User Fees & Toilets
Aviation user fees? Hell, no!
I believe users should pay their fair share. The guvmint says the FAA needs more money and therefore we need more user fees. It sounds so reasonable that I was beginning to agree. Then I got to thinking about it again.
As I wrote in 1990, user fees work only if you trust the party that holds the money. You can trust dog tracks, bookies, and insurance companies, but not the guvmint, and they have proved it. I still remember all those years that they collected our money for the Aviation Trust Fund and then refused absolutely refused to use it as promised.
That 1990 column I wrote said…”Does anyone, anywhere, still doubt that the guvmint is using the Aviation Trust Fund to make the deficit appear less odious? Let me remove all doubt. I have a letter from my Congressman in which he explains that this is exactly what the guvmint is doing.”
I put tens of thousands of dollars into Social Security and the guvmint promised I would start getting an income at age 65. Now they tell me I have to wait until age 65 plus seven months. That’s robbing me of more than $10,000.
And who says the feds are short of money, anyway? This is the same guvmint that seeks to build bridges to nowhere in Alaska, gives my money to the National Endowment for the Arts, and to other things like a Rock’n Roll Hall of Fame. Now they want me to trust them with more money?
(Besides, this is the guvmint that forced us to buy “efficient” toilets that don’t work. I’m mad about it and this is my chance to get even!)
Add it all up and I just can’t see trusting that same guvmint to take my user fees and give me a good return. No way. I’m agin it.
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Well, surely we can at least agree that it’s a crappy subject!
Thanks for your comment.
I think it all started with toilet user fees. The gummint then started the Toilet Trust Fund so that you wouldn’t have to pay a user fee every time you, well…, you know. But the trust fund was paying so much for the toilets that they decided to make them “efficient” so it wouldn’t cost so much. These efficient toilets are still ordinary, non-precision toilets. I hear they’re working on precision toilets now that will guide….well, let’s just say they’ll be better.
Good question. In my Airport Business column, Ground Clutter I have shortened “government” to “guvmint” since the 1980s mostly just because that’s the way people seem to pronounce the word. Thatn may be just a southern thing (I am from Alabama), but it seems universal to me. Kinda like most people–including Bush the Younger and Bill Clinton before him–pronouce “Social Security” as “sossecurty”.
Thanks for the question.
Ralph Hood
what is guvmint