Re: Birds
Boeing is kept afloat by the US Department of Defence, so yes they are funded by the taxpayer.
Regardless of past innovations, Boeing installed a more-or-less secret safety critical system that had no redundancy unless airlines paid extra for the redundancy which is essentially selling "safety as an optional extra", an utterly disgraceful approach but is exactly what Boeing did on this occasion, not to mention the concealment of the MCAS system which was done to increase sales of aircraft as pilots - according to Boeing - wouldn't then require expensive additional training/re-training on a new airframe.
Boeing have criminally trashed their hard-won safety reputation for the sake of a few dollars and a few sales. The victims of both air crashes have paid the price. MCAS should be ripped out of all 737 MAX8 aircraft as I'm not sure I would ever want to fly on a 737 MAX8 with a patched MCAS - that's too little, far too late.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
