The end of The Smithsonian as THE worlds greatest museum

Capt. Vick said:

Lincoln...you have a beef with Lincoln. The man was assassinated 160 years ago... The south has got to get over itself. No one I know in the north talks about the civil war...and we won. Honestly i wish you did succeed. So the rest of the union wouldn't have pay for states like Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky, for example, that have historically relied heavily on federal assistance. Think of where they would be without the union. SMH

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Minor point re Kentucky. It was not part of the Confederate.

Capt. Vick said:

Lincoln...you have a beef with Lincoln. The man was assassinated 160 years ago... The south has got to get over itself. No one I know in the north talks about the civil war...and we won. Honestly i wish you did succeed. So the rest of the union wouldn't have pay for states like Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky, for example, that have historically relied heavily on federal assistance. Think of where they would be without the union. SMH

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We should never have sold New York

I agree with the comments about waste and deadwood in Government departments, but I would like to say the same is true of businesses. Seems that as soon as you get more than 200 employees (random number, might be only 100), people can start playing the system. In small companies of a few dozen people, its pretty obvious if someone is not pulling their weight.

Shortround6 said:

There is undoubtedly waste and fraud at all levels of government.

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And equally so in private enterprise especially when a company is protected from competition by laws or tariffs or by being too big to be allowed to fail or being a virtual monopoly.

At one stage I worked for Ansett airlines in Australia. Under the two airline agreement two companies flew identical aircraft on identical routes. TAA always had an aircraft in the hangar for routine maintenance during the day. Ansett did routine maintenance at night when the companies main stores and workshops were closed so many items were deferred.

When I worked for startup we had to contract our 767 maintenance. We did not consider Ansett because they held the world record for a 4C48 inspection at 10 months. LT in Munich and Shannon in Ireland both provided a 72hr turnaround on the same inspection. Ansett removed the landing gear and all the other rotables like seats and galleys etc and overhauled them then refitted them. LT and Shannon exchanged landing gears and all the other rotables using parts from the spares pool which was used by multiple airlines.

Only a protected company can afford to spend 1.6 million a month (in 1994 $) on lease payments for an aircraft sitting in a hangar producing no income. Other operators join a spares pool and pay not much more per year to have new or overhauled, ready to fit, components available at very short notice.

When Ansett went tits up most of the fleet was scrapped as it was uneconomic to bring them up to international standards. A lot of the problems related to modifications that met, or were required by, Australian regulations but not international regulations.

Think Tanker said:

Speaking just to this, from my limited experience I have doubts that it is only 0.9% fired for the FAA. The FAA was already short-staffed, overburdened and suffering from mass brain-drain, but the recent firings within the FAA have had catastrophic impacts from a conformity and certification standpoint. Type certificates and supplemental type certificates are being ignored entirely simply because there aren't enough eyes to review and respond.

This has other knock-on effects, too, for what happens when the FAA is mandated to keep their program throughput the same, with their reduced manpower? Well, at that point their entire review process becomes little more than a rubber stamp affair, at grave risk to the flying public.

The irony is that, from what I am aware, several of the folks who were fired were involved in the review & approval process for DER/DAR/DMIRs, folks who in of themselves are critical to reducing the bureaucratic workload the FAA is saddled with. And so the dominoes begin to fall...

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I totally agree and would add that the B737MAX issues were all directly related to the FAA being so chronically short staffed for so long that they had but two options

1. Kill almost all new aircraft models because they did not have the review staff, OR
2. Allow the manufacturers to work with little or no oversight.

We all know how well that worked don't we.

And the French regulator is, or at least was 20 years ago, equally under resourced.

What scares the living sh-1-t out of me is that there are multiple, as far as I can see unconfirmed, reports that the fired FAA staff are to be replaced by xAI computers. Given "Gordon Gekko" is running the "system" I cannot dismiss this as merely anti "Gekko" propaganda.

If this is too political please take it down or edit it.

Capt. Vick said:

Lincoln...you have a beef with Lincoln. The man was assassinated 160 years ago... The south has got to get over itself. No one I know in the north talks about the civil war...and we won. Honestly i wish you did succeed. So the rest of the union wouldn't have pay for states like Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky, for example, that have historically relied heavily on federal assistance. Think of where they would be without the union. SMH

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I am certain that if Dodgy Bro DOGE stripped all the federal aid funds from those states they would instantly stop supporting Dodgy Bro DOGE.


If this is too political please take it down.

Capt. Vick said:

Lincoln...you have a beef with Lincoln. The man was assassinated 160 years ago... The south has got to get over itself. No one I know in the north talks about the civil war...and we won. Honestly i wish you did succeed. So the rest of the union wouldn't have pay for states like Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky, for example, that have historically relied heavily on federal assistance. Think of where they would be without the union. SMH

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I responded to another poster's diatribe about the South and the ACW.

Blah Blah Bkah - whiney bullsh*t media driven hyperventilating bullshit.

Let's carve a swastika on a Tesla to feel better.

I honestly cannot believe this thread has been allowed to exist this long.

Free Huey!

GrauGeist said:

I honestly cannot believe this thread has been allowed to exist this long.

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Right I was actually waiting for the team to chime in, but you're absolutely right.