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Replies to post #4139 on Just Politics
06/29/12 11:28 PM
06/30/12 9:16 PM
Small government conservatives in the city of Colorado Springs began slashing government services and taxes earlier this year and show no sign of slowing down. Everything from trash collection to streetlights to police coverage have been phased out in the quest to get closer to the free market model espoused by libertarians such as novelist Ayn Rand. The changes have turned Colorado Springs into something like a city-sized experiment in just how small government can get. So when pundits debate the Colorado Springs experiment, they’re also debating the hard-line libertarian philosophy behind that experiment. Does drastically cutting services and taxes really work?
“Self-reliance. Privatization. Thrift. Fiscal accountability. [ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2010/04/can-a-town-survive-with-nearly-no-government/24841/ ] The liberals in Denver and Washington could learn something from our Mountain West spirit if they could just get over their Colorado Springs Derangement Syndrome.”
As federal authorities confront the destructive start of what threatens to be one of the fiercest wildfire seasons in memory, they are relying on a fleet of ancient planes [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/fire-threat-up-as-vintage-air-arsenal-shrinks.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all ] converted from other purposes to do the dangerous, often deadly, work of skimming the smoldering treetops to bomb fires with water and flame retardant.
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The contractor-owned planes, refurbished from military use and leased by the United States Forest Service, have been hobbled by accidents and mechanical problems, leading to growing safety concerns and calls for a major overhaul. A decade ago, the government had 44 large tanker planes at its command. Now, with fires raging from California to Colorado to Wyoming, the regular fleet is down to nine.
Modern airplanes are available, some able to skim up a bellyful of water from a lake without even stopping to land and thus to conduct dozens of drops a day, but these are too expensive for the private contractors who fly the forest missions. Even the supply of younger military hand-me-downs has dried up. “There are no lightweight bombers being surplused anymore,” said Vincent Ambrosia, a forest fire expert at NASA.
“We’ve failed to invest,” said James E. Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, who led a blue-ribbon panel that examined the aging tankers in 2002, after two fiery crashes drew national attention. “We’re stepping back to these old tankers and old aircraft, and we’ve done nothing to develop any new technology.”
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