Background Briefing: March 27, 2019
How Regulatory Capture Allowed Boeing to Build an Unsafe Airliner
We begin with today’s hearings before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation and Space on the failure of oversight which allowed Boeing to certify the new 737 Max 8 which is clearly not a safe plane since two of them have already crashed killing all 346 passengers and crews aboard. Jeff Wise, a licensed pilot and a science journalist specializing in aviation and psychology and author of “The Taking of MH 370” who has an article at Slate “When the Rules Disappear: How American fervor for deregulation contributed to the 737 Max crashes”, joins us. We discuss the Trump Administration’s war on regulations and the capture of the FAA and Elaine Chow’s Department of Transportation by Boeing who also have a 30–year Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan as the Secretary of Defense, allowing an unsafe airplane to be certified by Boeing and sold around the world. Since Boeing decided not to design a new plane from scratch and just add length for more passengers and bigger engines which had to be moved further out on the wings, the plane’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System MCAS, is essential to enable this unstable plane to takeoff and fly. So with a hands-off approach to big business combined with the pursuit of short-term profits while cutting corners, one of America’s most successful brands Boeing is now losing its luster as the United States under Trump becomes more of a banana republic.
An Update from a Country Disintegrating into Chaos and Lawlessness
Then with today’s White House meeting with the wife of the alternative leader of a country that is disintegrating into chaos and lawlessness and is poised on the brink of civil war, we will go to Caracas for an update on Venezuela’s rapidly deteriorating conditions. Virginia Lopez, who covered Latin America and Venezuela for The Guardian and Al Jazeera English and had a recent article at The New York Times “Nothing Can Prepare You For Life With Hyperinflation”, joins us to discuss how life is becoming unbearable inside the country while outside irrelevant arguments over capitalism versus socialism and sovereignty versus imperialism drone on.
An Activist and Performance Artist Who Stages Acts of Creative Resistance
Then finally we are joined in the studio by an activist and performance artist who stages acts of creative resistance to arouse public awareness of human rights, animal rights, the environment and LGBT rights. Jordina Salabert, otherwise known as Jil Love, joins us to talk about some of her exploits such as sitting on a golden toilet on top of Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame reading Time magazine with Trump on the cover and covering her naked body with oil posing in public squares like a beached dolphin surrounded by dead fish to draw attention to stop offshore oil drilling.
