Project 2025 -- Note 2

Okay then.  I said I was going to get into this thing but, it turns out, I've already been into it for 20 years.  I know you'll be shocked to find out I naturally gravitated to the section of Project 2025 that dealt with the United States Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Air Traffic Organization.  And after reading 16 pages of cow patties, I woke up when I read this:

"One peer-reviewed study for the Hudson Institute by scholar Robert Poole identified the ATO’s (that's the Air Traffic Organization) underlying problems as including an overly cautious culture, a growing lack of technological and managerial expertise, the inability to finance major capital projects with revenue bonds, and over dependence on aerospace/defense contractors."

Robert Poole?  Y'all are going to cite Robert Poole in 2024?  Robert Poole had been trying to privatize government since 1978.  He goes back as far as Margaret Thatcher. (That fact is at the 1978 link too.)  But you don't even have to leave this blog to find out all you need to know about Robert Poole.  Just go read "So Reasonable" right here at Get The Flick.  That blog post is so old all the links are broken.  (Which is a shame.  My daughter can draw.  And that flight pattern link was cool.)  (Oh, okay, here's a link to what looks like the old link.)

Lord help.  I've been retired over 15 years.  Yet Robert Poole's outfit still cranks out a letter and sends it to me every month because....well, because somebody pays them to do it.  You did click on the links and read them didn't you?

"According to 2012 disclosures, its largest donors were the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation ($1,522,212) and the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($2,016,000)."

It's simple folks. Rich people don't want to pay taxes.  And Joe Biden has promised to raise their taxes while Donald J. Trump has promised to cut them.  The rich people are willing to pay somebody like Robert Poole to write letters for decades just so they won't have to pay more in taxes.  Just like they are willing to spend millions to keep you from getting a union because it will make them billions.

They will pay millions to The Heritage Foundation to come up with and implement something as massive as Project 2025 because it is worth billions to them.  And they are willing to risk Democracy itself in order to retain their wealth -- along with the status and power that wealth brings.  To wit, they will support Donald J. Trump -- convicted felon and dictator wannabe -- to protect their wealth.  They will pour millions and millions of dollars into convincing voters that Trump cares about them (apparently, you can sell anything if you can sell that) and will cut their taxes just like he will with the rich folks.  Trump will be their salvation -- their savior and protector.  Well, until a pandemic hits or Europe descends into World War III.  But what the heck, that will make the rich richer too.

(Note the catchy ticker symbol.)

Not to mix you up...but it seems to fit in here.  (Or at least I'm going to make it fit.)  As I stated earlier, I've been retired over 15 years from air traffic control.  I still think about it sometimes.  And this thought occurred to me the other day.

I've always said, you can't revolutionize air traffic control.  (The folks writing for Heritage don't understand this.)  The air traffic control system must evolve.  Well, if you want to it to stay the safest transportation ever designed by man it does.  All the systems that make the National Airspace System work -- indeed the whole world's air transportation system -- are so interwoven, so complex, that any change in the system may affect parts never thought of.  So we make slow, careful changes.  We take note of any unexpected consequences and address them.  Slowly.  Carefully. Deliberately.  Thoughtfully.

We are not Facebook. We do not "move fast and break things".  We evolve.  It drives business people crazy.  It makes the privateers nuts.  They think they know better.  They think they can do better.  They cannot.  Take a look around the world.  Several places have privatized their systems.  Ask people if they work better.  Ask the air traffic controllers.

My point being, after being retired for 15+ years the FAA is still short of air traffic controllers.  They've tried to "revolutionize" the hiring process several times.  The FAA made a mistake.  And it cost them.  It is still costing them.  Why?  Because our system evolves.  Evolution is a slow process. 

You see, the FAA didn't make that mistake when I retired in 2006.  Actually, the FAA didn't make the mistake at all (although they didn't help).  Ronald Reagan made it when he fired the PATCO controllers back in 1981.  (You know, 3 years after Robert Poole started giving Margaret Thatcher ideas.)  The FAA has been short of air traffic controllers ever since.

The FAA thought it would revolutionize air traffic control.  They said air traffic controllers would become air traffic managers.  Computers would do the decision making.  Controllers, I'm sorry, managers would only be there to step in when things went wrong.  It never happened.  Not in the 25 years I was there.  Not since I left either.

Maybe it will happen one day.  I'm sure some manager in the FAA is salivating over the thought of artificial intelligence in air traffic control.  But it won't be a revolution.  It will be evolution that gets us there.

Don Brown
June 16, 2024