poster's interpretation of "Don't worry, it's now legal for the judge and everyone else involved to get a nice present from Boeing, as long as it happens afterwards!" is more or less correct AFAICT (though I'd appreciate more educated opinions).

This ”congress is too slow” is an oft-repeated trope but completely wrong. What people like you don’t understand is that slowness is a feature, not a bug ! The first COVID relief bill was passed in less than a month. Because it had broad support and was urgent! Laws that have broad support are passed quickly. Laws that lack broad support are passed slowly or not at all. That how lawmaking should work!

Ehhhh it’s not always the case. Lots of laws have low levels of support (from constituents) but high levels of inertia that prevents them from being repealed. Subsidies are a prime examples. Alpaca subsidies for the Korean War were not repealed until the 1990s. (There’s probably also an important distinction between general support and support from the smaller population of monied classes that skews this further).

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

#525

Post by abeppu »

bpodgursky wrote: post #500
abeppu wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a dumb proposal that benefits nobody. The only way to guarantee that Boeing becomes worse at making planes, is to ask them to stop doing it for 18 months and then start up again.

Fairness and equality before the law benefits everyone.

But we live in a broken society where corporations have the rights of people (including political donations as free speech), but don't have the ability to be punished in a way that is at all aligned with what we inflict on actual people. This also means that punishment is largely not an effective deterrent for large companies, where the penalties when they're caught are smaller than the revenue when they're not caught (see cases of tech giants laughing off penalties in the 7-9 figures).

If the cost of being able to actually punish companies is that you sometimes have to actually punish companies with the side effect that we can't spend the whole $900B/yr on war machines to pass on to wars on the other side of the planet ... then sigh, I guess we'll have to settle for only buying $880B of death this year.

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

#526

Post by bumby »

WalterBright wrote: post #482
cjbgkagh wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not the first person I've head of this idea from; it's from the NTSB charter The NTSB does not assign fault or blame for an accident or incident; rather, as specified by NTSB regulation, “accident/incident investigations are fact-finding proceedings with no formal issues and no adverse parties … and are not conducted for the purpose of determining the rights or liabilities of any person” But there was plenty o…

> That it works for you actually makes me feel less safe flying. Feel free to ask the flight crew next time you're on a 757. The service record of the 757 speaks for itself. I fly Iceland Air because their fleet consists of 757s. I literally bet my life on my work. > Boeing tried to blame the pilots The pilots were partially responsible. 1. First incident - the LA crew followed emergency procedures and continued the…

You can also read the Boeing documents. The hazard analysis listed MCAS as hazardous. By Boeing process controls, that should have mandated redundant sensors. Why were they optional? Because that could increase profits. (Seattle Times has done good reporting on this).

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

#527

Post by bumby »

WalterBright wrote: post #490
cjbgkagh wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird to see such a strongly held belief of not blaming people abandoned so quickly. It's pretty standard to blame the pilots, as we know there is a Swiss cheese model for statistical analysis of risk and from my vantage point opening such large holes in the MCAS layer with the expectation that events are caught at the pilot layer is inadequate. That not all events are caught at the pilot layer is to be expected. Edi…

Finding the source of the error is not the same thing as meting out punishment. I am not aware of any pilot being criminally charged for making a terrible mistake. Though their careers are usually ended by it. That seems fair to me. An engineer at Boeing who could not be relied on will also find his career shunted to working on non-critical stuff. That's fair as well. > That not all events are caught at the pilot lay…

Mark Forkner was a pilot charged in the MCAS debacle (and acquitted).

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

#528

Post by bumby »

phone8675309 wrote: post #396
WinstonSmith84 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such decisions are way above the pay grade of random engineers

No they are not! You are responsible for what you sign off on/seal. If you don't want that responsibility then join another profession.

Importantly here, Boeing doesn’t require licensed engineers because they operate under an industrial exemption.

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

#529

Post by thumbsup-_- »

It's a slap on the wrist. No one goes to jail. Just pay money and move on. Boeing knows that if this goes to trial, the discovery material will be extremely incriminating to their brand. Instead, just pay money and move on.

I wonder if a plea deal like this would have ever reached if american lives were lost in two crashes as a direct cause of a company's negligence.

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

#530

Post by shakna »

gruez wrote: post #302
shakna wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowingly placing thousands of lives at risk, including possible state actors - risking international relationships, whilst also risking damages to critical infrastructure, such as airports, certainly would seem to qualify as a dangerous felony.

The legal system doesn't operate on "seem".

No, but anybody commenting on legalities outside the court room should be using "seem", as what they're saying is not definitive. Especially if they've got any legal background.
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