Republicans are up in arms about government spending but what about contractors who overcharge the government?

"Boeing’s reckless disregard for the public trust, if not the law, was again on full display when it was revealed that the company has been overcharging the government by tens of millions of dollars," the union said in a statement today.

"In May, the Defense Department’s Inspector General issued a scathing audit that uncovered $13 million in over-the-top, unwarranted costs, beyond fair and reasonable prices, by Boeing for spare helicopter parts delivered to the U.S. Army," the union statement said.

NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon issued the complaint, which alleges that Boeing’s decision in 2009 to locate a Dreamliner 787 final assembly line in North Charleston, S.C., represented illegal retaliation against IAM members who work for the company. The NLRB is seeking a court order requiring Boeing to operate the second 787 line, including supply lines, with union workers in the Puget Sound.

via NLRB Issues Complaint Over Boeing’s Move to S.C. | AFL-CIO NOW BLOG.

This reminds me of Wal-Mart shutting down an entire store in Canada after a unionization vote in retaliation. Corporations will do these things because they see it as a cost of doing business–meaning the penalties aren’t high enough.

But now Boeing has been hoisted by its own petard.  Responding to a counter-complaint filed by the European Union, the WTO has just concluded that Boeing received its own illegitimate government help – both from research contracts awarded by federal agencies and from states that put together large incentive packages to lure production facilities for Boeing’s next-generation 787 Dreamliner. The value of the questionable payments was said to be in excess of $20 billion.

The ruling itself was not made public, but the descriptions of it that have emerged in the press undermine Boeing’s long-standing contention that its government assistance, unlike that received by Airbus, is legitimate. The company has strained to argue that the deals offered by the states are incentives and that incentives are not the same thing as subsidies. The WTO now seems to be saying that this is one of those distinctions without a difference.

via Boeing’s Subsidy Coercion | Dirt Diggers Digest.

I love corporations (not) who argue in favor of less regulation, no government involvement & the free market but then cry for help when they need it.

Other misconduct by Boeing, according to POGO, includes “unauthorized possession of defense information,” gender discrimination, violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, the False Claims Act and anti-trust laws, water pollution in California, contaminating thousands of homes in Colorado with radioactive waste from the Department of Energy’s Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, radioactive and toxic contamination near Los Angeles, over-billing and illegal hiring of government officials.

via Hillary Clinton Gives ‘Shameless Pitch’ for Crooked Corporation in Russia | CommonDreams.org.

Is there anything that Boeing hasn’t done wrong? I don’t see why someone would be promoting them to companies in foreign nations.

I see all these US Senators from both sides of the aisle coming out against the US Air Force deal. The deal basically gave 35 billion dollars to Northrop Grumman to build air tankers. Boeing was angry because they lost out. Also, the jobs to build the air tankers would be taken out of America under Northrop Grumman. While I see a corporation in Boeing and Congress up in arms about losing “American jobs”, I wonder if they would apply that same thinking to some of these trade deals out there like CAFTA and NAFTA?