In article ,
Larry Dighera wrote:
The National Airspace System, being a nationwide resource, should be
government operated. For the government to abdicate responsibility
for our skies to corporate interests is irresponsible. But the
Republicans have no more qualms about handouts to big business than
they have permitting oil drilling, logging, and mining in 1/3 of our
national forests as occurred last week.

I suspect that there were many more Democrats pandering to big business
that Republicans over the last 50 years. The bottom line is that
politicians pander to those with the money, and big business donates to
whomever is in power, or has a good shot of gaining power, in the hopes
that they will be rewarded with kickbacks. It usually works. The last
time I looked, the combined wealth of the Democrats in the US Congress
exceeded that of the Republicans, but that's pretty much irrelevant
other than to dispel the myth that Republicans are rich and Democrats
are for the "middle class."

I'm all for using all of our natural resources, as long as they are open
to competition.

The entire issue of "public" and "private" with regards to aviation
plays out on a much smaller scale at the local airport. More
communities seem to be forming "airport authority" boards which are
basically controlled by commercial interests. The commercial interests
take over the administration of the airport, jack the rates up, slap on
some new restrictions intended to stifle the small guy who doesn't bring
in huge margins, and all of a sudden you have a declining light plane
population at an airport that was intended to be a public resource.
Usually, this is done in the name of "jobs for the region" or some such
nonsense that doesn't materialize. I'm sure there are success stories,
but I suspect that there are many more failures.



JKG