Harvard Law School graduates Deval Patrick and Barack Obama will be holding a fundraising lunch on Friday here in Boston (details). Taxpayers nationwide will be paying Nobel Laureate Obama’s salary and travel expenses for an entourage of 500 while he spends a Friday doing something other than work. To prevent disgruntled taxpayers from throwing offal at the dignitaries, the FAA is imposing a 30 nautical mile flight restriction around the city from 11 am until 4 pm. Our flight school will be effectively shut down on what would otherwise be a profitable fall day.
Is it safe to say that we now have enough lawyers to kill any economy?
[Related: ABC News story about a flight school owner in Oakland, California sends the Democratic Party a bill for lost revenue during Nobel Laureate Obama’s fundraising visit there.]
Instead of referring to Obama as a Nobel Laureate, I always refer to him as a two time Grammy award winner, Barack Obama. For some reason that it just cracks me up.
But it’s so easy! All you have to do is block an extra two hours for each lesson, file a VFR flight plan, get a squawk code on the ground at Hanscom, fly under RADAR surveillance until you’re outside the 30-mile TFR zone, do your practicing at Keene or somewhere outside of it, and fly back under another flight plan, and with RADAR service.
And make sure you can land on a runway other than 29 at Hanscom, as a 2 mile final for 29 would probably put you inside the No-Fly zone.
And that you can get a briefer from Lockheed without a 45 minute wait.
And that your flight plan doesn’t get lost.
And that the controllers aren’t too busy to provide RADAR service.
Sarcasm aside, I am surprised that they don’t have variable-width TFRs for when the President is in a major city. I understand the need to restrict air traffic around Presidential movements, but having a 30 mile ring in Boston or New York City is very different from a 30 mile ring around Topeka.
While I can’t comment about flight rules, I will say that paying for the President’s travel and security is part of the package, just as it has been for every President for at least 30 years. How much did we spend shuffling W and his staff to his numerous vacations? At least Obama is speaking on energy at MIT and engaging in politics.
Neil: As noted in http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/21/obamas-appearances-fundraisers-outpaces-predecessors/ , King Obama has indulged in this diversion of taxpayer funds into his personal Party coffers 4-5 times as frequently as Clinton and Bush. Perhaps we could afford this when we weren’t headed for a $20 trillion national debt, but I don’t see how we can possibly afford it now. What’s wrong with the idea that elected officials mostly stay at their desks working, especially if it is going to cost the taxpayers $10 million every time they travel somewhere new?
As far as vacations go, our elected officials could do a staycation in their already secure homes or go to a special already secured Fantasy Island leased by the government. Then we wouldn’t have to spend tens of millions of dollars securing Martha’s Vineyard, for example.