Your Thanksgiving Flight Depends on Unpaid Workers

Thanksgiving air travel on a knife's edge According to the Washington Post, the aviation system is under strain as the shutdown enters month two. Air traffic controllers and TSA officers are working without pay, and Vice President J.D. vance warns holiday chaos could be a disaster. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says the system is short about 3,000 air traffic controllers, leaving a fragile network where towers slow traffic when staffing thins. While some data shows early shutdown performance, with average cancellations ticked up at New York's airports, in Boston a sign of rising stress, FAA numbers show staffing related delays swing widely day to day. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the shutdown's economic hit at 7 to 14 billion dollars. And Duffy's push to recruit and train controllers is at risk as some trainees are bailing. No surprise there. Who wants to start a new job that doesn't pay? Weather has been cooperative, the calendar less so. If paychecks don't resume, Thanksgiving reliably, may hinge on goodwill. And goodwill is not a redundancy protocol. Okay, what's the real message here? It's all well and good and fun to say, oh, government's a big waste. Who cares if it's shut down? But when you're trying to travel to see grandma or to see your aunt and uncle or have your kids connect extended family members and they can't eat turkey together, it's going to be a huge problem for Americans. And it's going to force more and more to say, cut out the nonsense in D.C. and open the federal government again. Let's dig a little deeper here. Now this does Sorry to sound selfish, but we all look at the world through the lens of our own experience. I'm hoping to fly from Florida to Charlotte, North Carolina for Thanksgiving. I want to see my sisters and brothers in law and nephews and nieces. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it. Yeah, I bought the tickets, but do I want to get on a plane? Do I want to put my wife and daughter on a plane? If I have to think about there's this air traffic controller and they're daydreaming or they're fixated. Oh my gosh, I'm going to get evicted tomorrow and they're going through the motions and they're not even paying attention to two planes flying into each other. Understandable if they are distracted. I'd be distracted too if I didn't know how to pay the mortgage or to pay for food. So this is starting to Here we are in month two of the government shutdown. And there's starting to be some real pain. Obviously, there's a lot of pain for people losing food stamps, SNAP benefits, other benefits, federal government workers, not just air traffic controllers, getting no pay whatsoever. Pain is starting to filter out throughout this country. So what is the solution? And let me be fair and straight here. The Trump administration says the solution is very easy. Democrats just need to vote in the Senate to extend the debt ceiling. And that is true. That would open the government, things would go back more or less to normal. Democrats say the only thing that has to happen is Trump has to commit to extending health care benefits to 20 million Americans who otherwise would see their, their health care costs double in the next few months. So they're absolutely right. That is all it would take. And Trump administration's not willing to do that. The third option, which President Trump did bring up late last week, is the Republicans can simply change the rules of the Senate. And no, it wouldn't be unconstitutional. It wouldn't be an authoritarian reach. It would be a purely democratic solution, which is the Republicans in the Senate. And to their credit, they have 53 out of 100 votes. They could simply have a proposal today saying from now on, we want majority rules for all votes here. If they pass that vote, that would eliminate this whole filibuster thing. The very next vote would be let's extend the debt ceiling. And airports could go back to normal as well. So there are three possible solutions. I'll leave it to you to figure out which one is the best. And perhaps you should call your local officials or your congressional officials and let them know. Let's look at some more of the stats here. The FAA, as I mentioned, is short 300 air traffic controllers. Even if I do get on this plane, I'm going to be like chewing my fingers down to the bone out of nervous. Also, I have an upcoming trip to Asia in the next 60 days as well, and that's going to make me nervous as well. Now, fortunately, I'm in a position where I don't have to travel constantly to make a living. But there are a lot of people, consultants, executives, traveling salesmen and women who, if they're not traveling, they're not making money. There are bankers who can't make deals. There are all kinds of people where it's their living to travel. If they can't travel, what is that going to do to the economy? Cancellations are rising as people are rightfully so getting nervous. It's only going to take a few more close calls at major Airports and we could really see cancellations, right? And then I certainly hope it doesn't happen, but if there is, I don't even want to say it, but if there's one kaboom, two planes coming together, you're really going to see travel, just see widespread cancellation. You're going to see a major hit to the economy and you're going to see added pressure to politicians of both parties to do something, to at least negotiate, to at least have a discussion. The political dynamics right now are that, and this is, this is somewhat rare in America's political because it's usually very clear cut. But right now, both political parties happen to believe that politically it is advantageous for them to not give in to what the other side wants. Typically, in a government shutdown, politicians put their finger in the wind, start taking polls, and one side realizes, oh, we misjudged and the American voters are penalizing our party more than the other one. If we don't do something, we're going to lose big time in the next election. That's typically what happens. So these government shutdowns are often over in a day, sometimes two days. This is a long one. Now, of all the available polling data I have seen, it's not a clear cut majority. It's not like 90% of the public blames the Democrats or the Republicans. No, that's not it. But of the reputable pollsters I've seen it's anywhere from 9% to roughly 18% more voters than blame Trump and the Republicans for the current government shutdown than they blame Democrats. So that's Democrats argument. The Republican argument is a little more opaque, shall we say? Ultimately, Trump is the head of the whole government. He is accountable. So you would traditionally say, all right, that would be a factor making him want to negotiate and get the government working. But there is a macro political factor overlay on that, which is the Democrats are the party of the government. They're the ones who believe in government. They're the ones who want government to work. They are the ones who believe in things like unemployment insurance and snap food benefits, health insurance. The Republicans for the last 40 years have been the party of government's bad. Big government's always bad, less government better. So at a macro political environment, it sort of helps the Republicans to not have federal government party because so many of their constituents say, yeah, let's just shut down the federal government. As Grover Norquist, top Republican strategist, has been quoted saying over the years, his ideal government is that it's so small to drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub. Well, that may be happening sooner than you think. What do you think the solution is to this government shutdown? And what is your own particular pain point? If you are a single woman and you're working a job that, let's say is a waitress, let's say is a cashier at Home Depot, and you have two or three kids, you may really be counting on these SNAP benefits, these supplemental nutritional supplements, food stamps in the common lingo to keep your family fed. Obviously, if you can't feed your kids, that's going to be your primary pain point. Others of us have the luxury of, well, if it messes up my holiday plans, I'd love to know what are your pain points? At what point do you say, okay, enough is enough. I'd love to hear from you, so please let me know. Thanks again for people who are joining us live. I should point out this show is seen on demand around the world on virtually every social media platform and podcasting platform. But we also do it live each day. And I mean when I say each day, I mean seven days a week. So I want to thank those of us who have joined us. We have friends joining us on YouTube today and LinkedIn. And Linked is asking what the topics are of the day. Right now we are talking about what's happening to air traffic controllers and how it's really messing up people's travel plans. And our previous issue was about the epidemic of loneliness and how few friends people have these days. One of our viewer says exactly the negativity of staying at home playing games on the man and women to destroy our real world of actions and creativity. Yeah, I do think it's an absolute shame that so many people really do see the solution to what to do with your time isn't to hop on a plane to go fly and see friends or go to a friend's wedding or go see grandma or even going on a vacation. And it's not to even walk out of your house and go down the street and play basketball or sports or play in the park with friends. It is to sit at home in isolation playing video games, video porn, talking to character AI fantasy boyfriends and girlfriends. And it's just crowding out, not necessarily destroying friendships. It's crowding out the time to build friendships in the first place. So we'll be monitoring that story. Lots more to come today. Typically, for those of you new joining us on Pod TV and other platforms, we typically cover five main stories in the news affecting your life right now. Top business, technology and culture stories, and we dissect those and try to really isolate what the core ideas are being communicated to you and the impact it has on your life. And then we do a few grab bag issues as well.