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US prosecutors recommend Justice Department criminally charge Boeing
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoCriminal Neglicence Tax - CNT must be paid
- shiroiushi 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jb1991 2y agoWhat exactly is meant by this comment.
- 4death4 2y agoTwo Boeing whistleblowers "committed suicide" within a few weeks of each other.
- PradeetPatel 2y ago[flagged]
- devwastaken 2y ago"authorities will handle it" is a fallacy that is demonstrated to be wrong in practice. The theory of how societal functions operate is not at all how they're implemented - lack of evidence, corruption, and incompetence all contribute to there being little justice for anyone.
- bitcharmer 2y agoNot sure if you're trolling or just very naive. Knowing and having proof are two different things. Does Russian journalists and political activists falling out of windows en masse tell you anything? Or would you say they were all experiencing mental health issues because there is otherwise no proof they were murdered?
- PradeetPatel 2y agoI'm not trolling, and I'm sorry if it came off that way. As someone not living in the states, I simply had more faith in the US Justice system compared to say, Russia. I'm sorry if I offended anyone.
- pshirshov 2y agoThe media are all over it, you may check it, but law enforcement isn't.
- dialup_sounds 2y agoContracting MRSA is considered suicide now?
- 4death4 2y agoI wasn't aware one died of a staph infection. The other officially died from suicide.
- soulofmischief 2y agoI'd recommend doing cursory research before confidently claiming something as fact on the world wide web. I learned about the dangers of spreading rumors from Veggie Tales when I was five. We all make mistakes, but there's really no excuse for peddling secondhand information when established facts are an internet search away at all times.
- 4death4 2y ago[flagged]
- soulofmischief 2y agoThe Hacker News platform actually goes to great lengths to avoiding the reception of upvotes as a motivation for posting, and I'd recommend also de-prioritizing the importance of internet points and to instead rely on intrinsic motivation.
- 4death4 2y agoAnd yet, there are upvotes and they’re displayed to the poster. Also, I used the word ostensibly to imply I may personally have some other motivation. But in either cases, the broader point still stands: there are diminishing marginal returns to being more correct.
- soulofmischief 2y ago
- esskay 2y agoDidn't one of them also specifically tell a family member that if he dies it was Boeing?
- lukan 2y agoNot quite that, but something like it. It still does not proof it, though.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- reducesuffering 2y agoA self-described “family friend” said that the Boeing whistleblower (1 of 60?) said that. Also, as anyone who works with mental patients can attest to, “if I die, I didn’t commit suicide” is not anywhere close to as ironclad as it sounds on the surface… (I.e. 99% of those claims were false)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lukan 2y ago"In May, officials determined the company breached a 2021 agreement that had shielded Boeing from a criminal charge of conspiracy to commit fraud arising from two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 involving the 737 MAX jet. Under the 2021 deal, the Justice Department agreed not to prosecute Boeing over allegations it defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration so long as the company overhauled its compliance practices and submitted regular reports. Boeing also agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle the investigation" The 2.5 billion sound like a bribe to me, to avoid criminal charges. And Boeing thought that was enough, but it seems they did not assume that the FAA was also serious, that they still need to "overhaul its compliance practices and submitted regular reports". edit: we are talking about potential manslaughter in hundreds of cases here, because this is what a criminal investigation could lead to, not a fine for violating arbitary regulations
- nathancahill 2y agoIndeed. For a very good book on the subject, read "The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives" (2017)
- hugh-avherald 2y agoI think it's a stretch to say that a written deal in which a party pays damages is a bribe by that party.
- lukan 2y agoIf this payment avoids potential criminal charges about manslaughter, I think it is not.
- thelittleone 2y agoGees I wonder if the federal government would offer Joe Public a second chance if he defrauded them.
- yetihehe 2y agoIf he paid 2.5 billion then most probably yes.
- briandear 2y agoI don’t want to company charged. I want the actual humans responsible charged. Can’t put a company in jail.
- sofixa 2y ago> I want the actual humans responsible charged And there are a lot of them to charge. Start with the last two CEOs, add in the CEOs/COOs for Boeing Commercial aircraft, the test pilots, the program director(s) for the 737 Max, the engineers who designed MCAS and didn't add in any redundancy, and then move all the way down to the Spirit and Boeing employees cutting deadly corners on the production line.
- lyu07282 2y agoIt's almost like it's a systemic issue the system can't fix because it's the system that is broken
- formerly_proven 2y agoIt's just late-stage capitalism at work.
- promiseofbeans 2y agoTo quote the immortal words of every drama teacher and English teacher ever: "Capitalism bad."
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoThis is a huge self-own. Would this ever happen to a Chinese manufacturer?
- malermeister 2y agoAsk Jack Ma what happens when Chinese CEOs fuck around.
- lukan 2y agoEven though in this case "fucking around" meant not potential manslaughter, but not being 100% under control of the party.
- scarmig 2y agoChina is not what I'd call... Lax when it comes to corporate malfeasance. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-executes-milk-scandal-pair https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-executes...
- DiogenesKynikos 2y agoWith the Boeing 737 MAX, it was actually the Chinese Civil Aviation Administration that first decided to ground the plane. The American FAA was reluctant to ground the plane, and only did so after most of the rest of the world had done so. This is a case of American regulators putting an American company's business interests above safety. If it had been a foreign aircraft manufacturer, I doubt the FAA would have waited to ground the planes.
- dralley 2y agoHow lax they are is more a function of closeness to the powerful factions of the CCP than the scale of malfeasance.
- scarmig 2y agoCloseness to power generally seems to be a source of laxness, across many different societies.
- orwin 2y agoExpropriate the company, at least 51%, take control and let public officials (knowing the US way, it will be some army general) set up checks and controls where necessary, then sell the shares (maybe keep an 'oversight' part, like 10% to keep a state official on the board). Current stock owners will loose half their value (which is a good enough punishment for this lack of oversight), the state will have access to privileged company information which will allow the prosecution of human responsibles, top executives will be sacked (and their comp reduced by half since their comp is in stocks) and maybe the company will start on good base again.
- vt85 2y ago[dead]
- bitcharmer 2y agoThat sounds like the right thing to do. And that's why it's never going to happen
- wrren 2y agoI don’t think millionaires losing some money is sufficient punishment for hundreds of lives lost. What’s so crazy about prosecuting individuals?
- dspillett 2y agoWhy not both? Punish those making the decisions with prison time, and those turning a blind eye because it was profitable with at least some of that profit.
- hibikir 2y agoIt's not crazy, but many company divisions are set up in such a way to dilute guilt, and make people feel helpless about fixing issues near them. It will often be difficult to follow a paper trail and find that yes, X Y and Z were the people that decided on a criminally negligent tradeoff. Just like the unread targets in Wells Fargo, nobody asks for the fraudulent behavior by name, but the incentives often make it inevitable.
- worldwidelies 2y ago[flagged]
- kome 2y ago[flagged]
- ModernMech 2y agoBecause it confidently asserts nothing will happen while citing a case where execs went to jail as proof. It seems logically inconsistent.
- almostgotcaught 2y agoWhat they're doing is called https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman (very common around here)
- worldwidelies 2y agoThis is actually pretty dope. I didn't know something like this existed. Sounds like a tactic a natural psychopath or manipulator would use. I'm neither. Maybe I used a bad example out of ignorance. Let me try again. Boeing will not face any consequences just like no one at Ford Motor Company has ever faced any consequences for dumping toxic waste in New Jersey in the 1960's. This has been a continuous issue for decades, and no one to date has been held to account. Boeing will not face any consequences, just like no one in the Sackler family did any time for actively promoting opioids as a harmless pain killer. Please google the article, "NY Times 2023 - An Appeals Court Gave the Sacklers Legal Immunity. " I can keep going. I'm not crazy or trying to trick anyone. There's messed up things companies do, and no one is held accountable. If I was a someone's handyman and hurt a client or a clients neighbor I would be held to the full extent of the law. There are families, companies, and institutions out there doing terrible things, with no consequences. Why? Because they hold all the power. That is a fact.
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- DebtDeflation 2y agoThe problem for Boeing is that this wasn't a one time thing. Two weeks ago it came out that they were using counterfeit titanium, then a few days later the CEO testifies that they had in fact retaliated against whistleblowers, then a few days later it comes out that they actually hid faulty parts from FAA regulators and then lost them. Every apple that gets pulled from the bushel is rotten and there are a lot of apples left.
- Havoc 2y agoTo be fair the titanium thing isn’t just Boeing. Airbus used the same supplier
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago[flagged]
- skywhopper 2y agoThe idea that an operation of Boeing’s size would not have the resources or wherewithal to spot check their suppliers on this sort of thing is just silly. The folks squeezing Boeing’s margins should know their suppliers are doing the same thing, and be suspicious of them. Either those folks were in on it with the suppliers or they just didn’t care about their own product’s quality. I’m not sure which I think is more likely. But either explanation is criminal negligence for this type of product.
- Havoc 2y agoI must admit I have very little faith in US gov executing on this. Keep in mind the whole “certify your own stuff” that contributed towards the Boeing mess is a US gov plan
- MaxPock 2y ago[flagged]
- mastersummoner 2y ago[flagged]
- soulofmischief 2y ago[flagged]
- rustcleaner 2y agoCareful, you're arguing across ancient demarcation lines there.
- graemep 2y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Who is "we" that gets to decides who gets punished For starters, everyone that had to get involved the last time a dictator started gallavanting around Europe.
- graemep 2y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Consistency not required Correct. International relations exist in anarchy [1]. > British media has attacked Indian companies for doing business with Russia, but no one has a problem with Apple doing the same Uh, India has been given a free pass on Russia by the West. China makes no effort to contain its frustration at the double standard. > last time a dictator wen gallivanting around Europe I can recall was when Putin invaded Georgia If you recall, the crux of the debate was whether Georgia is geopolitically Europe. It seems we concluded, once and for all, with no uncertainty, “maybe.” (So we got Ukraine!) (Side note: “Please don't comment about the voting on comments” [2].) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_(international_relations) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_(international_relat... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- skywhopper 2y agoOkay, sure, prosecute the company. Better yet, zero out the investors and nationalize it. But more importantly, prosecute the executives who made these decisions.
- EasyMark 2y agoNationalizing Boeing will never happen in today’s federal courts. Temporary oversight like with the banking disaster? Probably. I think court will require a clean sweep of the board and new executives who “promise” put quality back as a goal for the company. Boeing was fine before it can happen again. I don’t know why this the end of western civilization for so many on HN.
- PedroBatista 2y agoGood but I have a feeling this is yet one more of those maneuvers where everyone says their line in the movie but in the end nothing is actually done other than some slap on the wrist for show. Too many powerful people and interests for Justice to work. And no, unfortunately this is not a tinfoil hat view. There is a long history of Boeing getting away with murder already.
- nerdponx 2y agoVery possibly literal murder in this case.
- tjpnz 2y agoCEOs often justify their large pay packets by the massive responsibility they shoulder. I wonder if this would extend to going to prison.
- alistairSH 2y agoOf course not. That "massive responsibility" is just baloney. Short of very obvious and egregious fraud (and even then, only if you piss off the wrong prosecutor or Congressperson), there's no penalty for being a criminally negligent CEO beyond losing the job (which usually comes with some sort of buy-out, so boo-fucking-hoo).
- YetAnotherNick 2y agoThere are lot of CEOs who went to jail. Here[1] is the list of like a dozen of them. [1]: https://blog.cheapism.com/business-crime/ https://blog.cheapism.com/business-crime/
- Garvi 2y agoThe real info in this thread is in the flagged and dead comments that were removed by moderation "for your safety". To see those you need to be both logged in and have showdead set to "yes" in your settings.
- oblio 2y agoLet me guess, conspiracy theories?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> conspiracy theories? Not even fun ones.
- boffinAudio 2y agoBoeing is the worlds leading supplier of bombs to states that use them to annihilate innocent people. For decades. Every twenty minutes. There is more to the rot in this company than just domestic customers falling out of the sky. I would wager that there is a great deal of actual, very real misanthropy throughout the executive structure.
- alkonaut 2y agoWhich states are that?
- boffinAudio 2y agohttps://airwars.org/ https://airwars.org/
- EasyMark 2y agoNo they aren’t
- r00fus 2y agohttps://www.boeing.com/defense/weapons https://www.boeing.com/defense/weapons
- boffinAudio 2y agoYes, they really are. https://airwars.org/ https://airwars.org/
- RobotToaster 2y agoIf corporations are people we should be able to give them the death penalty.
- tacocataco 2y agoRevoke their charter permanently? Sounds good, but what's to stop those responsible spinning up another company?
- EasyMark 2y agoI can certainly happen, but it’s highly unlikely with Boeing. They are “too big to fail”, government taking over for a while isn’t out of the question though if this gets much worse. A court appointed CEO whose primary goal is to get QA and QC back into the corporate structure rather than as being looked as only an unnecessary expense.
- FredPret 2y agoI’d feel better if they start by grounding everything with a Boeing logo first, and then went through whatever years-long legal process this will certainly be.
- chaostheory 2y agoI might have missed something, but the issue is that Airbus can’t meet demand, and the other alternatives don’t seem to be better than Boeing.
- alistairSH 2y agoThe problem is that a few crashed Boeings could lead to massive distrust of airline travel across the globe. Is that a larger long-term economic drain than grounding Boeings for a year? I'm not even sure how you'd begin to model that. Heck, I'm not sure we collectively know how to evaluate the risk of any given Boeing falling apart mid-air. It's probably still very, very low, but it might not take much to put people off flying completely.
- FredPret 2y agoI’d rather not fly, or have to pay more for a ticket on a fully reliable plane, than fly in a Boeing. If non-Boeing tickets were an optional upgrade when booking, I’d take it.
- stainablesteel 2y agowhat do you even do at this point? so much of US flight infrastructure is based around boeing and they're literally falling apart in the sky nasa wanted competition with spacex so badly that they've pushed boeing to strand two of their astronauts in space companies that fail due to inherent internal structural and corruption issues need to be broken down and sold off, but we can't even do that because the US is somehow reliant on it why must we write out our own downfall through corruption with failing companies? i bet there's thousands of upstarts that would take 1/1000th the funding given to boeing for a lot of their important projects that would come up with genuinely innovative solutions to problems we never knew we had if there were actual competition in aerospace
- dmix 2y agoThis is what happens when you eliminate consequences for bad behaviour in any industry private or public You can only kick the can down the road for so long. It’s only going to get worse and in 10yrs we’ll be wondering why it’s even worse than it is in 2024 while people will still defend how necessary it is to national security to prop up a half useless megacorporation, when it’s actually harming it Let them face risk, let the good/important parts be sold to better leaders, there’s plenty of money floating around to dump into the market to let competition take over the second there’s an opportunity for a new lively major business sector.
- nerdponx 2y agoIt would be less of a problem if the industry had not consolidated into literally two major companies in the entire world. You want incentives for a corporations to follow rules? Ensure that there is more than one or two of them.
- lenerdenator 2y ago"Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the results." - Charlie Munger It used to be that companies existed to transfer value to shareholders by doing something. In the case of Boeing it was making airplanes. They build you an airplane, you pay them for it, they had a list of rules to play by in order to reduce the costs of making that plane in order to make a profit. Boeing's incentives are to transfer as much value as humanly possible to its shareholders. They've made sure that large parts of their C-Suite, managers, executives, etc. are in on this by giving them shares. Those people have decided they don't want to play by the rules anymore. There's little incentive for them not to. If the Biden administration gets voted out in November, most of these regulatory and law enforcement pushes you've seen here of late (Adobe, TicketMaster, etc.) are going to go away because the people in charge at companies like Boeing have participated in regulatory capture. Thus, there are no more rules. You have to start throwing those people in prison (or worse) for the rest of their lives and make compensation in unrealized gains illegal if you want this to stop.
- dkarl 2y agoI agree, but I think we need to distinguish between the people and the corporation, and stop thinking that the way we treat people (such as the Boeing executives) will solve the system problem. We absolutely need to stop treating corporations like people -- and I'm not talking about taxation. I'm talking about the way we think and talk about corporations the same way we talk about people. When we domesticated animals, we had to be very cognizant that they were not people. For example, bulls are extremely aggressive and extremely physically powerful. You can allow a person into a room with a baby in a crib. There are exceptions, and they are treated as exceptions. With bulls, you do not allow them into a room with a baby in a crib, by default or by exception. It would be considered criminally irresponsible for a person to say, this bull is an exception, I've had it for five years, it's a great friend, and based on its past behavior I'm going to keep it in the same room with my infant child. You just wouldn't do that. We have enough experience with corporations to know that we need to start treating them less like humans and more like a species of partly domesticated but still extremely dangerous animal. Based on long experience with them, we should expect corporations to predictably lie, steal, and destroy whenever it is in their financial interest. We don't need to get rid of them (we don't have any good replacement for their role in the economy) but should structure the way we treat corporations around our knowledge of their destructive tendencies. Our long experience with cattle has taught us ways to protect humans from their destructive tendencies while still extracting what we want from them. We keep cattle out of our residences, we castrate most of the males, and we manage intact bulls in a way that ensures human safety while allowing them to serve their necessary functions. We design fences and other management technology with their aggression and power in mind. It is long past time to treat corporations the same way. In many small ways we have done this, but always held back by the human metaphor. Corporations are in a sense made of humans, and we feel a sense of respect towards fellow humans that we then unconsciously, and with horrible consequences, extend to the corporations they are part of. We need to consciously and decisively put that behind us. You don't have to be cynical about humans to accept that corporations are greedy and untrustworthy. That is their nature. How you square that with the nature of the humans who run them is irrelevant, as irrelevant as bovine neuroscience is to knowing that we should keep bulls out of our nurseries. We don't have to agree about humans to agree about corporations and stop giving them free reign to wreak havoc in society.
- newsclues 2y agoThe US military needs to absorb the military side of the business as a state owned enterprise
- tacocataco 2y agoTrillions spent on defense, and there isn't a factory just sitting around waiting to spin up and crank out artillery shells for ukraine?
- newsclues 2y agoCarriers, subs, and planes are expensive. Owning the primary arms contractors would make it easier to shift production into shells, rather than negotiating long term deals before breaking ground to expand production capacity
- nerdponx 2y agoThat sounds like a good idea until you realize that the military does is state owned anyway. The private sector supplies everything. But it's not like the military makes any of its own stuff. They buy all their trucks, guns, body armor, ammunition, radios, helicopters, boats, etc. etc. from private companies.
- newsclues 2y agoYeah, and so does Boeing so own the contractor and cut out a big cost. Lots of countries own state arms manufacturers. Doesn’t mean the state would takeover the entire supply chain.
- nerdponx 2y agoI'm not saying it can't or shouldn't be done. It's that we don't have anything like a state military manufacturing industry currently, so it would be a new and significant undertaking to nationalize a company like Boeing.
- bparsons 2y agoIf you are on a stranded Boeing spaceship right now, this is not news that will bring you comfort.
- EasyMark 2y agoIt’s not stranded, they are running tests. Please don’t exaggerate the situation. They just want to be safe. Stranded implies completely broken.
- calpal 2y agoHonestly, we should be at least considering nationalizing Boeing. There's a strategic need for us to build planes, and the corporate leadership continues to show they will not emphasize engineering and safety.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoI wish there were more details. Does anyone know of any reporting that gives more information? That is, the article says this: > Under the 2021 deal, the Justice Department agreed not to prosecute Boeing over allegations it defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration so long as the company overhauled its compliance practices and submitted regular reports. So, if they want to prosecute, I'm assuming it's because Boeing didn't adequately overhaul its compliance practices or that it didn't submit regular (or truthful) reports. But what are the specifics of how they failed? I also get frustrated reading these comments here, which are basically "Boeing bad, they only care about execs and shareholders, they ruined their engineering culture." I agree with all of that , but when the government wants to criminally charge someone or a company, they need some specifics (i.e. fraud). It's not enough to just say they had a lax culture or valued profits over safety. Again, to emphasize, not saying that's the case here, I just don't understand how folks can form an opinion on criminal prosecution without even knowing what specific charges are being proposed.
- MilStdJunkie 2y agoWatch the bond rating. They're at the very verge of junk right now, and if they slip into BB territory that might trigger a whole bunch of stuff to happen very quickly.
- Slava_Propanei 2y ago[dead]
- Jacobethannn098 2y ago[dead]