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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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 Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2020 12:27 pm Post subject: Socialism, Republican Style |
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| Quote: | By
Aaron Gregg,
Jeff Stein and
Josh Dawsey
March 25, 2020 at 6:35 a.m. PDT
Lawmakers have inserted in the Senate’s $2 trillion stimulus package a little-noticed provision aimed at providing billions of dollars in emergency assistance to Boeing, the aerospace giant already under fire for deadly safety lapses in its commercial jets, three people with knowledge of the internal deliberations said.
The Senate package includes a $17 billion federal loan program for businesses deemed “critical to maintaining national security.” The provision does not mention Boeing by name but was crafted largely for the company’s benefit, two of the people said. Other firms could also receive a share of the money, one of the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.
The carve-out is separate from the $58 billion the Senate package is providing in loans for cargo and passenger airlines, as well as the $425 billion in loans it is allocating to help firms, states and cities hurt by the current downturn. Congressional aides cautioned that the Senate bill was still going through last-minute revisions and could change.
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A Boeing spokesman declined to comment. The company previously said in a March 17 statement that at “least $60 billion” is needed to support the broader aerospace manufacturing industry, suggesting that the aid package should include a mix of “public and private liquidity, including loan guarantees.”
In a Tuesday interview on Fox, Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun said he would not be willing to give the government an equity stake in the company in exchange for a bailout, implying the company would only accept assistance on its own terms. President Trump has said he would support the idea, suggested by his economic adviser, of taking an equity stake in companies that receive assistance in the package.
“If they force it, we just look at all the other options, and we’ve got plenty of them,” Calhoun said.
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In its public statements, the company has said it needs the funding to sustain some 2.5 million aerospace-industry jobs and 17,000 suppliers. That includes numerous niche aerospace suppliers who provide aircraft parts to the company. Many of them are small businesses for which orders from Boeing are the primary source of revenue.
“The long term outlook for the industry is still strong, but until global passenger traffic resumes to normal levels, these measures are needed to manage the pressure on the aviation sector and the economy as a whole,” a Boeing spokesman wrote in a statement last week.
The company employs more than 150,000 people worldwide, including about 70,000 in the Puget Sound area of Washington state.
Many businesses are closing to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Not the defense industry.
The possibility that the aerospace giant would be in line for special federal assistance has already stirred public controversy, with the former U.N. ambassador under the Trump administration, Nikki Haley, resigning from the company’s board over its decision to seek public assistance.
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Trump continues to view Boeing as a critical company with private and defense links that he wants to see supported, although he has at times been unclear privately about how he wants to handle the situation, one senior Republican said. Trump has said repeatedly over past weeks that the federal government would step in to help Boeing, despite criticisms from some nonpartisan experts that federal lawmakers should avoid singling out individual firms for assistance.
“Probably I would have considered [Boeing] the greatest company in the world prior to a year ago. Now they get hit 15 different ways,” Trump said in a March 17 news conference, alluding to problems with the now-grounded 737 Max jetliner. “It was coming along well, and then all or a sudden this hits,” Trump said. “So we’ll be helping Boeing.”
The insertion of the special provision came after a flurry of lobbying about the massive stimulus package, one of the largest pieces of legislation taken up in the modern history of Congress.
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It also emerged late in negotiations. On March 18, the Treasury Department released a two-page memo with its request for the stimulus package. It included $50 billion in loans for the airline companies and $150 billion for other sectors of the U.S. economy experiencing “severe financial distress” because of the coronavirus pandemic. Last Thursday, Senate Republicans released their own version of the stimulus package, which included a similar amount for the airlines and other “eligible businesses” hurt by the downturn.
But after a weekend in which numerous lobbying groups tried to influence the legislation, a new provision in the bill emerged early this week for businesses “critical to maintaining national security.” The $17 billion in funding is for loans and loan guarantees, not direct grants. But low-interest government loans can help companies avoid worse outcomes, such as bankruptcy or consolidation, and are considered a special form of emergency federal relief.
Boeing is the likeliest recipient of the aid based on the language in the Senate proposal, according to Dan Grazier, a national security expert at the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, who reviewed the relevant section of the legislation.
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“Boeing would be the obvious manufacturer to receive funds through this,” Grazier said.
Boeing is most likely to qualify for the funding because it has a significant commercial airplane business that has been impacted by the global travel slowdown, he said. Most defense firms do not have significant commercial businesses.
Grazier said Boeing appears to be “leveraging the crisis to help its bottom line” and noted that Boeing’s financial challenges “obviously predate coronavirus."
The Senate legislation specifies a few conditions for qualifying for the loans, such as short-term limits on executive compensation and prohibitions on dividends and buybacks, provisions reflected in the other emergency assistance the Senate is pushing for large firms affected by the economic crisis.
Democratic lawmakers have pushed for more limits on the funding, including protections for workers’ health-care benefits and pension funds, but have largely been rebuffed, according to one person with knowledge of the deliberations.
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Boeing’s request for public funds has ignited controversy internally, with members of Boeing’s board of directors differing on whether to seek public help.
Haley, the former South Carolina governor who joined Boeing’s board early last year, implied in her resignation letter that it would be unfair for Boeing to receive public assistance while small businesses suffer. She said offering bailouts to specific companies is “not the role of government.”
“While I know cash is tight, that is equally true for numerous other industries and for millions of small businesses,” Haley wrote. “I cannot support a move to lean on the federal government for a stimulus or bailout that prioritizes our company over others.”
Some advocates of government oversight, too, have bristled at the prospect of Boeing receiving public help.
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Craig Holman, a lobbyist with the advocacy group Public Citizen, said companies such as Boeing are likely to have more options available to them in private capital markets.
Boeing could “get a loan from the bank to get through these hard times,” Holman said. “The workers, the people who are laid off or get sick, have no such options.”
“Any bailout ought to go to the people,” he added.
Boeing recently drew down the full amount of its $13.8 billion bank loan early, citing fears about access to cash moving forward. It also halted all new hires.
But some budget experts said many large companies were likely to recoup the loans being made available, and warned that a direct grant would represent a more harmful subsidy.
“In TARP, the money got repaid,” said Brian Riedl, a budget expert at the libertarian-leaning Manhattan Institute, referring to the bank bailouts authorized by Congress during the 2008 financial crisis. “And here there’s even more basis to assume it will be repaid because the loan recipients are, hopefully, not going into a long financial drop.”
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However, Boeing’s financial future is far from certain. The potential financial assistance comes at a time when Boeing’s business seems to be under threat from all directions. For more than a year, it has been working with regulators to recertify the 737 Max jet, which the Federal Aviation Administration ordered grounded a year ago when faulty flight-control systems played a role in two deadly crashes. A Washington Post investigation later found that the company’s board had largely prioritized speed of production and spent little time on safety concerns.
‘Safety was just a given’: Inside Boeing’s boardroom amid the 737 Max crisis
The inability to deliver the 737 Max took a heavy toll on Boeing’s business last year, leading it to new financial lows. It finished 2019 with $76.5 billion in annual revenue, a 24 percent drop from the previous year. Dennis Muilenburg, who was fired for poor performance in light of issues with the Max, left the company with a $62 million payout.
Boeing’s business is further threatened by the near-total shutdown of air travel in recent weeks because of international travel bans and work-from-home policies meant to contain the virus. Industry analysts increasingly believe the ongoing crisis will cause airlines to defer purchases as they struggle with financial challenges of their own.
U.S. economy deteriorating faster than anticipated as 80 million Americans are forced to stay at home
Boeing is taking aggressive measures to contain the financial fallout from the pandemic, which erased two-thirds of the company’s stock value in less than a month. And it is struggling to contain a coronavirus outbreak of its own, which has spread to at least 32 Boeing employees, a Boeing spokesman confirmed Monday.
On Monday, the company halted production at its factories in the Puget Sound region of Washington state, the global epicenter of its commercial jet production, after an employee at its Everett assembly plant who had coronavirus died.
Robert Costa contributed to this story.
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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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| Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2020 1:46 pm Post subject: |
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The country has been at grave risk for years to decades from the breadth and depth of critical products no longer manufactured within our borders in any useful quantity. Just a few that come to mind include the giant transformers easily fried by an EMP attack, 95% of our pharmaceuticals, anything resembling the warplane design and production capacity we'd need in wartime, and any nuclear warheads, period.
I don't want to hear that "we have plenty of warheads to blow up the world ten times over"; it's about their technology and reliability more than sheer numbers. Their shelf lives are expiring, and we haven't maintained their design, manufacturing, maintenance, and update capacities. We're up shit creek if our enemies get emboldened enough to push their buttons for a prolonged nuclear conflict.
Most warplane models last a decade or two before needing whole new designs and airframes. We've been using B52s since the 1950s and plan to keep them flying for many more decades because they are that necessary and that good. That lifespan is not merely an outlier; it's completely off the charts for warplane longevity. The same, to a lesser but still very impressive degree, applies to our ALCM cruise missile.
Guess who makes them.
And guess what nation makes all the above? None other than our greatest enemy on the planet. The same one that is SELLING (not giving) coronavirus supplies to the third world. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2020 6:32 pm Post subject: |
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Cognitive dissonance by Isobars. Nothing to do with the topic. Funny how he ranted about Democrats adding "unrelated" things like renewable energy. Here's how that one came out:
| Quote: | | The $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package - which remains under discussion on Capitol Hill - does not include any energy provisions presented by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. According to a Democratic aide familiar with the discussions, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Republicans to cut either the proposed $3 billion to buy oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or give Democrats "a litany of clean energy tax credits." (Axios) |
Now don't get me wrong, I support a stimulus package--as I did in 2008. I believe that the evidence shows Keynesian economics works, and you need not be perfect. If some slops over the edges, or there aren't perfect controls to prevent corruption, that is less important than getting money in the hands of people who are out of a job. Very FDR of me. But I am enjoying the hypocrisy of the right. Where is mrgybe, who posted dozens of complaints about the stimulus bill? How it was going to increase the deficit? Where is the tea party, and all the folks on the forum who ranted about bailing out the banks--but didn't notice the underlying causes?
Could it be self interest? Could it be fear? Could it be that there is a white guy in the White House asking for it? Rest assured, a healthy dose of hypocrisy lies behind the support. But polls do support money going to small businesses, not big corporations, and Nancy outmaneuvered turtleman and the grifter in chief on that one. |
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mat-ty
Joined: 07 Jul 2007
Posts: 7850
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| Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2020 6:35 pm Post subject: |
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| isobars wrote: | The country has been at grave risk for years to decades from the breadth and depth of critical products no longer manufactured within our borders in any useful quantity. Just a few that come to mind include the giant transformers easily fried by an EMP attack, 95% of our pharmaceuticals, anything resembling the warplane design and production capacity we'd need in wartime, and any nuclear warheads, period.
I don't want to hear that "we have plenty of warheads to blow up the world ten times over"; it's about their technology and reliability more than sheer numbers. Their shelf lives are expiring, and we haven't maintained their design, manufacturing, maintenance, and update capacities. We're up shit creek if our enemies get emboldened enough to push their buttons for a prolonged nuclear conflict.
Most warplane models last a decade or two before needing whole new designs and airframes. We've been using B52s since the 1950s and plan to keep them flying for many more decades because they are that necessary and that good. That lifespan is not merely an outlier; it's completely off the charts for warplane longevity. The same, to a lesser but still very impressive degree, applies to our ALCM cruise missile.
Guess who makes them.
And guess what nation makes all the above? None other than our greatest enemy on the planet. The same one that is SELLING (not giving) coronavirus supplies to the third world. |
And who has been preaching that for years?...DJT... China is now officially the boggy man... |
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vientomas
Joined: 25 Apr 2000
Posts: 2343
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| Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2020 7:10 pm Post subject: |
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Corporate Welfare...plain and simple.
BTW Maddy...it's boogeyman not "boggyman". Do the Chinese all live in a bog? |
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mat-ty
Joined: 07 Jul 2007
Posts: 7850
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| Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2020 9:31 pm Post subject: |
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| vientomas wrote: | Corporate Welfare...plain and simple.
BTW Maddy...it's boogeyman not "boggyman". Do the Chinese all live in a bog? |
Oh boy!!! little man finds a typo...you and Mac share the same childish fixation.. yawn. |
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vientomas
Joined: 25 Apr 2000
Posts: 2343
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| Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2020 9:58 pm Post subject: |
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| mat-ty wrote: | | vientomas wrote: | Corporate Welfare...plain and simple.
BTW Maddy...it's boogeyman not "boggyman". Do the Chinese all live in a bog? |
Oh boy!!! little man finds a typo...you and Mac share the same childish fixation.. yawn. |
Who said this? "LOL, between the typos and the rant you are obviosly a little rattled..."
Guess you share the same childish fixation. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2020 10:11 pm Post subject: |
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| mat-ty wrote: | | vientomas wrote: | Corporate Welfare...plain and simple.
BTW Maddy...it's boogeyman not "boggyman". Do the Chinese all live in a bog? |
Oh boy!!! little man finds a typo...you and Mac share the same childish fixation.. yawn. |
The point, which you obviously missed because you are a reactionary not a conservative, is that adults take responsibility to make themselves clear when they communicate. Used to be a basic value of conservatives--before they became rabid Trumpists who change direction whenever he does, and pretend they didn't say the stupid things that they actually said.
Last edited by mac on Wed Mar 25, 2020 11:57 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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coachg
Joined: 10 Sep 2000
Posts: 3550
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| Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2020 10:57 pm Post subject: |
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Matty does like to Parrot Trump word for word & Trump does have a problem speaking English so I guess we shouldn't be surprised that Matty has a problem writing in English.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftpc4fwcDfk
Coachg |
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techno900
Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4161
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| Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2020 8:26 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Shrewd action to address current economic crisis may help prevent a future economic crisis caused by climate change
Washington, D.C. – As Congress considers a massive bailout for industries affected by the coronavirus outbreak, U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Ed Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Tina Smith (D-MN), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) today called on congressional leaders to ensure any financial assistance for major airlines and foreign-flagged cruise lines includes reasonable environmental requirements to address pollution from these industries. Taking action to address the world’s carbon footprint while shoring up the American economy during the current crisis would help prevent a future economic collapse that may be triggered by climate change if we don’t act soon. |
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/
Is this a part of the bill today?? |
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