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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 same number of dollars could have been cut from specific programs in a way that would have had no noticeable impact on critical and important services. Instead, they chose to impact vital services in order to send a message to the public: "If you ask us to cut budgets, we'll do it in the most painful way possible." It's nothing more than an enormous "fuck you" to the American public.
It's interesting that the airlines are allowing customers to make changes to their itineraries at no charge to work around the problem. On the one hand this is good customer service, but on the other hand it would probably help the airlines to some degree if they instead said "Flight's cancelled. Don't like it? Call your congressman." As long as the airlines continue to accommodate those inconvenienced, then those truly responsible for this mess don't get blamed.
If the government stopped trying to control air traffic, we wouldn't have these delays. Sure, some airplanes would crash, but other flights would go much faster. Let the free market rule!
the BIG issue is that NO ONE offered cuts, both sides offered "cuts from projected spending" in otherwords, both sides offered up more spending than the previous year.
I know know about the rest of you guys, but to me, if i spend 10 bucks today and only 12 bucks tomorrow when i thought i was going to spend 15, thats still an increase, not a cut! sadly the government, both republican or demorcratic, thinks otherwise/
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
It's along those lines, yeah, though I think the strategy is morphing a bit.
That term, "starve the beast", is associated with Grover Norquist's idea that if Republicans managed to hold a hard line on taxes, by pushing for tax cuts and demanding party discipline over refusing any tax rises, it would starve the government of money, and it would be forced to shrink, even if people didn't want to vote for program cuts.
He underestimated the government's ability to borrow, however, so what actually happened for quite some time was that taxes were cut while spending simultaneously rose. That backfired by actually increasing the popularity of many government programs for two decades or so. People got the programs and low taxes, which is what everyone wants! A number of GOP types are still trying to make that strategy work; the manufactured fights over the debt ceiling, and the sequester here, are an attempt to "starve the beast".
However not all GOPers think that's a good strategy anymore. The new twist over the past few years is trying to reduce confidence in government by deliberately running it badly. The idea is that people will vote for a smaller government if they think government doesn't work well, and the best way to make them think government doesn't work well is to make it not work well.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
We waste a ton of money on nonsensical programs that should (and would) be done by the private sector.
For example, look at the airline security theater, don't you think that its in American Airlines, United and Delta's best interest to provide enough security to remove the threat of hijackings but not need a full cavity search? Instead, we have the FAA providing asinine rules on what you can and can't take on board a plane, rather than delegating those decisions to the airlines. Because of the FAA restrictions, flying is pretty terrible, because of that fewer people are flying, because fewer people are flying airlines have to cut costs which makes flying even worse, which makes fewer people fly and so on. If airlines (or airports) could be in charge of their own security, we'd be safer (we'd be looking at actual security and not security theater) and flying would be a much more pleasant experience.
We've got a terribly bloated military focused on offense rather than defense. Because of this, we end up creating more enemies which makes us be less safe in the long run. We're spending billions of dollars on unneeded overseas military bases. Sure, it might make sense to have a base or two in a foreign country, especially in some of the "hotter" regions of the world, but do we really need over 10 bases in Japan? Do we really need bases in Spain, Italy, the UK, Bulgaria, Bahrain, Singapore, the UAE, and many, many, other countries? No.
We've got a messed up welfare system, a screwed up financial system, a mess with farm subsidies and just about everything the government touches turns into a bureaucratic hellhole.
No, we're not going to get rid of the national debt by cutting PBS, we're not going to save much money by closing the Washington Monument for tours. But there is a ton of waste, but its in the stuff that the politicians don't want to touch (welfare, the military, farm subsidies, financial sector, etc.) because the public is either ignorant about it or enjoys getting free money at the expense of everyone else.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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
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.
Well yes it does make you a hate non thinking loon. If the debt were so important, where the FUCK were you before we invaded Iraq? Or passed Medicare Schedule D, otherwise known as that massive giveaway to big pharma?
Why it is republicans are only concerned about the debt when democrats are in charge? When the GOP is in charge, you get massive bloat and spending.
SS and Medicare are self funding. The taxes earmarked for them pay for them. Yes, if you cut the program and raised taxes to cover the difference, revenue would increase without changing paychecks, but if you eliminate SS taxes when you eliminate SS program, then you'd end up worse off. SS and Medicare are self funding and not running debt/deficit. The problem is the general fund is used mostly for military and debt. The only "discretionary" item that makes a difference is the military. Close all overseas bases (sell them off, or mothball) and eliminate the standing military, and you'll have the budget almost balanced. Drop obamacare for single-payer, and you'll have a surplus. Keep taxes where they are until the surplus pays off the debt (100 years or so, unless we raise interest rates to 10% or more), and then drop taxes by 30% and you'll still have a surplus..
Learn to love Alaska
Security was done by the private sector, it was shoddy as hell and 9/11 was a direct result.
Wrong.
9/11 had nothing to do with airport security. It's this sort of thinking that perpetuates the TSA gong show.
9/11 succeeded for two reasons -
1) Prior to 9/11, airline crews were trained to cooperate with hijackers - So the suicidal hijackers were able to easily take over the planes. Confiscating water bottles and groping grannies wouldn't have made a lick of difference here.
2) Intelligence failures. The intelligence services failed to cooperate and failed to detect and prevent the terrorist hijackings.
Neither had anything to do with nude-o-scopes and confiscating nail clippers.
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%.