Aviation is full of examples of the lessons learned over the years that got air travel, and ATC to its current level of safety.

In 1977 a USMC F4 collided with a Hughes Airwest DC9, killing all 49 passengers, and the pilot of the F4.

At the time, military pilots did not answer to civilian ATC. Now they do.

Perhaps the airlines could form an association requiring them to pay dues, and give the association the responsibility and authority to manage ATC, security screening, military and civil air travel but that would be tough to set up and get the government to accept.

But, as it is the governments responsibility to regulate interstate commerce, and as we already pay for this service with our taxes, it would be really sad to have to pay for it again through higher air travel prices just because our government is so inept.

But, since we cant seem to fix our inept government, i doubt we would have any luck getting them to allow such a venture. This hypothetical association would need substantial enforcemebt authority in order to keep the industry safe, and the gov doesnt like sharing power.

if you don't want government gridlock and shutdowns like this the solution is simple

elect fewer democrats and socialists and let the capitalists run the country

the business of the US is business - and that is NOT a job for socialists

take your wrath out on the democratic leadership - perhaps if Nancy and Chuckie showed up for their next television presser with a few black eyes things might change for the better

For those who have access to Federal Credit Unions (and even some non-federal credit unions are participating):

In general, if you are a federal employee you should be aware of past shutdowns and possible future shutdowns and plan accordingly. But, life happens and you may be young and new to the job, or just had a devastating medical issue in your family, or even just went through a divorce. I'm not judging in any way.

Federal credit unions are offering 0% loans of various amounts and various durations. Some of them require that you have been a member before the shutdown to get 0%. But, if you join now most are offering loans in the .4-.6% range. These are signature loans as long as you can prove you are a direct federal employee.

If you are a contract employee I'm sorry, but like 98% of the rest of Americans there is no special deal or safety net for you. You will just have to survive.

There are non-federal credit unions offering these programs as well. Most everything is 60 day terms with some offering an additional 30 days if the shutdown is still in effect.

Maybe now that we have that out of the way we can concentrate on ignoring the sky is falling onslaught from the main stream media and concentrate on fixing the disaster that is our federal government.

The shutdown is affecting craft beer because anything new being sold across state lines has to be approved (name, ingredients, art) by the government. People in craft beer circles are whining their asses off as if this is a sign of the apocalypse.

My wife does farcebook. She says it is loaded with whining pussies that act like they’ve been without income for months. The reality is that this coming week will be the first missed paycheck. The fake news networks are in full bullshit mode blathering about federal workers potentially losing their homes, defaulting on loans, and all manner of outright lies.

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:
The shutdown is affecting craft beer because anything new being sold across state lines has to be approved (name, ingredients, art) by the government. People in craft beer circles are whining their asses off as if this is a sign of the apocalypse.

I love craft beer!

As far as getting new labels approved...oh well.

Why is it the .gov is approving beer labels anyway? Who cares, they don't even have to put the ingredients or nutritional info on there. Nor the ABV % because usually it is on there, but sometimes it's not. So...what is it the .gov is regulating on the label...the picture?

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:
The shutdown is affecting craft beer because anything new being sold across state lines has to be approved (name, ingredients, art) by the government. People in craft beer circles are whining their asses off as if this is a sign of the apocalypse.

I’m game for a little Smokey and the Bandit action.

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:
The shutdown is affecting craft beer because anything new being sold across state lines has to be approved (name, ingredients, art) by the government. People in craft beer circles are whining their asses off as if this is a sign of the apocalypse.

https://www.thegazette.com/sub...rade-bureau-20190110

Hops on hold: Breweries in Iowa feeling effects of government shutdown

Thu., January 10, 2019

As the government shutdown drags on, the impacts are trickling down to local breweries.

With employees at the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau among those furloughed, permits and applications submitted by brewers to the agency are on hold.

Matthew Wolf, co-owner of Iowa Brewing Company, said the Cedar Rapids brewery is ready to sell its beer in Illinois, but the process has stalled as they wait for approval for labels for those beers. Federal approval is required on new beer labels before they can be sold across state lines.

The brewery recently received approval to sell in Illinois, and Wolf said businesses in places like East Dubuque, Galena, Moline and Rock Island have expressed interest in carrying his brand.

He said labels such as those he needs are usually approved in two to three weeks.

Iowa Brewing Company submitted its applications just before Christmas, but he’s now unsure when it will get approval. Even when the agency reopens, there will likely be a backlog.

“It’s frustrating,” he said. “There’s a lot of paperwork involved in any product that involves alcohol. ... We also feel for all those employees who we’ve worked with over the years who don’t get a paycheck. That really hurts. We’re just one little sliver of the pain. The bigger pain is on the part of the federal workers. We work with a lot of them, and they do a great job.”

The bureau’s website includes an appropriations lapse notice that no permit or other applications will be reviewed or approved until the shutdown ends and that no personnel will be available to respond to any inquiries, including emails or telephone calls.

That’s frustrating for Betsy Duffy, who has been working to open Gezellig Brewing Company in Newton for about two years. She said she submitted “as built” building plans of the brewery in November. Those plans reflect any changes made during construction and must be approved by the bureau. While she has been told approval of the plans normally takes six months, that process is now on hold.

“We had always said we hoped to open in spring. We’re pretty reliant on loans. The bank doesn’t stop, the interest doesn’t stop,” she said. “Those have to be approved before we can move on to the next step. ... We cannot even contact them to find out where we would have been in the queue.”

Asked if she has a message to President Donald Trump and to Congress, she said the politicians need to remember the Americans the shutdown is impacting.

“Maybe the politicians all need to sit down and have a discussion over a craft beer,” she said. “Beer is bipartisan and shouldn’t be caught up in this silliness.”


l Comments: (319) 398-8339; alison.gowans@thegazette.com

Perhaps these Iowan brewers should be talking directly to their newly elected demokkkrat congressmen?

quote:

Originally posted by Sigmund:

Hops on hold: Breweries in Iowa feeling effects of government shutdown


.....Asked if she has a message to President Donald Trump and to Congress, she said the politicians need to remember the Americans the shutdown is impacting.

“Maybe the politicians all need to sit down and have a discussion over a craft beer,” she said. “Beer is bipartisan and shouldn’t be caught up in this silliness.”

If this was the long-game all along, and happens, my respect for DJT’s 4-D chess playing will have no limit...

Trump’s shutdown trap? By Thomas Lifson


Has President Trump suckered Democrats and the Deep State into a trap that will enable a radical downsizing of the federal bureaucracy? In only 5 more days of the already-“longest government shutdown in history” (25 days and counting, as of today), a heretofore obscure threshold will be reached, enabling permanent layoffs of bureaucrats furloughed 30 days or more.

Don’t believe me that federal bureaucrats can be laid off? Well, in bureaucratese, a layoff is called a RIF – a Reduction in Force, and of course, it comes with a slew of civil service protections. But, if the guidelines are followed, bureaucrats can be laid off -- as in no more job. It is all explained by Michael Roberts here (updated after the beginning of the partial shutdown):

A reduction in force is a thoughtful and systematic elimination of positions. For all practical purposes, a government RIF is the same thing as a layoff. (snip)

Organizations must stick to predetermined criteria when sorting out what happens to each employee. They must communicate with employees how and why decisions are made. (snip)

In deciding who stays and who goes, federal agencies must take four factors into account:

1. Tenure

2. Veteran status

3. Total federal civilian and military service

4. Performance

Agencies cannot use RIF procedures to fire bad employees.

A lot of procedures must be followed, and merit (“performance”) is the last consideration, but based on the criteria above, employees already furloughed can be laid off (“RIFed”) once they have been furloughed for 30 days or 22 work days):

When agencies furlough employees for more than 30 calendar days or 22 discontinuous work days, they must use RIF procedures.

An employee can be terminated or moved into an available position….

This seems to be what was referenced in this remarkable essay written by an “unidentified senior Trump official” published in the Daily Caller, which vouches for the authenticity of the author, and explains that it is protecting him or her from adverse career consequences should the name become known. I strongly recommend reading the whole thing.

The purported senior official makes the case that devotion to “process” eats up most of the time of federal bureaucrats and is also used by enemies of President Trump’s initiatives to stymie the legitimate orders issued by his senior officials:

On an average day, roughly 15 percent of the employees around me are exceptional patriots serving their country. I wish I could give competitive salaries to them and no one else. But 80 percent feel no pressure to produce results. If they don’t feel like doing what they are told, they don’t.

Why would they? We can’t fire them. They avoid attention, plan their weekend, schedule vacation, their second job, their next position — some do this in the same position for more than a decade.

They do nothing that warrants punishment and nothing of external value. That is their workday: errands for the sake of errands — administering, refining, following and collaborating on process. “Process is your friend” is what delusional civil servants tell themselves. Even senior officials must gain approval from every rank across their department, other agencies and work units for basic administrative chores.

Then, the senior official notes what I have just called the “trap”:

Most of my career colleagues actively work against the president’s agenda. This means I typically spend about 15 percent of my time on the president’s agenda and 85 percent of my time trying to stop sabotage, and we have no power to get rid of them. Until the shutdown.

Those officials who waste time and stymie the president’s initiatives, but now are not present because they are not categorized as “essential.”

Due to the lack of funding, many federal agencies are now operating more effectively from the top down on a fraction of their workforce, with only select essential personnel serving national security tasks. (snip)

President Trump can end this abuse. Senior officials can reprioritize during an extended shutdown, focus on valuable results and weed out the saboteurs. We do not want most employees to return, because we are working better without them.

Keep in mind that saboteurs cannot be individually identified and RIFed, but they can be included in the layoffs if they meet the criteria above in terms of seniority and service, and that they must be given 60 days’ notice. But once they are gone, they are no longer free to obstruct using the “process” as their friend because they are gone.

Of course, you can expect lawsuits on every conceivable point I suspect that they definition of “furlough” would be one matter of dispute.

If this was the plan all along, it would explain by President Trump goaded Chuck and Nancy in his televised meeting with them last year, boasting that he would claim credit for the showdown. How could they resist a prolonged shutdown when he made it so easy to blame him?

President Trump has proven that he is a “disruptor” who changes the framework of thinking on major issues by refusing to accept the “givens” – the assumptions of how things always have been done, and therefore always must be done.

So, who is the “senior official”? I don’t know, but I think that Stephen Miller is the sort of bold thinker who might volunteer to telegraph the strategy just 5 days before the deadline. Give Chuck and Nancy something to think about, and probably reject as unthinkable. Then they can’t complain that they weren’t warned once the trap is sprung.

Such a mass RIF would be the Trump version of Ronald Reagan firing the air traffic controllers when they went on an illegal strike in 1981. That was completely unexpected by his enemies, vehemently criticized, and successful.

Among other benefits, it taught the leaders of the USSR that Ronald Reagan was a man whose threats cannot be dismissed as mere rhetoric. If you think that Xi Jin-ping, Kim Jong-un, Angela Merkel, and any other foreign leaders would not draw the same conclusion from a massiveRIF, then you are kidding yourself.


Read more: https://www.americanthinker.co...p.html#ixzz5cgH9sFdr

What are those 'crats going to do when their federal money teat drys up?

Maybe they can find some cushy state government job or in the bowels of some conglomerate where their inadequacies won't be exposed to the light.

My definition of 'crat is a project-blocking, paper-chain creating numskull whose only purpose on the job is to make sure he keeps his. I work for a large corporation and we have thousands of these kinds of people, they're utterly useless and they stifle our progress with their bullshit rules and forms to fill out.

The article, referenced By Thomas Lifson, above:

I’m A Senior Trump Official, And I Hope A Long Shutdown Smokes Out The Resistance

Senior Trump Official | Contributor

The Daily Caller is taking the rare step of publishing this anonymous op-ed at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose career would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

As one of the senior officials working without a paycheck, a few words of advice for the president’s next move at shuttered government agencies: lock the doors, sell the furniture, and cut them down.

Federal employees are starting to feel the strain of the shutdown. I am one of them. But for the sake of our nation, I hope it lasts a very long time, till the government is changed and can never return to its previous form.

The lapse in appropriations is more than a battle over a wall. It is an opportunity to strip wasteful government agencies for good.

On an average day, roughly 15 percent of the employees around me are exceptional patriots serving their country. I wish I could give competitive salaries to them and no one else. But 80 percent feel no pressure to produce results. If they don’t feel like doing what they are told, they don’t.

Why would they? We can’t fire them. They avoid attention, plan their weekend, schedule vacation, their second job, their next position — some do this in the same position for more than a decade. (RELATED: diGenova and Toensing: Judge Napolitano Is Wrong On The Law and The Facts)

They do nothing that warrants punishment and nothing of external value. That is their workday: errands for the sake of errands — administering, refining, following and collaborating on process. “Process is your friend” is what delusional civil servants tell themselves. Even senior officials must gain approval from every rank across their department, other agencies and work units for basic administrative chores.

Process is what we serve, process keeps us safe, process is our core value. It takes a lot of people to maintain the process. Process provides jobs. In fact, there are process experts and certified process managers who protect the process. Then there are the 5 percent with moxie (career managers). At any given time they can change, clarify or add to the process — even to distort or block policy counsel for the president.

Saboteurs peddling opinion as research, tasking their staff on pet projects or pitching wasteful grants to their friends. Most of my career colleagues actively work against the president’s agenda. This means I typically spend about 15 percent of my time on the president’s agenda and 85 percent of my time trying to stop sabotage, and we have no power to get rid of them. Until the shutdown.

Due to the lack of funding, many federal agencies are now operating more effectively from the top down on a fraction of their workforce, with only select essential personnel serving national security tasks. One might think this is how government should function, but bureaucracies operate from the bottom up — a collective of self-generated ideas. Ideas become initiatives, formalize into offices, they seek funds from Congress and become bureaus or sub-agencies, and maybe one day grow to be their own independent agency, like ours. The nature of a big administrative bureaucracy is to grow to serve itself. I watch it and fight it daily. (RELATED: Remember When Obama And Clinton Shut Down Government For Their Own Pet Projects?)

When the agency is full, employees held liable for poor performance respond with threats, lawsuits, complaints and process in at least a dozen offices, taking years of mounting paperwork with no fear of accountability, extending their careers, while no real work is done. Do we succumb to such extortion? Yes. We pay them settlements, we waive bad reviews, and we promote them.

Many government agencies have adopted the position that more complaints are good because it shows inclusion in, you guessed it, the process. When complaints come, it is cheaper to pay them off than to hold public servants accountable. The result: People accused of serious offenses are not charged, and self-proclaimed victims are paid by you, the American taxpayer.

The message to federal supervisors is clear. Maintain the status quo, or face allegations. Many federal employees truly believe that doing tasks more efficiently and cutting out waste, by closing troubled programs instead of expanding them, “is morally wrong,” as one cried to me.

I get it. These are their pets. It is tough to put them down and let go, and many resist. This phenomenon was best summed up by a colleague who said, “The goal in government is to do nothing. If you try to get things done, that’s when you will run into trouble.”

But President Trump can end this abuse. Senior officials can reprioritize during an extended shutdown, focus on valuable results and weed out the saboteurs. We do not want most employees to return, because we are working better without them. Sure, we empathize with families making tough financial decisions, like mine, and just like private citizens who have to find other work and bring competitive value every day, while paying more than a third of their salary in federal taxes.

President Trump has created more jobs in the private sector than the furloughed federal workforce. Now that we are shut down, not only are we identifying and eliminating much of the sabotage and waste, but we are finally working on the president’s agenda.

President Trump does not need Congress to address the border emergency, and yes, it is an emergency. Billions upon billions of hard-earned tax dollars are still being dumped into foreign aid programs every year that do nothing for America’s interest or national security. The president does not need congressional funding to deconstruct abusive agencies who work against his agenda. This is a chance to effect real change, and his leverage grows stronger every day the shutdown lasts.

The president should add to his demands, including a vote on all of his political nominees in the Senate. Send the career appointees back. Many are in the 5 percent of saboteurs and resistance leaders. (RELATED: New Facts Indicate Mueller Destroyed Evidence, Obstructed Justice)

A word of caution: To be a victory, this shutdown must be different than those of the past and should achieve lasting disruption with two major changes, or it will hurt the president.

The first thing we need out of this is better security, particularly at the southern border. Our founders envisioned a free market night watchman state, not the bungled bloated bureaucracy our government has become. But we have to keep the uniformed officers paid, which is an emergency. Ideally, continue a resolution to pay the essential employees only, if they are truly working on national security. Furloughed employees should find other work, never return and not be paid.

Secondly, we need savings for taxpayers. If this fight is merely rhetorical bickering with Nancy Pelosi, we all lose, especially the president. But if it proves that government is better when smaller, focusing only on essential functions that serve Americans, then President Trump will achieve something great that Reagan was only bold enough to dream.

The president’s instincts are right. Most Americans will not miss non-essential government functions. A referendum to end government plunder must happen. Wasteful government agencies are fighting for relevance but they will lose. Now is the time to deliver historic change by cutting them down forever.

The author is a senior official in the Trump administration.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/0...6-Q5JRdUPkoqSzkiiEBk

A massive RIF in DC would be the best gift DJT could give this country.

quote:

Originally posted by Yanert98:
A massive RIF in DC would be the best gift DJT could give this country.

We RIFed some folks... sorry, Chuck and Nancy...

There's a gov't shutdown? If it wasn't for constant news coverage, I literally would have no idea it was happening. To say it has so far had Zero impact on me or any visibility in my day to day life would be an understatement.

Why is the main harm of a long shutdown the pay of the workers and not the actual work?

Daniel Horowitz · January 14, 2019

The political and media elites are border deniers. They are also debt deniers. This partial government shutdown has finally forced a national dialogue over the most ignored national security problem of this generation at our border. But oddly, the fact that so many agencies and departments have shut down for three weeks and nobody cares has not spawned a national discussion over the purpose of having some of these jobs, other than to pay the employees.

On Friday, with almost no debate, House Democrats brought a bill to the floor, S. 24, that would permanently guarantee automatic back pay for federal employees, even the ones that were furloughed, in the event of a shutdown. Traditionally, Congress has always voted to pay back federal workers after a particular shutdown, given the radioactive nature of the politics behind it. But this bill is different. If it were to become law, it would essentially take all federal employees’ salaries, which are currently discretionary and subject to the appropriations process, and make them mandatory spending. Thus, irrespective of whether Congress passes appropriations bills, all federal employees – whether essential or not – would be guaranteed pay for not working during an appropriation lapse.

The amazing thing is that only seven Republicans had the courage to fight through the demagoguery and vote against this bill.

The bill was poorly crafted, even from a leftist perspective, because if the goal is to pre-emptively end government shutdowns, then why didn’t the bill also mandate that these same workers go to work? If you want to end the concept of government shutdowns, then just end them. This bill merely permanently guarantees pay and treats government salaries like Social Security and Medicare without even ending the furloughs when Congress can’t reach an agreement on spending bills. As Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., one of the seven brave conservatives who voted against the bill, told me today, by guaranteeing “retroactive pay for every possible future shutdown,” it will only make it “easier for politicians to cause future shutdowns,” which is the exact opposite of what proponents of this bill are touting.

Sadly, the political class is learning the exact opposite lesson they should from this stealth shutdown. Obviously, there are some important agencies, such as ICE, Border Patrol, and the Coast Guard, that are subject to this lapse in appropriations and are seeing their pay delayed. We should always ensure that the essential workers are paid. But because they are essential, they are still working. What about the 95.4 percent of HUD employees, 86 percent of Commerce, 83.3 percent of Treasury, 66.5 percent of Agriculture, and 76 percent of Interior, employees who are not working because they are deemed unessential? Education and Labor are already funded this time, but if they were subject to the shutdown, 95 percent and 81 percent of their respective employees would be deemed nonessential.

One can make a case that some nonessential workers are necessary in the long run and are just not indispensable at the moment. That is certainly the case at Justice and Homeland Security, where roughly 85 percent of employees are deemed essential, so naturally you will need a certain number of nonessential, yet necessary, employees to support their work. But if such a high percentage of a department is deemed nonessential, shouldn’t we have a discussion on whether those positions should exist or whether states, which actually have to balance their budgets, should take up the slack?

For some non-security-related agencies, the only collateral damage of this border fight is that the workers aren’t getting paid. But if that is the only substantial problem, why are we not having a debate over the purpose of these jobs to begin with? We don’t have government for the purpose of creating employment. Regardless of one’s ideology, federal agencies and programs should only exist if they are deemed indispensable to the public good.

Sure, the media is trying to conjure up problems resulting from the shutdown, but nobody could honestly suggest that we are seeing a crisis from the closure of the departments and agencies where the majority of the employees are nonessential, such as at HUD. We have thousands of local governments and 50 states governments for a reason, and housing is clearly a local function.

Which brings us to the 800-poound gorilla in the room – the debt. Any responsible American, even one who is not facing a debt crisis, would not pay for so many products and services that are so unessential that if they were terminated for a while, they wouldn’t feel it. Now consider someone who does face a debt crisis. The finances of an individual family who is in the same debt crisis as the federal government would look like this:

• The family earns $100,000 per year but incurs $130,000 in annual expenses.
  
• The cumulative debt of the family is greater than all its assets and is set to explode in a few years.
  
• The family already throws away a lot of money every year paying interest to credit cards, but in a decade, $18,000 every year will be going towards that interest.
  

Any normal American family in this predicament would be forced to make painful long-term cuts and find a new path in life. Yet our government won’t have a discussion over the debt even now that it has become evident that we can go so long without many government positions.

Unfortunately, we already have two-thirds of federal spending deemed off limits and not subject the annual budget process. This is why it was so irresponsible for Congress to try to take the entire federal payroll out of the budget process and turn it into de facto mandatory spending. We will never have a discussion on the need for any part of the federal budget if this bill becomes law.

For that matter, Congress is not even doing anything about the $141 billion in annual “improper payments.” We are having a fight over $5.7 billion in funding for the most important job of the federal government, while Congress refuses to deal with pure waste and fraud that is 25 times that cost every year.

In the coming weeks, it’s incumbent upon people of all political persuasions to ask the following question: If we are facing such a deep debt crisis, can we still afford to reflexively keep every federal office currently in existence simply because it offers a paycheck?

https://www.conservativereview...not-the-actual-work/

My kids are having issues with federal aid as they start the new year in college - other than that, I haven't seen any problems associated with the shut-down.

From The Daily Caller - https://dailycaller.com/2019/0...moke-out-resistance/

I’m A Senior Trump Official, And I Hope A Long Shutdown Smokes Out The Resistance

quote:

On an average day, roughly 15 percent of the employees around me are exceptional patriots serving their country. I wish I could give competitive salaries to them and no one else. But 80 percent feel no pressure to produce results. If they don’t feel like doing what they are told, they don’t.

quote:

The president’s instincts are right. Most Americans will not miss non-essential government functions. A referendum to end government plunder must happen. Wasteful government agencies are fighting for relevance but they will lose. Now is the time to deliver historic change by cutting them down forever.

^^^ The entire article is already posted above on this page...

20/80 rule in Government...20% of the people do 80% of the work. I was in the 20% eons ago before escaping the perpetuation of the stigma.