Sequester kills 1K US jobs but Egypt gets 250 F16s
Apr 23, 2013 20:39:14 GMT -5
Post by schwartzie on Apr 23, 2013 20:39:14 GMT -5
Obama’s Sequester Grounds American Jets and Kills 1000 American Jobs, But, Egypt Gets 250 F-16s!
By Joe Calandra Jr.
Published: April 23, 2013 | 1 Comment
FAA(2)Today, Sequestration has claimed its latest victims – your summer flight plans and one-thousand air traffic controllers’ jobs.
Obama’s sequester mandates that the FAA cut $637,000,000 out of its sixteen billion dollar budget. The FAA has chosen to terminate one-thousand actively contracted air traffic controllers. The FAA says that they chose to eliminate the contracted controllers because they can be fired more quickly than the controllers who work directly for government as FAA employees, and thus, the government can begin seeing savings at once.
The Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood, is not just eliminating the jobs of one-thousand contracted air traffic controllers. He has also promised unpaid furloughs for the federally employed air traffic controllers and other personnel too. He said, “The vast majority of FAA’s nearly 47,000 employees will be furloughed for approximately one day per pay period until the end of the fiscal year, and in some cases it could be as many as two days.”
Secretary LaHood is also considering shutting down over one-hundred air traffic control towers. The complete list includes towers in places like: Mobile, AL, Tucson, AZ, Los Angeles, CA, Jacksonville, FL, Orlando, FL, and Atlanta, GA, just to name a few.
The FAA says that the towers scheduled for closure generally see traffic of less than “150,000 operations a year — and fewer than 10,000 commercial operations.”
However, the FAA is making no promises to avoid furloughs of seasoned air traffic controllers at major airports around the nation like LAX, Newark, San Francisco, and Chicago.
The FAA has said that major airports could begin seeing an average of six-thousand total delays of three-plus hours as well as outright cancellations due to sequestration-mandated reductions in staff.
The President of the Air Traffic Controllers Association, Paul Rinaldi, explained that an average of “1,200 to 1,500 controllers will be staying home each day.”
The bottom line here is that sequestration will personally affect one out of every three airline passengers during the busiest season for air travel. Lee Moak, of the Airline Pilots Association described the effect of the furloughs and firings to CBS News today. He said that it will be “Like waiting in line while having Hurricane Sandy in the North and having Hurricane Katrina in the South at the same time.”
Mr. Moak says that the system could quickly “come to a grinding halt.” He also charged President Obama with using sequestration “as a political football.”
The “political football” Mr. Moak is talking about is the theory that the Obama Administration is ensuring that average Americans are negatively impacted by Sequestration in personal, visible ways so that angry voters complain to their member of Congress. Obama hopes that legislators will then be motivated by desire for reelection, and thus, be forced to end sequestration altogether by agreeing to the president’s demands for higher taxes and other concessions.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has called this decision “A dangerous political stunt that could jeopardize the safety and security of air travelers.”
While the FAA is eliminating vital jobs in the current economic climate, the TSA, however, thought it was prudent to sign a fifty million dollar contract with VF Imagewear Inc. to provide brand new uniforms for TSA security personnel. Half of the company’s clothing is manufactured in Mexico. The rest is manufactured in the Middle East and other parts of the world – except for the U.S.
In short, while the FAA is cutting jobs for American citizens to meet sequestration’s demands, the FAA is outsourcing fifty million dollars worth of jobs to Mexico and the Middle East to make new shirts, pants, gold badges, and belts for guards at airports throughout the nation where angry American customers will be waiting for flights that may or may not come.
According to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), the Department of Homeland Security spends zero dollars equipping these officers with any federal law enforcement training, but spends hundreds of millions of dollars giving them clothing and equipment made abroad.
TSA officers also receive an annual stipend of $446.00 for uniforms, while combat officers of the U.S. Marine Corps receive a one-time allotment of $400.00 for uniforms that are far more expensive to manufacture and maintain.
Finally, while American jets are grounded by Sequestration, the Obama Administration has continued giving advanced C and D Model F-16 fighters to Egypt.
These fighters are not being purchased by Egypt; they are being given away as part of foreign aid package of more than one billion dollars. The latest gift of American F-16s takes Egypt’s air combat armada to two-hundred and fifty such American fighters which are now in the hands of Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) called this recent shipment a “first rate blunder,” and stated, “”I find it objectionable to send weapons, F-16s and tanks, to a country that allowed a mob chanting ‘death to America’ to threaten out American diplomats.
Video is at the link:
www.libertynews.com/2013/04/obamas-sequester-grounds-american-jets-and-kills-1000-american-jobs-but-egypt-gets-250-f-16s/
