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I'd like to point out that vast majority of this lax enforcement of FAA oversight of the Boeing 737 Max certification happened during the Obama Administration b

I'd like to point out that vast majority of this lax enforcement of FAA oversight of the Boeing 737 Max certification happened during the Obama Administration by political appointees of Barrack Obama and the Democratic Party. I am centre-left political (socially liberal, fiscally conservative) and It really really bothers me to see the double standards. Once you start to notice the pattern of one-sided appropriation of blame in pretty much every fking scenario, you end up discounting any criticism of republicans as bias.

stevehawk 7y ago
It's really disappointing to see this comment downvoted. Apparently we're all fine with blaming the current administration for not firing them but we're not ok with blaming a previous administration for hiring them? We've also had countless posts talking negatively on the very merger that lead this iteration of Boeing (McDonnel-Douglas) with no regard for the administration that basically encouraged the merger. It's okay to admit it guys: both parties suck and are corporate shills.
- unlinked_dll 7y ago
  > Apparently we're all fine with blaming the current administration for not firing them but we're not ok with blaming a previous administration for hiring them One of these two parties has the ability to affect change. It's not the latter.
  - kovac 7y ago
    The official report just came out. On what grounds would the existing administration just fire upper level management at an early stage? The appropriate response would be to force FAA to ground the planes (if and which FAA did not do themselves), and wait for the official report and then open an investigation in to Boeing and FAA. Time is a factor to take into account.
- 1shooner 7y ago
  Appointing someone that ends up breaking the law vs. keeping someone that is known to have. These are not the same thing.
  - pdpi 7y ago
    They're not the same thing, no. But that doesn't change the fact that stuffing the FAA with Boeing insiders is a dumb idea.
    - fma 7y ago
      They should be rules against stuff like that. Our current head of Health and Human Services is a former pharmaceutical lobbyist...there are more examples...
    - mattrp 7y ago
      anyone who looks at my comments on Boeing knows I’m fairly critical. However, it’s probably fair to say anyone with any bonafides in commercial aviation by definition is a Boeing insider since it has either squashed or acquired all of its domestic competition. We talk all the time about banks are too big to fail yet when it comes to defense we simultaneously create projects that only Boeing can bid and look the other way when Boeing acquires companies that might represent an alternative while increasingly taking delivery of weapons systems that don’t work as intended. One doesn’t have to look that deep into history to see scandals like the Air Force tanker which rose all the way to the Supreme Court, or the failed SLS project which has sent so much pork spending to specific congressional districts that Spacex could build something like 300 falcon 9’s instead, to see that Boeing’s relationship with the US government is problematic at its very core. Blaming both parties is surface level equivocation that does nothing. The simple fact is Boeing is too big, they know it and the government knows it and unless we want our defense to be outsourced to foreign ownership, preserving this status quo is quite literally the only thing keeping Boeing from reverse-mergering itself out of this country. We have overlooked our own strategic resources - be it pharmaceutical, manufacturing, telecom, etc, for far too long and have pursued incredibly near-sighted policy objectives to our own detriment. In the spirit of HN, I’ve already gotten too political here but I will say one final thing: don’t equivocate both parties as equal, neither should you be complacent and assume what your party is telling you is the right direction either — there’s more to this issue than simply saying oh let’s arm the regulators with more regulations and vice versa.
- tigershark 7y ago
  It’s really disappointing to see that after all the crazy stuff done by the current administration, even after senators admitted the guilty of the current potus and declined to remove it, after he put in charge of containing the Coronavirus the least qualified person to do so while removing qualified people, there is still someone that has the nerve to say that both sides suck. It’s okay to admit it, you probably didn’t follow so much what happened in the White House and in the world in the last three years.
unlinked_dll 7y ago
My comment wasn't on who appointed the regulators but on the likelihood of the people who have the power to remove them to do so. I'm sorry if that was unclear.
briandear 7y ago
> Once you start to notice the pattern of one-sided appropriation of blame in pretty much every fking scenario, you end up discounting any criticism of republicans as bias. Exactly this. What people like me are tired of is the legions of armchair experts that opine in such way as to support their prejudices while pretending to be rational and intellectual about it. For example: complaints about the complicated tax filing system, yet when Ted Cruz offers a postcard-sized tax return as a proposal, that idea is ignored and “Republicans” get blamed for being in bed with TurboTax. When Rand Paul calls out and presents proposals against excessive government surveillance, he gets ignored and this crowd still overtly or tacitly support the party to which they belong, rather than supporting the actual ideas that claim to care about. If Obama cut taxes, it’s “good,” when Republicans do it, it’s “for the rich” or whatever tribal argument is en vogue. When Republicans wanted to reduce SALT deductions, all hell broke lose (in California at least,) while the increase in the standard deduction gets ignored. Nancy Pelosi argued the tax cut was “for the rich,” while saying that the $1000 average in lower taxes for working people was a pittance. $1000 isn’t a pittance for many people. In the current discussion, the FAA is “bad,” but only because Trump is in office, despite the Max certification happening with officials appointed by Obama. When Obama put kids “in cages,” the media literally ignored it. When Trump did it, there was mass outrage, ironically using Obama-era photos as “proof” of how bad Trump is. Even the Coronavirus is being politicized beyond all reason. The Democrat aligned media makes it seem like we are all about to suffer a zombie apocalypse, despite a low American infection rate. When the economy was up, that was because of Obama’s policies, yet when it’s down, that’s because of Trump. San Francisco “liberals” are every bit as tribal and biased as some NRA bubbas in an Arkansas Cracker Barrel — and both groups are wrong. The answer is somewhere in the middle. But the middle has dissolved because honestly, the near non-stop Trump hatred has turned the country into a place that is barely removed from some warlord-infested tribal region in Africa. Republicans weren’t fans of Obama, but they didn’t launch non-stop, media fueled investigations over and over again. First it was Russia. Then Ukraine. Now it’s Coronavirus. We had the FBI at the highest levels sending text messages vowing to stop Trump.. even before he was inaugurated. Imagine if the George Bush FBI started wiretapping the Obama campaign and then, Republicans calling for impeachment before he even took office. Imagine if Trump directed the head of the IRS to not testify to Congress over proven discrimination over tax exempt statuses of left wing groups. That would be considered obstruction, yet Obama did exactly that when Loris Lerner refused to testify about IRS targeting of conservative tax exempt groups. Was Obama impeached over that obstruction? Of course not. There is a huge double standard fueled by an intellectual class that’s offended that the crowd that shops at Bass Pro Shops has just as much a right to their opinions as some writer at the New Yorker. Some cafe-culture liberal doesn’t have more right to their opinion than anyone else. Hillary Clinton actually called half of the country “deplorable,” and Bloomberg said farmers were essentially stupid. It’s evil, this environment. Bill Maher even publicly wished for a recession so that Trump wouldn’t be re-elected. There are Democrats actually hoping this Coronavirus thing gets worse because, as Rahm Emmanuel once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” It’s disgusting.
ImaCake 7y ago
Once you step back and read a little political history, it is remarkable how little sunlight there is between the two major parties in the USA and also in my home country of Australia (labour and liberal). Arguments like yours really expose the system for what it is (a loose conspiracy to maintain the status quo and prevent third parties from competing).
- JauntyHatAngle 7y ago
  Uh, there is glaring sunlight between Labor and liberal in Australia at a federal level. Look at their history of fiscal policy. Carbon tax, NBN, selling off public assets etc. It's rubbish to say they're not that different. State level is where they are all the same. Whether they are in favour of a loose status quo in terms of the political system is entirely different to their operations within it.
  - cyphar 7y ago
    > Uh, there is glaring sunlight between Labor and liberal in Australia at a federal level. Look at their history of fiscal policy. Carbon tax, NBN, selling off public assets etc. It's rubbish to say they're not that different. The "they're all the same" argument in Australia is a very common talking point you see on the ABC and "left-leaning" (actually corporatist) outlets like The Project. Folks who tune in are inundated with this crap. The ABC's idea of balance is to feature the viewpoint of the Lib/Nats (to cover the right-wing) and the Greens (to cover the left-wing). Labor gets all of the criticism for "not being left enough" by the Greens and "being too far left" by the Lib/Nats. You even see the Murdoch papers making both arguments simultaneously. > State level is where they are all the same. Maybe, but I doubt a Labor NSW state government would've privatised the vast majority of WestConnex before construction began. Or engaged in outright corruption by giving discounted land to developers who then gave them kickbacks.
    - JauntyHatAngle 7y ago
      That's fair, state level they're all as corrupt as each other, but Labor is still a union base. Libs are more cosy with banks and business in general.(and pro privatisation) I dunno about the left saying that though. I see it most from people who aren't really into politics in general justifying their lack of interest in voting. Definitely agree on abc having a weird split identity, but that's due to external pressure and a lack of funding.
cryptonector 7y ago
President Trump did the right thing: first force the FAA to ground the MAX earlier than the FAA would have on its own, then let them hang out there for all to see. This report (and no doubt others) will destroy their reputations more than having fired them earlier would have if that also stopped the inquiries from going after them (though that might not have happened). Among other things, as long as they remain government employees, they can't refuse to testify. Sure, if the President had fired them earlier that would have been satisfying -- at first, then when they all lawyered up and refused to testify, we'd all have thought that the President was a moron for having fired them too soon.
- tigershark 7y ago
  He didn’t. He was conspiring with Boeing to avoid grounding the 737 max. And as proof the 737 Max was not grounded after the first crash, it was not grounded after the second crash, it was grounded only after pretty much every other flight security agency on the planet grounded it.
  - cryptonector 7y ago
    I wouldn't expect the President to get involved after one crash. Yes, the President let the FAA get egg all over its face first, but he forced them to ground the plane. They ruined their own reputations. The President shouldn't have had to be have been involved at all.
- hedora 7y ago
  The report says that the FAA estimated there would be 15 more crashes, and still didn’t ground the plane until the second crash. It is clear that many people were involved in conspiracies, and that their negligence directly lead to many deaths, as they knew that it would. Why hasn’t the current administration brought criminal charges against them? Also, the courts can force non-government employees to testify, and most of the evidence in the report seems to have come from non-government employees. Firing them doesn’t somehow absolve them of their crimes.
  - 7y ago

stevehawk 7y ago

It's really disappointing to see this comment downvoted. Apparently we're all fine with blaming the current administration for not firing them but we're not ok with blaming a previous administration for hiring them? We've also had countless posts talking negatively on the very merger that lead this iteration of Boeing (McDonnel-Douglas) with no regard for the administration that basically encouraged the merger. It's okay to admit it guys: both parties suck and are corporate shills.

unlinked_dll 7y ago
> Apparently we're all fine with blaming the current administration for not firing them but we're not ok with blaming a previous administration for hiring them One of these two parties has the ability to affect change. It's not the latter.
- kovac 7y ago
  The official report just came out. On what grounds would the existing administration just fire upper level management at an early stage? The appropriate response would be to force FAA to ground the planes (if and which FAA did not do themselves), and wait for the official report and then open an investigation in to Boeing and FAA. Time is a factor to take into account.
1shooner 7y ago
Appointing someone that ends up breaking the law vs. keeping someone that is known to have. These are not the same thing.
- pdpi 7y ago
  They're not the same thing, no. But that doesn't change the fact that stuffing the FAA with Boeing insiders is a dumb idea.
  - fma 7y ago
    They should be rules against stuff like that. Our current head of Health and Human Services is a former pharmaceutical lobbyist...there are more examples...
  - mattrp 7y ago
    anyone who looks at my comments on Boeing knows I’m fairly critical. However, it’s probably fair to say anyone with any bonafides in commercial aviation by definition is a Boeing insider since it has either squashed or acquired all of its domestic competition. We talk all the time about banks are too big to fail yet when it comes to defense we simultaneously create projects that only Boeing can bid and look the other way when Boeing acquires companies that might represent an alternative while increasingly taking delivery of weapons systems that don’t work as intended. One doesn’t have to look that deep into history to see scandals like the Air Force tanker which rose all the way to the Supreme Court, or the failed SLS project which has sent so much pork spending to specific congressional districts that Spacex could build something like 300 falcon 9’s instead, to see that Boeing’s relationship with the US government is problematic at its very core. Blaming both parties is surface level equivocation that does nothing. The simple fact is Boeing is too big, they know it and the government knows it and unless we want our defense to be outsourced to foreign ownership, preserving this status quo is quite literally the only thing keeping Boeing from reverse-mergering itself out of this country. We have overlooked our own strategic resources - be it pharmaceutical, manufacturing, telecom, etc, for far too long and have pursued incredibly near-sighted policy objectives to our own detriment. In the spirit of HN, I’ve already gotten too political here but I will say one final thing: don’t equivocate both parties as equal, neither should you be complacent and assume what your party is telling you is the right direction either — there’s more to this issue than simply saying oh let’s arm the regulators with more regulations and vice versa.
tigershark 7y ago
It’s really disappointing to see that after all the crazy stuff done by the current administration, even after senators admitted the guilty of the current potus and declined to remove it, after he put in charge of containing the Coronavirus the least qualified person to do so while removing qualified people, there is still someone that has the nerve to say that both sides suck. It’s okay to admit it, you probably didn’t follow so much what happened in the White House and in the world in the last three years.

unlinked_dll 7y ago

My comment wasn't on who appointed the regulators but on the likelihood of the people who have the power to remove them to do so. I'm sorry if that was unclear.

briandear 7y ago

> Once you start to notice the pattern of one-sided appropriation of blame in pretty much every fking scenario, you end up discounting any criticism of republicans as bias. Exactly this. What people like me are tired of is the legions of armchair experts that opine in such way as to support their prejudices while pretending to be rational and intellectual about it. For example: complaints about the complicated tax filing system, yet when Ted Cruz offers a postcard-sized tax return as a proposal, that idea is ignored and “Republicans” get blamed for being in bed with TurboTax. When Rand Paul calls out and presents proposals against excessive government surveillance, he gets ignored and this crowd still overtly or tacitly support the party to which they belong, rather than supporting the actual ideas that claim to care about. If Obama cut taxes, it’s “good,” when Republicans do it, it’s “for the rich” or whatever tribal argument is en vogue. When Republicans wanted to reduce SALT deductions, all hell broke lose (in California at least,) while the increase in the standard deduction gets ignored. Nancy Pelosi argued the tax cut was “for the rich,” while saying that the $1000 average in lower taxes for working people was a pittance. $1000 isn’t a pittance for many people. In the current discussion, the FAA is “bad,” but only because Trump is in office, despite the Max certification happening with officials appointed by Obama. When Obama put kids “in cages,” the media literally ignored it. When Trump did it, there was mass outrage, ironically using Obama-era photos as “proof” of how bad Trump is. Even the Coronavirus is being politicized beyond all reason. The Democrat aligned media makes it seem like we are all about to suffer a zombie apocalypse, despite a low American infection rate. When the economy was up, that was because of Obama’s policies, yet when it’s down, that’s because of Trump. San Francisco “liberals” are every bit as tribal and biased as some NRA bubbas in an Arkansas Cracker Barrel — and both groups are wrong. The answer is somewhere in the middle. But the middle has dissolved because honestly, the near non-stop Trump hatred has turned the country into a place that is barely removed from some warlord-infested tribal region in Africa. Republicans weren’t fans of Obama, but they didn’t launch non-stop, media fueled investigations over and over again. First it was Russia. Then Ukraine. Now it’s Coronavirus. We had the FBI at the highest levels sending text messages vowing to stop Trump.. even before he was inaugurated. Imagine if the George Bush FBI started wiretapping the Obama campaign and then, Republicans calling for impeachment before he even took office. Imagine if Trump directed the head of the IRS to not testify to Congress over proven discrimination over tax exempt statuses of left wing groups. That would be considered obstruction, yet Obama did exactly that when Loris Lerner refused to testify about IRS targeting of conservative tax exempt groups. Was Obama impeached over that obstruction? Of course not. There is a huge double standard fueled by an intellectual class that’s offended that the crowd that shops at Bass Pro Shops has just as much a right to their opinions as some writer at the New Yorker. Some cafe-culture liberal doesn’t have more right to their opinion than anyone else. Hillary Clinton actually called half of the country “deplorable,” and Bloomberg said farmers were essentially stupid. It’s evil, this environment. Bill Maher even publicly wished for a recession so that Trump wouldn’t be re-elected. There are Democrats actually hoping this Coronavirus thing gets worse because, as Rahm Emmanuel once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” It’s disgusting.

ImaCake 7y ago

Once you step back and read a little political history, it is remarkable how little sunlight there is between the two major parties in the USA and also in my home country of Australia (labour and liberal). Arguments like yours really expose the system for what it is (a loose conspiracy to maintain the status quo and prevent third parties from competing).

JauntyHatAngle 7y ago
Uh, there is glaring sunlight between Labor and liberal in Australia at a federal level. Look at their history of fiscal policy. Carbon tax, NBN, selling off public assets etc. It's rubbish to say they're not that different. State level is where they are all the same. Whether they are in favour of a loose status quo in terms of the political system is entirely different to their operations within it.
- cyphar 7y ago
  > Uh, there is glaring sunlight between Labor and liberal in Australia at a federal level. Look at their history of fiscal policy. Carbon tax, NBN, selling off public assets etc. It's rubbish to say they're not that different. The "they're all the same" argument in Australia is a very common talking point you see on the ABC and "left-leaning" (actually corporatist) outlets like The Project. Folks who tune in are inundated with this crap. The ABC's idea of balance is to feature the viewpoint of the Lib/Nats (to cover the right-wing) and the Greens (to cover the left-wing). Labor gets all of the criticism for "not being left enough" by the Greens and "being too far left" by the Lib/Nats. You even see the Murdoch papers making both arguments simultaneously. > State level is where they are all the same. Maybe, but I doubt a Labor NSW state government would've privatised the vast majority of WestConnex before construction began. Or engaged in outright corruption by giving discounted land to developers who then gave them kickbacks.
  - JauntyHatAngle 7y ago
    That's fair, state level they're all as corrupt as each other, but Labor is still a union base. Libs are more cosy with banks and business in general.(and pro privatisation) I dunno about the left saying that though. I see it most from people who aren't really into politics in general justifying their lack of interest in voting. Definitely agree on abc having a weird split identity, but that's due to external pressure and a lack of funding.

cryptonector 7y ago

President Trump did the right thing: first force the FAA to ground the MAX earlier than the FAA would have on its own, then let them hang out there for all to see. This report (and no doubt others) will destroy their reputations more than having fired them earlier would have if that also stopped the inquiries from going after them (though that might not have happened). Among other things, as long as they remain government employees, they can't refuse to testify. Sure, if the President had fired them earlier that would have been satisfying -- at first, then when they all lawyered up and refused to testify, we'd all have thought that the President was a moron for having fired them too soon.

tigershark 7y ago
He didn’t. He was conspiring with Boeing to avoid grounding the 737 max. And as proof the 737 Max was not grounded after the first crash, it was not grounded after the second crash, it was grounded only after pretty much every other flight security agency on the planet grounded it.
- cryptonector 7y ago
  I wouldn't expect the President to get involved after one crash. Yes, the President let the FAA get egg all over its face first, but he forced them to ground the plane. They ruined their own reputations. The President shouldn't have had to be have been involved at all.
hedora 7y ago
The report says that the FAA estimated there would be 15 more crashes, and still didn’t ground the plane until the second crash. It is clear that many people were involved in conspiracies, and that their negligence directly lead to many deaths, as they knew that it would. Why hasn’t the current administration brought criminal charges against them? Also, the courts can force non-government employees to testify, and most of the evidence in the report seems to have come from non-government employees. Firing them doesn’t somehow absolve them of their crimes.
- 7y ago