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On Wednesday, Boeing dropped a bombshell on the state of Kansas, announcing that they were closing their plant in Wichita:
A company that helped Wichita become known as the Air Capital of the World is leaving.
Boeing, one of the city’s iconic manufacturers, said it will close its sprawling facilities in south Wichita by the end of 2013.
The decision ends Boeing’s 85-year history with the city and affects 2,160 workers in Wichita, their families and the community.
Plant closures like this have big ripples, as all the parts suppliers are wondering if they will find their orders coming to an end, and all the companies that sold things to the workers find their customers without jobs. Kansas social service organizations are worried, because the folks that had been donors are now likely to become clients. This kind of thing has happened all over the country, every time a major plant gets shut down.
What makes this plant closure announcement different is that according to Republican US Senator Pat Roberts, Boeing’s announcement reneges on a deal. Said Roberts in his press release [pdf]:
Boeing’s chairman sat in my office 22 months ago during that battle [to decide who would win a new military refueling tanker contract] and promised me, then-Senator Brownback and Congressman Tiahrt that if we won the fight to get the tanker contract back, Boeing would stay in Wichita. The chairman again promised the entire delegation the work would remain in Wichita just last February, when the tanker contract was settled in Boeing’s favor.
The other Kansas Senator, Republican Jerry Moran, had this to say [pdf]:
Today I join thousands of Kansans who are outraged by the announcement that Boeing will be closing its Wichita defense facility – leaving the future for hundreds of Kansas workers in jeopardy. As recently as 10 months ago, I joined these workers and local and state officials in Wichita to celebrate Boeing’s victory in the tanker competition. During the competition for the contract, Boeing pledged that a win would bring approximately 7,500 jobs to Kansas, including hundreds of Boeing jobs associated with the finishing work on the new tankers. It is hard to believe that conditions would have changed so rapidly over the past few months to bring about the decision to not only move the tanker finishing work elsewhere, but to also close down the entire facility. The fact that Boeing is now refusing to honor its commitment to the people of Kansas is greatly troubling to me and to thousands of Kansans who trusted that Boeing’s promise would be kept.
Boeing, as you might imagine, disagrees with this characterization. Shorter Boeing press release [pdf]: “Fellas, fellas, fellas. It’s nothing personal — it’s just business.”
Rep. Mike Pompeo, (R-KS04) doesn’t buy it [pdf]:
Today’s statement from Boeing is terrible news. It is a confession that it will not honor its commitment to Kansas. Those Kansas purchases Boeing announced are not new work, but rather a function of increased build rates on already promised work in Kansas. Boeing’s statement confirms that it will indeed break years and years of promises. . . .
Regrettably, we have now learned that Boeing will not only walk away from its commitment to the people of Kansas to finish the KC-46A tanker here, but it will also leave the state altogether—a state that helped make Boeing successful for more than 80 years and a state whose pride in its heritage with Boeing is second to none. Do not be fooled by Boeing’s announcement that it will continue to rely on sub-supplier work in Kansas. While economically important, that development is not news. That work in no way substitutes for the decade of promises made by the Boeing Company with regard to defense work on the KC-46A tanker at the Boeing-Wichita facility.
The GOP is shocked — shocked, I tell you — to discover that corporations would deceive members of Congress and break their word when it suits them.
Welcome to the world outside the DC bubble, fellas. Now you’ve gotten a taste of how the 99% live.
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Photo h/t to Jan “Jannie-Jan” McLaughlin
37 Comments
Aw c’mon Peterr. These guys have always known that corporations like Boeing lie like rugs. It’s always been OK for them to lie when it was to most of us in the 99% Hell, it has even been OK for corporations to lie to other Rs so long as it benefited them (Roberts, Brownback, Tiahrt, Pompeo, Moran) at the expense of the other guy.
…and you didn’t even get kissed in the morning. Welcome to the world the rest of us have to deal with and have had to deal with for the last 35 years where companies squeeze out whatever they can from government and then reneg, send work overseas or to a ‘right to work’ state and so on. It’s obviously OK when it happens to anyone else but you guys are ‘special’ – right?
Let’s see now – will they go to the South Carolina delegation and ask for support now?
To clarify, these politicians aren’t surprised that Boeing lied, they’re surprised that Boeing lied to them!
Boeing, like sports teams, will get some other state & locals to build them a nice new shiny plant. Or, more likely, China.
Boeing prolly already has the deal signed, they’ll just wait a couple of weeks before announcing it.
Maybe Witchitans can be like Flint MI and get into the lint roller biz:
http://www.flintexpats.com/2009/02/flint-artifacts-helmac-lint-roller.html
(apologies but if I didn’t do this once in a while, I’d have to just cry)
People lie
Corporations lie
Therefore corporations are people after all.
Just up at the Wichita Business Journal:
No need to ask — the spigots are already open. All Boeing is doing is putting their wallets underneath them.
Per OpenSecrets, Roberts has received $19,750 from Boeing (individuals and PAC money), and of the Kansas House delegation, no one got more than Pompeo’s $5000.
And since the main purpose of government is to “protect the people” they had to say corporations are people too….and corporations have all the money so they are the more important people and need more protecting from the less important people.
Did you know, in light of the need for protection, they’re bringing back “lynching” in the age of Obama? Lookee here:
http://susie-c.tumblr.com/post/15105973656/an-extrajudicial-execution
There’s the real source of their outrage. The donations will now be going to Texas reps to-be-named-later (I say that because our congressional districts are in limbo right now as the parties fight it out in court over redistricting).
As a resident of San Antonio, I found it hard to join in the boosterism that accompanied this announcement. We aren’t even getting that many of the transferred jobs…about 200, is what I read.
An advantage for Boeing here (where past city councils have very much given away the store to corps. that stay just until their tax rebate agreements expire, then pull up stakes the next day) is that they have a facility already, and it is at the former Kelly Air Force Base, where there’s lots of infrastructure (hangars,e.g.) built by the govt to walk right into.
Sigh. In a few years, they’ll pack up and go somewhere else. Mississippi, I suppose…one place where wages are even lower than here.
Yep, they really don’t care about the workers just the $$$$$.
Maybe if all public offices, including the judiciary, were populated with Republicans, so that Boeing wouldn’t have to live with even the weakest of bought-and-paid-for corporate Democrats, they could shed enough uncertainty to employ Americans. That is, Americans who will work for 8 dollars an hour and no bathroom breaks.
That’ll teach ‘em to kiss corporate ass.
Corporations are people, just like soylent green.
Hmm.
This wouldn’t be the same Senator Pat Roberts who continually told the country that he would be investigating the justifications for the Iraq War when the Republicans controlled the Senate, would it?
Something about glass houses comes to mind.
EXACTLY!!!!
These grifting shits don’t give a rat’s ass about the 99% & their lost jobs & lost pay, etc.
ALL these pols care about is that grift tittie is being taken away from them. Call the waaahmbulance, please.
Somewhere in the background I hear that old Woody Woodpecker laugh… it’s teh corp. 1% thumbing their noses as this batch of grifting politician cons: so long, $UCKAH$!!!! See ya, see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya!
Just another day in Corporate America, fucking over the very people that made Corporate America successful all these years. I hope that Airbus kicks the hell out of Boeing.
This is from someone who spent his life flying Boeing equipment for a living and always thinking they built the best airplane in the world. Fuck em!
Boeing has been screwing over Washington State like this for a while. I don’t see Republicans or Democrats, I don’t see red or blue, I see working people losing jobs forever with no simple way to recover.
This is un-fuc*ing-believable!
She is being charged with lynching herself! Because she called for help!
Accordingly, we conclude that a person who takes part in a riot leading to his escape from custody can be convicted of his own lynching.
“This is how Gabe Meyers was charged following his arrest at a protest in San Francisco in 2005. (Update: Charges were later dropped.)
The arrests of occupiers at Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant plaza Friday afternoon were not a mass arrest situation, but “surgical” arrests aimed at targeting individuals. The Oakland Police Department has been holding the lynching charge in their back pocket to deal with Occupy Oakland since planning for the first raid on October 25.
Logistically, the arrested occupier charged with lynching is relatively physically small; regardless of the legality of an alleged unarrest action, the arrestee was likely not capable of being effective against the physically large Oakland police officers they allegedly wronged. (Update: It appears Tiffany Tran’s arrest is likely a case of attempted self-lynching, similar to Meyers’. Eyewitnesses report Tran called out for help as she was being detained by police.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xan2dkMouM
WOO HOO. /s
Boeing did the same thing in 2003 to Washington State, bribing then Governor Gary Locke and the state Legislature to grant more than $4 billion dollars in tax subsidies on the promise that they would remain in Washington, while secretly laying groundwork to move huge parts of their executive and manufacturing operations out of state.
All these corp do it in all states. What’s really annoying (to put it mildly) is that too many citizens still vetch about how the poor poor benighted corp are being so woefully *over taxed* and that’s why they cannot stay in State X… and so the corp is being “forced” to move, etc, ad nauseum.
It would be interesting to have a list, say of the past five years or so, of which corp got paid big-time tax bribes either to start a business or keep a business in some State, and then promptly left within a couple of years to go GRIFT some other state to “permit” them to do business there for even LESS in taxes and MORE in incentives.
Would be nice to know. Bet it’s a pretty good sized list.
The Boeing plant in Wichita,Kansas is the location of this whistleblowing investigation:
Boeing ‘In Massive Safety Cover-Up’: Report – Home – The Daily Bail
dailybail.com/home/boeing-in-massive-safety-cover-up-report.html
Dec 15, 2010 – Two whistleblowers from Boeing have stepped forward. … passenger planes, the Boeing 737NG, were built with ill-fitting and illegal parts. …
this bloomberg clip does not mention boeing, but speaks of the larger market, on monday, before boeing’s announcement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vaqzqk9_ZI&
my brother works for boeing in wichita. I’ve yet to talk to him. A year ago I asked him if he would instead be happy as a greeter at wal-mart when boeing reneged and moved out.
more broadly, I hope people use the knowledge of this move to hammer their neighbors, asking, ‘Isn’t it past time we replace that trickle-down with something we can live with?’
Trickle down?
Is that when they pee on your leg and tell you it’s raining?
Yeah, they sure have put the trick in trickle…
Maybe Boeing will move to California or Michigan or Ohio. Those folks need jobs too.
Boeing:
“We’re not in Kansas anymore,ToTo.”
WHO and where’s the Wizard,now?
The rubes get corn-holed.
Gee, that’s a shame.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha….Kansas is just learning the lesson learned over and over again in Washington State. Boeing is a corporate pimp, who will use and discard it’s political whores without a second thought. (If they’re older and less desireable than the new girl, it won’t matter HOW good that last blow job was.)
Aw, they didn’t lie, just changed their mind.
Gov. Brownback needs a new prayer pardnuh. That time he spent with Perry before God a few months ago wound up being a stab in the back. No honor among thieves, you know.
For the past couple of months our jilted governor has been retooling the state tax system to eliminate the income tax and scaring the bejeezus out of local governments around the state, especially the school districts. He gonna go whole hog on fracking and give us water pollution and earthquakes.
@dogjudge Yes, Paddy Roberts carried water for the Bushies WRT the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence. Isn’t that oxymoronic? I saw a quote from him expressing his outrage and he promised to roll up his sleeve and ummm carry more water, I guess.
Ah, yes. Karma…
And this is why
1) we need local officials who do not “sell the farm” to publicly held corporations to entice them to choose their municipality or county. Typically local officials will give ridiculous tax breaks to these corporations; lift local environmental requirements and look the the other way on federal requirements; and in some extreme cases, even pay corporations out of pocket money that should be spent on community services and infrastructure for the citizens such as police and schools.
Because the results include: an eroded tax revenue base for the community; trashed infrastructure (as often happens with the corporation’s increased used of the roads and bridges in the community hauling heavy equipment; polluted air and ground water); etc.
2) We need local officials with the gumption to realize that the “love” publicly traded companies is fickle. They are not married to the community. The minute they determine that the grass is greener somewhere else. That’s it. They pull out–often unannounced–leaving the community economically devastated because their leaders set up a situation that was no mutually beneficial for the people in their community .
3) We need local officials who will start working now to establish locally owned cooperatives and businesses whose primary source of profits are derived from products and services that are created for and sold to members of the community. These business are not going anywhere. They are economic anchors for the community.