Here are 4000 pink slips.
SEATTLE -- Boeing, the state's largest employer, expects to cut 4,000 jobs by June.
The company says the 4,000 jobs could come from anywhere in the company but most are expected to come from the Washington state workforce. Such deep losses have many wondering why Boeing was given billions of dollars in tax breaks with no guarantees on total job numbers. Governor Jay Inslee championed those tax breaks.
Well, he's a Democratic, so what can you expect? The state of Washington gave the company $8.7 billion in tax incentives; in exchange, the company's moving jobs out of the state. P.T. Barnum was right: there's one born every minute.
But Washington's a union state. South Carolina's a right-to-work state. You've got to cut costs if you're going to stay competitive in the international aerospace industry.
Meanwhile, there's not an aircraft in the sky that doesn't contain parts produced by Precision CastParts, which is based in southeast Portland and neighboring Milwaukie. Naturally, residents in southeast Portland are targeting the plants over "pollution concerns". The company is the second largest one based in Oregon (Nike's got the first-place lock).
Its parts, made from titanium, nickel, cobalt and steel alloys, are found in General Electric, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce jet engines, as well as in nuclear power plants, satellite launch vehicles and medical devices.
You can see why the neighbors are worried: toxins and cancers. Of course, the place with the most toxic air quality isn't located there:
The air in the most toxic hot spot in the city, located in the heart of downtown, is capable of causing an extra 86 cancers per million people.
But hey - protesters gotta protest.
