Shot in the Dark

300 Million Hostages

No news here; the Sequester, like every “school layoff” in every city that isn’t Detroit, is basically the same as everyone’s old alcoholic significant other threatening to kill themselves; an abusive, co-dependent way of browbeating and bullying people into giving in.   The “cuts” – really a whiz-in-the-wind reduction of an increase – are designed to gull the gullible and intimidate the weak and dependent.

The FAA Controller furloughs were a great example; the furloughs will save a fraction of the FAA’s consulting budget, or travel budget, or any number of other expendables that don’t directly affect the agency’s mission.

But squeezing the flying public shows the peasants who’s boss.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Local community celebrations suffer from Obama Administration tax-hike hostage-taking: “Give us the money or the fly-boys get it.”

Note this quote: “Maj. Darrick Lee, spokesman for the Thunderbirds, said a typical season averages about $9.75 million and the Air Force needs to focus its resources now on its mission in Afghanistan.”

Seriously? We’re cutting back airshows all the sudden because we need a lousy $10 million to fight the war in Afghanistan? Dude, we spend that every hour over there and there’s no end in sight.

An entire season of Air Force goodwill (and recruitment advertising) that also directly boosts local economies costs about the same as two Obama vacations; a grant to redesign Southwest Canyon Road in Beaverton, Oregon; or the missing first payment on bankrupt car maker Fisker’s federal Green Energy subsidy loan.

I could understand cutting airshows if the federal government suddenly got Libertarian Fever and cut airshows IN ADDITION to these other boondoggles . . . but the administration shows no sign of fiscal prudence, only political punishment. Longer lines at airport security, laying off air traffic controllers, grounding military flying teams: these are directly aimed at making life miserable for ordinary taxpayers who haven’t demanded higher taxes quickly enough, so they must be punished for it.

Hostage-taking used to be a gangster tactic, now it’s Democrat standard operating procedure. That should tell us something.

Joe Doakes

Spare the rod, spoil the taxpayers.

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Mitch Berg

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9 responses to “300 Million Hostages”

  1. jpmn Avatar
    jpmn

    I am fine with cutting the military portion of air shows, flyovers at sporting events, drill team etc.

    I am also fine with cutting the FAA. Turning the operation over to local airports wherever possible.

  2. Seflores Avatar
    Seflores

    This is Chicago politics on a national scale. Your Ward didn’t support ‘damayor’ adequately enough? Well, maybe your streets don’t get plowed (I know you St Paulites might not think that’s unusual) or oops, we forgot to collect garbage on your block last week.
    Based on the “White House Correspondents Dinner Fashion Do’s & Dont’s” report I just saw on the leading national morning ‘news’ show, I don’t imagine we’ll have any reports speaking ‘truth to power’ as to why the FAA is using roughly the same air traffic control process as my dad’s Army Air Corp colleagues did in the Pacific.
    To add to your numbers, Mr Doakes, the ATC Process upgrade (to take advantage of 90’s era radar and avoidance software) is years behind schedule and way over budget. In fact I saw where the budget overage is exponentially more than what they are saving giving the controllers a day off every tenth work day.
    As seen elsewhere – “First they came for the corporate jet travellers and I said nothing because I didn’t have a corporate jet. Then they came for the business travellers and those wealthy enough to fly on vacation – ie: me.”

  3. Chuck Avatar
    Chuck

    Mitch, have you ever covered the USDA farmer scandal? In very short (of a very long story), there were a few cases of farm loan discrimination against Black farmers. Solution? Give the victims $50,000 of free money to make up for it. No problem. Should cost a few million. But it turned out that any non-white male can turn in a claim with no evidence of even being a farmer, let alone being discriminated against. The bill is now up to $4,200,000,000 (that is $4.2 Billion) and counting. The lawyers have profited to around $300,000,000.

    But hey, no bid deal. We’ll just raise other peoples taxes to pay for this fraud.

  4. Chuck Avatar
    Chuck

    Geesh, I just scrolled down to you next post. Soooooo never mind.

  5. bubbasan Avatar
    bubbasan

    You mean that those who endorse more goverment money are trying to maximize the pain to minimize budget cuts? Say it ain’t so, Joe!

    Really, this is why the GOP needs to come up with some simple, common sense proposals for cuts where nobody will notice that cuts were made–at least nobody that doesn’t work intimately in the area.

  6. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Americans don’t want less government; they just want government that costs less. Faced with an immediate backlash from flyers, Congress and the White House enacted legislation that fixed the problems in what by congressional standards was warp speed. Choosing a reduced federal service or a reduction in spending, the decision was immediate and unmistakable: a federal service was the winner.

    I looked at the coverage of the FAA furloughs closely for any sign of anyone declaring that this is the price we have to pay for reducing the deficit. As far as I can tell either no one said it, or no one said it loud enough for it to be recorded.

    If the FAA was hard to cut, think about Medicare and Medicaid, which are far more important to many more people than air traffic control. Indeed, the biggest lesson of the FAA sequester reversal is that changes in Medicare and Medicaid will be far more difficult that anyone is imagining.

  7. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    “Americans don’t want less government; they just want government that costs less.” No, Emery, that’s not correct. Americans DO want less government. And if we had less of it, the total bill would go down, a win-win.

    Americans didn’t clamor for Green Energy subsidies or Big Bank Bailouts. Nobody clamored for more wars in Africa, $5 curly light bulbs, Obamacare, light rail, or shoe-removal-at-check-in. We got stuck with those things. We don’t want them and don’t want to pay for them but can’t get rid of them.

    The things we do want – a border fence along Mexico, immigration moratorium and federal spending freeze – we are willing to pay for but we can’t get them.

    Never forget that the sequester was the DEMOCRATS idea. They appointed John Kerry’s Super Friends Super Committee to conjure up a magic bullet to solve the crisis. Instead, these deep thinkers puked up the idiotic 5-percent-across-the-board solution that would have failed a freshman Management class. And OBAMA is implementing it precisely as Seflores describes it – an exercise in Chicago politics.

    Don’t lay this off on the people wanting their cake so they can eat it, too. This incident – and every other “Washington Monument” or “lay-off-cops” incident – are ordinary Democrat power politics all the way.

  8. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    This says a great deal about the budget debate that’s ahead.

    1. Federal programs that have the potential to inconvenience large groups — like air traffic control– are going to be very difficult to cut no matter what.

    2. As happened with the sequester, spending reductions for these programs put in place with great fanfare and lots of political chest-bumping are very likely to be reversed within a relatively short period. It might take longer than a week, but the reversals should be expected and built in to projections.

    3. Federal employees should be worried. The administrative and operating expenses of most departments and agencies will not be a great concern to voters because it’s hard to see how most of that affects them directly.

    4. The National Park Service may well be the next reversal if furloughs cause the parks to close one day a week or month as has been rumored.

    5. The IRS may also be a candidate for a reversal if it becomes obvious that refunds are seriously delayed.

  9. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    1 – Cut Air Traffic Control? ELIMINATE! Privatize! They are self-sufficient IF effing government would just get the heck out of the way and stop pilfering their account. They are not even paid for by taxpayers, but airlines and passanger fees!
    2 – All except WH tours for kids.
    3 – They freaking better! Alas, as we have seen in the past, federal employees will be exempt from the hurt and be payed in arrears – a protected overclass indeed.
    4 – Yeah, that worked out well for you favourite tax and spend gobernor last year.
    5 – Hmm, money in the bank account vs being paid out – I bet audits will continue unabated while refunds will be delayed as long as possible.

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