“About a decade ago, the FAA developed a plan to address the understaffing at N90 (and perhaps regain some level of management control). The idea was to shift responsibility for approaches and departures for the five New Jersey airports to a well-staffed facility in Philadelphia. This would ease the extent of the controller shortage at N90, by reducing the air traffic they manage by about one-third.
The controllers’ union branch at N90 declared war on the plan, backed by Schumer and his New York congressional allies. So it sat on the shelf for years—until a new FAA Administrator, Mike Whittaker, took office last year. Additional discussions with airlines and the national controllers’ union leadership led to agreement (at last) on this sensible reform, set to take effect on July 28, 2024. On July 17, 17 controllers who’d been slated to transfer to Philadelphia refused to relocate. But 14 others volunteered, and another 10 agreed to a temporary relocation to assist in training the Philly controllers. The airlines (and I) breathed a sigh of relief. This long-standing problem was on the way to being solved, though it would take a few years to get Philly fully up to speed.
But—wouldn’t you know it—on August 2, Schumer, along with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.) and five House members from New York, sent the FAA a letter demanding the plan be rescinded. Airlines serving the three main N.Y./N.J. airports support the plan, knowing that it will take a year or two before the transition is completed and FAA flight restrictions can be lifted. A senior airline executive told Politico, “Doing nothing to fix the most chronically understaffed and also busiest airspace in the system was not an option. Long-term, this is the most effective solution.”
Most Americans are unaware that this kind of political meddling is rare in most developed countries. Since 1987, more than 60 countries have depoliticized their air traffic control systems. Instead of being part of a government transportation agency funded by the legislative body, these systems have been converted into self-supporting public utilities. They charge airlines and business jets for their services and can issue revenue bonds to finance facility replacements or expansions. (In contrast, the FAA depends solely on whatever Congress appropriates each year and is not allowed to issue bonds.)
Freeing U.S. airspace from political micromanagement has been proposed many times over the past 50 years but has never come close to happening. The latest effort (between 2016 and 2018) got an air traffic corporation bill through the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, but it went no further. The large coalition (airlines, controllers’ unions, pilots’ unions, and others) that got us that far no longer exists. But someday, our anachronistic system of managing air traffic will be depoliticized as a self-supporting air traffic utility. Perhaps then it can build its way back to being the world’s best, instead of just the world’s largest, air traffic management system.”
“The concept of nutritional and ingredient labeling is even more complex in the alcohol space since the TTB uses a pre-approval system for alcohol labeling, meaning that alcohol producers have to submit their proposed labels to the agency for approval before the product ever hits the market. No approval, no market access. This is in marked contrast to most food labeling, which the Food and Drug Administration enforces after a product goes to market.”
“It seems clear that neither Trump nor Vance is interested in a rational conversation. “With this rhetoric,” Bettina Makalintal noted on Eater last week, “the Republican party is picking from the most predictable xenophobic playbook and invoking time-worn fear mongering.” The idea that “immigrants ‘eat pets,'” she wrote, “is meant to signify their backwardness, danger, and inferiority, ” which “then justifies the Republican party’s efforts to curtail immigration.”
For politicians “perpetuating this false narrative,” Makalintal observed, “the truth has taken a back seat to the intended message: that immigrants are not ‘like us’ and therefore pose a threat to hard-won American lives.” Trump and Vance, she said, are implicitly drawing a contrast between “white ‘Americans’ with household pets like Fluffy and Fido as members of the family” and dark-skinned immigrants who are “trouncing on that which is held dear.”
Implicit racism aside, Vance is proving to be just as impervious to reality as the man he once condemned as a “total fraud” who was shockingly xenophobic, “reprehensible,” “a moral disaster,” and even possibly “America’s Hitler.””
…
“All of this is reminiscent of Trump’s attitude toward claims of fraud during the 2020 presidential election, which he was eager to accept no matter how outlandish and unsubstantiated they were. During the notorious telephone conversation in which he pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes necessary to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in that state, for example, Trump mentioned a rumor that election officials had “supposedly shredded…3,000 pounds of ballots.” That report, he conceded, “may or may not be true.” Yet within a few sentences, Trump had persuaded himself that the allegations were reliable enough to establish “a very sad situation” crying out for correction.
Where does Vance stand on Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen through systematic fraud? He recently argued that Trump had raised concerns that were valid and troubling enough to justify “a big debate” about whether electoral votes for Biden from battleground states should have been officially recognized, although “that doesn’t necessarily mean the results would have been any different.” Alluding to “the problems that existed in 2020,” Vance said that if he had been vice president at the time, “I would’ve told the states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should’ve fought over it from there.”
Just as he refuses to definitively say whether he believes Hatians actually have been eating people’s cats and dogs in Springfield, Vance has declined to explicitly endorse or reject Trump’s stolen-election fantasy. In both cases, he seems to think the fact that someone made a wild allegation is enough to justify “a big debate” about whether it might be true, even when there is no evidence to support it.
You can either live in the real world or be Donald Trump’s running mate. Vance has made his choice.”