Goldy deflects some of the flack coming at Kshama Sawant for suggesting the Boeing workers take over production, and start producing things that aren’t used for war. The piece is fine as far as it goes, but I think he misses the biggest problem with this kind of dismissive commentary: it doesn’t give us any idea of what a takeover might look like.
Now I have certainly no idea what a worker takeover at Boeing by its workers might look like. The best guess off the top of my head is something like Mondragon. Or maybe she has something completely else in mind; Mondragon isn’t a panacea. And in any event how the state, or others, might move from Boeing making unreasonable demands to whatever she’s pushing wasn’t discussed. It was a short speech at a rally, and there’s only so much nuance you can give. So there are more questions than answers.
But, gosh, the best people to get those answers are reporters. Rather than writing dismissive pieces, they could ask her for details. I mean they could eventually get to dismissive if that’s their position, but it would be nice to know what she’s actually proposing and how she expects to get from point A to point B before dismissing it.
Now to be clear, I don’t think I agree with her (again, to the point that I understand what she’s proposing). The best thing is probably for Boeing to realize that they need the Puget Sound workforce. But if that doesn’t happen, and Boeing continues the slow decline of their Western Washington workforce, there will be people in the region with manufacturing skills, and no job. It might make more sense for them to start something collective rather than hope that some other big company will come to the rescue, and if this discussion makes them realize that there are other options, well, I’d rather not have pundits — especially ostensibly lefty ones — shutting that discussion down.
I think Boeing has shot itself in the foot again, but CEOs and boards of directors are as capable of such things as the rest of us, even though they’re paid millions of dollars in compensation to make rational (and correct) decisions. They’re going to do what they said what they’d do because they said they’d do it. And it will cost the company dearly.
I think Boeing has shot itself in the foot again, but CEOs and boards of directors are as capable of such things as the rest of us, even though they’re paid millions of dollars in compensation to make rational (and correct) decisions. They’re going to do what they said what they’d do because they said they’d do it. And it will cost the company dearly.
I think Boeing has shot itself in the foot again, but CEOs and boards of directors are as capable of such things as the rest of us, even though they’re paid millions of dollars in compensation to make rational (and correct) decisions. They’re going to do what they said what they’d do because they said they’d do it. And it will cost the company dearly.
I think Boeing has shot itself in the foot again, but CEOs and boards of directors are as capable of such things as the rest of us, even though they’re paid millions of dollars in compensation to make rational (and correct) decisions. They’re going to do what they said what they’d do because they said they’d do it. And it will cost the company dearly.
I think Boeing has shot itself in the foot again, but CEOs and boards of directors are as capable of such things as the rest of us, even though they’re paid millions of dollars in compensation to make rational (and correct) decisions. They’re going to do what they said what they’d do because they said they’d do it. And it will cost the company dearly.
Geez, the host server is really fucked up tonight. Must be all the traffic. Stefan’s sucky little blog (or is it Jim Miller’s blog now?) doesn’t have problems like this — because nobody reads it.
Fucking hippy-reds.
Perhaps we should invite Airbus to build planes in Washington. Really, why not?
As the rookie City Council member, Kshama wil surely enjoy her committee assignments, like Animal Control.
@8 Don’t laugh, it could happen. Boeing clearly is on the way out, and the facilities and workforce are in place.
@7 Yeah, I agree with you. Goddam Bolshevik bastards! Next thing you know, they’ll tax capital gains, or slap a wealth tax on stock portfolios. I’m moving to Montana if that happens.
Except I don’t own Boeing stock, so I don’t care if the Reds grab the Boeing plants. Serve McNerney right. That’s what he gets for trying to butt-fuck the workers. The board should take it out of his pension.
This is not your father’s Boeing. That disappeared 15 years ago when McDonnell-Douglas “bought Boeing with Boeing’s money,” as former Boeing executive Ron Woodard put it.
The old Boeing was run by engineers who wanted to make airplanes, the new Boeing is run by financiers who want to make money.
As roger Rabbit says, Boeing is on the way out. We’ll see if someone can pick up the pieces and build something better.
I recall expropriation, especially in the 1960s when South American countries were putting a stop to being looted by oil companies by expropriating their facilities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expropriation
Sure, it’s kind of a commie thing to do, but why the fuck not?
“Sure, it’s kind of a commie thing to do, but why the fuck not?”
theft noun \ˈtheft\
: the act or crime of stealing
1a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it
1b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property
“When consumers purchase more goods, plants use more of their capacity, men are hired instead of laid off, investment increases, and profits are high. Corporate tax rates must also be cut to increase incentives and the availability of investment capital. The government has already taken major steps this year to reduce business tax liability and to stimulate the modernization, replacement, and expansion of our productive plant and equipment.”
“Our true choice is not between tax reduction on the one hand and the avoidance of large federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget, just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. Surely the lesson of the last decade is that budget deficits are not caused by wild-eyed spenders, but by slow economic growth and periodic recessions, and any new recession would break all deficit records. In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low. And the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.”
@16. “And the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now”.
Alas, wishful thinking, regardless of who is doing it, doesn’t make it so. At one time, wise men argued that the sun rotated around the earth. Didn’t make it so.
Tax cut after tax cut on the wealthy were implemented and they didn’t work. If it did, after the shrub tax cuts, we should have been awash with jobs and excess taxes.
That. Didn’t. Happen.
Time to try something else.
@15 So? What do you think business is?
Speaking of stealing, interestingly, when communists overthrew the Afghan government in 1979, then sent communist cadres into the countryside to institute “land reform” (i.e., confiscating it from landlords and giving it to tenant farmers), the rural peasants defended their landlords. “We can’t to that,” they said, “it’s stealing!” Nearly all of them refused the land offered to them by the communists. The Afghan peasantry was Muslim, and it seems Muslims have a thing about stealing. The three things that triggered the civil war between the Afghan communists and everyone else, which the Soviets ultimately lost, were land reform, education for women, and not allowing Muslims to practice their religion. Even the Soviets weren’t that stupid, and tried to talk their Afghan comrades out of it, but the latter wouldn’t listen. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan not to subdue the Afghan people, but to bring the Afghan communists who had seized power under control. The very first thing the Soviet invaders did was kill Afghanistan’s communist ruler.