Column: How much more must we grovel?
Seattle Times 10/16/03
author: Nicole Brodeur
(Copyright 2003)
So now they want a fleet of cargo planes?
And even if we bankrupt ourselves to meet this, the latest demand from Boeing, the most we can hope for from the 7E7 contract is the honor of making the tail fin?
I'll tell you what you can do with your tail fin, Mr. CEO Phil Condit.
And as for you, Boeing Commercial Airplanes Chief Alan Mulally, well ... To paraphrase your recent, high-minded remarks to the Rotary Club of Seattle about our state's business competitiveness and transportation network: You suck, too.
I guess being a corporate giant in a troubled economy means you can treat entire states with the same self-important disregard that Arnold Schwarzenegger has shown women foolish enough to have rear-ends.
State officials have already offered Boeing a textbook example of corporate welfare, serving up more tax breaks and incentives than the state's middle- and low-income residents will ever know in their lives.
In return, we're being offered the sorry south end of the 7E7. Literally.
It's a taunting taste of what some other place will get for being able to touch its nose to its toes, and get Boeing parts from here to there without having to stop for gas, lunch and dinner.
Granted, our lawmakers should be throttled for sitting on their hands while hundreds of thousands of cars choked Washington's roads over the past decade or so, making business transportation something akin to the Pony Express.
(And don't get me started on Sound Transit or the Monorail; the yoga and deep breathing are just starting to take).
But the place known as Jet City should get a little more consideration from the company that made its name here. We've already been dumped; do we have to model swimsuits beside Kansas, Texas, Japan and — the indignity — Italy to get a second look?
If that's the kind of dealmakers Boeing's honchos are, then they don't need cargo planes.
What they need is to be pushed into the back of a battered Buick Skylark as they step out of their Windy City headquarters, and driven to a dark alley on the South side of Chicago for a little talk about what it means to be fair, decent businessmen. Then they should be left to find their own way home.
We lost a large part of our identity when Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago.
Now, with the 7E7 contract being dangled in front of us like a check from the Publisher's Clearinghouse, we're losing some of our pride, as well.
Take the wings of the 7E7. It looks like they will be made in Japan.
We used to be known for our wings. Boeing loved our wings. Boeing bragged about them as its key engineering marvel, our wings.
It's like your kid suddenly choosing canned soup over the homemade you've slaved over, and he's raved over, for years.
You can't help but feel hurt, angry and confused.
Have we changed that much? Or has Boeing?
I'm not even sure they're in the airplane business anymore.
This feels more like being railroaded.
