The kneecapping continues

Listen to Dave’s commentary: The kneecapping continues

Dateline CRAZYTOWN:

“The political dispute has cut funding for the FAA.”

And the result is that FAA projects to improve airports — work that’s already been funded — has been shut down.

The dispute is over two things Republicans attached to the FAA funding bill:

“House Republicans want to make it harder for FAA employees to unionize. Democrats don’t. Republicans are also trying to trim subsidies for rural airport service.”

But it’s beginning to look like there’s a wider strategy here: to make the government look even more incompetent by deliberately kneecapping it.

Republicans want to save $16 million on rural airports. But because the shutdown stops the FAA from collecting airport taxes, all those savings were lost by about noon on the first day of the shutdown.

And on the union issue… we get it that Republicans want to discourage unions, but why do employees typically unionize? Because the boss behaves like a jerk. As in laying off people for no reason.

Which is exactly what Congress has done here — laying off construction workers at the height of the construction season for reasons having nothing to do with construction. EXACTLY the kind of thing that makes employees WANT to unionize!

At some point, this begins to look like sabotage — to push the meme that government can’t do anything right. Of course, they did draw the line at the air traffic controllers:

“This does not affect safety because air traffic controllers are still at work.”

But why not lay them off too? How arrogant are those air traffic controllers? Making pilots fly at certain speeds and altitudes dictated by the government! Talk about a nanny state!