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Comment by bitminer | Hacker News Reader

What concerns me is the evidence of regulatory capture. Boeing was telling the FAA what the approval schedule was going to be. And the FAA sucked it up. Instead of saying "our review capacity is x pages per day. You will receive our reviews on such-and-such a date."

(And yes I am oversimplifying.)

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Boeing has spent more money lobbying the US federal government over the last 20 years than any other company. Last year they had the government kill Bombardier's attempt to break the Airbus/Boeing duopoly. Boeing also prevented the US military from buying an Airbus tanker a few years back. Boeing has definitely captured the US government.

> Boeing has spent more money lobbying the US federal government over the last 20 years than any other company.

This is simply false. Boeing has spent a lot, but less than General Electric, or the National Association of Realtors, or many (many!) healthcare and pharmaceutical companies.

Source: https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s

While your source seems to suggest that my statement is false, a closer looks shows that the only corporation (I.e. not an industry special interest group like the national association of realtors) that spent more money than Boeing was General Electric. So I would say your statement is even more misleading than mine. General Electric has fallen off a cliff since 1998. I suppose my "20" years statement is false according to "OpenSecrets", but if you change my statement to "15" years, it is probably correct, since General Electric did most of their lobbying closer to 1998 than 2018.

> I would say your statement is even more misleading than mine.

Fair enough, I guess. I think of groups like Blue Cross/Blue Shield or the NAR as representing corporations, but I can see how you'd disagree on a strict reading. I didn't mean to mislead.

> General Electric has fallen off a cliff since 1998.

In 1998, GE spent $7.28m on lobbying. Nearly every year since then, they have spent more than that, generally staying north of $16m per year, with the exception of the last three years.

Your statement is true only for the last three years.

Same source: https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00000012... for GE, https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00000010... for Boeing.

I appreciate your fact-checking. I do not mean to mislead anyone.

What is the evidence for this claim? It certainly may be true, but I’d like to see evidence.

You are not clearly questioning me or the other responder.

Additional comment:

After regulatory capture, it is not clear to me that any subsystem reviews are valid.

MCAS is not the only subsystem revised (or introduced) for the MAX series.

All "FAA" so-called reviews need to be inspected for validity. (Quotes because Boeing not the FAA did the reviews). And recertification will take months.

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