Is this a bad joke? - 'FAA to close 149 air traffic towers'

Bush and Obama alike were in favour of bailouts. Bush got that ball rolling before his second term was ended. Would he have continued to spend the way Obama has? Would Republican congress critters have been so dead set against him doing so? I must wonder. They didn't mind his irresponsible taxation and spending practices before, so why would they have worried later?

 

I think everyone including most normal republicans were tiring of Bush and his spending, unfortunately it should have started earlier. I think a large segment of the population rallied behind the war, and looked past the spending, than when the proverbial poop hit the fan everyone was shocked after having their head buried in the sand, they spoke out and when Obama was elected he felt the blow back. Welcome to politics.

 

Ah, so this is a case where government will step back and let people handle things themselves. This, of all things..

That's a refreshing way to look at it, though.

 

^ This...

Not to mention the fact that... and this is a bit important here I think... the left spewed so much bile and ridiculous psychotic ranting about the Bush administration... one tends to get locked up defending obscenities waged against the right.

The same is happening now on the left. As they are robbed of every promise they railed against the previous administration for, this theft of liberty is met with applause and apologists rationalizing EVERY action they revile in ideology because they just cannot stand the right... and enjoy watching them flail about impotently while liberty is crushed.

At least conservatives railed against bush for his spending like a drunken sailor. Obamabots just want the right to suffer, even at the compromise of their beliefs and integrity.

I dislike this administration. It concerns me greatly what is being done to liberty. I do not hurl epithets at Obama because he is still MY CIC. I will still take a bullet for him. I will not have him martyred for doing what he believes is best, however misguided, in the face of a congress that cannot perform their function.

Liberals sacrifice their principals on a blood alter, for spite.

We have some growing up to do.

 

However, it was the Secret Service that decided the tours were to end (this is not the President's decision) since their on duty members are being reduced by the furloughs, they do not believe they can provide adequate protection with the staff reductions. The same with the Control Towers. The sequestration law does not affect much of the budget, it is concentrated by the law to areas that account for about 14% of the total budget which is discretionary. This means that those areas are taking a 10% cut in funding, and the only way these agencies can meet that is by reducing payroll.

 

IT WASN'T A CUT... IT WAS A LACK OF INCREASE.

They could afford to protect him when he showed up... they can afford to protect him now. This is political grandstanding.

 

So many Righties who have thought "starving the beast" was the way to go until its THEIR rich man's puppy dog that goes unfed.

 

not even remotely in the ball park.

 

Yeah..LESS THAN 3% of the overspending cut caused this...

More of the Obama Adm.'s war on American taxpayers.

 

They cut the increase that had already been appropriated, and they required those cuts to be across the board on 14% of the budget. These are real cuts, despite what the liar's at Faux News claim. They were deliberately designed by both parties to be very painful and to slash very visible services in the hopes that they could force themselves to compromise., this was known by all parties involved at the time it was passed in 2011, it was a major topic of discussion on most of the Sunday Morning talk shows at the time, it was covered extensively by the main stream press (though I know that the Washington Times failed to mention it - I do read that rag regularly). It failed, the two parties are unable to find a compromise (of course the Republicans have refused to even discuss a Compromise, since they would rather see this nation fail than to compromise their so called principles - but that is typical of their radical reactionary world view). There is no Center Right left in the Republican party, it is now fully made up of ultra radical reactionary right wingers.

 

The numbers are there for all to see. So let's take a quick look.

The total congressional appropriations for the war in Iraq & Afghanistan is $ 2.2Trillion taking into account that ALL of that money was borrowed. (but didnt' show up in Bush's deficit's like they do in Obama's - yet another legal loophole GWB found that Obama rectified).

This amount does not include the additional costs to the VA, nor the repair, refurbish, replace bills for military equipment.


So there's a couple trillion on the debt and for roughly 250 billion a year in deficit that was not accounted for under bush.
So you can knock off another trillion. So that is 4.5 trillion in deficit.

Then, there is the stimulus package, of which 1/3 was tax breaks for everyone. Further tax breaks for small businesses also reduced govt revenues, thereby increasing the deficit and debt automatically. The plunge in employment took 18 months to turn around under Obama and it took another 4 years to recover the jobs lost in those first 18 months, which also had a huge impact on the deficit.

We could also factor in the historically unprecedented obstructionist strategy of the Republicans with a record number of filabusters that resulted in quashing a number of job creation and stimulus bills, not to mention damaging the credit of the country, thereby increasing interest payments (tea partiers are even worse at math and cost/benefit analysis).

And to top it all off, after all that angst over the past 5 years about the country going bankrupt because of the deficits and debts and the ridiculous "its not a revenue problem, its a spending problem, all that obstructionism and vitriol, and Mr. Boehner finally admits on national tv that the country doesn't have a debt problem, but will have if deficits aren't reduced, neglecting to mention that they have already been reduced by half a trillion and counting.

Unbelievable. That is the republican leadership essentially admitting they were playing pure politics with the welfare of the nation. And they think they are fit to govern?

 

Yes, the program was a continuing success, and naturally as the technology shifted, the program was adjusted.

No, why wouldn't I accept the fact that there was a tremendous increase in the debt? You get that when a country is in one of its worst economic declines in history. Seems most economist in the world agree that stimulus spending is the primary solution to halt decline and intitiate growth again. It also solves some big big infrastructure problems that one way or another are going to have to be made. The old pay me now or pay me more later scenerio.

What is your point here? As a scientist you should know that anecdotal evidence is not something to base any determination on.
In any large system there is waste and mistakes and fraud. It shouldn't be a surprise that our human institutions reflect our human nature.

As for research vs air traffic controllers, This is exactly what happened when Ol' Newt shut down the gov't. air traffic towers closed, air travel became a bigger pain, the national parks closed (in summer), etc. etc. If you think that there is some huge toteboard in the white house where Obama sits and prioritizes what gets cut in every department and moves money around from dept to dept to cover something else, you have the totally wrong impression of what the sequester is.

Of course, the president does not have the power to arbitrarily move department allocations from one department to the other. So I guess you should be screaming at congress to do their job, not the president.

I agree. The small % of people who leech off the government and do nothing are (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)bags. But its a small % of social program recipients. That is the big problem with the right's messaging. They are more than prepared to throw the baby out with the bath water, because they think the majority of welfare recipients are freeloaders. Facts merely get in the way.

 

But why would Republicans want to see the nation fail? They're not likely to benefit from that the way things are going.

 

IMHO, extreme partisanship steeped in ignorance of facts happened.

 

This is brought to you by Obama who hasn't had a budget since taking office. I am sure that the next time he wants to go to Florida to play with Tiger that things will go smoothly

 

None of the cuts in the sequester involve the free stuff so beloved by Obama voters.

 

They so hate this President and the Democrats and are so devoted to their ideological purity that they believe that anything but the nation going the way they want is a failure anyway.

 

I dunno, that sounds like Democrat propaganda.

 

Pretty disgusting what america has become. Cut funding for people who safely manuevuer airplanes, and then release illegal aliens from jail and blame it on budget constraints. If these two actions don't tell the taxpaying american constituents that their government has been hijacked then the american people deserve what they get.

- - - Updated - - -

Radical leftists taking this nation to socialism IS failure.

 

It is Democrat Propaganda. The Government is so strapped for cash they need to shut down 149 air traffic control towers but they have $200 million for aid to Jordan for the Syrian Refugees, $250 million to the Muslim Brotherhood controlling Egypt and $13.1 million for Libya, murderers of 4 Americas.

 

And did you hear about what the IRS just pulled?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kHUsZeuDlc

 

Indeed. When road-tripping to my mother-in-law's house, I easily pass 40 small airports without ATCs over the near 800 mile drive.

I actually think they have less accidents per 100 flights than major airports.

 

Let's go back earlier. The problems started when the racist Wilson was elected.

 

Most locals know which frequency to use and non-locals can ping the tower frequency. It is then merely a mic-click from finding who is in teh area.

 

Obama is the author of the sequester. It's his baby. Live with it.