Should politicians be criticized for using private aircraft?

murphey said:
Remember the former Speaker of the House asking for the spare 757 for flights between DC and California?
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Gibberish. Said Speaker required a plane capable of nonstop flight to California, and when headwinds necessitated an aircraft other than the one normally used (by the previous speaker), a different aircraft was used. This was as ordered by President Bush and sanctioned by the House sergeant-at-arms for security reasons. There are only a handful of planes in the military which can carry the 3rd in line to the presidency.

P.S. Are you ranting about our trillion dollar deficit this year? I didn't think so.
 
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This reminds of something my wife said to me recently. She'd asked me to please never run for office because she didn't want our family put through all that. I have to agree.

Regardless of party, if you run for a higher ranking office in government they pick apart your entire life. Every little thing you've ever done wrong will be blown up and put in the news and in case you've never really done anything too bad they'll find something to smear you with. We've all got someone we've had trouble with in our lives and the opposition will find those people and and broadcast their bad opinion of you to everyone. They'll scrutinize where and what you eat, your dress, your choice of pet, your means of transportation, how you earn your money, your medical history, and god knows what else. Any possible thing that just might make you look bad and change someone's opinion can and will be used against you. Now they've even got folks harassing politicians and their families out in public.

To actually try to run for one of those offices... and actually subject your family to what I can only imagine is a living nightmare you either have to be one cold calculating power hungry jerk of a person... or driven above and beyond and sort of sanity to achieve. We do this to our elected officials and then we wonder why so many of them turn out to be scumbags or don't seem to really care about the average person. Well, if you consider yourself to be a decent reasoning caring human being would YOU want to be in that position? What sane person who cares about their loved ones would? That's why we get what we get... a bunch of narcissists, nuts, and scumbags and it's our own(collective) fault.
 
labbadabba said:
In a local race, one incumbent is being hit hard for the use of a private plane which is owned by a LLC in which the incumbent's spouse is the majority owner. There's no legal impropriety in these actions but the challenger seems to be hammering on the issue of having a private aircraft and using it.

I've intentionally left this post agnostic to party to avoid the Spin Zone. I'm more curious what POAers and how the GA community should feel about these kinds of attacks.
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Long as the candidate is honest about it. One here claimed to be taking a bus tour of the state. Actually they were flying and getting on the bus at each local airport.
 
Are there sexual favors involved in the deal that the public should be aware of?
 
flyingcheesehead said:
This "issue" is party-ambiguous. Remember the letter to the editor I talked about above? The guy who was criticized for using the plane lost. In the very next election, the guy who had been doing the criticizing, got criticized by the other party for doing exactly that which he had been critical of the previous guy for. BOTH parties love to hate airplanes, because 99.5% of people think airplanes are a wasteful excess.
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Alright..!!! I am a 0.5 percenter..!!

Is that better than a 1 percenter..??
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Yes, with a bit of a caveat, as bolded below:
So, if the election/campaign finance laws don't require you to be paid, you can't get paid (unless you're qualified to be paid regardless of your pax being a candidate, ie, you have a 135 cert).
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Ok, thanks. I knew there was a way a private pilot could fly a politician around.
 
Zeldman said:
Ok, thanks. I knew there was a way a private pilot could fly a politician around.
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Do the rules change if the pilot tosses the politician out from 10,000’ and uses the WKRP defense?

“With God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
 
If appropriate for the task, I would encourage politicians to use GA.

That way they can appreciate the value of little airplanes and local airports.
 
Of course they shouldn't. But it's politics and blaming the other guy for anything is one way to play.
 
RalphInCA said:
If appropriate for the task, I would encourage politicians to use GA.

That way they can appreciate the value of little airplanes and local airports.
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And they can be more productive!

I forgot to mention - When I wrote that letter to the editor, I used the figures that had been shared as far as how many hours the governor had spent on the state planes, multiplied it out to get miles, and figured out that if he'd been driving like they were saying he should, he'd spend TWENTY HOURS A WEEK in the car. Not a good use of resources either.
 
Eric Stoltz said:
If this was a topic in Alaska... Well, it wouldn't be, no one complains about having to fly there from here.
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Well, this was a topic in AK. One of the AK governors got the state to lease and eventually purchase a Westwind. While it did see some use for things like prisoner repatriations, it mostly existed to stroke his ego. The next governor made it a campaign issue during the primary and made a big display out of selling the jet once she came into office.
 
weilke said:
Well, this was a topic in AK. One of the AK governors got the state to lease and eventually purchase a Westwind. While it did see some use for things like prisoner repatriations, it mostly existed to stroke his ego. The next governor made it a campaign issue during the primary and made a big display out of selling the jet once she came into office.
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I know, how funny! Right!? It never sold on eBay and made Momma Bear look like she was going to make it someday. The Good Senator flies coach, and has made it.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk
 
Here in NY, when George Pataki was running for guv he hammered Mario Cuomo for using state aircraft too much ("Air Cuomo" he called it). Then when he won he proceeded to fly the state helicopter from his home in the Hudson Valley to Albany and back every single day for 12 years.

If they're using it to further the interests of their constituents, that's fine. Some do abuse it. Like W flying to his ranch every weekend at $400,000 an hour to the taxpayer credit card. Nobody had a problem with that, but Obama...

The outrage is often selective.
 
We've recently had a couple spin-off threads from this one that have gone political. That will not be tolerated nor will political discussions.

This thread has stayed remarkably aviation-centric and will remain open as long as it continues to be aviation specific. The MC is watching this thread and will not hesitate to issue suspensions and warnings if it strays. A few posts have been borderline political - consider this your warning to cease that behavior or you will get the thread locked on what is an otherwise constructive discussion.
 
labbadabba said:
In a local race, one incumbent is being hit hard for the use of a private plane which is owned by a LLC in which the incumbent's spouse is the majority owner. There's no legal impropriety in these actions but the challenger seems to be hammering on the issue of having a private aircraft and using it.

I've intentionally left this post agnostic to party to avoid the Spin Zone. I'm more curious what POAers and how the GA community should feel about these kinds of attacks.
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No problem with politicians using GA, unless they make hypocrites out of themselves by using their platform to condemn business and private use of general aviation.
 
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Pilots Of America Management said:
We've recently had a couple spin-off threads from this one that have gone political. That will not be tolerated nor will political discussions.

This thread has stayed remarkably aviation-centric and will remain open as long as it continues to be aviation specific. The MC is watching this thread and will not hesitate to issue suspensions and warnings if it strays. A few posts have been borderline political - consider this your warning to cease that behavior or you will get the thread locked on what is an otherwise constructive discussion.
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So annoying...
 
cowman said:
This reminds of something my wife said to me recently. She'd asked me to please never run for office because she didn't want our family put through all that. I have to agree.

Regardless of party, if you run for a higher ranking office in government they pick apart your entire life. Every little thing you've ever done wrong will be blown up and put in the news and in case you've never really done anything too bad they'll find something to smear you with. We've all got someone we've had trouble with in our lives and the opposition will find those people and and broadcast their bad opinion of you to everyone. They'll scrutinize where and what you eat, your dress, your choice of pet, your means of transportation, how you earn your money, your medical history, and god knows what else. Any possible thing that just might make you look bad and change someone's opinion can and will be used against you. Now they've even got folks harassing politicians and their families out in public.

To actually try to run for one of those offices... and actually subject your family to what I can only imagine is a living nightmare you either have to be one cold calculating power hungry jerk of a person... or driven above and beyond and sort of sanity to achieve. We do this to our elected officials and then we wonder why so many of them turn out to be scumbags or don't seem to really care about the average person. Well, if you consider yourself to be a decent reasoning caring human being would YOU want to be in that position? What sane person who cares about their loved ones would? That's why we get what we get... a bunch of narcissists, nuts, and scumbags and it's our own(collective) fault.
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Exactly! I would never want to put myself or my family through anything like that. Every sin and every wrong turn you've ever made will come back. Even if there aren't any they will create some. Just wait until the Facebook/Snapchat/Twitter generation start to run for office or get appointed to high level positions. It is going to get real interesting.
 
mryan75 said:
Here in NY, when George Pataki was running for guv he hammered Mario Cuomo for using state aircraft too much ("Air Cuomo" he called it). Then when he won he proceeded to fly the state helicopter from his home in the Hudson Valley to Albany and back every single day for 12 years.

If they're using it to further the interests of their constituents, that's fine. Some do abuse it. Like W flying to his ranch every weekend at $400,000 an hour to the taxpayer credit card. Nobody had a problem with that, but Obama...

The outrage is often selective.
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Bush flew to his ranch 77 times, in 416 weeks. Simple arithmetic says that that is not "every weekend", nor once per month.
 
Generally, the use of a private aircraft for campaign use is improper in my view unless you are chartering and paying the full charter rate that everyone else pays.

Even if you reimburse for the use a friend or associates plane, someone is expecting a favor in return.

If you own a company that owns the plane, the question now becomes are you writing your campaign use off as a business expense. If there are multiple share holders, chances are they are subsidizing your campaign like it or not.
 
I also believe that there is a difference between the president and a governor or lower level fed or state official. If the president wants to go anywhere, security considerations dictate that he is flown and the entire circus follows him around. A state governor can fly in business with a staffer and few know or care who they are.

On the other end of the spectrum are state officials who abuse job provided transportation. We have two state universities with their respective presidents. Both attended a presidential inauguration a couple of years ago. One of them spent 4k on a hotel room and used a chartered King Air to get his family to DC. 22k billed to the alumni association. The other one flew coach and billed three nights in a B&B to the state travel office ( the flight for his wife he paid out of pocket).....
 
labbadabba said:
In a local race, one incumbent is being hit hard for the use of a private plane which is owned by a LLC in which the incumbent's spouse is the majority owner. There's no legal impropriety in these actions but the challenger seems to be hammering on the issue of having a private aircraft and using it.

I've intentionally left this post agnostic to party to avoid the Spin Zone. I'm more curious what POAers and how the GA community should feel about these kinds of attacks.
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This is an issue of the Haves and the Have Nots.

The people who have or working on getting their pilots license see the plane as a tool.

The people without, are seeing the plane as a toy of the rich.
 
At one point, the narrator says, "zzz even said this about private planes."
The ad then shows footage of zzz saying, "That normal people can afford it."
The narrator returns to ask, "Normal people can afford a private plane?"
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Wow.
I'm not often accused of being a "normal person", but yea, I can afford a private plane. So what...
 
I'd be interested to see the amount of money wasted annually by politicians or business people who travel via airlines instead of charter/GA for 'optics' reasons.

Airline travel is a gigantic time suck, and its expensive as hell for short notice trips which happen all the time. The time it takes to get to the airport, get through security, wait for the aircraft to board, deal with delays, conform to their schedule and the airports they service... its a lot of time. $1200/hr to operate a king air looks really good to a savvy accountant.
 
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dell30rb said:
I'd be interested to see the amount of money wasted annually by politicians or business people who travel via airlines instead of charter/GA for 'optics' reasons.

Airline travel is a gigantic time suck, and its expensive as hell for short notice trips which happen all the time. The time it takes to get to the airport, get through security, wait for the aircraft to board, deal with delays, conform to their schedule and the airports they service... its a lot of time. $1200/hr to operate a king air looks really good to a savvy accountant.
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During the presidential primaries 6 yrs ago I flew into KTOP (Topeka, KS). I was taking a buddy out there for lunch. I taxied the Archer to the ramp and passed a lot of motorcycle cops, police cars, and black SUVs. I didn't have any idea what was going on, so when I parked I asked the ramper about it. He said a candidate was about to show up and he needed to go inside and get his mask(?). Just then a jet of some sort landed and he had to run back out to marshal it to a parking spot right behind me. Turns out it was Rick Santorum in town for the KS primary. My buddy and I hung out next to the Archer and saw Santorum exit the jet and get into a waiting SUV. He saw me, so I did what I normally do in those situations, I waved. He smiled and gave me a thumbs up, so I have that going for me which is nice. We went into the FBO and the ramper was there complaining he didn't get a chance to put on his mask. He had an Obama Halloween mask. He said, "You thought I was kidding, didn't you?"

After lunch, we talked with the pilots. They said they'd already been in two different states since morning, and had one more to hit later that day.

Candidates are one thing, their campaign contributions pay for it. But for incumbents? I don't know how the accountants work that out.
 
Matthew said:
Candidates are one thing, their campaign contributions pay for it. But for incumbents? I don't know how the accountants work that out.
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The incumbent's campaign pays the government for travel on government aircraft, and they pay for the incumbent's travel on private aircraft or on airlines. Extra costs for transportation and housing of security personnel for incumbents do fall to the taxpayer. Basically the rules are set so that the incumbent and their competing candidates have similar campaign costs for travel.
 
dell30rb said:
I'd be interested to see the amount of money wasted annually by politicians or business people who travel via airlines instead of charter/GA for 'optics' reasons.

Airline travel is a gigantic time suck, and its expensive as hell for short notice trips which happen all the time. The time it takes to get to the airport, get through security, wait for the aircraft to board, deal with delays, conform to their schedule and the airports they service... its a lot of time. $1200/hr to operate a king air looks really good to a savvy accountant.
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Not when you understand that these folks earn an annual salary and probably don’t work a full day all year.
 
And here we go again. Just saw an ad last night to "Ground Air Walker!" Now, they weren't completely bagging on Walker's use of the state plane, just that he uses it for a lot of really short legs, and that he campaigned against his predecessor on this issue and then ended up using the plane significantly more than his predecessor did.
 
Zeldman said:
There used to be in the FARs specific rules allowing a part 91 operation to carry a politician and receive compensation. Not sure if that is still allowed or not.
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91.321 in my 2014 book
 
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