Column By John Young
I’m curious about the fire sale we’ve witnessed on the White House lawn.
They’re offering public lands and federal buildings for cheap. They’re mowing down civil servants like roadside weeds. They’re liquidating whole agencies with utter indiscrimination.
Are we that hard up for cash? Apparently not.
— We have $45 million rattling around to pay for a military parade next month to commemorate, um, the 250th anniversary of the Army. It also happens to fall on, um, the president’s 79th birthday. Yes, a military parade for a draft dodger.
— As of mid-April, the White House had spent $26 million to pay to fly President Mulligan to his weekly Florida golf trips.
— A total revealed pursuant to a demand from Sen. Elizabeth Warren: We’ve spent $21 million to fly Venezuelan migrants to Guantanamo Bay. What? With all that prison space vacated by the Jan. 6 rioters?
— We’ve transported 8,500 active-duty troops to the southern border to interrogate cacti. Their mission: to certify an invasion — of spiny plants — that their commander can use to justify the end of constitutional protections like habeas corpus.
— Don’t forget the Boeing 747 “palace in the sky,” our president says he — correction, “WE” — can have “for FREE” through the genuine something-for-nothing kindness of the emir of Qatar. Only problem: the plane needs a $1 BILLION retrofit.
Oh, well, it’s only money.
Thinking about all this spending, including the demands of trucking our wannabe emir wherever he wannabe, one wonders:
What if that money were spent on making it safer for the rest of us to fly?
“A scary few months for air travel,” The New York Times said of the build-up to a travel season just begun.
Days ago, an outage of antiquated radar at Newark’s airport left hundreds of planes flying in circles.
The chaos led to a necessary discussion of insufficient staffing. In The Wall Street Journal a Newark air-traffic controller describes a near collision he averted amid a marathon stint.
“The situation is, and has been, and continues to be unsafe,” he writes. “The amount of stress we are under is insurmountable.”
Antiquated technology. Understaffed workers. It seems that the most advanced, most resource-rich nation in the world could address such things if its leader weren’t so intent on blowing things up, distracting us with wedge politics, and ingratiating himself with dictators.
Park that plane, Mr. President. Make things better for the rest of us who fly.
Despite obvious air-safety problems, punctuated by a collision at Ronald Reagan National Airport between an Army helicopter and a commuter plane that killed 67, the Federal Aviation Administration was not spared by Elon Musk’s DOGE bros. Under Elon Musk’s ax-murderer approach, it took major personnel hits.
The FAA now examines how to do its job without thousands of employees who’ve been fired or have buyout offers.
Reportedly these buyouts do not include front-line controllers. Republican budget writers plan to boost those ranks with 2,000 new hires. That would still leave us with a 1,000-controller shortfall nationally. That’s how acute the problem is.
Sure, hire more controllers. But because of DOGE, airports will be hurt for maintenance mechanics and a host of support personnel who make things work.
Considering the safety issues that are so self-evident, these are choices a nation of plenty should not have to make.
Yes, we have the money. Ever since Reagan, when the supposed imperative of tax cuts and feeding an ever-engorged military superseded all other needs, like health care, schools, and transportation, were shunted aside, Republicans have acted like we’re penniless, using deficits by design to make that case.
Bull-loney. We have the money. See it on parade as we observe President Mulligan’s big day.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email him at jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
