Day: July 2, 2024

Boeing Dodges A Bullet

Who does the government work for?

Any ideas?

After hundreds of deaths, shoddy safety measures, lousy construction and let’s not forget the whistleblowers that mysteriously dead after coming forward, Boeing was set to face a trial for their actions or are they?

Last week federal prosecutors recommended the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Boeing over its failure to keep the terms of an agreement sparing the company from legal action in 737 Max crashes that killed a combined 346 people. A lawyer for the families of those crash victims say what’s in the works is a “sweetheart plea deal.”

Reuters reports the DOJ plans to criminally charge Boeing, with sources saying the company can go to trial or take the deal, which is said to include a $487.2 million fine (Boeing would be credited for a previous settlement and only pay half) and the assignment of an independent monitor to audit the company’s safety practices for a three-year period. The DOJ is said to have briefed victims’ relatives on Sunday. More:

  • Standout lines: “The memory of 346 innocents killed by Boeing demands more justice than this,” victims’ lawyer Paul Cassell tells the BBC, saying the “families will strenuously object to this plea deal.” He adds, “The deal will not acknowledge, in any way, that Boeing’s crime killed 346 people. It also appears to rest on the idea that Boeing did not harm any victim.”
  • What the families want: Per a letter Cassell sent to the DOJ in June, the families of victims of the October 2018 Lion Air and March 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crashes wanted to see Boeing’s then-top executives prosecuted and a $24.8 billion fine levied.
  • Next steps: USA Today reports that should Boeing accept the plea offer, US District Judge Reed O’Connor of Texas will be the one to decide whether to accept the plea agreement in the public interest. Lawyers say victims’ families plan to fly in from around the world to attend any hearing and voice their opposition.
  • The timeline: CNN explains that the DOJ in June let Boeing know that the safety failures it has racked up lately put the company in breach of the 2021 agreement through which Boeing avoided criminal charges (specifically, criminal conspiracy charge to commit fraud) related to the 737 Max crashes. The DOJ said that meant Boeing is subject to criminal prosecution, but it had not announced whether it planned to prosecute the case. The DOJ has a July 7 deadline to file charges, so Boeing will have until week’s end to decide whether to accept the plea deal.
  • Side note: Reuters reports it’s atypical for the DOJ to loop in third parties (in this case, the victims’ families) about its plans prior to alerting the company it intends to charge. Reuters sees the shift as a reaction to the relatives’ outcry over the original 2021 agreement, which they learned about after it had been reached.
  • The anger: The Guardian reports that “on a conference call on Sunday, one official is said to have been asked by a family member how he sleeps at night.”

You realize this will go to the Supreme Court and we know how that will work out with the political hacks on the court, right?

Chevron gets pass, dark money gets a pass, so forth and so on….

The court has become a huge joke….those people have NO business using the Constitution and law has toilet paper.

Impeach all of them and start over without political hacks…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

SCOTUS Does It Again!

It is not bad enough that these political hacks are swimming in special interest money they also crap on the Constitution whenever GOP policies are involved.

The nightmare from K Street has happened….Trump gets immunity….

The Supreme Court delivered its historic ruling on presidential immunity Monday—and it was welcomed by Donald Trump, who is now immune from prosecution for “official acts” during his presidency. “Big win for our constitution and democracy,” he wrote in an all-caps post on Truth Social. “Proud to be an American!” Other Republicans also praised the 6-3 ruling, while leading Democrats shared the dismay of the dissenting liberal justices.

  • Dissents: “With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote. She said the ruling sends the message: “Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends,” NBC News reports. “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.” she wrote. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that the ruling “breaks new and dangerous ground,” creating immunity “applicable only to the most powerful official in our Government.”
  • House leaders: House Speaker Mike Johnson praised the ruling as a “victory for former President Trump and all future presidents, and another defeat for President Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice and Jack Smith,” the Guardian reports. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader, released what he called a statement “in connection with the Supreme Court decision to bend the knee to the Insurrectionist-in-Chief.” He warned that the ruling “sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our nation.”
  • A ‘dramatic expansion of presidential power’: “As Justice Sotomayor’s appalled dissent makes clear, this ruling is a dramatic expansion of presidential power—not just for Trump but for all presidents,” Charlie Savage writes at the New York Times. “She cites the notorious World War II ruling that upheld the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast.”
  • A ‘license for authoritarianism’: Sen. Richard Blumenthal was among many Democratic lawmakers to condemn the decision—and members of the court—in strong terms. In posts on X, he called the ruling a “license for authoritarianism.” Members of the court’s conservative majority, he wrote, “will now be rightly perceived by the American people as extreme & nakedly partisan hacks—politicians in robes,” he wrote.
  • Ruling rebukes ‘attempts to weaponize our legal system’ against Trump: Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee praised the ruling, Politico reports. Its chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan, said the committee will “continue to oversee dangerous lawfare tactics in our judicial system.” Another member, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, said the ruling “rebukes Democrats’ blatant attempts to weaponize our legal system against Donald Trump.”
  • ‘Absurd and dangerous’: Eric Holder, the attorney general in Barack Obama’s administration, slammed the “absurd and dangerous” ruling in a post on X. He wrote: “The Trump immunity decision says: a president CAN VIOLATE THE CRIMINAL LAW if he acts within his broadly defined “constitutional authority.”
  • Decision will be seen in context of Trump’s connections: “No case to date has put Trump’s personal interests so directly in the hands of the justices he appointed—and from whom he has expected a sympathetic hearing,” Jess Bravin writes at the Wall Street Journal, noting that two other members of the court, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, “have familial ties to Trump’s cause.” “However ironclad the legal rationales behind their votes, the justices’ actions cannot avoid being viewed in the context of such connections,” Bravin writes.

Weaponized DoJ?

If Trump wins the election then you have not seen anything yet.

This whole fiasco proves just how corrupt the political hacks are , those people we trust to stand by the Constitution….they not only do not stand by the Constitution they crap on it yearly.

I am behind AOC 100%…..

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday said she will file unspecified articles of impeachment U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority ruled that former President Donald Trump is entitled to “absolute immunity” for “official acts” performed while he was in office, a decision that prompted dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor to declare her “fear for our democracy.”

Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said on social media that “the Supreme Court has become consumed by a corruption crisis beyond its control.”

“Today’s ruling represents an assault on American democracy. It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture,” she added. “I intend on filing articles of impeachment upon our return.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/supreme-court-justice-impeachment

This may go nowhere in a GOP controlled House but at least someone is standing up to the fat cat slugs on the Court.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”