Discussion: Trump Issues Order To Ground All Boeing 737 Max 8 And 9 Planes

Agreed. Base would never blame him of this. They did not blame him for kneeling in front of Putin…

I can't come up with a viewpoint from which this doesn't seem like the right choice.

That’s easy. Say you are a 65 year old corporate executive at Boeing who happens to be a psychopath. You calculate that there is a 1% chance of one of these planes falling from the sky if they are not grounded. If grounded, Boeing is contractually obligated to pay for repairs and your quarterly profit will disappear, leading to no bonus.

So you figure keep the planes in the sky. 99% chance you make your bonus, then you can retire. 1% chance the plane crashes and you get fired and don’t make your bonus but are otherwise unharmed and can still live out your retirement in luxury. You consider that 1% chance to be pretty much equivalent to grounding the planes, as both result in you losing your bonus and you don’t care about other people. Thus you gamble on the 99% chance that no one dies.

Of course a 1% risk of 130 people dying in a plane crash is absolutely unacceptable to decent people. But you are a psychopathic executive. You simply don’t care.

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Donald: “Leadership!”

There must have been some major shit ready to hit the fan for Fat Ass to do something like this. It’s not like him to go against Boeing, who donated a million bucks to Emperor Chlamydia’s 2016 inauguration.

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OK, my world makes sense again. Thanks.

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The fix for this isn’t going to be ready until April. What kind of stupid moron would bet that no other planes would crash?

Well, Trump is stupid enough and a lousy poker player, but I guess even he could see the disastrous optics of playing with people’s lives.

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No, he’s just showboating. No other country that grounded the fleet did it by proclamation of Dear Leader. It was done through the normal civil aviation authority. Once again, Trump makes America look Foolish Again.

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Surprising. I assumed Boeing would trade him some magic beans in exchange for not doing this.

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No, the stock has been tanking this week and they have to get the story out of the headlines. You need to imagine an actively malicious executive who is eager to get people killed at the expense of his own bottom line, which of course is a silly idea.

There’s already a software change in the works. Airlines will be mad that there are grounded planes which aren’t making money, but they’ll get over it and there will be no substantial repair costs to be paid.

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Election year coming, so this is Trump trying to simulate being President. Classic Trump: screw it up because of laziness and corruption, have a disaster of some kind, do a half-assed job of addressing the problem, then claim to be the Best President Ever.

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The evidence so far from the Lion Air accident (the first accident) was that the problem was manageable by the flight crew but they didn’t cutout the stabilizer downward trim control. Instead they got into a tug of war match with the software which should have been shut off. There’s a manual trim wheel on the center console between the pilots.
Regarding the second accident - we know nothing at this point until we get a readout of the Flight Data Recorder…

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Trump only decides in favor of his own self interest. One of his minion miscreants convinced him that if one of the aircraft crashed in the US, he wouldn’t be able to have Sarah send out a press release blaming it on Obama.

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They also donated $1,000,000 to Obama’s inauguration. It’s what these companies do.

The answer is EXECUTIVE TIME. Trump is watching FOX news, Trump sees they hyping the story, and bingo issues an executive order. Elaine Chow (can we call her “Cocaine Chow?”) will do what the doners want, but Trump does what the boob tube tells him to do.

And P.s. it is the right move, overdue. Even a syphilis addled malignant narcissist finds a nut every once in a while.

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I came here to note the same thing…yet ANOTHER acting admin. Jeez…a govt of temps.

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Yes after all other countries already done so…this leading from behind strategy is getting old

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Why didn’t he let Elaine Chao - the Transportation Secretary do this? It is in her department.

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Your question is spot on. This is totally a WH stunt. The statutory authority to ground airplanes was originally placed in the FAA, which was an independent agency. When the FAA was folded into the Department of Transportation, which was created many decades later, the organic act establishing DOT established basically overlapping authority in the Secretary of Transportation, which, as a practical matter made the DOT Secretary the action officer. So, the last time there was a Boeing standdown, the order was signed by then DOT secretary, Ray LaHood. The statute doesn’t even mention the president; the president has absolutely no authority under it, at all. So, this Trump “emergency action” is nothing but a stunt by a WH desperately seeking to put Trump’s name on something other than a subpoena from the Special Counsel. It would be nice if there were some reporters who knew this.

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Easy call for DJT. Makes him look “Presidential”

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No doubt doing this let’s him think he is validating the “I am an expert on how airplanes should be designed” outburst from yesterday.

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