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Seattle’s newest councilmember urges Boeing workers to seize factories
Hotair ^ | 11/21/2013 | Ed Morrissey

Posted on 11/21/2013 8:02:17 AM PST by SeekAndFind

Here’s the inevitable follow-up on the election of a Socialist to the Seattle City Council — although perhaps sooner than anyone would have thought. Boeing has tried working for years with its unions in the state of Washington, but still cannot reach agreements on labor contracts for its manufacturing facilities. The aerospace giant has looked for other regions in the US to build its planes, which has angered the unions and the Obama administration. It’s also provided an opportunity for Seattle’s newest councilmember to launch her anti-capitalist agenda, and she’s wasted no time in doing so … even before officially taking office:

Seattle City Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told Boeing machinists her idea of a radical option, should their jobs be moved out of state

“The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” Sawant announced to a cheering crowd of union supporters in Seattle’s Westlake Park Monday night. …

On Monday night, she spoke to supporters of Boeing Machinists, six days after they rejected a contract guaranteeing jobs in Everett building the new 777X airliner for eight years, in exchange for new workers giving up their guaranteed company pensions.

Now Boeing is threatening to take those jobs to other states. “That will be nothing short of economic terrorism because it’s going to devastate the state’s economy,” she said.

So what wouldn’t be “economic terrorism”? Seizing the company’s property, of course:

Sawant is calling for machinists to literally take-possession of the Everett airplane-building factory, if Boeing moves out. She calls that “democratic ownership.”

“The only response we can have if Boeing executives do not agree to keep the plant here is for the machinists to say the machines are here, the workers are here, we will do the job, we don’t need the executives. The executives don’t do the work, the machinists do,” she said.

Well, Seattle voters elected her, so they get what they deserve, but perhaps we should point out a couple of inconvenient realities for Sawant. The machinists don’t own the plants, but that’s only just the beginning. Unless the machinists own the designs, they can’t build the planes unless licensed by those who do. And where will they get the raw materials with which to build the planes? Who pays for the energy necessary to operate the machines?

That’s not to say that the machinists can’t build their own planes, of course. They could open up their own business, design their own planes, and build planes themselves, but they’ll need to find an awful lot of capital with which to do it. That means they’d still have to deal with executive management imposed by the VC sources and labor cost controls, which would certainly include getting rid of any notion of defined-benefit pension systems. Then they’d need to compete on price in order to sell the planes, and find people willing to buy them at all when Boeing is still producing proven models in South Carolina.

That is “democratic ownership.” What Sawant demands is outright theft, and we’ve seen the results of it from China to Russia to Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Besides, Sawant doesn’t want machinists to build planes anyway:

“We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of destructive, you know, war machines,” she told KIRO 7.

War machines? Boeing wants to build another series of commercial airliners. When KIRO informed Sawant of that, she replied that she was was “referring to drones when speaking of war machines.”

Hey, Seattle … you elected her. Have fun. The rest of certainly will … at your expense.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Washington
KEYWORDS: boeing; council; seatlle
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To: catnipman

RE: Hey, I wanted to thank Seattle for electing a genuwine Commie!

Then you should congratulate New York City, we did the same thing for Mayor last November.


61 posted on 11/21/2013 9:23:22 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
Seizure of the means of production is the difference between Fabian socialism and pure Communism, and this woman is a Communist. Not a historian, apparently - Lenin found out in two short years what happens when you try this.

I don't think the machinists will be stupid enough to do it, frankly. Their union pension funds hold too much Boeing stock.

62 posted on 11/21/2013 9:30:08 AM PST by Billthedrill
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To: SeekAndFind

Come on down to the South( GA,SC,AL) as we have room and a lot of people that want to work. I worked at BAC in Everett for three and a half years. Best job I ever had, got laid off because I was low on the union list. Even my boss said he was sad to see my crew go as we did more in one shift than the other two did in a day. The long term people would just set around and watch the new bees get the job done. I told a lot of them that one day the golden goose would fly away. I sure hope it lands down here and not in China.


63 posted on 11/21/2013 9:30:23 AM PST by lostboy61 (Lock and Load and stand your ground!)
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To: SeekAndFind

Yep, that is the Revolutionary Peoples Republic of See-Attle that I remember!


64 posted on 11/21/2013 9:38:37 AM PST by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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To: SeekAndFind

Well, the is a statue of Lenin in Seattle so go figure.


65 posted on 11/21/2013 9:44:29 AM PST by hattend (Firearms and ammunition...the only growing industries under the Obama regime.)
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To: Robert Teesdale

The woman is too stupid to be an idiot.


66 posted on 11/21/2013 9:44:56 AM PST by jmacusa (I don't think so, but I doubt it.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Seize the factory? Ok big mouth, lead by example. March your brown ass into the CEO’s office and do it.


67 posted on 11/21/2013 9:46:01 AM PST by jmacusa (I don't think so, but I doubt it.)
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To: jmacusa
The woman is too stupid to be an idiot.

She's simply ahead of the planned timeline, carried away with her enthusiasm before she is supposed to communicate this kind of intent.


68 posted on 11/21/2013 9:47:30 AM PST by Robert Teesdale
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To: SeekAndFind

Boeing, get your a%* out of Seattle and move here to the sunny South. We’d love to have your good jobs and economy boost. Leave the union thugs on the left coast to rant and rail their socialist slogans!


69 posted on 11/21/2013 9:51:15 AM PST by 2nd Amendment (Proud member of the 48% . . giver not a taker)
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To: hattend
Well, the is a statue of Lenin in Seattle so go figure.

FREMONT, SEATTLE


70 posted on 11/21/2013 9:51:43 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind; metmom; F15Eagle; ExTexasRedhead
Communism always end with this.

Always.

Each, and every time.

--------------------------------------------------------------

"4 So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. 5 They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead[b] us, such as all the other nations have.”

6 But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. 7 And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.”

10 Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle[c] and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”

21 When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the Lord. 22 The Lord answered, “Listen to them and give them a king.”

1 Samuel 8: 4-22

71 posted on 11/21/2013 9:51:47 AM PST by SkyPilot
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Comment #72 Removed by Moderator

To: SkyPilot

Liberal Twilight Zone of Insanity is here, ya think?


73 posted on 11/21/2013 10:02:42 AM PST by ExTexasRedhead
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To: molson209

“The electricity bill would bankrupt them in one month.”

SEIZE THE POWER COMPANIES!!!


74 posted on 11/21/2013 10:04:42 AM PST by Darteaus94025 (Fascist President)
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To: SkyPilot

I think that top photo is (Hollywood) Cambodian Army executing Khmer Rouge, but it’s a nice thought anyway.


75 posted on 11/21/2013 10:06:15 AM PST by PLMerite (Shut the Beyotch Down! Burn, baby, burn!)
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To: Darteaus94025

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Washington

It appears much of the “juice” in Wash St already is govt owned.


76 posted on 11/21/2013 10:08:14 AM PST by nascarnation (Wish everyone you see a "Gay Kwanzaa")
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To: Dr. Sivana

No to Michigan, too blue, haven’t learned yet.
It’s too bad, they just tore down the (big) Ford, Wixom plant, just a field now.


77 posted on 11/21/2013 10:10:35 AM PST by polymuser
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To: polymuser
No to Michigan, too blue, haven’t learned yet.

They passed Right to Work. Illinois is the one that's still scrathing its head.
78 posted on 11/21/2013 10:22:58 AM PST by Dr. Sivana (There's no salvation in politics.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Sawant is no savant.


79 posted on 11/21/2013 10:57:44 AM PST by Moltke (Sapere aude!)
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To: GreyFriar
Workers of the World UNITE! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

80 posted on 11/21/2013 12:03:10 PM PST by zot
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