About John Mica

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Press Release and FOIA links - ANGERED NEW YORKERS SERVE DOCUMENT DEMAND ON REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MICA, USDOT, AND FAA OVER MICA’S MANIPULATION OF AIR ROUTES

Press Release -“QUIET ROCKLAND” CALLS FOR THE RESIGNATION OF CONGRESSMAN

"Do you have to take your toupee off when you go through security?"

What will John Mica put on the Auction Block next?

Crybaby Mica - Washington Post Article

Law Office of John J. Tormey III, Esq.

John J. Tormey III, PLLC

217 East 86th Street, PMB 221

New York, NY 10028 USA

(212) 410-4142 (phone)

(212) 410-2380 (fax)

brightline@att.net

Quiet Rockland - No New Flights Over Rockland County, NY

John J. Tormey III, Esq.

P.O. Box 918

Pearl River, NY 10965 USA

(845) 735-9691 (phone)

(845) 735-0476 (fax)

jtormey@optonline.net

VIA FAX: 1-202-226-0821, E-MAIL, and U.S. MAIL

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Congressman John L. Mica - Florida, 7th District

2313 Rayburn House Office Building

United States Congress, United States House of Representatives

Washington, D.C. 20515 USA

Re: Your Nonsensical January 16, 2009 Press Release About U.S. Airways Flight #1549, And The FAA’s Ill-Conceived And Harmful “NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign”

Congressman Mica:

Never mind that you’re too afraid to respond to all of Quiet Rockland’s past correspondence sent directly to you.

Your Friday January 16, 2009 “Press Release”, once again bought and paid for by your redneck yahoo aviation-industry buddies, sinks you to new depths of Stunade.

In your Press Release you have the nerve to suggest that FAA’s foul and unlawful NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign would somehow militate against aviation accidents like U.S. Airways Flight #1549 which landed in New York’s Hudson River last Thursday January 15, 2009 – the very last day of Failed Acting Administrator “Bobby” Sturgell’s abysmal term at FAA. You are one of the primary malevolent architects of that purely-mercantilistic Redesign. You seek to facilitate FAA’s brutal routing of between 200 to 600 new jumbo-jets per day at low altitudes, every 2.5 minutes, over Rockland County, New York’s most densely-populated residential areas. This would turn pleasant villages like Chestnut Ridge into de facto extensions of Newark Runway #22.

Apparently, you would rather make an Airbus crash into people’s homes, schools, and houses of worship, than have a chance to evacuate its passengers in a water landing. Your “vision” of safety only maximizes body-count and, destruction.

That’s MORONIC, John Mica.

Furthermore, you again lie and mislead. American aviation is NOT safe. The Flight #1549 Airbus crashed because of defective engines which were already the subject of up to four (4) Airworthiness Directives, one of which was the Emergency A.D. of December 31, 2008 - not birds. The engines on that very same plane exploded in loud booms while the plane was mid-air on the very same departure air-route out of LaGuardia two days prior to Thursday’s water-landing. Yet that very aircraft was kept in service and the engines were not replaced during the day in between. Your aeromercantile cronies made that genius decision – you know, the ones that pay you.

As for ousted FAA functionary “Bobby” Sturgell, he was the worst Administrator in FAA’s 50-year history. Sturgell notched approximately 4,000 or more aviation fatalities on his flight-belt during his time at FAA. Just like your disgraced buddy Sturgell did, you are lying to the American people – AGAIN. The “political” games that harm aviation safety, are YOUR games, John Mica – your games of putting profits over people, every single time you get the chance. We’re sick of it. And we’re sick of your transparent chicanery.

Moreover, why should anyone trust a man like yourself who cannot even write, spell, or punctuate correctly, John Mica? Is English your second language because your primary language is “Thug”? In your “Press Release” you say:

“[a]ir [r]edesign[sic] must move forward to insure[sic] that both safety and congestion improve”.

You are too much of an inattentive boor to realize that FAA’s own term is “Airspace Redesign”, and not “[a]ir [r]edesign[sic]” - although I very much look forward to you showing us in the Northeast your manifold ways of altering the nitrogen/oxygen balance in the future. Perhaps you seek to do that with the jet-fuel emissions you want to bring to our county of 300,000, and the 30,000,000 of us in the Northeast who have not abandoned our roots like you did when you parachuted to Florida.

Your Press Release also blew the name of the airline itself. The airline is “US Airways (Inc.)”, and not simply “US Air”:

http://www.usairways.com

But perhaps you are in such a rush to cash your “campaign finance” checks when they come in, that you don’t read the payor’s name all that carefully.

You are also too much of a thick-headed aeromercantalist to realize that the word you were seeking in the above, was “ensure”, not “[i]nsure[sic]”. Maybe you should tell your crack-proofreading staff the difference, too. “Insure” is what State Farm does. “Ensure”, on the other hand, is what Quiet Rockland is going to do to your morally-bereft legacy. But what, really, does spelling, grammar, and diction matter to someone like yourself, already bought-and-paid-for by the dirty jet-fuel-soaked money of the aviation industry a thousand times over?

The reason why FAA Reauthorization failed repeatedly, and why you have none other than a political hack in office as current pro tempore FAA Administrator in the form of Lynne (9/11) Osmus, is because YOU failed, John Mica. Now we Americans have swept most all of the old aero-refuse out the door. Sturgell. Gone. Blakey. Gone. Sabatini. Leverenz. Elwell. Weiss. All ejected. All gone. You are one of the last remaining vestiges of the old corrupt Bobby Sturgell aero-mercantile machine. Your act is tired. Your song is over.

We will continue to make sure that every one of your Florida constituents, and every American citizen, knows what an inhuman failure you are, John Mica. We will make sure that every American citizen knows that your brainstorm giamope solution for preventing future Flight #1549’s, is to instead fly those defective-engined planes over densely-populated residential areas and risk killing people with them. I’d call you chiacchierone, but that would imply that more than one person actually listens to you. Too bad that you yourself don’t have the voice of an internal conscience to which to listen, as opposed to the mere flappings of your own gums and the sound of Topstick dripping in the Florida sun which has obviously fried your brain. Or perhaps maybe the injury occurred when you head-butted that cameraman after the Tom Delay fundraiser you attended this past summer. That was class.

My role models are in Congress, the same body you inhabit, for now – dignified and genteel persons like Eliot Engel, John Hall, Robert Menendez, and Frank Lautenberg. You don’t deserve membership in their fraternity. You’re antithetical to the interests of the citizens of this country, and you don’t even hide it well:

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Congressman John Mica’s Shameless Aeromercantile Plugs

http://removesturgell.blogspot.com/2009/01/congressman-john-micas-shameless.html

Your move,

John J. Tormey III, Esq.

Quiet Rockland - No New Flights Over Rockland County, NY

cc:

VIA FAX: 1-386-860-5730, E-MAIL, and U.S. MAIL

John L. Mica - Florida, 7th District

United States Congressman

840 Deltona Boulevard, Suite G

Deltona, FL 32725 USA

VIA FAX: 1-386-676-7748, E-MAIL, and U.S. MAIL

John L. Mica - Florida, 7th District

United States Congressman

770 West Granada Boulevard, Suite 315

Ormond Beach, FL 32174-5180 USA

VIA FAX: 1-904-810-5091, E-MAIL, and U.S. MAIL

John L. Mica - Florida, 7th District

United States Congressman

3000 North Ponce de Leon Boulevard, Suite 1

Saint Augustine, FL 32084-8600 USA

VIA FAX: 1-407-657-5353, E-MAIL, and U.S. MAIL

John L. Mica - Florida, 7th District

United States Congressman

100 East Sybelia Avenue, Suite 340

Maitland, FL 32751-4495 USA

VIA U.S. MAIL

John L. Mica, Florida - 7th District

United States Congressman

1 Florida Park Drive, Suite 100

Palm Coast, FL 32137 USA

VIA U.S. MAIL

John L. Mica - Florida, 7th District

United States Congressman

613 Saint Johns Avenue, Room 107

Palatka, FL 32177-4643 USA

Distribution - Those Interested In Aviation Safety, And Defeating The FAA’s “NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign”:

ALL U.S. SENATORS, ALL U.S. REPRESENTATIVES, THE GAO, OTHER FEDERAL OFFICIALS, STATE OFFICIALS, COUNTY OFFICIALS, TOWN OFFICIALS, LAWYERS, CITIZENS, BUSINESSES, GROUPS, NEWS MEDIA, LAW ENFORCEMENT, CLERGY, EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS, OTHER INTERESTED PARTIES; OTHER U.S.-FRIENDLY COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD, EMBASSIES, AND WORLD MEDIA; AND FAA, USDOT, I.G., AND NASA PERSONNEL

Jurisdictions

Alabama (AL), Alaska (AK), Arkansas (AR), Arizona (AZ), California (CA), Colorado (CO),

Connecticut (CT), District Of Columbia (DC), Delaware (DE), Florida (FL), Georgia (GA), Hawaii (HA),

Iowa (IA), Idaho (ID), Illinois (IL), Indiana (IN), Kansas (KS), Kentucky (KY), Louisiana (LA),

Massachusetts (MA), Maryland (MD), Maine (ME), Michigan (MI), Minnesota (MN), Missouri (MO), Mississippi (MS), Montana (MT), Nebraska (NE), Nevada (NV), New Hampshire (NH), New Jersey (NJ),

New Mexico (NM), New York (NY), North Carolina (NC), North Dakota (ND), Ohio (OH), Oklahoma (OK), Oregon (OR), Pennsylvania (PA), Rhode Island (RI), South Carolina (SC), South Dakota (SD),

Tennessee (TN), Texas (TX), Utah (UT), Vermont (VT), Virginia (VA), Washington (WA),

Wisconsin (WI), West Virginia (WV), Wyoming (WY); American Samoa (SM), Guam (GM),

Puerto Rico (PR), Virgin Islands (VI)

http://republicans.transportation.house.gov/News/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=503

Press Release

Mica Demands Obama and Congress Act After US Air Accident

January 16, 2009

Washington, DC – U.S. Rep. John L. Mica (R-FL), the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Republican Leader and former chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee, praised the pilot of US Air Flight 1549 and those involved in the rescue of passengers and crew, and called on the President-elect and Congress to take action on some long-delayed safety matters relating to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

“Although the aviation industry avoided a catastrophic event with the crash of US Air flight 1549 in the icy waters of the Hudson River, America’s aviation system is skating on thin ice,” said Mica.

“Thanks to the heroic actions of the experienced pilot and the crew, and those on the ground who responded quickly, all the passengers were rescued. American aviation is still the safest form of travel, but the Federal Aviation Administration and the aviation industry continue to face significant safety challenges that must be addressed.

“Unfortunately, political games have been played that could endanger the effectiveness and safety record of the FAA,” Mica added. “Since September 2007, the agency has been operating without a confirmed administrator, and this is absolutely unacceptable.

“In the 1990’s, after the agency saw five different administrators in a short period of time, Congress acted to bring needed stability and consistency to the position by establishing a five-year term. Former FAA Administrator Jane Garvey, appointed by President Clinton, and former Administrator Marion Blakey, appointed by President Bush, both completed five-year terms. However, Robert Sturgell’s nomination has languished in the Senate since late 2007 because Senate Democrats have blocked a vote on his confirmation.

“Leaving this critical agency without a confirmed leader places the entire system in jeopardy,” Mica said. “I call on President-elect Obama and Congress to fill and confirm this essential aviation leadership position immediately.”

The former House Aviation Subcommittee Chairman continued, “Northeast Senate Democrats have also worked to delay FAA efforts to implement a redesign of the New York area airspace. Planes leaving LaGuardia, JFK and Newark are limited to air routes that were established decades ago. Efforts to redesign New York’s airspace, which is responsible for almost three-fourths of the nation’s chronically delayed flights, have dragged on for more than 18 years, and this air redesign must move forward to insure that both safety and congestion improve.”

Mica further commented, “The American public should know that Congress has also failed to approve FAA reauthorizing legislation for more than a year and forced the agency to operate on the basis of short-term funding extensions. FAA funding and other key federal agencies have yet to receive updated appropriations authority that was due at the beginning of last October.

“All of these issues, including no Administrator, no policy and no funding, have the potential for crippling FAA projects, including bird strike and other safety research and development programs.

“I call on President-elect Obama to nominate an FAA Administrator as soon as possible, support the airspace redesign, and work with Congress to pass pending FAA policy and funding legislation,” Mica concluded.

# # #

Quiet Rockland Feeds Information On “The Goose Coverup” To Fox News, Bill O’Reilly, And Geraldo Rivera – And Fox Runs The Story:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,483344,00.html

It Was Engine Failure, And Not Geese, That Crashed U.S. Airways Flight #1549 Airbus Into The Icy Hudson River On January 15, 2009.

Interview

Where Is Hero US Airways Pilot Capt. Sullenberger?

Monday, January 26, 2009

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This is a rush transcript from “The O’Reilly Factor,” January 23, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Watch “The O’Reilly Factor” weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET and listen to the “Radio Factor!”

BILL O’REILLY, HOST: Continuing now with FOX News anchor Geraldo Rivera. Last week, the biggest hero in America was Captain Chesley Sullenberger, who successfully crash-landed a US Air jetliner on the Hudson River. Nobody was killed, an amazing achievement. But where is Captain Sullenberger? So what’s going on? Why isn’t he out there?

Click here to watch the segment!

GERALDO RIVERA, HOST, “GERALDO AT LARGE”: I don’t know why he hasn’t spoken up until now, but I do know that tomorrow in his hometown…

O’REILLY: Parade.

RIVERA: ...that’s Danville, California…

O’REILLY: Right. Related Column

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RIVERA: ...he will get a hero’s welcome.

O’REILLY: There’s a parade.

RIVERA: And he should.

O’REILLY: Right, right.

RIVERA: It’s the most, as I said, the most incredible feat of aviation skill that has ever happened since at least Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic solo nonstop or Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. This guy is a magnificent hero.

The bigger question as we see the emergency float being deployed there — and that’s incredible video — the bigger question is: Why did those engines stall? Was it just the bird strike?

O’REILLY: Bird strike, yeah.

RIVERA: A random bird strike? I hold in my hand what’s called an Airworthiness Directive. All right, this Airworthiness Directive, which is, in effect, December 31, 2008 reads: “This Airworthiness Directive results from an Airbus A-321 airplane powered by a...” and it goes on to designate the engine, the turbo fan engines experiencing high pressure compressor stalls during climb out after takeoff. In other words, airplanes with that Airbus with the engines that that airplane had were suffering stalls…

O’REILLY: Stalls.

RIVERA: ...during climb-out after takeoff. So now you have December 31, 2008, Airworthiness Directive, every Airbus of that sort has to be inspected, OK. That’s December 31, 2008.

What happens next? January 13, 2009, Tuesday, the same flight, LaGuardia to Charlotte, North Carolina, guess what? The same aircraft experiences compressor stalls. The engine stalls. The passengers are worried. They panic. The pilot says we have to go back. We have to make an emergency landing. That is the same aircraft, this is Tuesday, that on Thursday Chesley Sullenberger…

O’REILLY: Not the same plane.

RIVERA: Well, it is the same plane, Bill.

O’REILLY: It is the same plane?

RIVERA: It’s the same exact plane.

O’REILLY: Really?

RIVERA: The fuselage number is N106US.

O’REILLY: OK, now…

RIVERA: Same aircraft.

O’REILLY: All right, hold it. So you’re going to have more on this on your show.

RIVERA: The NTSB admits that the engine was screwed up on Tuesday.

O’REILLY: So they knew the engine was bad?

RIVERA: They knew they had a compressor stall. They knew it.

O’REILLY: Oh, my God.

RIVERA: They knew it.

O’REILLY: So you’re going to go through this on your show.

RIVERA: I’m saying that to suggest that it is…

O’REILLY: Birds.

RIVERA: ...pure coincidence that that same aircraft that on Tuesday, two days before…

O’REILLY: Stalled.

RIVERA: ...had a compressor stall in the air to say that it’s just a coincidence that the birds hit the engine and the engines quit…

O’REILLY: All right.

RIVERA: ...and Sullenberger has to be a hero. I’m telling you, there’s more to this story.

O’REILLY: All right.

RIVERA: And I’m investigating it.

O’REILLY: All right. So Geraldo will be on Saturday at 8:00. Check him out. We’ll be back with more on Monday on it.

+++

===========================================================================

Quiet Rockland - No New Flights Over Rockland

Thomas Sullivan

PO Box 918

Pearl River, NY 10965 USA

(845) 480-1088 (phone)

e-mail: quietrockland@gmail.com

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

To: VIA FAX: 1-202-226-0821, 1-407-657-5353, 1-904-810-5091; 1-386-676-7748;

1-386-860-5730; and U.S. MAIL

Congressman John Mica (R-FL)

United States House of Representatives

2313 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20515-0907

cc: Honorable President Barack Obama

Each Honorable Senator of the United States Of America

Each Honorable Congressperson of the United States Of America

Re: Response to your January 16, 2008 Press Release calling on President Obama to Act

Dear Congressman Mica:

After reading your press release to Honorable President Obama and Congress this week,

http://republicans.transportation.house.gov/News/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=503

I am compelled to reply. Your flacked introduction seems to suggest that America’s aviation system is skating on thin ice because of, your words, “Political Games”. That’s specious, condescending and flat wrong.

The Aviation system, the one at which you yourself failed during the Bobby Sturgell FAA regime, is in your words “skating on thin ice” because of the perilous shortage of ATC’s that you and your political cronies allowed to happen. It’s a shortage that has been made worse due to the early retirements of ATC’s, which were caused directly by the hostile work environment, created by your partners in the Sturgell/Blakey regime.

First, what are you doing in New York? You quit New York a long time ago. Now you are monkeying around with our airspace? I suggest you go back to Orlando and see what you can do about the perilous shortage of ATC’s and other dangerous aviation conditions there.

Second, your Friday plug-piece /press release goes on about Robert Sturgell and how his nomination “languished”. Better to let that nomination languish and die on the vine than to let that inept individual known as “Bobby” run this important federal agency for five more years. How could you have the audacity to try and defend the nomination of Robert Sturgell? “Bobby” Sturgell is the same person that presided over some of the worst safety scandals to hit the FAA in its entire 50-year history. The Southwest planes that were allowed to fly with cracked skin, the soft-pedaling on enforcement actions for several of the nation's largest airlines, including Northwest, United and Continental…The non-secure outsourcing to overseas mechanics…The wrong way departures…The low fuel landings...The over 3,500 U.S. aviation fatalities that occurred on Sturgell’s FAA watch since 2003…The FAA pattern of intimidating whistleblowers and abusing its labor force…The list goes on and on. And that’s the horse you want to back, John Mica? We have news for you, Sturgell failed, and now he’s done.

Robert Sturgell and Marion Blakey before him perpetuated a Tombstone Agency culture at the FAA, wherein the agency’s management attacked its own inspectors for enforcing serious safety rules.

This is the same Sturgell/Blakey regime that invented the “cozy” relationship with the airlines who are now unabashedly cited as FAA’s “Customers”. It would have been utterly irresponsible for you or anyone else to have allowed Robert Sturgell to remain at the helm of the FAA after all that has gone wrong at the FAA under Sturgell’s failed 5+ year “watch”. Now Sturgell has been forced into involuntary retirement.

How dare you disparage the Senators from the Northeast for fighting the NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign?! Don’t forget that this Airspace Redesign is being fought by Senators and Congressman, both Democrat and Republican from all across the 30,000,000-strong Northeast, for very valid reasons:

1) The very real safety issues that are now materializing in the first sought phases of the Airspace Redesign: Pilots being unfamiliar with the new headings... Planes making wrong-way turns out of Newark... New departure headings that cannot be used because they conflict with arrival patterns. You’re the only remaining one who hasn’t figured out yet that making substantial changes in the complex airspace over the entire Northeast, while at the same time perpetuating a critical shortage of ATC’s, is completely irresponsible and dangerous.

2) What the FAA promised in terms of delay savings is marginal at best – and, more likely, illusory in full. This Airspace Redesign was a $50.5 mm+ boondoggle which Sturgell has been pushing along and attempted to rush, despite some serious safety concerns raised by NATCA and other experts. According to the FAA’s own “COO” Henry Krakowski; the Redesign would be but a “Band-Aid” solution. In fact the Air Traffic Controllers have said that the Redesign plan has the potential to make claimed flight delay problems worse by putting more planes in the air than the airports can physically handle. As I told you in my last letter, the capacity limitation is on the ground, which is where the Airspace Redesign falls on its face. What is causing the “chronically-delayed flights” is the over-saturation of the prime-time slots at the NY, NJ, and Philadelphia airports. It’s the airlines’ bad behavior that is really the human cause of these delays (that, and the, Sturgell caused shortage of controllers).

3) The FAA has approached this dictatorially-sought Redesign in a most callous and un-American way. The FAA ran roughshod over the rights of 30mm hardworking Americans, while at the same time, pandering to its “Customers” the airlines who were really causing the delay problems. This Redesign was a money-grab. This Redesign has some serious issues with regard to safety, environmental, and Environmental Justice concerns. Remember, this Redesign has spurred at least a dozen lawsuits from all five affected states. The aviation industry campaign contributions you received, should be used to pay those legal defense costs. You were in on it the whole time, John Mica.

What the “American Public should know”, in your inestimable words – or as we should say it, “what should not be allowed to be further swept under the rug”- is how the current FAA Administration has acted as a totalitarian regime, thinking they were answerable to no one. Congressman and Senators alike have been repeatedly lied to and their concerns dismissed and ignored by Bobby Sturgell. Blakey was no better. Those courageous Senators from New Jersey who put the “Hold” on Sturgell’s confirmation did this country a great service. Thank God, your buddy Sturgell finally decided to acknowledge his compulsory, uh, “Resignation”.

As for you Mr. Mica, you should not be calling on anyone to do anything but investigate your relationship with the aviation industry and your rank conflicts of interest. Your history of taking such huge amounts of money from aerospace interests and then shilling for the Failed FAA administration of Blakey/Sturgell with its revolving door culture is downright sinful. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Very truly yours,

Thomas Sullivan, Co-Founder

Quiet Rockland

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE PRESIDENT

VIA FAX: 1-202-456-2461, and U.S. MAIL

Honorable President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NY

Washington, DC 20500 USA

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JURISDICTIONS

Alabama (AL), Alaska (AK), Arkansas (AR), Arizona (AZ), California (CA), Colorado (CO),

Connecticut (CT), District Of Columbia (DC), Delaware (DE), Florida (FL), Georgia (GA), Hawaii (HA), Iowa (IA), Idaho (ID), Illinois (IL), Indiana (IN), Kansas (KS), Kentucky (KY), Louisiana (LA), Massachusetts (MA), Maryland (MD), Maine (ME), Michigan (MI), Minnesota (MN), Missouri (MO), Mississippi (MS), Montana (MT), Nebraska (NE), Nevada (NV), New Hampshire (NH), New Jersey (NJ), New Mexico (NM), New York (NY), North Carolina (NC), North Dakota (ND), Ohio (OH), Oklahoma (OK), Oregon (OR), Pennsylvania (PA), Rhode Island (RI), South Carolina (SC), South Dakota (SD), Tennessee (TN), Texas (TX), Utah (UT), Vermont (VT), Virginia (VA), Washington (WA),

Wisconsin (WI), West Virginia (WV), Wyoming (WY), American Samoa (SM), Guam (GM),

Puerto Rico (PR), Virgin Islands (VI)

+++

===========================================================

Quiet Rockland - No New Flights Over Rockland

Thomas Sullivan

c/o 217 East 86th Street, PMB 221

New York, NY 10028 USA

(845) 480-1088 (phone)

e-mail: quietrockland@gmail.com

Sunday , March 16, 2008

To: VIA FAX: 1-202-226-0821, 1-407-657-5353, 1-904-810-5091; 1-386-676-7748; 1-386-860-5730; and U.S. MAIL

Congressman John Mica (R-FL)

United States House of Representatives

2313 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20515-0907 USA

cc: Each Honorable Senator Of The United States Of America, Each Honorable Member

Of The House Of Representatives, The Media, And All Other Interested Parties

Re: Response To Your March 3, 2008 Letter To Senators Lautenberg and Menendez

Dear Congressman Mica:

After reading your March 3, 2008 letter to Honorable Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, found at:

http://republicans.transportation.house.gov/Media/File/110th/Aviation/03-03-08-FAAAdministratorLetter.pdf

Quiet Rockland and others concerned with protecting air safety and our biosphere are compelled to reply. You are incorrect about virtually all your conclusions. Virtually all your rationales you use to reach them, are in error. Why would a Congressman like yourself purposefully disseminate misinformation? The answer is clear. You continue to reside in the pocket of the airline industry, John Mica.

Your letter’s introduction seems to suggest that if “Bobby” Sturgell is not confirmed as FAA Administrator, that will lead to a meltdown in aviation safety. Yet we all know that the REAL meltdown has already occurred over the past five years, and you helped. The meltdown was Marion Blakey’s and “Bobby” Sturgell’s mismanagement of the FAA. Right in your area, Orlando International Airport is experiencing a dangerous shortage of air traffic controllers (ATCs). The shortage is caused by FAA’s seemingly-perpetual hostile treatment of its ATCs. But all you can say is “the shortage didn’t pose an immediate threat”, even though Orlando International has 45% fewer controllers than it had 5 years ago. You deceive the public.

Your responses to the Senator’s concerns are flawed and incomplete. Let me respond to some of the further points in your letter:

NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign

Your letter suggests that this Redesign, for which you have in the recent past taken to the road and shamelessly pandered as far north as Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, will solve delay problems. You indicate it is in the national interest that Redesign work proceeds. But what we well know, is that the FAA’s supporting “promises” are specious. This proposed Airspace Redesign was a US$50,000,000 boondoggle whose only purpose was to make a few people, mostly contractors, very rich. “Bobby” Sturgell has pushed the Redesign along, attempting to rush its implementation ahead of the findings of a GAO audit and investigation which will indubitably bring the Redesign crashing down faster than a Southwest Airlines publicity balloon. According to FAA’s own Chief Operating Officer Henry “Hank” Krakowski, the FAA’s Redesign is but a “Band-Aid” solution at best. And the real sin here, is that after wasting all this United States currency, the Redesign can, according to ATC union NATCA, actually make the delays worse. The Redesign would put more planes in the air than the airports can handle. Sturgell’s FAA in recent years deliberately screened ATCs off of the planning of the Redesign, instead preferring to pay profiteers for US$50mm worth of useless PowerPoint presentations. You see, Mr. Mica, the capacity limitation is on the ground, which is where the Airspace Redesign falls flat on its face. Your letter says that “no redesign will satisfy everyone”. However, the NY/NJ/PHL Redesign will satisfy no one, except maybe the airline-company profit-takers that will be able to pump even more airplanes into the sky per unit time, further increasing delays – and except those like you, that feed downstream from their trough. What caused the nation’s flight delays was greed expressed in the form of over-scheduling of flights and over-saturation of our skies. It is the bad behavior of the airlines that is really the human cause of these flight delays – that, and the shortage of controllers at the airlines’ and FAA’s hand. Keep the airlines from over-booking and over-saturating the prime timeslots, and then maybe your will see a measurable decrease in delays (not the exaggerated, if even actual, 3 minutes that the FAA has “promised” with this Redesign). And now NATCA has raised serious safety concerns regarding the Airspace Redesign. As one whose house will be flown-over by the Redesign if it occurs, I am not going to sit and listen while you misrepresent the facts about the Redesign to the American people.

Air Traffic Controller Staffing Levels

Your letter states that putting a hold on the “Bobby” Sturgell confirmation is somehow at odds with concerns about the shortage of experienced air traffic controllers. I am shocked you have the audacity to make this blatant misrepresentation. It is well-chronicled that air traffic controllers are leaving in record numbers because of the hostile work environment created by the past five years of the Blakey/Sturgell FAA. I have been in contact with many controllers over the past year. Their story is the same. They are each just counting the days until retirement. They hate not their calling, but they hate their management and those like you who shill for their management. The FAA needs a REAL Administrator that can repair the FAA relationship with the air traffic controllers, and stem the exodus of veteran controllers and others - so that as and when these hardworking men and women reach true retirement age, the new controllers will have adequate experience. Maybe then, the ratio of veterans to trainees will be less precarious. “Bobby” Sturgell has shown over the past 5 years that he is incapable of maintaining a productive relationship with his ATC workforce. Both the shortage of ATC’s and the now-FBI-investigated FAA Inspector debacle, drives home that point. You say the “long[-]anticipated wave…of retirements has begun”. If it was so “long[-]anticipated”, then why hasn’t it been addressed and fixed, and why are innocent American lives still being put at risk because of it? “Bobby” Sturgell clearly dropped the ball on this, and he seriously aggravated the problem by mistreating the ATCs that he had remaining. He continues to do so through this day, and you are one of his enablers.

Near-Misses On Runways

Your letter suggests that Senatorial “inaction” will delay pending efforts to address aircraft near-miss and runway-incursion problems. This suggestion by you is also nonsense. The real problem and the reasons for it are outlined above. The Blakey/Sturgell-created shortage of controllers has caused the unconscionable number of recent near-misses – period. So, what you are saying here is, “Confirm the idiot that caused the problem, so that he can solve the problem he caused”. That’s outrageous. And by the way, you have confused “action” with “inaction”. The wise-thinking Senators undertook an affirmative act to put a “Hold” on Sturgell’s confirmation. That’s not “inaction”, stunade. That’s a purposeful step to save human lives.

Minimum Fuel Landings

Where do I even start, here? Planes are dangerously landing with the bare minimum of fuel. You say that without a permanent FAA Administrator, the response to this concern will be slower rather than quicker. That is a joke. The Blakey/Sturgell FAA proved itself to be the Uber-source of misrepresentations, spin, and outright lies. The current Acting Administrator, a man who somehow prefers the moniker of “Bobby”, has already proven himself to be untrustworthy and inept. What matter if the answers come slowly or quickly, if they are false and misleading? The issue with the dangerously-low quantities of fuel, has to do with the FAA’s now-abdicated function as a regulator. How can “Bobby” Sturgell regulate anyone or anything, considering the outright scandal and current FBI investigation with regard to FAA’s own inspectors and inspections? The “cozy” relationship between the failed Sturgell FAA and the Airlines, decried by the House Transportation Committee’s leader Congressman Oberstar, leaves no doubt. Sturgell is incapable and undesirous of regulating anyone, or anything. This same airline industry is clearly, at minimum, his future paymaster, just like “Made” Marion Blakey’s paymaster. How timely that the Southwest debacle blows up, now, while you are attempting to sell everyone on this failure named Sturgell? - and only five weeks after a scathing Business Week exposé on the same safety inspection issue at Northwestern Airlines. Have you no shame? (Asked and answered).

* * * * *

The number of additional reasons why the “Hold” should remain on the Sturgell confirmation, are too numerous to fit in this letter. I’ll leave it at this, just in case you are ever again tempted to suggest how “qualified” Mr. Sturgell is:

If someone spent the past five years running the FAA into the ground as Number 2, why would any sane person give him the job as Number 1? Sturgell should be ejected rather than nominated. Your next letter should be to the President, to ask that he instead nominate someone who hasn’t proven himself to be a failure. Or, perhaps, maybe this “cozy” relationship between FAA and the Airlines provides you with some benefit? One only need effect a cursory review of the campaign contributions you accept, to know for sure:

http://www.anyonebutmica.com

People like you don’t really care about aviation safety, and therefore do harm to this great country of ours. You’re the Unpatriot. All you care about is the corporate “Johns” that fill your campaign coffers. You are in the pocket of the aviation industry. You always have been, all of your political life. You are the walking billboard for what is wrong with our government today. Just like the FAA needs to be cleaned-out from “top to bottom”, so too does the part of Congress in which you reside, Sir - the part wherein congressmen like yourself have the “For Rent” sign hanging on your backs.

You are the aero-prince of darkness. You, along with Sturgell and the aviation industry, continually look to preserve the status quo and feed from the troth like pigs and goats. You three are the diabolical trinity. A prime example of this diabolical trinity would be the FAA contract with Harris Corp.: (1) FAA awards a billion-dollar contract to Harris. (2) Harris continually screws up, costing billions – but then gives huge amounts of money to your campaign. (3) Mica protects Sturgell. (4) Sturgell protects Harris… and so on, in a vicious cycle of corruption.

How DARE you insinuate that Senator Lautenberg and Senator Menendez are putting parochial political interests over our national interest?! You have no moral standing to suggest that. It is you who are putting private pecuniary aviation interests over national safety, for the sake of your own campaign coffers, and the revolving door of aero-pay.

It was really nice to read in the Orlando Sentinal this week that your “power ranking” in the House has slipped from 139th place to 265th place. Hopefully the folks in Florida’s 7th district wake up and realize what a failure you really are, with your abysmal record on the environment, and your shameless plugs for the failed FAA Administration of Blakey and Sturgell.

Quiet Rockland again requests that you admit your rank conflicts-of-interest and resign from the House Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure, immediately. You have a history of taking huge amounts of money from aerospace interests and shilling for the failed Blakey/Sturgell FAA. That doesn’t just give the appearance of impropriety. It also leaves a foul smell in the halls of Congress at large. Even those in your own party, concerned about public perception of your own party with the November elections looming, should be calling for your ouster. Oh, and if they don’t, Quiet Rockland will. Meanwhile, every single member of your own party in Congress, as well as all others in Congress, will have a copy of this letter on their desks and desktops Monday morning, and we respectfully ask that they assist us in ousting you and failed FAA “acting’ administrator Sturgell.

Congressman Mica, you disingenuously seek to warn Senator Lautenberg and Senator Menendez that if an aviation disaster soon occurs, it will somehow be on their heads for not having confirmed failed FAA Administrator “Bobby” Sturgell sooner. God forbid if an aviation disaster occurs, it will sooner be the product of the ill-fitting cover-up of a toupée on your head, than any protective and beneficent act of Senators Lautenberg or Menendez.

Very truly yours,

Thomas Sullivan

Pearl River, NY

Quiet Rockland has approved this message.