Local media violins were out in full force recently when brave Sir William Gates travelled to D.C. to slay the evil Congressdragons (while damsel Patty Murray slumbered at his shoulder). The homeboys faithfully relayed Microsoft's assertions that it's not positioning itself for a software browser monopoly with Explorer--ignoring Netscape's rapidly dwindling market share, as well as the experience of anyone with Windows (which most PCs are shipped with) who's tried to actually load Netscape.

But that puckerbutt treatment pales next to the willful negligence shown in reporting our other local corporate megapredator: Boeing. Sure, we hear all about it whenever there's whisper of an order for planes, or a plane crash anywhere on Earth. Boeing's production delays and safety concerns are covered, balanced with the inevitable weekly Times/P-I puff pieces on upper management. This is exactly sort of coverage Seattleites got about its hometown company 25 years ago.

Yet Boeing is a vastly different beast than it was 25 years ago--or even five years ago. And it is those big picture changes that we're not hearing about. Boeing is a sacred cow: a respected corporate citizen, a huge source of local jobs and political power. It is also one of the more destructive citizens in the emerging global economy.

Boeing got lots of "negative" ink last week, both for a racial discrimination suit filed by 41 Puget Sound area employees (40 of them African-American), and for posting--gasp--quarterly losses, due mostly to short-term production delays. But even these stories generally missed the point.

Boeing's absorption of Rockwell and especially McDonnell Douglas has created not one, but two de facto monopolies. There was much ado last year about the domestic monopoly created in the commercial airline industry, especially when the European Union tried to block the merger using the same free trade rules that Boeing itself has pushed long and hard for.

But more worrisome, certainly for the taxpayer, is Boeing's dominance in military aircraft. Defense merger mania in the '90s--helped by an astonishing bit of federal largesse that pays merger costs between Pentagon contractors--has left only four major defense and space firms in the U.S., and only two gigantic ones, Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin pocketed over $1 billion from the feds for its merger costs; the Boeing windfall may exceed that.

No competition means higher prices. The duopoly of Boeing and Lockheed Martin is heavily intertwined, subcontracting to each other on high-priced pork like the B-2 Stealth Bomber (price: $1.1 billion each). Introduce monopoly to the land of $400 screwdrivers and $6,000 toilets and we've got the primary reason post-Cold War military spending continues to go up, even though the military itself is downsizing and social programs are gutted in the name of fiscal responsibility.

A Dept. of Defense audit last week turned up Boeing charging, and getting, $75.60 each for a small nose-wheel screw made by Boeing, that the Air Force previously was able to procure for 57 cents apiece. Even more amazingly, the audit laid no blame to Boeing for this ripoff, noting that the government should have negotiated a better price; apparently 13,663% markups are an unstoppable natural force.

With the mergers, Boeing is now either the world's largest arms dealer or #2 behind Lockheed (depending how you measure it)--profiting from weapons of mass destruction, selling to repressive governments that often attack their own people (Nigeria, Turkey, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Singapore, Mexico, Malaysia, Pakistan), and selling to opposing sides in several conflicts around the globe.

Boeing's enormous political clout--retaining over 70 of D.C.'s largest lobbying firms--has allowed it to nearly single-handedly shape to its own self-interest U.S. policies that tolerate and encourage human rights abuses in China and numerous other countries. As noted last week, Jim McDermott's current "Sub-Sahara Africa Trade Bill," like much of trade and defense policy advocated by McDermott and everyone else in the state's Congressional delegation, is a huge windfall for Boeing. Boeing also takes a more direct role, as in NATO expansion (the major purpose of which is to sell U.S. weapons to Eastern Europe). In Hungary's national referedum last fall on whether to join NATO, Boeing donated about U.S. $100,000 to the "yes" campaign, which won.

Boeing's interest in such countries isn't just in sales. As with many transnationals, Boeing relentlessly outsources its labor and suppliers-- busting unions, killing U.S. jobs, and contracting as much of its manufacturing as it can in countries with low wages, brutal anti-union regimes, and lax to non-existent environmental laws. Even in this country, Boeing's worker safety record is abysmal (e.g., its recent settlement of a lawsuit with chemically injured workers in Renton). Its environmental record, littered with Superfund toxic waste sites, is equally horrid.

The raucous 1995 machinists' strike was fought largely over outsourcing and job security; within the U.S., Boeing's strategy has been to move jobs away from higher-wage locales (like Puget Sound) and south to non-union Sunbelt states or beyond. The long-awaited "restructuring" plan subsequent to the Boeing-McDonnell Douglas merger will be announced in a few weeks--the "merger costs" taxpayers will shell out $1 billion for. 30,000 lost their jobs after Lockheed and Martin-Marietta merged in 1995; meanwhile, executives got $31 million in publicly funded bonuses. The first 8,000 layoffs were announced last week; Seattle media chortled, because few of the layoffs were here. It doesn't matter; Boeing has repeatedly stated its intent to become less "dependent" on this area.

Boeing is the ultimate corporate welfare queen. Virtually all of its commercial R&D costs, and many of its sales (via mechanisms like credits through the Import-Export Bank), are funded by taxpayers. All of the military business is, too, of course. The amount of tax money spent per job created--even in Seattle--is amazingly high. That money goes off our dinner tables and into executive salaries and shareholder pockets. (Isn't it time we ended this cycle of welfare dependency?)

Boeing, in turn, pays astonishingly few taxes itself. In 1995, Boeing not only avoided paying any federal taxes at all, but received a $33 million rebate from the U.S. Treasury. Locally, Boeing's purchase of Seattle's political process is well-illustrated by its ability to actually change Seattle's city limits, so that key manufacturing plants are in Tukwila, outside the city's property tax base; and introduction in Olympia this year of a bill to exempt Boeing's parking lots from property taxes.

Boeing's "boom and bust" reliance on government contracts has held our region's economy hostage for decades. Times are good--now. The boom is doomed: Many of Boeing's union contracts expire next year, amidst extensive in-plant streamlining. Expect demands for worker concessions, with talk of productivity, global competitiveness, blah blah blah. As Boeing has already discovered, Chinese peasants, under the supervision of the Red Army, work hard for cheaper.

Boeing is no longer a li'l ol' hometown company made good. It's a huge transnational that exemplifies many of the worst anti-human tendencies of a global economy whose only recognized value is stockholder value. Surely Seattleites would prefer a local economy that's both more stable and more socially responsible. But it's hard to know where to start, when local media and politicians dare not even name the problems.