The Shutdown Hits Home

"I belong to a group of men who fly alone. There is only one seat in the cockpit of a fighter airplane. There is no space alotted for another pilot to tune the radios in the weather or make the calls to air traffic control centers or to help with the emergency procedures or to call off the airspeed down final approach. There is no one else to break the solitude of a long cross-country flight. There is no one else to make decisions."

-Richard Bach

It's Friday, and I have a long to-do list I started writing in a text to myself at 4:45 this morning. Welcome to my world.

In my wanderings through the usual assortment of internet readings, which included a wonderful mini-biography of Edward VI, I ran across this piece by Paul Krugman, late of the NYT until his banishment for being too liberal, that does a remarkable job explaining why the shutdown crisis is coming to a head at this moment, long before the Rs wanted to unleash this level of suffering on their own countrymen.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/too-cruel-too-soon?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=277517&post_id=177640056&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2fku&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

That all trails lead back to Epstein made me smirk---The Rs are willing to risk a political catastrophe for themselves, given that the country mostly and correctly blames them for the mess, and to broadly inflict pain on Americans who've grown accustomed to "affordable" health insurance, or to eating every day, all to protect a pedophile. If you're still a Republican, you belong to a party that sanctions diddling kids. Hope your teenage daughter gets an internship at Mar A Lago.

Of course, there's a way out of the trap for the Rs, but at a price. They could just end the filibuster, win in the Senate on a straight party-line vote on the current budget, and that'd be that. The House wouldn't need to reconvene, and no release of the Epstein files. Eazee peazee.

That is, so long as the Dems don't ever return to power. The Republican Party is comprised of an ever-shrinking minority, and the 60 vote requirement in the Senate has allowed them to stymy a lot of legislation over the years. Once the filibuster is gone, with the wildly unpopular agenda they've unleashed the only way to avoid that inevitability is to do away with elections altogether, or further neuter Congress. So stand by for that.

Personally, the shutdown hasn't affected our household in any material way. But I'm worried that may change next week when I must fly back to Florida for work.

On these 800 mile trips through all sorts of weather, I always file IFR, which stands for "instrument flight rules". I file a flight plan through a computer app that details my route of flight, altitude, time enroute, and ultimate destination. The nearest "center" controllers, which cover broad swaths of airspace across the country, enter the plan, and one typically doesn't taxi without receiving acknowledgement from tower that the plan is in the system. Just before takeoff, center issues an IFR release, and then and only then you're allowed to take off.

This transaction is my cause for concern--the IFR release is a function of traffic flows and volumes all over the region, and if the system is saturated they can hold you on the ground for some indefinite period. As you may have read, over the last few days the system has begun to collapse, with massive ground holds at major airports and over a thousand cancelled flights a day. The reason? Not enough controllers to handle the volume, and many call in sick so they can go work their new "second" jobs delivering pizza or whatever it takes to pay their rent during the shutdown. I don't blame them. Would you come to work for free?

If the system is saturated, no IFR release. It may be that simple.

So the next few weeks, which include a fairly demanding flight schedule for me, could be interesting.

The only other option would be to fly back-and-forth VFR, meaning under "visual flight rules". No ATC clearance required. The problem with this solution is that it requires flight in clear air, and not within 500 or 1000 feet of clouds. Good luck pulling that off on a flight down the entire eastern seaboard, in November. And the path of flight along the Shenandoah and east of Charlotte crosses perpendicularly the approach corridors of three of the busiest airports in the country. The opportunities to swap paint with a 767 are manifest, and I watch them cross over me regularly while I'm flying IFR. Just imagine if no one is dictating my altitude on a VFR flight, or maybe even talking to me.

With a slight break in the action these days, meaning only two or three events a day, I'm trying to pack tax classes into the interstices as I make up for a couple lost weeks swallowed by celebrations of life and travel to FL for hearings and mediations that didn't seem much worth the effort. Inching ever closer to pulling the plug on litigation, and taking back this last sliver of life.