From the Houston Chronicle, Inspector blasts FAA for Southwest relationship“Southwest Airlines exerted undue influence within the Federal Aviation Administration, creating an atmosphere that let the carrier fly aircraft after cracks had been discovered in a jet’s fuselage, inspectors told a House panel.”

And from the Washington Post, FAA Derailed Safety Alarms, “They also said the FAA had gone from aggressively regulating airlines to treating them like customers or clients. Lawmakers and outside safety experts have expressed similar worries about regulators’ coziness with the carriers.”

I won’t fly if in order to get on a plane and be confident that it will take off, fly, and land, I’ll have to go to the airport and inspect the plane. Forget the fact that I’m not qualified; it’s inefficient for every passenger, or even one out of 10,000, to go to the airport, review the maintenance records, and study the planes. But isn’t that’s why we have an FAA? Isn’t that why we have a government?

Isn’t it the role of government to provide police and defensive forces to protect law abiding citizens from thieves, scoundrels and external threats; from invaders and from thugs who would point a gun at me and say ‘your money or your life’? That doesn’t mean I don’t have the right to self-defense; it means that I have the right to expect that the police and the courts will protect my rights, including my right to self-defense.

Take that one step further. If I can count on the government to protect me against a thug who will steal my money at gunpoint, then I should be able to count on the government to protect me from someone who, in Woody Guthrie’s words, will ‘rob me with a fountain pen’ by pouring toxic wastes into the air we breathe and rivers we drink from and swim in, or perhaps by ignoring airplane maintenance regulations.

This doesn’t make me a liberal or a conservative, but it sure doesn’t make me a Bush Cheney McCain Republican. It might make me a John Warner Republican, but they pushed him out of the Party. I guess it makes me a liberal because it leads me to believe that the government has the obligation to inspect and regulate airplanes, taxis, roads, cars, and to make sure that we have clean air, clean water, and healthy food, and to educate our children and to do the kinds of things that Edwards was talking about on the stump.

When you believe, as Reagan put it, that “the scariest sentence is ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’” you’re saying we don’t want foxes guarding the henhouse, we don’t want anyone guarding the henhouse, in fact we’re going to sell the wood, the chickens will stay put.