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Efforts to avert a shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration failed Friday amid a disagreement over a $16.5 million cut in subsidies to 13 rural communities, ensuring that nearly 4,000 people will be temporarily out of work and federal airline ticket taxes will be suspended.
Lawmakers were unable to resolve a partisan dispute over an extension of the agency’s operating authority, which expired at midnight Friday.
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So, its about “rural air subsidies” and stopping the funding for same.
I’m for it. Free market solution that fits the subject matter.
If you want to live in the hinterlands, be prepared to take the bus.
Makes sense to me—and I’m a lib.
The rich are planning to get a whole lot richer from the interest rate rise which will come from the coming US default.
Instead of getting crap interest on their money, (they’ve already got the lowest taxes possible and have been piling up trillions in bank accounts around the world,) they’ll be able to charge us, the American taxpayer, among the first of the worst, top interest rates.
Its going to be a great time to be rich. (I only have no debts. I’m not rich by any stretch of the imagination. It’ll suck to be me, but not as bad as it will suck to be in the 90% of people who’s retirement will go away to service the debt.)
They are shutting down their major source of aggravation, (the various governments and their costly programs are coming to an end,) and will be able to charge us interest rates that make the corner loan shark seem like an altruist.
And you can forget about hyperinflation coming to your rescue. Its not in their interest (pardon the pun) to have inflation eating at their holdings.
Hyperinflation is now used as punishment for the people who are outside of the club and get uppity. (Zimbabwean dollar anyone? Mugabe needed to be taught a lesson. [And all the poor people who died and/or saw their dreams go up the chimney were, uh, poor and weren’t in the club either/i>. {They were collateral damage.}])
It will start with defaults in Greece, then Ireland, Iceland, Spain, Portugal, the US, Japan, all of whom will owe ever-increasing amounts. (the miracle of compound interest is that you can double your debt rapidly.)
We are definitely living in interesting times.
The rich, the true owners of this world, are going to go through the most fun they’ll have for about a century.
Bobbo, your middle class pseudo-elitism is about to get the shock of its life.
Peapod—when the toilet flushes, we all go down. You may be higher in the stream, but its all closer to the stink.
Elite? I don’t see it from what I’ve posted, but then I do live in a different intellectural univerise than you do. Maybe it looks that way through your gravitational lens?
I’d love to know what you are actually thinking about, but I fear words will fail us in the cultural gulf that separates us.
What do you mean?
@msbpodcast Government is too damn large. Subsidies, refunds, loopholes must go first – there is no Constitutional basis for Social Engineering by other people money. Do you know amount of $ per passenger we spend to support those airports? – 3600$ per passenger… If any program is too expensive to keep it when borrowing 40% of the budget, this one is quite high on the list.
The free market is the last refuge of somebody who’s as uncaring as he is short sighted.
There is no place for anyone is your free market, not even you, you idiot.
The free market is ruled by people just like you, merciless accountants and humorless lawyers who will not sacrifice a thing for you or anyone else.
Government is supposed to make up for what the free market can’t deliver.
But now short sighted idiots like you are getting rid of government for the sake of “reducing taxes”.
You’ll just end up paying up far more in interest to people who in turn owe you nothing.
Thank [insert name of deity here] that I’m not stuck in this hell hole. I’m not a citizen of Gitmo nation.
I’ve actually got a homeland that cares for its people, its sick and its elderly, like a homeland should.
Peapod–so you’re saying the sick and the elderly need tax subsidized rural airport services?
Please connect those dots for me.
Read this well before it was on this blog.
Get over yourself.
doesn’t effect me in the least.
Please Jesus, have Obama tell the nation that he’s having Bohner and the rookie Teabaggers arrested for treason.
These people are not paid by the government but from a trust fund fed by a general travel levy. They are basically airport employees who have their incomes cut because of the government’s inability to administer the levy. Am I right?
Nows a good time to die. Me and Bobbo completely and totally agree on something. Hell has officially frozen over.
#12 really? Who said I was atheist?
#15–Derek==good boy. You are just being pragmatically libertarian. Existentially Anti-Theist may come in time, but only with some effort on your part.
Nihilism to be rejected.
what else is there but this shabby existence?
#7 That is what they said they were doing in the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba. I wish you would move to one of the two still going because you are messing up the only hope most of us have for a decent life.
The problem is still as Margret Thatcher stated it; Sooner or late you run out of other people’s money. This happens sooner because governments are inherently corrupt with the people in charge making sure they are first among _equals_ and they police themselves.
They also tell everyone what to do even though the people in charge got their job by political maneuvering and make a total mess of things. Things just sort run down like a house or car without proper maintenance.
Used to be when the rich screwed the poor eventually it would come back around and hurt the rich. It’s different now, when the rich screw the poor the rich then make their money overseas and could give a rats ass about the USA. The rules of the game have changed and the deck is stacked.
The proposal to cut rural airport subsidies was part of our great Oklahoma Senator Coburn’s recent budget cutting plan. He wants to get rid of all small airports, eliminate wind and solar energy in favor of our Oklahoma natural gas industry, and wants to eliminate federal highway funding. We will be driving on dirt roads again outside the major cities, since no one lives out here and drives between the major cities, evidently. I suppose that’s OK with you, bobbo?
Pedro,
At first everyone was happy because they though tickets would get cheaper because they’d tax free but then the airlines decided to take the difference.
And I’ll bet you a shiny buffalo nickel they won’t keep that rate when the taxes get added back on. They’ll just tack the tax back on top of it.
Kinda like the “gas surcharge”. When the price of gas dropped, the extra charge didn’t go away.
Or, they could be hedging their bets that the government will force them to repay that tax later. Would that be legal — a retro-tax?
Oh, and I suppose eliminating funding for rural airports is OK with our other Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who recently landed his plane at a rural airport in Texas on a runway that was CLOSED for maintenance, sending workers scrambling for cover. That airport should not have been there in the first place I guess.
# 7, msbpodcast “I’m not a citizen of Gitmo nation.”
Where are you from then? What is your ‘homeland’?
I’ve read quite a few of your posts and have always assumed you were from the US. Or at least that’s the impression I had (for some reason I was thinking you were from New York).
Just want to understand where you are coming from, that’s all. You argue strongly on issues affecting the US and then turn on your heel and distance yourself from any interest in that country – it’s a bit confusing.
#21–ggore==I am very much for a balanced budget. I would not deficit spend for unused airports or to pave roads to no where. Of the three, alternative non-carbon energy sources should be figured out with long range stated goals. You act like States and Localities are unable to fund local needs at all and outside of the energy/pollution that affects us all, unused/rural areas don’t have a high priority for Federal funds. I fly into unattended air strips and I drive on unpaved roads. Whats the issue?
Bobbo, I saw Derek’s response to finding something you guys agreed on and my curiosity got the better of me so I went and read your post.
I have to agree. Hell has frozen over. I agree as well.
Its great to keep blaming the rich. But remember a lot of Americans do not pay taxes or very little little. I think some are very mistaken to think that their is enough wealthier Americans to make that up. Why is it that middle class and poor would rather hate weathier people then try and obtain that wealth themselves?
#28, Laziness, low-self esteem, jealousy. Take your pick.
It’s easier to complain about being owed a living than actually going out and doing something about it.
Granted, there are those who are truly indigent, but they are few and far between from those who just don’t want to work to better themselves.
# 21 ggore said, “I suppose that’s OK with you, bobbo?”
Well, I don’t speak for Bobbo (thank gawd) but it’s okay with me. The US government should only involved with interstate routes. If there is enough
traffic between Podunk and Bumfuck, then the state ought to pay for paving the road. There’s no reason the folks in California should be building a road in Maine unless it supports interstate commerce.
Same to your rural airports. The Feds should only be involved when it reaches a certain traffic level or when it begins to cater to cargo or passenger airlines. I’ve flown in and out of lots of rural airports. Never a problem. Nor a TSA agent. Sometimes the FBO will handle some minimum tower duties but it isn’t uncommon to click your radio twice to turn on the runway lights, either.
If Inhofe landed his lane on a closed runway, then I suspect either the runway was not appropriately marked as closed or Inhofe doesn’t bother to read his NOTAMs. Do we need Federal support of the airport because Inhofe is an idiot?
The point is, the Feds don’t need to be involved in every little thing in your life. Take some responsibility!
I think this is the bigger stumbling block (from the full article):
#31, I’m not quite sure why the government even has a say in how workers choose to form a union. Freedom of Association.
#32 LL,
The government has formulated rules to create an orderly society. As a society, we generally abhor chaos and anarchy. While you may wonder why, that is because you must have slept through that portion of Civics class. “We the people, … ” doesn’t mean “I, the libertarian, …”.
As for “Freedom of Association”, no one is forced to join a union. You may be forced to pay an equivalent amount in dues as all employees receive the same benefits whether they use those benefits or not.
#33, As for “Freedom of Association”, no one is forced to join a union.
You crack me.
No, you don’t have to join the union but we are going to take your money anyway. And you can’t work if we go on strike or we’ll torch your car. And get your kid beat up at school and called names like scablet. And get your wife fired from her secretarial job.
But you don’t have to join to the union.
And because of that, we’ll make sure you can’t negotiate for higher wages than the rest of us no matter how much better you can do the job. And if you try to show us up, well, just beware of your car getting torched, your kid getting beat up, and your wife getting fired.
doesn’t mean “I, the libertarian, …”.
Are you sure you want to go down this path?
Sigh. ok.
So, tell us MF, why would you save your wife in favor of watching a bunch of kids burn to death? You’ve already said you would, now tell us why.
#35,
Pedro,
He knows deep in his heart that his happiness trumps the happiness of those kids’ parents.
He just doesn’t want to admit it in public.
As soon as he does, he turns from altruist to human — the needs of the few or the one outweigh the needs of the many.