HARDWICK – Every so often, amid the ever flowing stream of garbage coming up from Washington, D.C., something gets lost and forgotten. This time, it is the functioning government we expect our taxes to be paying for.
Did anyone else forget we were in the midst of a historically long government shutdown?
The shutdown has gone on for so long I forgot it was happening, and I work in the news and information business.
Have the Republicans finally proven that big government isn’t necessary for the day to day life of the average citizen? I don’t think so. Gas just reached 4.50 and flying is a gamble.
Instead, airports and travelers faced months of long lines, countless government workers going unpaid, with ICE agents scabbing in a weak attempt to rebrand their Gestapo image, FEMA dollars in limbo, and the education system straining as the President withholds an estimated 2 billion in grants and funding.
The entirety of the Department of Homeland Security was shuttered for an unprecedented 76 days, which includes the U.S. Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Secret Service, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), also a part of the department remain unfunded.
In the meantime, mind you, our Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was filming a road trip reality series with his family. For seven months!
“The Great American Road Trip,” starring Sean Duffy and his wife, Fox News anchor Rachel Campos Duffy, features the couple and their children as they travel to famous U.S. destinations including Civil War battlegrounds, the Mayflower landing site and Yellowstone National Park.
Duffy’s time at the Department of Transportation (DOT) began with a series of plane crashes, 60 in the last year, including the collision of an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter above Washington, D.C.’s Reagan National Airport, which killed 67 people aboard both aircraft.
The Trump administration tried to blame the fatal accident on Biden-era diversity initiatives. Since Duffy’s appointment and the subsequent funding changes to air traffic control and more, multiple planes have collided or had a near miss, including a deadly collision at LaGuardia Airport between a plane and a truck, and near misses at Chicago Midway and Burbank Airport.
Just hours after the transportation secretary revealed he’d been filming a family road trip for over half the year, while also ostensibly working to ensure travel safety, a plane struck and killed a person at Denver International Airport.
I write all this to ask, why are we as United States taxpayers, accepting this level of blatant disregard for our safety and peace of mind?
These agencies are created and funded to improve the quality of life and safety of those who live in the U.S. of America.
If federal appointees aren’t working for us, they are working against us.
As the safety of aviation staffers and travelers everywhere is in shambles, Sean Duffy falls into the latter category. I wonder if his family uses the commercial airlines he isn’t effectively regulating?
