Boeing 737 MAX: Another Sham Senate Investigation

157 people murdered by capitalism: Source

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

It’s very handy that a corporation is a person in the US. That’s why when we read about issues involving their activity, especially concerns about safety and public safety in particular, we often read that GM said this or Google says that.

As far as I can recall, British Petroleum (BP) was quite chatty during the horrendous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This spill was not a “mistake” any more than the crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX aircraft were mistakes. In early 2010, the New York Times pointed out in with regards to the BP spill that an Interior Dept investigation revealed that, “Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil — and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency, according to an inspector general’s report to be released this week. The report said that investigators "could not discern if any fraudulent alterations were present on these forms." (1)

In yesterday’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg stated that “Boeing” made mistakes and in response to Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s  (D., Conn.) accusation that Boeing was engaged in a “pattern of deliberate concealment” by blaming pilot error for the crashes and that “Boeing” had lied, Muilenburg replied, “The premise that we would lie or conceal is not consistent with our values.”  They love that phrase don’t they. Muilenburg received about $23 million in total compensation in 2018, including a $13.1 million incentive payment. These are the only values he respects.

There are countless examples of such tragedies. The catastrophic effects of the BP spill will not really be known for decades. It’s almost comical that the US government, one “of the people by the people” would hand over the writing of rules for deep water drilling to the energy company doing the drilling. Eleven workers died due to that “mistake” by BP. 

A dead sea turtle lies in oil in Louisiana's Barataria Bay in 2010. Source

I wrote some time ago about the aftermath of the famous Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and what it meant for the local community. In a Washington Post article from September 2010 a fisherman describes his observations about the Herring after the Valdez spill:

“In 1990, he says, they began behaving oddly. Instead of laying their eggs in a row, the herring would leave them in pyramids or in stacks. A year later, they started reabsorbing their eggs.

"We were freaking out because they weren't spawning," Renner says.

In 1992, he noticed lesions, evidence that disease had taken hold of their population.

"And then they died," Renner says. "So we quit herring fishing, and that was devastating to this town."

The Senate investigation is just another sham performance for the public to show in Bob Dylan’s words:

“That the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled” 2

It is not as if the public are not aware of this. There is just a general feeling that we can’t change it and there is no alternative. Workers have no political voice, no political party. We are watching the representatives of capitalism debate among themselves how best to get out of this “mistake” and protect the system they govern.

The system will not be questioned. An individual might be the fall guy, that is a possibility as the death of over 350 people is no small matter and Muilenburg told Trump after the Ethiopian crash that “aircraft was safe and did not need to be grounded” . The Boeing CEO also praised Trump saying, “He cares about business and he creates open communication lines, and we will have differences from time to time, we may not agree on every topic,”

What is more important is the industry itself. Boeing, is the second largest defense contractor receiving $104 billion in unclassified defense contracts between 2014 and 2018 according to reports. US capitalism is the world’s largest purveyor of weapons of mass destruction often supplying both sides in conflicts. What a deal that is.

Like the auto industry, the energy industry, and all the major industries crucial to the needs of what should be a civilized, humane society, Boeing should be taken in to public ownership and its productive capacity used for social need not profits. It is the rapacious quest for profits that is the root cause of these so-called mistakes. They are not “mistakes” they are market driven, an inherent aspect of capitalist production.

A government “for the people by the people” is not a bad slogan. The question though is, which people.

(1) NYT Inspector General’s Inquiry Faults Regulators

(2) The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll