Your government at work

Schumer shutdown. What a ridiculous ploy from the U.S. Senate. Strictly politics and we didn’t need it. The Republicans blame it on the Democrats and the Democrats blame the Republicans because after all, they have the Presidency, the House and the Senate while of course ignoring that it takes 60 votes to pass spending bills in the Senate and the Republicans only have 51 members. I guess that they think the public, that’s us, are ignorant of that fact.

The ballyhooed government shutdown, as before, was settled in short order. Little harm done as government workers will receive back pay for days worked or not worked either way. The best way to prevent such nonsense from happening came from a friend in California who noted that California made a law that if a balanced state budget was not passed by their state constitution’s mandated date then the state legislators would receive no pay until they passed a budget. No back pay either. Ben noted that the California legislature had never been late in passing their budget since that law went into effect. Oh we can only hope that such a rule could be instituted on the U.S. Congress to get rid of the nonsense that we watched in action today.

Welcome back “Mike at Night”. I’ve missed your sometimes acerbic comments concerning politics. One thing in Mike’s most recent column intrigued me though and that was when he was commenting on his son’s decision to make a career change at age 40 years. Mike opined that such a career change was difficult and wasn’t quite sure that it was a good idea.

Reflecting on my life I would beg to differ from Mike’s concern. At age 42 I retired from the Air Force and came back home to take over the family farm. Having been raised on that very same farm but then been away for 25 years I found the return adjustment easy. The timing wasn’t exactly propitious as securing a line of credit for operating expenses in the President Jimmy Carter (D) era of double-digit interest rates made financial decisions tough. I loved the farm life. The solitude of hour after hour operating the tractor or combine, thinking time. Early morning tending to irrigation with the dew still on everything before the oppressive heat of the day. The satisfaction of a good crop in the bin. The mechanical challenge of keeping all the machinery in top operating condition. Training my son and his young friends who I hired to help learn the value of farm labor. For nineteen years it was a great career.

Then after the death of our parents and the dissolution of the farm holdings to settle their estate I again transitioned to a career of a corporate pilot. It was a different world from Air Force pilot duties. Tanker and bomber flight plans always had oversight by their Squadron commanders. During flights there was always a link to a command post for help or change of plans. Not so corporate aviation. The pilot was pretty much on his own to make decisions concerning weather, mechanical state of the aircraft, fuel purchases etc. In my opinion that is where experience comes in on good decision making. Fortunately, the company that I flew for never second-guessed one of my decisions. If the weather was down and there was nowhere to go to legally make an instrument approach and land in case of losing an engine or some other major problem once airborne I simply would not go. Some corporate pilots do not have such assurances which makes that occupation a bit more dicey.

Your McCook Airport Advisory Board is due to meet shortly to make a recommendation for airline service into and out of the McCook Airport. In my opinion, Boutique has served us well. They have compiled a pretty good record of on-time arrivals and departures and people who have flown with them report pleasant experiences. A real plus with Boutique is their staff at our airport. All are local people and bend over backward to make travelers experience at the terminal most pleasant. I’ll just say that the local TSA staff is thorough. Yes I have received complaints from time to time so Boutique’s service isn’t perfect but possibly another carrier would be no better.

Back to the Kabuki theatre that is our U.S. Senate in action. Even their TV coverage is misleading. The Senate chamber itself is a large theater shaped room with seating for each senator. What we see on TV is a speaker with one or two attendants plus the acting President of the Senate opining into the camera. What we don’t see is that the rest of the chamber is empty. Evidently, communication is piped to each of the senator’s office so that they can entertain visitors, do paperwork and pay attention or not to what is being said by whoever is speaking in the Chamber. In my opinion, if all were required to be in their assigned Chamber seat whenever one of them was speaking a lot more business would get done. Possibly that would be good for our country or NOT.

Mike I kind of feel sorry for you having to defend your beloved Democrats preference for creating rights and privileges for illegal immigrants over those of U.S. citizens and especially over my beloved military serving today without pay.

That is the way I saw it.

Dick Trail