Saturday, February 1, 2025. Annette’s News Roundup.
Put Reagan-Trump on the blame list.
Reagan-Trump. They didn’t care about public safety.
What happened at the January 30th DC crash?
According to the New York Times, “The helicopter flew outside its approved flight path. The American Airlines pilots most likely did not see the helicopter close by as they made a turn toward the runway. And the air traffic controller, who was juggling two jobs at the same time, was unable to keep the helicopter and the plane separated.
Like most of the country’s air traffic control facilities, the tower at Reagan airport has been understaffed for years. The tower there was nearly a third below targeted staff levels, with 19 fully certified controllers as of September 2023, according to the most recent Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan, an annual report to Congress that contains target and actual staffing levels. The targets set by the F.A.A. and the controllers’ union call for 30.”
The Associated Press reported - “This was a disaster waiting to happen,” said Ross Aimer, a retired United Airlines captain and chief executive officer of Aero Consulting Experts. “Those of us who have been around a long time have been yelling into a vacuum that something like this would happen because our systems are stretched to extremes.”
On August 5, 1981, the Republican President, Ronald Reagan, began firing 11,359 air-traffic controllers. Why? The air-traffic controllers were on strike, wanted raises, yes, but they also wanted more staff and a lighter work load. Controlling air traffic is one stressful job and a 40 hour work week shouldn’t fly. The union sought a reduction of their five-day, 40-hour workweek to a four-day, 32-hour workweek.
Now Reagan was a real Republican. The air traffic controller strike violated his most strongly held principle, “A public employee doesn’t have the right to strike.”
Firing the air traffic controllers proved a seminal, defining action for Reagan. Though he himself had once headed a union (the Screen Actors Guild), he had come to hate unions, and public unions especially.
Americans are a jealous lot. They hate to hear that those who they consider generously paid complain about the conditions under which they work and even worse, ask for more money. In 1981, air traffic controllers were paid as much as $50,000 a year, while the average American salary was just under $11,00 a year.
Thus, not surprisingly, the public supported Reagan’s action. He dug his heels further in, declaring a lifetime ban on the rehiring of the strikers by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
From 1981 on, our airports have been run by overworked and stressed air traffic controllers, coping with skimpy staffing levels and long, long hours.
Donald Trump is far from what we mean when we say someone is a “Real Republican.” “Real Republicans” want smaller government and think that government should not provide solutions to social problems.
None of this really matters to Trump.
Trump is just a greedy man, a transactional man, a selfish, narcissistic man, a man who thinks that the purpose of life is to gather money and fame.
And for the self-proclaimed genius, business is the mechanism by which to do this.
If Trump had any philosophy - he has none - it would be that business exists only to put money into the owner’s pockets and glorify the owner’s self. Business is not an organization that provides services or products to the public and depends on many who rightly share in its aspirations and success.
To him, a paid employee is just an inconvenience, someone who takes money out of his pockets.
And Government? A thief who wants to steal money from men like him in the form of taxes.
The Heritage Society or its Project 2025 creators got lucky when Trump decided to go into politics.
Musk’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ and all his recent moves to fire government employees find their natural place in Trump’s government.
One of the first actions of the Trump Administration on the day of his inauguration was firing the FAA director.
He then fired 400 FAA senior officials, the TSA head, and 3,000 air traffic controllers.
This was followed by the Office of Personnel and Management “buyout” offer to 2 million government employees whom he hoped to fire.
Like Reagan, Trump doesn’t “see” employees or understand work or workers. He just sees “costs.”
Like Reagan, Trump doesn’t understand the repercussions of “understaffing” for the employees or the public.
Since Reagan’s action, airports have suffered from this. It is not a surprise that our media is now rolling out reports of multiple near plane crash misses at our major airports before the Trump crash of January 30.
This same behavior - firings, shrinking of staff and services - done on the scale intended by Trump appointees and lackeys will undoubtedly lead to comparable “crashes” in all parts of American life. The entire National Security Council career staff, for example, was sent home last week.
Our hospitals and healthcare will suffer. Our schools will suffer. Our military and intelligence services will suffer. ETC.ETC.
To cite the historian, Heather Cox Richardson, since the early twentieth century, the U.S. government has performed an extensive and remarkably successful role in our lives. But Trump talks about the U.S. government as if it is the enemy and must be destroyed.
In the end, if Trump succeeds, American life, as we have known it, will suffer and, maybe, not survive.
Reagan-Trump. Republicans. Republicans. Appropriately, Trump’s crash happened at Ronald Reagan Airport.
Annette Niemtzow
Have a good weekend. I’ll see you on Tuesday.
Trump is announcing tariffs today against Canada, Mexico and China.
He thinks he can change the subject from his disgusting pardons for the violent January 6 criminals, or his failed order to stop Government spending that he had to rescind, or his repulsive and unfit appointees, or the Trump crash.
Don’t let him.
Fight!
Call friends. Talk to strangers. Write on social media.
Keep his dangerous failures front and center.
We are the answer.