Thanks to Boeing, your wallet is lighter this morning. In December the aerospace giant, now headquartered in Chicago, arranged a deal that Arizona senator John McCain described as “the envy of corporate lobbyists from one end of K Street to the other.” Compliant congresspeople from the far west inserted a provision in the Defense Department appropriations bill allowing the air force to lease 100 Boeing 767s for use as tankers. As Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman summarize the deal in the January 5 issue of their on-line newsletter “Corp-focus,” these are planes that neither the air force nor the president has requested. According to McCain, the cost to the government of leasing them exceeds $25 billion–five times what it would have cost to buy them outright.
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The worsted of times. University of Illinois professor Francis Boyle, quoted in the New York Times (December 26): “If the U.S. government is going to pull the wool out from under the Geneva Conventions, that is going to be serious for our soldiers.”
Terrorists attack prominent symbol of corporate welfare. “How many Americans–let alone those responsible for the attacks–know that the World Trade Center was actually anything but a shining example of the success of American capitalism and free trade?” asks Judy Meima in the Statewide Housing Action Coalition newsletter “Illinois Community Development News” (Fall/Winter). “Built entirely with public money, the center never came close to breaking even as a real estate venture, and was permanently subsidized by the Port Authority in New York. Compare that to what it takes us to get tiny subsidies for our modest efforts to address the affordable housing crisis.”
