Slashdot Mirror
FAA On Travel Delays: Get Used To It
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.
The idea was that if the cuts were applied equally to every program, deals could be made to eliminate some programs to prevent cuts to the truly vital ones (in a sense, forcing choices about what really is vital by acknowledging that there is a finite amount of money to spend). Unfortunately, the goal of neither side was a balanced budget. Rather, cuts were maneuvered to impact the most visible programs so that both sides had fresh mud to sling.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
That's actually not uncommon in systems with little buffer. If a highway is right near a critical point of congestion, 4% more traffic can result in 40% longer commutes.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
the admin who wont call a terrorist attack a terrorist attack simply because it goes against his political agenda?
You are likely referring to the Boston bombings; as I understood it, Obama didn't use the term "terrorist" specifically ON the day of the bombings, and has ever after. I'd say this is simply him doing his due-diligence in not jumping to conclusions, as at the time no one knew if the explosions weren't simply a gas line exploding. If anything I'd want more of politicians and news stations taking a deliberate and thorough approach to things, rather than going all reddit on us and pointing fingers and making sensationalist claims. Each to their own eh?
Hi. I'm a contractor working for the FAA.
ALL controllers are having their hours reduced by 10%. This comes out to 1 day per 2 week pay period, or the approximately two days per month in the summary. It's not 10% of controllers being affected, it's all controllers being affected by 10%.
And for those of you saying "Why didn't they cut other, less important budgets?"
Well, it doesn't work that way. Every account was cut 10% across the entire FAA. This is incredibly stupid, by the way, since the much of the FAA's labor is paid for via levies on airline tickets, and so it shouldn't be affected by these general fund shenanigans (as an aside, this is why we got furloughed two years ago, because Congress wouldn't renew the airline ticket levies for political reasons). But, hey, Congress... You get what you pay for.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
If you think the GOP is the only problem here, then you're also part of the problem.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
The dems only wanted to raise taxes on the rich, so by your acknowledgement it would not have touched you. The cutoff rate was $200,000 or $250,000 a year. I can't remember which. The part that a lot of people did not understand was that it was a marginal tax rate increase. That means that if you made $200,001 in a year, only $1 would be taxed at the hire rate given a $200,000 cutoff. People seemed to think that once you went into a higher tax bracket, ALL you income would be taxed at the high rate. What that all boils down to is that only the very rich would feel the tax increase.
On the other hand, it was the GOP that wanted to cut all tax rates but keep it "revenue neutral" by ending some deductions. The problem was that they could never specify what deductions they wanted to end. When economists tried to make head or tails out of it, they only way the GOP plan could work without blowing up the budget was if they eliminated deductions that would disproportionately affect the middle class. There simply weren't enough high end deductions that could be eliminated that would pay for the revenue that would be lost by the tax cuts. The end result is that while the GOP sounded like they wanted to lower taxes, the effective taxes for the middle class would actually go up.
i work for the DoD as a civilian. our theater command met its budget cut requirements, yet we are still about to go to four-day work weeks. and yeah, we take out my own trash and there is a bathroom cleaning schedule.
meanwhile, we have "certain" (code for "important") people flying their asses all around the theater (commercial flights) for three weeks straight, getting paid full TDY, etc... why use that expensive video teleconference suite when you can fly to hawaii, bank some per diem, and accumulate frequent flyer miles?
everything is for show. ever since the GSA vegas debacle, public spending has been curbed, but still runs rampant in private. i used to have pride in working for the government and armed forces, now i am demoralized, ashamed, and actively looking for non-civilian non-government jobs.
Yeah, that's pretty fucking rich. A little over 9 times the poverty level, and about 4 times the GDP per capita. It won't get you a mansion on a private island, but you won't be hurting for anything either.
But, what's worse is that the spending hasn't been on anything which benefited the average citizen, it's mostly on things that benefit the rich.
Bush did pass the drug benefit bill when he was running for re-election, which of course was also a big payout for the drug companies. While I was looking that up, I checked to see who sponsored the bill, and it was the Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who was implicated in a Turkish bribe by an FBI whistleblower who was subsequently fired. Hastert later retired and went on to earn $35k per month as a lobbyist for Turkey.
Words fail me.
What? Who mods up this shit?
2011 budget - $9.79 billion (http://www.dot.gov/sites/dot.dev/files/docs/faa_fy_2011_budget_estimate.pdf)
2013 budget - $9.70 billion (http://www.dot.gov/sites/dot.dev/files/docs/faa_%20fy_%202013_budget_estimate.pdf)
1% real reduction, or about a 5.5% reduction adjusting for inflation. And that's before the sequester.
2011-2012 flights - 738,143
2012-2013 flights - 743,569 (http://apps.bts.gov/xml/air_traffic/src/index.xml)
Traffic increased about 0.75%.