x

Please Login




Register Here!

On Politics, We Can Always See the Whites of Their Eyes.

 Search:  
Login / Register   About Us   Advertise   Contact Us  
RSS Feed

The Patriot Room

GM Asks FAA To Remove Private Jets From Public Tracking Site

by: Bill Dupray   posted: 2008-11-29 11:45:00
Viewed 316 times. 0 Comments.

When you get to the bottom, keep digging fellas.

The Chairmen of the Big 3 automakers took a ration of grief for flying private jets down to Washington to beg for money to bail out their incompetently-managed, failing companies.

Adding a public relations disaster to a fiscal disaster didn't help. As a result, the companies announced they may be selling a couple of the jets.

But they are obviously pissed off that somebody was able to track the fact that they flew the jets to Washington in the first place. So they have asked the FAA to block the public's ability to track the jets.

General Motors Corp., criticized by U.S. lawmakers for its use of corporate jets, asked aviation regulators to block the public’s ability to track a plane it uses.

“We availed ourselves of the option as others do to have the aircraft removed” from a Federal Aviation Administration tracking service, a GM spokesman, Greg Martin, said yesterday in an interview. He declined to discuss why GM made the request.

Flight data show that the leased Gulfstream Aerospace G-IV jet flew Nov. 18 from Detroit to Washington, where Chief Executive Officer Richard Wagoner Jr. spoke to a Senate committee that day and a House panel the next day on behalf of a $25 billion auto-industry rescue plan.

Representatives at the Nov. 19 House hearing including Democrat Gary Ackerman of New York faulted Wagoner, Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally and Chrysler LLC CEO Robert Nardelli for taking private jets to Washington to plead their case.

“Couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class?” Ackerman said. . . .

An FAA spokeswoman, Laura Brown, said she couldn’t immediately determine whether her agency had granted GM’s flight-privacy request. “We do this routinely” for aircraft owners, she said yesterday. “They don’t have to have a reason” for requesting the block, she said.

I have no problem with these guys taking their private jets to a bake-sale if they want to. The market will correct for such mismanagement.

The reason this issue is important now is because these companies are asking to be sheltered from free market forces. Congress wants to take over the management of the companies in return for the bailout money. This is anti-capitalist folly, of course, but if that is the decision, then our tax dollars are being used to prop up companies that will ultimately fail anyway and we should demand open books and full disclosure of the uses of all capital by the company and its executives. If taxpayer money is paying for these jets, then they do need a reason to hide their usage from the public.

H/T Instapundit

Tags:

Related Articles


Links to this post

Trackback url: http://patriotroom.com/article/gm-asks-faa-to-remove-private-jets-from-public-tracking-site/trackback

Comments 0

Have an opinion?

 Name (required)
 Email (required)
 Website

If you were a member you wouldn't have to input that stuff!


What is 2 + 3 ? (seriously... for moderates the answer is 4 and for liberals the answer is cat)

Note: Your comment may be held for moderation.

blog advertising is good for you

blog advertising is good for you

Publius' Newsstand

  • Schlafly: Health Care Vote Set to Expose the My...

    Direct hit: "It is naive for any elected official, especially one who describes himself as 'pro-life,' to expect that a promise to issue an Executive Order that reasserts the intentions of the Hyde Amendment will be fulfilled by the most pro-abortion president to ever sit in the White House. Perhaps Mr. Stupak and his fellow pro-life Democrats forget that President Obama's first Executive Order was the repeal of the Mexico City Policy to allow for international funding of abortion." "Not only would an Executive Order be rendered meaningless in the face of Congress passing legislation which actively provides for the massive expansion and funding of abortion services, but anyone who doubts the abortion tsunami which awaits this bill becoming law lives in a fantasy world."

      Views: 80 Comments: 0

  • One last trick up Boehner's sleeve?

    Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said House leaders are specifically concerned about a Republican motion to recommit that would contain only language on abortion that Stupak originally had wanted to include in the Senate bill. The concern is based on the fear of GOP attack ads painting Democrats who vote against a motion to recommit that includes Stupak’s favored language on abortion as “flip-floppers” on the issue…

      Views: 270 Comments: 0

  • Crocodile tears: Pro-abortion House livid that ...

    Members of the pro-choice caucus are livid after the White House released the Executive Order on abortion to the media without showing it to them. According to members who spoke on the condition of anonymity, at the end of the Stupak press conference today they were still waiting to see the language of the Executive Order. The first they saw of it was after the White House released it with a statement to the media.

      Views: 77 Comments: 1

  • The Hill factors in Stupak: Defeat still within...

    They count 37 dem "no" votes. Makes Kanjorski (PA-11) dang important.

      Views: 183 Comments: 0

  • New issue? Senate cannot take up expedited reco...

    From Drudge - FLASH: Senate Republicans found a provision in the new House health care bill that likely makes it ineligible for expedited 'reconciliation' procedures in the Senate. Dems refused to meet with GOP and Parliamentarian.... Developing....

      Views: 156 Comments: 0

  • Stupak News Conference at 4PM

    From FDL: 3:28 pm – CNN is reporting that a Stupak press conference will take place at 4 pm. If Stupak’s bloc decides to vote in mass for the bill it will pass baring a large revolt from pro-choice Democrats.

      Views: 89 Comments: 1

  • If Barack Forces Passage of Health Care “Reform...

    Great Analysis. Begins here: Would a straightforward, unbiased analysis of the presidential actions of Barack Obama through March 2010, lead to a demand for his immediate impeachment and removal from office? Yes, for a most transparent reason: Obama is purposely undermining the US Constitution. In doing so, his actions make unstable every institution and office below the presidency, since the Constitution is the foundation of every government power and official decision. In fomenting institutional unrest across the US, he threatens the safety of every American man, woman and child, and all our citizens abroad.

      Views: 114 Comments: 8

  • Conference of Bishops: It is the unanimous view...

    Do we really need to state the obvious? Laws are made and changed in the Legislative Branch, not the Executive. Only in dictatorships are laws made by the Executive Branch.
    According to these rulings, such health legislation creates a statutory requirement for abortion funding, unless Congress clearly forbids such funding. That is why the Hyde amendment was needed in 1976, to stop Medicaid from funding 300,000 abortions a year. The statutory mandate construed by the courts would override any executive order or regulation. This is the unanimous view of our legal advisors and of the experts we have consulted on abortion jurisprudence. Only a change in the law enacted by Congress, not an executive order, can begin to address this very serious problem in the legislation."

      Views: 83 Comments: 0

  • Breaking: Hoyer - We don't have the votes yet

    House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) predicted Sunday that Democrats will have the votes to pass the massive health care bill later in the day, but he suggested a number of crucial Members were still undecided. “There are still Members looking at it and trying to make up their minds, but we think there are going to be 216-plus votes when we call the roll,” Hoyer said on NBC’s "Meet the Press.” He added, "We’re going to pass this bill.” Hoyer said the remaining votes the Democrats need are “in the low single digits, certainly.”

      Views: 97 Comments: 0

  • Senate bill requires 67 vote supermajority to k...

    So the Dems now want to decide who lives and who dies so badly, they have rigged the rules to require 67 votes to kill the death panels. Keep in mind this is the same number of votes needed to pass a Constitutional Amendment.
    [Democrats] have inserted . . . a provision that it would take a supermajority of 67 votes in the Senate for future legislative bodies to even consider amendments to its provisions for "death panels." . . . The bill states, "It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection." That subsection addresses rules and regulations that doctors would be ordered to follow by the "Independent Medicare Advisory Boards a/k/a the Death Panels," RedState reported.

      Views: 89 Comments: 1

Get Your PR Button!

Copyright © 2008-2009 Patriot Room Media, LLC
Privacy Policy  Terms Of Service