FAA Funds Sham Study to Justify Massive Spending of Taxpayer Money

Results are in from a study paid for by the FAA regarding the "costs" to passengers of flight delays.

"Airline flight delays cost passengers more than inconvenience -- $16.7 billion more -- according to a study delivered to the Federal Aviation Administration on Monday.

The FAA-funded study looks at the cost to passengers for flight delays in 2007, the latest year for which complete data was available when researchers began working on the study.

Unlike past studies of the impact of flight delays, researchers looked more broadly at the costs associated with flight delays, including passengers' lost time waiting for flights and then scrambling to make other arrangements when flights are canceled.

The cost to airlines for delays was $8.3 billion, mostly for crew, fuel and maintenance. Overall, the cost was $33 billion, including to other parts of the economy. But one finding of the study is that more than half the cost associated with flight delays is borne by passengers."

Last year, 85,000 flights were delayed and 63,000 canceled. Mark Hansen, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study, said he believes 2007 is a more representative year "since we think that the weak economy isn't a permanent thing."

Flight delays have been with us just about as long as commercial flights have existed. So why, you might wonder, did anyone bother to quantify the "cost" and why was this ridiculous study commissioned in the first place?

Look no further than the last sentence of the article.

"There will always be flight delays due to mechanical problems or weather, but they can be significantly reduced by expanding the capacity of the nation's airports and air traffic control system. The FAA is in the midst of a program to modernize the air traffic control system, replacing World War II-era radar with satellite-based technology. The program is expected to cost government and industry about $40 billion." (emphasis added)

So, the FAA is looking for another $40 billion of taxpayer money to "modernize" their very own air traffic control system, which has worked perfectly fine for the last 7 decades.

In order to justify this expenditure, the FAA had to find a compliant professor to conclude a study pointing out the significant "costs" to taxpayers.

Next, sufficiently armed with the results from the study, the FAA can justify spending a massive amount of taxpayer money on a new air traffic control system that will in no way reduce the "costs" of air travel that were no doubt cited as a primary reason for the upgrade.

Anyone confused on how the US has ended up with trillions of public debt need look no further than this charade being pulled by the FAA, which is simply one small example of how taxpayer money is needlessly squandered.

Police Brutality Settlements in NYC Total Almost $1B???

An AP investigation has revealed that New York City has paid out close to $1 billion in settlements for claims made against its police officers over the past 10 years.

"The fiancee and friends of an unarmed man killed in a 50-bullet police shooting on his wedding day said they wanted justice. The legal system gave them money — more than $7 million.

The city did what it has done time and time again: pay.

Nearly $1 billion has been paid over the past decade to resolve claims against the nation's largest police department, according to an investigation by The Associated Press. Some smaller departments also shell out tens of millions a year in payouts, but New York's spending on police claims dwarfs that of any other U.S. city.

Taxpayers foot the bill — New York officials say the payments cost less than insurance would, and officers themselves don't usually bear personal responsibility.

The $964 million in payouts covers everything from brutality cases to patrol-car wrecks to stationhouse accidents, and it includes settlements and trial awards. Some police officers have been sued again and again — including one officer at least seven times on excessive force and brutality claims. Some law firms have made it their primary business to sue the city.

City lawyers call the payouts a hard-fought cost of policing a metropolis of 8.3 million people — a price officials work to minimize through officer training and discipline. And the city has prevailed in thousands of cases, including some deadly shootings."

The amount is simply astounding, and points to a completely unaccountable body alternately brutalizing residents and paying up to settle frivolous claims.

The real issue here is not just that governments waste untold amounts of taxpayer money because they are inefficient, lack competition and overpay for purchases of good and services.

The real issue is that the city's monopoly on police services means they have little to no meaningful incentive to improve their performance.

For example, what publicly-traded company would be able to stay in business following countless claims and settlements for acts of brutality perpetrated by its employees?

The answer is zero.

At an absolute minimum, the city of New York must reign in its police department, including having a vibrant internal affairs division that regularly removes the worst of its officers from the city's employ.

No Tax Hikes = Snake Oil Politics?!?

Memo to President Obama: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!

President Obama continues to flail away at Republicans, accusing them of "peddling snake oil", primarily due to their refusal to raise taxes on high-income Americans.

"...Obama accused Republicans on Monday of peddling "snake oil" in their campaigns to gain power in Congress on November 2 and urged Democrats to get motivated about the elections.

Obama appeared at two Democratic fund-raisers that raised $1 million at the seaside home of former NBA basketball star Alonzo Mourning. The crowd included such NBA luminaries as Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and former player Magic Johnson.

In a pair of speeches, Obama singled out the "Pledge to America," a list of priorities House Republicans say they will pursue if they win control of the House in the elections.

He said a Republican push for an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans would include $700 billion for wealthier citizens, money he said would be better spent helping to bolster the sagging U.S. economy.

Obama wants to limit the tax cuts to families making under $250,000 a year and a fierce partisan battle is being waged over their future. "They are peddling the same snake oil as they were peddling before," Obama said."

This type of rhetoric is not going to sway many American towards thinking that President Obama can "fix" the economy.

Instead of trying to get the federal government off of the backs of Americans, he is proposing to do just the opposite.

Unlike Obama's view, most rational people would agree that higher taxes do not bring prosperity. Unless your view of prosperity is the former workers paradises of the USSR, East Germany, etc., where tax rates were effectively 100%.

It's no wonder why the Democratic Party is headed for a historic beat-down in just a few weeks.

China Starts Spending Some of Their U.S. Cash

China has worked hard over the past few years to build-up a massive treasure chest of US securities, almost $846 billion at last count.

Now, it appears they are trying to spend some of it.

"China's top offshore oil producer CNOOC Ltd agreed to pay $1.1 billion for a stake in a U.S. shale oil and gas field, testing the market for the first time since its 2005 failed bid for Unocal.

Most of the outbound acquisitions by China's oil firms have been in risky areas such as Africa, which Western rivals have avoided, or in locations with aging assets.

Now they are also eying the United States, which was once deemed off limits to the Chinese due to protectionist sentiment."

China's prior attempt to purchase US oil and gas assets (specifically, the shares of Unocal) failed back in 2005, so it is not a given that their latest parlay will be approved by Congress.

Having these US-based assets owned by the Chinese should be no cause for concern to Americans, and should simply be viewed as an attempt by China to diversify their vast holdings of foreign currency.

Frankly, this is going to be a recurring them in the future, as holders of the US debt that is being issued with abundance attempt to swap that investment for real, tangible assets located in the US.

More Disingenous Calls by Rich for Higher Taxes

The Gates family is beyond wealthy. Bill Sr. was a well-known attorney in Seattle, while his son Bill Jr. founded Microsoft and continues to run it today.

They are both now actively campaigning for the state of Washington to institute a state-level income tax (Washington currently has no such tax).

"The state that produced America's richest man has never taken a cut of its residents' income. Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and his father would like to change that.

They are among the wealthy Washingtonians who have joined labor unions and other traditional Democratic allies to support a tax-the-rich ballot measure that is dividing the state's business leaders. Executives at Microsoft, Amazon.com and other technology companies have come out against it.

The initiative will test whether voters are willing to buck economic jitters and drain money from their rich neighbors at a time when national Democrats and Republicans have been waging an intense election-year battle over the merits of taxing the wealthy.

Washington's measure, known as Initiative 1098, would institute a new state tax on the top 1 percent of incomes to pay for education and health programs while trimming state property and business taxes. The campaign follows January's overwhelming decision by Oregon voters to increase taxes for corporations and wealthier households."

The support of the Gates' for this tax-the-rich proposal is probably critical for the ultimate passage of this measure.

By lending their support to this measure, they are trying to appear magnanimous and are also signaling to voters that even high-income people support the proposal.

However, although the younger Gates undoubtedly has a high income, his father is a retired attorney and most likely does not.

Would the Gates support this "soak-the-rich" measure if instead of implementing taxes on income it called for taxes on accumulated wealth?

Most likely they would not, as that would hit them hard in the pocketbook, while the current measure they ardently support won't actually reach one iota of their accumulated earnings.

It's time for the Gates family to stop pretending to be in favor of higher taxes. The reality is they do not support higher taxes when it actually means they'll have to pay the higher taxes themselves.

Like most Democrats and other so-called do-gooders, the Gates are firmly supportive of measures that put additional obligations on everyone other than themselves.

Guatemala Prisoners Infected With Syphilis - Tax Dollars at Work 1940's Style

Recently unearthed news reports indicate that in the 1940's the US government knowingly infected prisoners from Guatemala with syphilis, in order to study the effects of penicillin.

"U.S. officials have apologized for shockingly immoral experiments done on hundreds of Guatemalans in the 1940s, in an effort to test the effectiveness of penicillin in treating syphilis.

From 1946 to 1948, American public health doctors deliberately infected nearly 700 Guatemalan prison inmates, mental patients and soldiers, as part of the experiment. In some instances, syphilis-infected prostitutes were paid to sleep with prisoners, as part of the testing.

Susan Reverby is responsible for publicly exposing the details of this medical testing. A medical historian, professor at Wellesley College and author of Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy, Reverby was doing research about the Tuskegee study (in which black American men with syphilis were deliberately left untreated and observed for decades) when she came across the unpublished work of Dr. John C. Cutler, who led the experiment in Guatemala. Cutler also had an important role in the Tuskegee study. Reverby says, "As with Tuskegee, [the Guatemalan syphilis experiment's] lessons ended up being about morality."

These findings and admissions are astonishing on many levels.

These experiments don't put the actions of the US federal government very far from the perverse and sadistic doings of Nazi "Angel of Death" doctor Joseph Mengele, who was also rather well known for his "scientific" experiments on live human beings.

Does anyone else have the feeling that there are certain actions being taken by the federal government today (think War on Terror, Patriot Act, etc.) that we'll only find out about 50 years from now and for which the federal government will belatedly apologize for and promise that it will never do that exact same thing ever again.

The amazing thing about the federal government is that it can take taxpayer money and be involved in scandal after scandal in year after year, and yet very few of us ever gives much if any thought to reigning in its influence as a consequence.

What private company would be able to survive a scandal similar to this one in its mendacity and evilness, even 60 years after the original act was perpetrated? Me thinks none.

One last thing is that something tells me that the entire work history of that creep (Dr. Cutler) who had his hands in at least two scandals needs to be fully studied in order to find any other "experiments" he might have undertaken on behalf of the federal government.

President Demonstrates an Open Mind on Public Schools

President Obama today acknowledged the fact that more money being spent on public schools won't necessarily produce better results.

This is a truism that few proponents of public education are willing to acknowledge.

If spending more and more money on education always generated better results, then the test scores of kids in the Washington DC public school system (which has some of the highest per capita education spending in the nation) would far exceed those of, say, your average home-schooled child. This is obviously not the case.

Also surprisingly, some of the President's other comments on the matter revealed an open-mind about changing some of the prevailing standards of public schools.

"Asked in an interview if he supported a year-round school year, Obama said: "The idea of a longer school year, I think, makes sense." He did not specify how long that school year should be and said that U.S. students attend classes, on average, about a month less than children in most other advance countries.

He said more resources must be matched with reforms, including the removal of teachers who, once identified as underperforming and given the chance and the training to improve, are still not serving students well."

All in all, making changes along the lines of the President's suggestions would allow taxes that are used for education to be spent more efficiently and would more than likely produce far superior educational results, which would be a great outcome for taxpayers and parents alike.