On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 12:34:44 -0500, Bob Noel
wrote in
:

In article ,
Larry Dighera wrote:

If we can manage to stall these sort of NPRMs until Bush and the RNC
are out of office, perhaps reason will prevail once again. If not,
the future is going to be a continuation of RNC Nixon ethos.

Were you asleep during the 90's? User fees were pushed by the Clinton
regime.

True; Clinton/Gore did envision the FAA as a PBO:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...4?dmode=source
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...d?dmode=source

Brilliant Bill ordered ATC to become a PBO:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-...me=2000_regist...
President Bill Clinton:
Executive Order 13180 of December 7, 2000
Air Traffic Performance-Based Organization
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and
the laws of the United States of America, and in order to further
improve the provision of air traffic services, an inherently
governmental function, in ways that increase efficiency, take
better advantage of new technologies, accelerate modernization
efforts, and respond more effectively to the needs of the
traveling public, while enhancing the safety, security, and
efficiency of the Nation’s air transportation system, it is hereby
ordered as follows: ...


Clinton established the fact that ATC was an inherently governmental
function, thus blocking privatization efforts and their requisite user
fees.

To pave the way toward ATC privatization, Bush overturned Clinton's
edict:


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...le/archive/200...
"Bush's executive order amended an executive order signed by
President Bill Clinton on Dec. 7, 2000, in which he
redesigned the air traffic control system to make it
performance-based and otherwise infuse it with efficiencies. Bush
deleted Clinton's four-word description of the controllers' work:
"an inherently governmental function." "

If you are pinning your hopes on the DNC saving the day wrt to aviation,
you are even more delusional than the troll-the-shall-not-be-named.


Agreed. But at least the DNC, unlike the RNC, lacks the hubris to
burglarize the opposition's election headquarters, or worse:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...e/charles.html

Charles Colson
Known within the Nixon administration as the "evil genius,"
special counsel Charles W. Colson served seven months in prison in
1974 after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice in the
Watergate-related Daniel Ellsberg case. Colson's more notorious
ideas, according to some reports, included spreading false
information about Ellsberg and firebombing the Brookings
Institution. He was also indicted for his role in the Watergate
cover-up.

In 2000, Florida Governor Jeb Bush restored Colson's civil rights
25 years after his release from prison.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Colson
Charles Colson was the chief counsel for President Richard Nixon
from 1969 to 1973 and was one of the Watergate Seven, jailed for
Watergate-related charges.

Colson was known as President Nixon's hatchet man. Slate magazine
writer David Plotz described Colson as "Richard Nixon's hard man,
the 'evil genius' of an evil administration."[4] Colson has
written that he was "valuable to the President ... because I was
willing ... to be ruthless in getting things done".[5] This is
perhaps complimentary when read in comparison to the descriptions
of Colson which pepper the work of Rolling Stone National Affairs'
Political Correspondent, Hunter S. Thompson during the period.
Colson authored the 1971 memo listing Nixon's major political
opponents, later known as Nixon's Enemies List. A quip that
"Colson would walk over his own grandmother if necessary" mutated
into claims in news stories that Colson had boasted that he would
run over his own grandmother to re-elect Nixon. Plotz reports
that Colson sought to hire Teamsters thugs to beat up anti-war
-- demonstrators.[4] John Dean maintains that Colson proposed
firebombing the Brookings Institution and stealing politically
damaging documents while firefighters put the fire out.

Colson also became involved in the Committee to Re-elect the
President (CRP or CREEP). At a CRP meeting on March 21, 1971, it
was agreed to spend US$250,000 on "intelligence gathering" on the
Democratic Party. Colson and John Ehrlichman appointed E. Howard
Hunt to the White House Special Operations Unit (the so-called
"Plumbers") which had been organized to stop leaks in the Nixon
administration. Hunt headed up the Plumbers' burglary of Pentagon
Papers-leaker Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in September
1971. The Pentagon Papers were military documents about the
Vietnam War which helped increase opposition to the war. Colson
hoped that revelations about Ellsberg could be used to discredit
the anti-Vietnam War left. Colson admitted to leaking information
from Ellsberg's confidential FBI file to the press, but denied
organizing Hunt's burglary of Ellsberg's office.[5] He expressed
regret for attempting to cover up this incident in his 2005 book,
The Good Life.

On March 10, 1973, Colson resigned from the White House to return
to the private practice of law, as Senior Partner at the law firm
of Colson and Shapiro, Washington, D.C.

On March 1, 1974, Colson was indicted for conspiring to cover up
the Watergate burglary.

In 1974, Colson pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in the
Ellsberg case. On June 21, 1974, he was given a one-to-three year
sentence, fined $5,000, and disbarred.[3] He served seven months
in Maxwell Correctional Facility in Alabama,[11] and was released
early, on January 31, 1975, by the sentencing judge because of
family problems.

bottomline: almost no one inside the beltway at the federal level has
the slightest clue about GA. This is definitely a non-partisan issue in
that neither party has a clue.

I'll have to agree with you about legislators not having a clue about
GA or the NAS or ATC or ....