Didn't U.S. Taxpayers Bailout Airline Industry With Billions?

Industry analysts say there are roughly 700 FAA-approved repair companies in other countries — including repair shops in Argentina, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Kenya, China and Indonesia. The Aeroman company in El Salvador is becoming one of the more popular, drawing business from US Airways, JetBlue, Frontier, Southwest and other U.S. carriers.

We are becoming a meaningless country. Our livelihood, our health, our safety, our morals, our economy are all just a game for the super rich, backed by the Republican Party and the media.

We are becoming a bloated, sloppy, stupid, foolish mess... and we are taking the rest of the world with us.

Comments

[Christian Democrat]

It's the cycle of empires, we just happen to be the generation that is REALLY starting to sense the decline. Our parents warned us, but we were young, immortal, and foolish. Their parents warned them, too.

Rome was all the rage for a while. Spain and then England, too. Empires fall.

Complacency on the part of the populace? Sure, it's an easy easy to fall in to. Can a government save it? Only for a while and even then, really, only on the surface.

We are each, wonderfully American-ly, beholden for our own personal successes or failures. Beyond that its out of control even of the players that think they are in control.

Who's up next? My bet is on China, but I think they're smart enough to realize that real power resides in the group that declines the honor of saying they are in power but can flex muscles to remind the minions of their sub-prime nature. So no, China won't be an empire like any before them.

They'll just own it all and call in chips when needed to bring the debtors into line.

Here's the sick thought a friend pointed out to me over the weekend - how destabilizing would it be for India and Pakistan to have a go at it, or Israel and Iran, or China and Taiwan? The sickness comes from the thought that any of those might benefit us.

I think not. The benefit went out the door when we stopped making the stuff we buy.

We're fucked and corporate America doesn't give a shit 'cause they've gone multinational on the American taxpayers' dollars. Truly. A CFO buddy at a huge Pharma company says the US government paid his company something over $200 Million Dollars (in tax breaks) to open a manufacturing facility in ... Ireland.

Is there an up side to any of this?

Yes. We aren't our childrens' children. A very sad upside but yeah, it will get worse before it gets better if it gets better at all.

I'm sitting here for a while reading that last paragraph and realizing, wtf, why are some people so able to just give it up to some corporation knowing that evil is being done. Think Enron but any brokerage would suffice. Very smart people work at those places because they simply don't effin care about anyone but their selfish selves.

I don't get those people and I don't want to.

Too much. G'night.

[Jim DeRosa]

For most of last century America was all about crushing socialism and communism and making sure capitalism flourished... but what of the poor, what of the worker? Who spoke for them? No one in America... and look at us now.