Playing With Air Safety

BushCo is continuing its policy of promise now to pay later - but only after we're safely gone. This time however it's not a Mars mission or AIDS assistance or even our children's' education. This time it's air safety. You know, one of those things that aWol specifically promised to fix even before September 11, 2001. From this morning's Wall Street Journal:

The Bush administration plans to propose a 16% cut in spending on air-traffic-control equipment and facilities, saving nearly half a billion dollars a year but postponing or scaling back projects aimed at making air travel more efficient.

Don't be fooled by the word "efficient." When it comes to air traffic control, that means SAFETY. Efficiency in air traffic control means that planes don't have to be stacked up quite so closely when queued up for landing or takeoff. That gives controllers and pilots more time to react should something out of the ordinary happen.

So, there's the cut, the part you knew was coming. Where's the promise?

Speaking Tuesday to an aviation-industry group, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta made no mention of the budget plan but said the administration is working to triple the capacity of the nation's aviation system over the next 15 to 20 years.

There's the now-classic set up. We're going to do something so wonderful - just you wait and see! But it won't be finished for quite a while. Sure we'll be long gone, but you'll have a nice, shiny new [insert promise here]. Then, under the cover of the latest announcement or emergency, they cut funding for their brand new whatever. They've gotten quite good at it. But they've done it so often, you'd think the public would have caught on by now.

What? A new mission to Mars? Wow...

Now, what was I saying?