<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" BUFFALO \u2014 I have spent the last couple of days at the annual Dick Joyce Sports Journalism Symposium at St. Bonaventure University. Hence, among other things, the relatively light posting. So today, I was part of a panel discussing the future of the NCAA. (I used to say, &amp;quot;Blow it up and salt the earth so that it never rises again.&amp;quot; Now I say, &amp;quot;Let it collapse of its own internal contradictions and moral incoherence and remain a pile of foul, smoking meat by the side of the road.&amp;quot; I have become more moderate as the years go on.) We did our thing, and I caught a ride to the airport in Buffalo and I discovered that my 6:45 flight home had become an 8:15 flight home. And thus did sequestration enter my life. &amp;quot;Sorry,&amp;quot; the nice lady at the ticket counter said. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s been like this all day. All the planes are late because of the FAA furloughs.&amp;quot; I actually thought for one wild moment that, maybe, this would be enough for people to rise up against one of the most truly moronic pieces of economic policy \u2014 and political strategy \u2014 ever devised by what are laughingly called our two major political parties. And then I thought, well, domestic air travel has been such a carnival of inconvenience for so long that one more new act in the general burlesque likely would draw no notice at all. (And, since nobody I know has bought the various bullshit excuses they get at airports since at least 2003, I suspect that &amp;quot;FAA sequestration&amp;quot; has no more credibility with my fellow castaways than do &amp;quot;weather,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;mechanical issues,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Take the train if you don&amp;#039;t like it, Ace.&amp;quot;) We have been so conditioned to expect so little from &amp;quot;government&amp;quot; that I firmly believe that people no longer truly connect in their minds that government has ceased performing a function because they don&amp;#039;t expect \u2014 or, worse, don&amp;#039;t want \u2014 it to do anything at all. Look, for example, how many knots into which congressional Republicans are tying themselves over this. They loved sequestration \u2014 Hey, we&amp;#039;re cutting spending! \u2014 and now Uncle Fud and Aunt Bee are marooned in Biloxi while trying to get home to Bug Tussle, and all hell is breaking loose. &amp;quot;Why is President Obama unnecessarily delaying your flight?&amp;quot; Cantor tweeted. &amp;quot;FAA can reprioritize.&amp;quot; The Republican National Committee urged passengers with delayed flights to contact the White House - and provided the telephone number to make it convenient. As of Monday afternoon, there were only a handful of airports across the country reporting delays, according to the FAA website. Charlotte Douglas International Airport was citing staffing issues for departure delays, and Baltimore-Washington International Airport cited traffic management issues for departure delays greater than 45 minutes. This is, of course, nonsense, and Cantor knows it. Lasse nach Buffalo kommen! The reasoning behind the FAA&amp;#039;s decision to apply a one-day-every-two-weeks furlough to all 47,000 employees \u2014 including 15,000 flight controllers \u2014 is also not as simple or political as Republicans argue. The FAA has to cut $637 million from its budget before the end of September, with every account sliced by the same percent. The FAA&amp;#039;s operations account, from which 71 percent of all payments goes to salary, can&amp;#039;t avoid the chopping block. Rory Cooper, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), told The Huffington Post that his boss believed the president and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood could save money elsewhere in the FAA budget without unnecessarily delaying air travel.... But specific programs that could be cut as a replacement for the money saved by furloughs are hard to pinpoint. Especially when there aren&amp;#039;t any, really. I don&amp;#039;t need any more excuses not to like Eric Cantor. Stranding me for a couple of hours in Buffalo is way down the list. But I&amp;#039;ve always been dubious that the White House can spin the sequester deftly enough to pin its inconveniences, and the genuine damage it is doing in a number of areas, especially scientific and medical research, into an effective enough political weapon to force the Republicans to act rationally on the budget. More likely, I&amp;#039;ve thought, people would just think &amp;quot;government&amp;quot; is fcking up again, and that&amp;#039;s where the Republicans go to have their dinner. More thoughts on this tomorrow, provided I don&amp;#039;t have to buy a house here. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a18254/faa-sequestered-in-buffalo-042313/>