I attended a workshop on the nuclear ban treaty that the U.S. has not signed. In the presentation, we were given a list of companies that are involved in manufacturing nuclear weapons. Imagine my surprise when I found that Boeing is on that list. I decided to check the donor lists of our members of Congress since they vote on these treaties. And sure enough, they all take donations from Boeing.

Representative Derek Kilmer took $10,000 from Boeing, $9,000 from Lockheed Martin, $26,500 from Northrop Grumman and $10,000 from Raytheon and $17,000 from Honeywell, all manufacturers of nuclear weapons.

Senator Patty Murray took $39,750 from Boeing, and Senator Maria Cantwell took $86,596 from Boeing. If you don’t believe these numbers just go to opensecrects.org, and access their donor lists. That is public information.

My question is: Do they know that Boeing is in nuclear weapons production and if they don’t, wouldn’t it be the responsible and ethical thing to do to investigate the people who give you large sums of money? And if they do know, well there are no words for the irresponsibility of those actions.

So I called  their offices and asked. Perhaps they are unaware of the whole nuclear issue, in which case, they should give the money to an anti-nuclear group. Or, at least, refuse to take any more.

These were the replies:

Derek Kilmer’s office — spoke to aide who said that he had not spoken to Rep Kilmer about that but would pass my message along.

Patty Murray’s office — left  voicemail.

Maria Cantwell’s office — Same reply as Kilmer’s office.

I’m looking forward to any response that is not a boiler-plate letter.

TRISH WALAT
PORT TOWNSEND