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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month

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Boeing’s deliberately defective fleet of flying sky-wreckage

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (May 2) in WINNIPEG, then Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Boeing's 787 "Dreamliner" is manufactured far from the company's Seattle facility, in a non-union shop in Charleston, South Carolina. At that shop, there is a cage full of defective parts that have been pulled from production because they are not airworthy.

Hundreds of parts from that Material Review Segregation Area (MRSA) were secretly pulled from that cage and installed on aircraft that are currently plying the world's skies. Among them, sections 47/48 of a 787 – the last four rows of the plane, along with its galley and rear toilets. As Moe Tkacik writes in her excellent piece on Boeing's lethally corrupt culture of financialization and whistleblower intimidation, this is a big ass chunk of an airplane, and there's no way it could go missing from the MRSA cage without a lot of people knowing about it:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-04-30-whistleblower-laws-protect-lawbreakers/

More: MRSA parts are prominently emblazoned with red marks denoting them as defective and unsafe. For a plane to escape Boeing's production line and find its way to a civilian airport near you with these defective parts installed, many people will have to see and ignore this literal red flag.

The MRSA cage was a special concern of John "Swampy" Barnett, the Boeing whistleblower who is alleged to have killed himself in March. Tkacik's earlier profile of Swampy paints a picture of a fearless, stubborn engineer who refused to go along to get along, refused to allow himself to become inured to Boeing's growing culture of profits over safety:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

Boeing is America's last aviation company and its single largest exporter. After the company was allowed to merge with its rival McDonnell-Douglas in 1997, the combined company came under MDD's notoriously financially oriented management culture. MDD CEO Harry Stonecipher became Boeing's CEO in the early 2000s. Stonecipher was a protege of Jack Welch, the man who destroyed General Electric with cuts to quality and workforce and aggressive union-busting, a classic Mafia-style "bust-out" that devoured the company's seed corn and left it a barren wasteland:

https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-to-the-737-max-crisis

Post-merger, Boeing became increasingly infected with MDD's culture. The company chased cheap, less-skilled labor to other countries and to America's great onshore-offshore sacrifice zone, the "right-to-work" American south, where bosses can fire uppity workers who balked at criminal orders, without the hassle of a union grievance.

Stonecipher was succeeded by Jim "Prince Jim" McNerney, ex-3M CEO, another Jack Welch protege (Welch spawned a botnet of sociopath looters who seized control of the country's largest, most successful firms, and drove them into the ground). McNerney had a cute name for the company's senior engineers: "phenomenally talented assholes." He created a program to help his managers force these skilled workers – everyone a Boeing who knew how to build a plane – out of the company.

McNerney's big idea was to get rid of "phenomenally talented assholes" and outsource the Dreamliner's design to Boeing's suppliers, who were utterly dependent on the company and could easily be pushed around (McNerney didn't care that most of these companies lacked engineering departments). This resulted in a $80b cost overrun, and a last-minute scramble to save the 787 by shipping a "cleanup crew" from Seattle to South Carolina, in the hopes that those "phenomenally talented assholes" could save McNerney's ass.

Swampy was part of the cleanup crew. He was terrified by what he saw there. Boeing had convinced the FAA to let them company perform its own inspections, replacing independent government inspectors with Boeing employees. The company would mark its own homework, and it swore that it wouldn't cheat.

Boeing cheated. Swampy dutifully reported the legion of safety violations he witnessed and was banished to babysit the MRSA, an assignment his managers viewed as a punishment that would isolate Swampy from the criminality he refused to stop reporting. Instead, Swampy audited the MRSA, and discovered that at least 420 defective aviation components had gone missing from the cage, presumably to be installed in planes that were behind schedule. Swampy then audited the keys to the MRSA and learned that hundreds of keys were "floating around" the Charleston facility. Virtually anyone could liberate a defective part and install it into an airplane without any paper trail.

Swampy's bosses had a plan for dealing with this. They ordered Swampy to "pencil whip" the investigations of 420 missing defective components and close the cases without actually figuring out what happened to them. Swampy refused.

Instead, Swampy took his concerns to a departmental meeting where 12 managers were present and announced that "if we can’t find them, any that we can’t find, we need to report it to the FAA." The only response came from a supervisor, who said, "We’re not going to report anything to the FAA."

The thing is, Swampy wasn't just protecting the lives of the passengers in those defective aircraft – he was also protecting Boeing employees. Under Sec 38 of the US Criminal Code, it's a 15-year felony to make any "materially false writing, entry, certification, document, record, data plate, label, or electronic communication concerning any aircraft or space vehicle part."

(When Swampy told a meeting that he took this seriously because "the paperwork is just as important as the aircraft" the room erupted in laughter.)

Swampy sent his own inspectors to the factory floor, and they discovered "dozens of red-painted defective parts installed on planes."

Swampy blew the whistle. How did the 787 – and the rest of Boeing's defective flying turkeys – escape the hangar and find their way into commercial airlines' fleets? Tkacik blames a 2000 whistleblower law called AIR21 that:

creates such byzantine procedures, locates adjudication power in such an outgunned federal agency, and gives whistleblowers such a narrow chance of success that it effectively immunizes airplane manufacturers, of which there is one in the United States, from suffering any legal repercussions from the testimony of their own workers.

By his own estimation, Swampy was ordered to commit two felonies per week for six years. Tkacik explains that this kind of operation relies on a culture of ignorance – managers must not document their orders, and workers must not be made aware of the law. Whistleblowers like Swampy, who spoke the unspeakable, were sidelined (an assessment by one of Swampy's managers called him "one of the best" and finished that "leadership would give hugs and high fives all around at his departure").

Multiple whistleblowers were singled out for retaliation and forced departure. William Hobek, a quality manager who refused to "pencil whip" the missing, massive 47-48 assembly that had wandered away from the MRSA cage, was given a "weak" performance review and fired despite an HR manager admitting that it was bogus.

Another quality manager, Cynthia Kitchens, filed an ethics complaint against manager Elton Wright who responded to her persistent reporting of defects on the line by shoving her against a wall and shouting that Boeing was "a good ol’ boys’ club and you need to get on board." Kitchens was fired in 2016. She had cancer at the time.

John Woods, yet another quality engineer, was fired after he refused to sign off on a corner-cutting process to repair a fuselage – the FAA later backed up his judgment.

Then there's Sam Salehpour, the 787 quality engineer whose tearful Congressional testimony described more corner-cutting on fuselage repairs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP0xhIe1LFE

Salehpour's boss followed the Boeing playbook to the letter: Salehpour was constantly harangued and bullied, and he was isolated from colleagues who might concur with his assessment. When Salehpour announced that he would give Congressional testimony, his car was sabotaged under mysterious circumstances.

It's a playbook. Salehpour's experience isn't unusual at Boeing. Two other engineers, working on the 787 Organization Designation Authorization, held up production by insisting that the company fix the planes' onboard navigation computers. Their boss gave them a terrible performance review, admitting that top management was furious at the delays and had ordered him to punish the engineers. The engineers' union grievance failed, with Boeing concluding that this conduct – which they admitted to – didn't rise to the level of retaliation.

As Tkacik points out, these engineers and managers that Boeing targeted for intimidation and retaliation are the very same staff who are supposed to be performing inspections of behalf of the FAA. In other words, Boeing has spent years attacking its own regulator, with total impunity.

But it's not just the FAA who've failed to take action – it's also the DOJ, who have consistently declined to bring prosecutions in most cases, and who settled the rare case they did bring with "deferred prosecution agreements." This pattern was true under Trump's DOJ and continued under Biden's tenure. Biden's prosecutors have been so lackluster that a federal judge "publicly rebuked the DOJ for failing to take seriously the reputational damage its conduct throughout the Boeing case was inflicting on the agency."

Meanwhile, there's the AIR21 rule, a "whistleblower" rule that actually protects Boeing from whistleblowers. Under AIR21, an aviation whistleblower who is retaliated against by their employer must first try to resolve their problem internally. If that fails, the whistleblower has only one course of action: file an OSHA complaint within 90 days (if HR takes more than 90 days to resolve your internal complaint, you can no have no further recourse). If you manage to raise a complaint with OSHA, it is heard by a secret tribunal that has no subpoena power and routinely takes five years to rule on cases, and rules against whistleblowers 97% of the time.

Boeing whistleblowers who missed the 90-day cutoff have filled the South Carolina courts with last-ditch attempts to hold the company to account. When they lose these cases – as is routine, given Boeing's enormous legal muscle and AIR21's legal handcuffs – they are often ordered to pay Boeing's legal costs.

Tkacik cites Swampy's lawyer, Rob Turkewitz, who says Swampy was the only one of Boeing's whistleblowers who was "savvy, meticulous, and fast-moving enough to bring an AIR 21 case capable of jumping through all the hoops" to file an AIR21 case, which then took seven years. Turkewitz calls Boeing South Carolina "a criminal enterprise."

That's a conclusion that's hard to argue with. Take Boeing's excuse for not producing the documentation of its slapdash reinstallation of the Alaska Air door plug that fell off its plane in flight: the company says it's not criminally liable for failing to provide the paperwork, because it never documented the repair. Not documenting the repair is also a crime.

You might have heard that there's some accountability coming to the Boeing boardroom, with the ouster of CEO David Calhoun. Calhoun's likely successor is Patrick Shanahan, whom Tkacik describes as "the architect of the ethos that governed the 787 program" and whom her source called "a classic schoolyard bully."

If Shanahan's name rings a bell, it might be because he was almost Trump's Secretary of Defense, but that was derailed by the news that he had "emphatically defended" his 17 year old son after the boy nearly beat his mother to death with a baseball bat. Shanahan is presently CEO of Spirit Aerospace, who made the door-plug that fell out of the Alaska Airlines 737 Max.

Boeing is a company where senior managers only fail up and where whistleblowers are terrorized in and out of the workplace. One of Tkacik's sources noticed his car shimmying. The source, an ex-787 worker who'd been fired after raising safety complaints, had tried to bring an AIR21 complaint, but withdrew it out of fear of being bankrupted if he was ordered to pay Boeing's legal costs. When the whistleblower pulled over, he discovered that two of the lug-nuts had been removed from one of his wheels.

The whistleblower texted Tkcacik to say (not for the first time): "If anything happens, I'm not suicidal."

Boeing is a primary aerospace contractor to the US government. It's clear that its management – and investors – consider it too big to jail. It's also clear that they know it's too big to fail – after all, the company did a $43b stock buyback, then got billions in a publicly funded buyback.

Boeing is, effectively, a government agency that is run for the benefit of its investors. It performs its own safety inspections. It investigates its own criminal violations of safety rules. It loots its own coffers and then refills them at public expense.

Meanwhile, the company has filled our skies with at least 420 airplanes with defective, red-painted parts that were locked up in the MRSA cage, then snuck out and fitted to an airplane that you or someone you love could fly on the next time you take your family on vacation or fly somewhere for work.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/01/boeing-boeing/#mrsa

Image: Tom Axford 1 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_sky_with_wisps_of_cloud_on_a_clear_summer_morning.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

Clemens Vasters (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:N7379E_-_Boeing_737_MAX_9.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

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bellybiologist · 7 months

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And here are the other halloween themed pics of my OCs!

The first is a very old David from 2015. the 2nd is David and Fran doodle from 2017, then we got Oktoberfest Ulrich and David (not halloween, but relevant!), also from 2017. Then Calhoun, Pome, Rodrigo, and Vivek from 2020! The Hermes Titus is also from 2020.

This catches me up with Repost-ober, and I hope people had a nice time looking at some of the older stuff with me. :P

#verzi's art #verzi's oc #david #fran #titus #vivek #rodrigo #pome #calhoun #ulrich

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may8chan · 2 years

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Hellraiser Jamie Clayton Make up & Photo Kenneth Calhoun

#Hellraiser #David Bruckner #Jamie Clayton #Kenneth Calhoun

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slightlyaboveaverageiq · 8 months

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Characters that I am absolutely 100% gay for:

-Jennifer Jareau (Criminal minds)

-Cat Adams (Criminal minds)

-Ava Bekker (Chicago med)

-Sarah Reese (Chicago med)

-Arizona Robbins (Greys Anatomy)

-Addison Shepherd (Greys Anatomy)

-Rita Calhoun (Law and Order SVU)

-Alex Cabot (Law and Order SVU)

-Ziva David (NCIS)

-Catherine Rollins (Hawaii five o)

#chicago med #one chicago #ava bekker #sarah reese #law and order svu #rita calhoun #alex cabot #ncis #ziva david #ncis la #kensi blye #jennifer jareau #cat adams #criminal minds #addison montgomery #arizona robbins #greys anatomy

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thefandomverseau · 5 months

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TITLE: Barney Calhoun's Super-Functional Family

DESC: Barney decides to take his family out to kill some Combine soldiers as they were being far too energetic at the base. It goes about as well as you can expect.

LENGTH: 399 words

TWS: Canon-Typical violence/blood/gore

SHIPS: N/A

FANDOMS: Postal, Half-Life, Cry of Fear, Afraid of Monsters

"Hey, wait up!" Barney called as Dude went off running, wheeling Simon with him as they charged at a crowd of Combine soldiers.

"Fuck you!" Dude called back, smile stretched wide on his face. Barney watched in awe, shock, and some disappointment as a chainsaw-wielding Simon was basically thrown at the enemy by Dude, being used as a living weapon. Dude spun the wheelchair around, the whirring blade cutting easily through the midsection of one Combine soldier, staining Simon's hoodie and hands a crimson red as Dude cheered. David whooped, grabbing his semi-automatic weapon and beginning to mow down Combine soldiers without a care in the world. Alyx took off running after Dude and Simon, who were currently throwing severed heads at other metro cops, cheering loudly. Profanities sang through the air as the blood bath started. Gordon slowed to a stop besides Barney, a playful smile on his face as they watched what had become their family murder people and play with their limbs. Sophie, who was hiding slightly behind Barney, seemingly shared his sentiment about the craziness of all of this. "Well."

"Look, they're having fun." Gordon said, gesturing towards the bloodbath in front of them. Dude had abandoned his previous choice of wheeling Simon around and was strangling an innocent civilian with the entrails of one of the Combine metro cops. Unlike Simon, Sophie, David, Gordon, Barney, and everyone else in the resistance, Dude didn't really care who you were or what your stance was. He just liked murdering the fuck out of people, because he's a psychopath like that. "And they're getting some energy out. I think this was a good idea." Gordon hummed, cocking his pistol. Barney sighed, shrugging, knowing that even after this they'd still probably be energetic.

Barney, somewhat tired, decided to just watch the chaos happen. David seemed to be dissecting someone, Simon was using his wheelchair to run over people from behind, Dude and Alyx were throwing giblets at each other like snowballs and Gordon was trying to get as many headshots as he could. Sophie, the angel of the group, decided to stay with Barney. Everyone except the two of them were covered in blood, sweat, and other bodily fluids. Speaking off, Dude was currently pissing in people's faces. Barney was filled with a sense of pride. Yeah, his family was crazy, but at least they were having fun.

#postal game #half life 2 #cry of fear #afraid of monsters #barney calhoun #gordon freeman #sophie cry of fear #simon henriksson #david leatherhoff #postal dude #fanfic

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andr3mdl · 2 years

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Late, but oh well. Sadly, couldn't add more characters in, or else SFM will crash that many times and I'd had to suffer to scrap some stuff. Reupload cause I did a silly mistake Happy (Late) Anniversary, Half-Life!

#Half-Life #Cry of Fear #Afraid Of Monsters #Grey #Wilson Chronicles #Entropy Zero 2 #Simon Henriksson #David Leatherhoff #OC #Grey Anderson #Aiden Walker #Gordon Freeman #Adrian Shephard #Barney Calhoun #G-Man #SFM #Source FilmMaker

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asolitaryrose3 · 11 months

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So recently I've started to get back into writing again, but I've not posted anything and so I thought I would make this💗 please send in request because I'm honestly lost atm 😭

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who i write for:

Svu:

Rita calhoun

Olivia benson

Amanda Rollins

Alex cabot

Casey novak

Elizabeth Donnelly

NCIS:

Ziva david

Kate todds

Jennifer shepard

Abby sciuto

Criminal minds:

Emily prentis

Penelope Garcia

Jennifer jareau

Bones:

Temperance brennan

Angela Montenegro

Camile Saroyan

Abbot elementary:

Melissa schemmenti

Barbara howard

Ava Coleman

Janine teagues

The school for good and evil:

Lady Leonora Lesso

Clarissa dovey

Wednesday:

Larissa weems

Morticia Addams

Ted lasso:

Rebecca welton

Keeley jones

Tom jones:

Lady bellaston

The personal history of David Copperfield:

Jane murdstone

Sex education:

Maeve Wylie

Jean milburn

Grey's anatomy:

Addison shepherd

Meridith grey

Miss peregrine's home for peculiar children:

Miss peregrine

Emma bloom

A house with a clock in its walls:

Florence Zimmerman

Oceans eight:

Debby ocean

Lou miller

Rose Weil

Tammy

Daphne kluger

Merlin:

Morgana Pendragon

The devil wears Prada:

Miranda Priestley

Andrea Sachs

Emily Charlton

Cruella:

Cruella devil

Baroness Von Hellman

The golden finch:

Xandra

American horror story:

Cordelia goode

Billie dean Howard

Wilhelmina venable

Sally McKenna

Ally Mayfair Richards

Ratchet:

Mildred ratchet

Sandman:

Lucifer

Snow white and the huntsman/the huntsman: winter's war:

Queen revenna

Queen Freya

The old guard:

Andromache of Scythia

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I think that's it hopefully it is, please tell me if you want me to write for anyone else, (women only characters), please send in request 🙏🙏 thank you love💗

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twittercomfrnklin2001-blog · 10 months

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How to Marry a Millionaire

Films about young women or sometimes men out to conquer the world have been a Hollywood staple since the silent era. The studios used them to showcase new talent, figuring if one performer hit it didn’t matter if the others didn’t. At times they would even pair an established star with the newcomers as box-office insurance. Jean Negulesco’s HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE (1953, Criterion through month’s end), which should more accurately be called Nunally Johnson’s HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, was designed to boost Marilyn Monroe’s rise to stardom by teaming her with 20 Century-Fox’s reigning blonde bombshell, Betty Grable. It also gave Lauren Bacall a shot at comedy (she’s good with wisecracks, but sometimes, her timing feels off). They’re a trio of models who pool their resources to rent a posh apartment in hopes of finding rich husbands. To keep up the ruse, they even sell the furniture that comes with the place. Today, the rampant materialism feels rather atavistic, and Bacall’s plot, in which she repeatedly fights her attraction to Cameron Mitchell because she thinks he’s poor, is particularly unlikable, even though the film hedges its bets by revealing he’s a millionaire early on. When her story takes over and turns into soap opera (will she marry wealthy William Powell even though she doesn’t love him, and he can act her off the screen without batting an eye?), the picture starts feeling very long. But Monroe is funny as the woman trying to hide her near-sightedness, and this is one character for whom that forced diction works. Grable is charming, but she’s got some weak material casting her as a stock dumb blonde. Why Johnson didn’t attempt to capture the real Grable in all her bawdiness and warmth is a mystery. For Negulesco, the film marked a turning point as he switched from the stylish films noirs he had directed for Warner Bros. and other studios to over-stuffed Cinemascope extravaganzas. This was the first film shot in that wide-screen process (though it was released after THE ROBE), and at times the characters are so far apart you’d think they’d need bullhorns to communicate. But he manages to use the image to showcase the three stars (and later their boyfriends) to good effect, and when Bacall lounges in an easy chair with her outstretched body filling more than half the screen, it’s a lot more satisfying than watching vast natural vistas or endless Roman armies.

#marilyn monroe #lauren bacall #betty grable #william powell #cameron mitchell #rory calhoun #david wayne #jean negulesco #romantic comedy #nunnally johnson

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tcmparty · 2 years

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@tcmparty live tweet schedule for the week beginning Monday, June 13, 2022. Look for us on Twitter…watch and tweet along…remember to add #TCMParty to your tweets so everyone can find them :) All times are Eastern.

Tuesday, June 14 at 8:00 p.m. HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE (1953) Three models pool their resources to rent a posh penthouse in hopes of snaring rich husbands.

Saturday, June 18 at 3:45 p.m. 4 FOR TEXAS (1963) Double-crossing outlaws go straight and become rival saloon owners.

Sunday, June 26 at 10:00 p.m. TAXI DRIVER (1976) A loner becomes fixated on a teen prostitute.