Federal regulators on Wednesday proposed fining a feeder airline, Corporate Air, $455,000 for allowing a small airliner to carry passengers on 80 flights despite an engine that needed repair.
You know what’s destroying our nation’s competitiveness? Too much government regulation. If we just got off of corporate America’s back, the magical powers of the free market would sort everything out for the best. Because that’s what markets do. Always.
Or so I’m constantly told.
Hey, you’re perrfectly free NOT to fly on and airline that flies unsafe aircraft.
And I am sure they would let you inspect their jet engines yourself to satisfy your curiosity, or even bring an engine expert to do so. Wing welds and riveting, too.
The market was not given an opportunity to work here. If there had been a crash with dead passengers, the market most certainly would have acted to punish Corporate Air by cutting its market share. Plainly, the FAA should have held back to permit this market correction.
Outside inspections yield little, except perhaps for some oil seepage from the landing gear.
Airline passengers should inisist on a “C” check before each flight, and allow the passengers to inspect every inch of the airframe and engines. This would involve removing the entire interior, and stripping all paint from the exterior, so that each aluminum panel, stringer, and joist can be inspected for metal fatigue, proper fasteners, and proper welding. Engines should be completely disassembled so each turbine blade could be inspected.
Of course, a “C” check takes about six weeks, using an optimistic schedule, so expect each aircraft flight to take at least that long.
Or, we could rely on the FAA to make sure the airlines follow maintenance proceedures themselves. Naw, that wasn’t authorized in the original Constitution in the 19th century, so there’s NO WAY we could do that now!!!!!
Yeah. We don’t need traffic lights either. After enough people get killed at an intersection, drivers will take a different route to avoid that intersection. Let the free market work!
If any of the conservative memes were true, if they had even an iota of credibility, Alabama would be the best place to live in America.
worf @5:
But it wouldn’t hold a candle to the meme-iest of conservative paradises, Somalia.
Worf, thanks for the link!
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A political economy of Alabama is revealing: for every dollar the state sends to Washington, D.C., it receives $1.69 in federal funding (.PDF). Millionaires are taxed at effective rates less than half that of the poorest Alabamians (.PDF). Land and property taxes are the lowest in America. The state relies almost completely on sales taxes to fund education, therefore school funding is a yo-yo oscillating in time with the economy. By the time a child has reached the end of an Alabama K-12 education, they have experienced an average of four years of prorated school budgets. But no matter how extreme the budget cuts, there is always money for high school football and evolution “warning stickers” on biology textbooks.
In short, Alabama has the most regressive revenue plan in America, and has thrown out a welcome mat for any business that would have it in exactly the way economic theorists say they should. Moreover, the state has been doing this since 1901. According to the aptly-named “Laffer Curve” and the supply-side, trickle-down economics ascendant in America for the last thirty years, Alabama ought to be roaring with industry.
Instead, the once-bustling Florence industrial park is now a collection of small businesses and charity warehouses in the shells of former textile mills. The cotton farmer here who once sent his crop from the gin to the mill now sends it to India or China to return as a t-shirt. That’s a classic third-world development trap, and a fair way to state the case: Alabama, like West Virginia, is a part of America’s third world.
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Conservatives, What say thee?
How do you explain why Alabama is not roaring with industry?
Geez, Puddy, what’d you do, go off the deep end again, wishing for this very nice liberal lady to die??
http://crooksandliars.com/karo.....s-personal
@6) and Somalia and Haiti would be paradise.