FAA On Travel Delays: Get Used To It 720
coondoggie writes "The term sequestration has certainly become a four-letter word for many across the country — and now you can count business and regular traveling public among those hating its impact. The Federal Aviation Administration today issued a blunt statement on the impact of sequestration on the nation's air traffic control system, which this week begain furloughing about 10% of air traffic controllers for two days or so per month. It reads as follows: 'As a result of employee furloughs due to sequestration, the FAA is implementing traffic management initiatives at airports and facilities around the country. Travelers can expect to see a wide range of delays that will change throughout the day depending on staffing and weather-related issues. ... Yesterday more than 1,200 delays in the system were attributable to staffing reductions resulting from the furlough.'"
U.S. Democrats and Republicans spent the day using the FAA's statement as political fodder rather than working on resolving sequestration.
Damned if they do, damned if they don't... (Score:5, Interesting)
Easy Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
End the TSA. Used the money saved to hire back air traffic controllers to 120% of the original volume.
Fewer jerks gate-raping us, more well-rested air traffic controllers making sure we don't collide in mid-air.
Seems like a win-win to me.
Re:Two separate fights (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Two separate fights (Score:4, Interesting)
If there is a pinch in the economy and they're forced to sell services below cost, they're going to sell the most desirable services they can
That's exactly what the US Postal Service tried to do, run itself like a business by shutting down underused post offices and stopping Saturday delivery. Same with Amtrak, which wanted to cut unprofitable routes and focus on just the high-use, profitable Eastern Seaboard routes. In both cases, politicians wouldn't let them do it because someone's pork barrel was at risk.
The unfortunate moral of the story is that government agencies can't run themselves like businesses because their bosses - the elected politicians - will sabotage those efforts any time it is in their political interests to do so. You can't run an organization like a for-profit corporation and a non-profit public service at the same time. The two missions are fundamentally at odds.
(In an interesting bit of irony, this was the DoJ's rationale in pursuing the breakup of Ma Bell back in the day - you shouldn't have regulated interests like like local phone service [i.e. an entitlement] being subsidized by unregulated services like long distance [i.e. a profit venture]. Read The Deal of the Century [amazon.com] for the full story, it's fascinating.)
Unless the government is willing to declare certain parts of itself off-limits to Congressional mandates and able to operate themselves like a for-profit corporation, it should abandon any ideas about judging them that way. Government at its heart is about providing services that need to be collectively funded because they simply can't be profitable, but are in the common good. I hate to sound like a Republican here but it makes sense that the parts that need to operate like a business should be cut loose to make a profit, and the rest should just be declared entitlements and treated as such.
Re:Sequestration is a gimmick (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, yet another idiot who believes in false equivalence. While neither party is perfect, you have one party that refuses compromise, wants to legislate what I do in my bedroom, wants to enforce Christian beliefs, and wants to take away protections we've fought for over the last century while enacting monetary policy that will make the rich richer and shrink the middle class.
The other party has a few boneheaded ideas and a tendency to put money into good ideas without adequate execution, I'll admit. But they don't want to regulate my private life, they honestly want to help people, they're willing to discuss their differences rather than stick to them like religious tenets, and they actually understand science and economics.
Yup, pretty easy choice there. Until something better comes along, I'll go with them.
Re:Sequestration is a gimmick (Score:5, Interesting)
The dems only wanted to raise taxes on the rich
The problem is raise is the wrong word here. The correct word to use is RESTORE taxes on the rich.
I'm a small business owner. By the time I pay my federal taxes (income and payroll, which is really all income) I'm paying 43.6% of every additional dollar I own to the federal government.
How can I lower my tax burden?
Well, I just need to become FILTHY rich. The problem is that I actually work for my income. If I already had enough money that I just needed to "invest" for my income, I could knock my federal tax rate down to 15%. Even less with some nice accounting tricks.
I think it is perfectly fair that people who "invest" to get their income pay the same tax rate as those of us who actually WORK for our income.
Republicans, however, are not interested in this concept. They are a party whose #1 priority is helping the rich get richer. The Republican position isn't "low taxes", the Republican position is "High taxes for the middle class, low taxes for the rich." And they have been successful at advancing that position - the Bush tax cuts heavily favored the wealthy. Now that the Republicans already managed to get the rich to pay lower taxes than the rest of us, they are working very hard to make sure the rich keep that advantage, at the expense of everything else.
That's not to say Democrats don't have their own problems, but until Republicans agree that the rich should pay the same taxes as people who work, it is silly for me to support Republicans.
And if a bunch of generally wealthy people have to spend a lot more time sitting around airports to get rich people to pay their fair share, I'm good with that.