FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE        

January 7, 2008

 

Contact:

Tom Sullivan, “Quiet Rockland”: 1-845-480-1088, “http://www.quietrockland.com”

John J. Tormey III, Esq.: 1-212-410-4142

 

“QUIET ROCKLAND” CALLS FOR THE RESIGNATION OF CONGRESSMAN JOHN L. MICA FROM THE HOUSE TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE AND AVIATION SUBCOMMITTEE.

 

Rockland County, NY - January 7, 2008:  Fed-up with “stone-cold anti-environmentalists” threatening their homes with unrelenting commercial jumbo-jet overflights, and incredulous that an eight-term Congressman would support the “already-failed, chronically-unsafe regime” of FAA Acting Administrator Robert A. (“Bobby”) Sturgell, New York environmental group “Quiet Rockland” has called for the resignation of hard-core extremist conservative Representative John L. Mica (R-Fl.) from the U.S. House Transportation Committee and the House Subcommittee on Aviation.

 Said John J. Tormey III, an attorney with “Quiet Rockland”: “It’s time for Mica to flake himself off from the American political landscape. His harmful transportation legacy includes the Minnesota bridge collapse and Alaskan “bridge to nowhere” fiasco each occurring under his watch. Mica’s bald plugs for the FAA and aviation over-expansionism are as tiresome as an “Apply directly to the forehead!” TV commercial – as well as hazardous to innocent American people. Through long-distance cyber-contribution to the political process, ‘Quiet Rockland’ will afford every assistance to help the informed electorate in Florida’s Seventh District chip Mica and his cronies away from elected office in November. Any vote ‘for Mica’ would be a vote for Mica’s vacuous petro-plastic culture. Yet aviation safety and the environment require an approach far less inanimate, and one far more sentient and human. John L. Mica is incapable of anything so organic. As career mouthpiece for the FAA and the rich aero community, Mica recognizes no value beyond the smell of spent jet-fuel and the crinkled-paper sound of a handed-over almighty Dollar. We embrace the wisdom of clean open space and peace-and-quiet, in lieu of further Mica-forced inhalation of fossil-fuel for the sake of someone else’s quick-and-dirty paper profit. The governmental function of objective aviation regulation must be reinstituted. The stewardship currently feigned by Sturgell and Mica must be scissored out. Costs of their ouster should now be for the airlines to pay.

 “Mica has been ‘kept’ in office for 15 years by a staid homogeneous constituency in northeast and central Florida. Mica’s 7th District includes wealthy businesses of the greater Orlando area, and others with a keen special interest in maximizing their own revenues by over-scheduling flights and over-saturating our skies. Seeking to protect only the living rooms of his well-heeled campaign donors from any airplane noise, John Mica meanwhile abuses his influence and position on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Aviation Subcommittee to further placate those same aero-loyalists. Mica shills for the FAA and its would-be head ‘Bobby’ Sturgell, and even road-shows for Sturgell’s ill-conceived wasteful $53.5 million boondoggle known as the ‘NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign’ aimed directly at our homes in the Northeast. While Congressman Mica is Ranking Member of the Transportation Committee, what’s truly ‘rank’ are the Mica-extruded conflicts-of-interest while he purports to further the cause of air safety. Replete with hypocritical chutzpah is Mica’s recent accusation that others in Congress played special-interest politics when resisting Sturgell’s late-year quest for a fast-track confirmation hearing as FAA head. That would be like Ike criticizing JFK for having a receding hairline. Mica doth project too much. His patterns are too easily read.

 “Though dimmed at the edges by the current opaque duplicitous FAA with which Mica regularly allies, crystally-clear transparent is Mica’s brazen pandering to wealthy elements of the aero-mercantile complex who got him elected and keep him in office. Parts of Mica’s Federal Election Commission list of political contributors at ‘http://www.fec.gov’ read like a ‘Who’s Who’ of aviation-industry operatives. Campaign donors include airlines, PAC-shielded FAA managers, and even failed former FAA head Marion Clifton Blakey herself. Mica’s own aviation machinations are as flaky as Blakey. While the cue-ball with which Mica ran the political pool-table 8 times to date, will sink by November - that’s not soon enough. John Mica should step down from the Transportation Committee and Aviation Subcommittee for the sake of the safety of this country and all air travel within it. While many in the Northeast have considered moving to Florida simply to vote against John Mica in the next possible election, in the meantime Rocklanders today launch a website to similar effect called ‘http://www.anyonebutmica.com’. ‘Quiet Rockland’ encourages citizens interested in defeating those that would harm our environment and our homes, to please access that website. For too long John L. Mica has been provided a rug of cover by aeronautical special interests. It is now time for Mica to come out from under that rug.