Seeing as how it is just three weeks prior to the elections, I very rarely would write about anything else right now, but I just have to quickly note something: Boeing has an extraordinary amount of gall.
Okay, I know they are a defense contractor, and all defense contractors have a lot of gall, so I shouldn't be too surprised. But I used to like Boeing a little more. At least they used to have a decent relationship with my old union, the International Association of Machinists, and they employed a lot of people at decent wages and working conditions. But more and more, they seem determined to act like the worst kind of special interest big business, taking money from taxpayers and then breaking their promises
I have written before about how Boeing takes a ton of American taxpayer money from the Export-Import Bank (they have been provided $50.13 billion, the most of any business) and have used those dollars to do business deals with some pretty awful folks, from airlines with terrible behavior toward women and the LGBT community to countries which have chalked up basic human rights violations.
Now I read this: Not even a year ago, Governor Jay Inslee of Washington signed a bill awarding the company the "single largest tax break any state has ever given to a single company." And guess what: They are breaking all those promises to Inslee and shipping jobs and investment out of the state so fast it makes your head spin.
This is bad news and bad business. From taking our federal tax dollars so that they can cut deals with bad actors overseas to making promises to the people of Washington State which they break in less than a year, Boeing has become a worse and worse company -- and you and I as American taxpayers are subsidizing them.