This is CNN:
FAA furlough reprieve: ‘No fair!’
Millions of travelers frustrated by airport delays may be relieved that Congress did an about-face this week, passing legislation to end the furloughs of FAA air traffic controllers.
But advocates for everyone else directly affected by the so-called sequester are miffed with the selective undoing of what were supposed to be across-the-board cuts.
“We’ve got to save the traveling public but I ask the question about 5,000 children in Texas that will lose Head Start or the millions of seniors or our military families that will lose the support because we’ve got the sequester,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas, said Friday.
Joseph Beaudoin, a former federal air traffic controller who now heads the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, was glad to see Congress reverse his former colleagues’ furloughs. But he is worried about all the other federal government workers who aren’t so lucky.
“Last month, Congress took action to ensure that furloughs could be avoided for TSA agents, meat inspectors and border patrol agents. However, hundreds of thousands of federal employees providing services across the United States still face furloughs,” Beaudoin said in a statement. “We’ve had enough of the reactionary legislative response. It is time for Washington to come together to agree to smart, sensible approaches to tackling the budget.”
The liberal activist group MoveOn.org was more scathing, contending the reversal was “solely to appeal to wealthy contributors who fly frequently.” It issued an online petition to “demand that any emergency legislation to eliminate airline delays caused by the sequester also restore cuts to Head Start, cancer clinics, housing assistance, food pantries, and unemployment insurance.”
Meanwhile, NDD United — a coalition of 3,200 groups focused on public health, medical research, education and other areas — sent a letter to Congress before the FAA reprieve was passed. “Damage control is not a sound fiscal policy. We urge you to reject any efforts to pick favorites and instead fix sequestration, once and for all,” the letter said.
The news media is supposed to inform and enlighten. This article does neither. What it does is misinform, but it is so carefully worded that you really can’t say it’s untrue.
If you didn’t know any better and just skimmed the article you would get the impression that Congress decided to restore the cuts to the FAA caused by the sequester. But this bill does not restore one red cent of spending.
See, what happened is this: Congress and the White House couldn’t agree on a budget. That triggered the Sequester. Contrary to popular belief (thanks to our press corpse) the Sequester is not some draconian plan to shove grandmothers off of cliffs. All it is is a default budget for the federal government.
This default budget reduces some federal spending by about 3 percent compared to last year. Because it only applies to certain parts of the budget, even after the Sequester the total federal budget for this year will be slightly higher than last year.
Even though the Sequester was originally a White House idea, for political reasons Obama wants to make the Sequester cuts as painful as possible, thus causing public pressure that will force the GOP to agree to tax increases and other stuff he wants but they oppose. That is why we heard dire warnings for months before the Sequester finally took effect on March 1st.
The Obama administration claims (based on their interpretation of the law) that their hands are tied and they have no choice but to furlough air traffic controllers, cutting their hours by 10%. What this bill does is give the FAA discretion as how the cuts are implemented so as to keep the ATC’s on the job. In other words, their hands will be untied.
If it was up to me I would have done nothing. Let Obama play his games. It’s been years since I’ve flown anyway (except for trips via the Free Mexican Air Force) But apparently some animals are more equal than others.
It should be noted that the GOP previously proposed a similar bill that would have given Obama more discretion as to how to make all the Sequester cuts, but he threatened to veto it and it never passed. He wants to cause pain. His Sequester policy apparently is “This is gonna hurt you more than it’ll hurt me”.
The Crawdad Hole 
the end of his term can’t come soon enough……
like I said yesterday, the only photo I want to see is the one where he’s waving goodbye for the last time. (And yes, it can’t come soon enough)
honk
Meanwhile, he and Michelle are still having exclusive parties at the WH, taking expensive vacations, and he still hits the golf course regularly – all at taxpayer expense – but the press trumpets pieces about seniors losing their Meals on Wheels.
If it costs the taxpayers 1.4 billion a year to support the First Family, imagine how much we’d save if they cut back 10% ? It was no surprise when I saw the first staff members furloughed were in the WH budget office 😉
The Chicago Tribune gets it 😀 Obama’s upset the sequester just isn’t hurting us enough, so roll out the ATC furlough’s and hold us hostage on the tarmac and damn the Republicans !!!
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-04-24/news/ct-edit-faa-20130424_1_sequester-cuts-house-republicans-furloughs
The article is pretty tough on him, almost thinking he was hoping for a plane to crash. Wow, from his hometown paper, our President deliberately wants us to hurt. Sicko.
Air traffic controllers are still furloughed. You won’t hear that on the news either.
I don’t know if the bill has been signed or if it is sitting on some desk in the senate because the house and senate version are not exact. It could be it was signed but by the time it was the FAA administrator and others had gone home for the weekend, but the furloughs are still going on.
I assure you, you won’t hear that in the news. The media is so lazy they won’t bother and if there are delays they’ll blame them on weather or what have you, since they no longer have the FAA twitter feed pointing out every staff shortage. Things are flowing better today because they’ve eased some of the restrictions from on high that were slowing things down for “safety”…….translation the guys that are working today are getting their butts kicked, it’s an ugly day for ATC, at least where I am.
It could be that there is some information out there being sent to employees but we wouldn’t know. Here’s another little gem. On an employee’s furlough day their access to their official FAA email, as well as employee express (pay and leave statements, schedules, etc) are blocked. I don’t know why it seems really silly. Today and yesterday being a classic case in point with the bill moving through and things being fluid…….dutiful employees checking to see if word came down from on high.
Just to make sure every employee knew that their access would be blocked on their furlough day the FAA sent a certified letter to each and every employee to inform them of that……pissing away who knows how much money. Not to mention creating work for somebody to block and unblock access.
Disgusted doesn’t begin to describe how I feel. Never in 31 years have we witnessed such politics. Oh sure things would swing this way or that with changing administrations, but the core mission of ATC was never politiczed until now. I’m not a legal expert, but based on experience of past administrations, I don’t think there was ever a problem with moving money around. Other agencies that are under this current sequestration seem to have the authority to move money around and I don’t buy that the DOT/FAA didn’t. Disgusted indeed.
The media is all in DC getting their hair done for the big dinner! Wat too busy to report anything except the menu and the glorious hollywood celebs they hope to meet.
[T]he core mission of ATC was never politiczed until now.
Not even by Reagan when he broke the union? That seemed pretty political to me at the time.
I suppose you could look at the firing of the controllers as political, but what you have Reagan do?
Federal employees do not have the right to strike. They know that, they are informed of that upon employment, it is not a secret. Reagan told the controllers they would be breaking the law if they went on strike, he gave them a chance to return to work and fired the ones that didn’t heed his warning.
If he had let them continue the strike do you seriously doubt that every federal agency would have followed suit in the coming years?
I don’t know why this article made me think of myiq, but hey, it’s Dixie Chick Natalie Maines giving political advice 😀
http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/natalie-maines-doesnt-regret-slamming-george-bush-never-liked-country-music-2013254
Lord, please let my granddaughters grow up to be as bold as, but a lot smarter than Dixie Chicks..
Funny that US gave her a platform to say “it’s okay to criticize the President” but never ask her how she feels about Obama doubling down on Bush’s “war crimes” mistakes 😀
This was the same rag-mag in 2008 gave the Obamas a schmoopy lovers cover then gave the Palin family an un-photo-shopped trailer trash cover the following week.
Helenk I replied to you in last night’s thread about the PATCO guy you knew and what he said about the strike.
Sarah tosses another ninja star at Obama for his historic, first sitting President, visit to PP.
http://www.therightscoop.com/sarah-palin-rips-obama-for-associating-with-planned-parenthood/
He’s baaaaaack ! Just announced for NYC Mayor 😀
Better than Anthony Here’s My Weiner
😆
Via aoshq, remastered anti NRA poster
http://t.co/eq1nKcSaRC
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/27/17945105-police-arrest-tupelo-miss-man-in-ricin-case?_osource=SocialFlowTwt_BAYBrand
arrest in ricin letters
Here we go again:
I think it’s called incompetence. You’ve got nothing, you’ve got no good leads, grab a known quantity so it looks like you’re doing something.
Have they finally nabbed a Tea partier?
No, unfortunately for them he’s a Dem. But that’s all they’ve got for now.
But he’s white, which makes him a racist. And he’s from one of those in-breeder states, so he’s probably a bitter-clinger who voted for Hillary. And if he voted for Hillary he’s a Republican ratfucker.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/04/26/WH-protests-FAA-fix
WH not happy with FAA fix
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/white-house-correspondents-partiers-say-tom-brokaws-got-it-wrong-90698.html
spat among the press over white house correspondents dinner
funniest line in the whole article
“Look at what we publish,” he said. “Does it seem like it corrupts us?”
That caught my eye, too.
Journalists need their own 12 step program. So addicted to seeing things CORRECTLY they no longer comprehend reality.
Michelle the fashion icon, always so classy
https://twitter.com/GregWHoward/status/328036328711278592
http://www.newsdaily.com/canada/f9cf9c393a244a4092809f3bc8eab3df/hermes-golf-bag-statues-among-obama-gift-list
what are the odds that backtrack will give up these gifts?
Maybe QEII “re-gifted” his autographed complete DVD set of his own speeches.
That would be really cold.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/04/in-support-of-kaitlyns-law.php
this is something we should write our congress critters to pass
http://thehill.com/blogs/transportation-report/aviation/296425-winners-and-losers-in-faa-furlough-fight-
winners and losers
http://freebeacon.com/schakowsky-rips-gop-for-accusing-faa-of-political-manipulation-votes-for-furlough-fix/
she really thinks that the public believes this
http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2013/04/27/jokes-tonight-president/
does anyone think backtrack will have the class to do this?
http://www.therightscoop.com/breaking-rep-trey-gowdy-says-more-benghazi-hearings-coming-quickly-promises-explosive-evidence/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRightScoop+%28The+Right+Scoop%29
more hearings on Benghazai with explosive evidence
Attention!
The FAA furlough have now officially ended. Employees are receiving phone calls telling them to report for duty.
I guess it takes time to trickle down??? What a clusterfuck, these guys work 24/7 so some of them have missed their shifts and some of them are getting calls part way through their shifts, etc.
I don’t know how it will be resolved in the end. I don’t know when the official end in DC was. So will the guys told not to come in this morning be charged leave??? Not be paid as per normal furlough or what? What about people being called in to complete partial shifts?
I just hope nobody is charged with being AWOL. You may not know this but because of the nature of their job they are subject to being AWOL and/or subject to being forced into work if needed. I doubt anybody in the agency has the balls to try and put somebody furloughed and then not furloughed on AWOL, but who knows.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/27/us-faa-furloughs-idUSBRE93Q09H20130427?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
air travel should be back to normal by Sunday night
FYI my husband is in the partial shift category. He was told he could come in or burn leave. We don’t know how the first part of his shift will be handled, but if they charge him leave that is utter BS.
He’s about to retire so he’s been saving up his leave to cash in when he retires. OPM is woefully behind so it’s taking about 6 months to get a pension check, hence why we prefer to save every hour of leave to help tide us over while we wait for a pension check.
Like I said a complete clusterfuck.
are ATC subject to being forced assigned? when they are the youngest qualified and and there is a vacancy with no one else to fill it they are it. Got stuck with that a lot on the railroad
Technically yes. You can be forced assigned an area, which has to do with what airspace you work, they really try not to do that and rarely do. If they do it usually goes by seniority.
You can also be forced assigned shifts, which they do a lot. In a technical sense it goes by seniority, but the way the crews and shifts work there is only a small pool to draw from. They wouldn’t switch somebody on a different crew with different days off. My husband has been there 31 years and he routinely has his schedule changed. They have to move them around for a variety of reasons. It may have to do with somebody that is off sick or on maternity leave or it may have to do with a rocket launch or some military exercise where they might need extra staffing.
As far as being forced to move to another location for an assignment, yes they can do that, but they rarely do. If they force you to move they have to pay for it, so it’s just not something they typically do.
for me it was: it could be my day off or I was working one shift and someone marked off and if I was qualified on a desk or a territory , if no one senior to me took the job I had to work another shift. If it was my day off and I answered the phone, I was it.
As a train dispatcher it was on my day off that I could be drafted due to FRA rules on hours worked. or if I had 8 hours off between shifts
Basically the same thing, except after the brewhaha of those 6 controllers caught sleeping they made it 9 hours between shifts. The 9 hour rule has only been in effect for a couple of years.
They first ask for volunteers, but if there are no takers they just move you or make you come in on your day off, paying you overtime of course.
http://news.yahoo.com/fbi-removes-boat-used-boston-bombing-suspect-storage-152132969.html
government took the boat
Expected that. It is “evidence” and storable, but goes back to the owner when the case is adjudicated and the time for all appeals has run out. Could be decades.
I’m sure his heirs will welcome the return of a dilapidated, bullet-ridden hull in 20 years.
That boat is worth money. It’s a collector’s item now.
I agree it is a collector’s item and one day will probably fetch a pretty nice price. The question is how long with the feds keep it, because as the headlines fade so does the boat’s value.
If I owned that boat, I would have listed it on ebay the next day, LOL!
Good point – I think I’ll go our and buy an old boat and some ammo.
Does Boston PD use 9mm, 10mm, or .40?
I doubt that the boat has much evidentiary value. Unless they are worried about getting sued by Shitstain for excessive force.
BTW Klown……funny picture of the controllers in the tower, but that would never happen.
No electronic devices are allowed in the control room, not even cell phones. If you’re caught using any kind of electronic device in the control room it’s a firing offense.
Although sleeping on the graveyard shift is also a firing offense and a while back there were 6 guys caught doing that. Several of them were eventually fired though…..the rest suddenly sought an early retirement. They all should have been fired, they knew the rules.
the backtrack show the usual no class
looks like the Nevada mental patient dumping in finally making some headlines. Story on Fox now. outrage from Nev Governor and Suit by California attorney general
[I[t’s been years since I’ve flown anyway
Lucky you. I’ve flown 33 times so far in 2013.
…… “demand that any emergency legislation to eliminate airline delays caused by the sequester also restore cuts to Head Start, cancer clinics, housing assistance, food pantries, and unemployment insurance….”
Why do we need cancer clinics? Didn’t the President solve all our medical problems with Obamacare? Hasn’t he “saved or created” enough jobs that we no longer need THREE YEARS of unemployment extensions? Hasn’t he now put a record breaking number of Americans on food stamps, making us less dependent on food pantries?
Amen yttik, preach it!!
Hasn’t it been proven again and again that Head Start is in fact not much of a Head Start and a waste of money?
Unemployment, oy! Just look at parts of Europe where they had these ridiculous unemployment benefits and once benefits were shortened people managed to find work AND the economy began to make a full recovery.
The cancer clinics I do agree with fixing. Those Medicare and Medicaid patients are still getting their treatment, except they’re getting it in hospitals instead of clinics and it’s costing us more.