Bizjets Cause Homeless Shelter Crowding? Really?

News/Analysis/Opinion By James R. Campbell, CEO/Editor-In-Chief

Yes... we live in interesting times -- the point of a well-known Chinese curse, I'm told...

But the amount of idiocy being displayed by people trying to destroy a uniquely American industry... once that needs hundreds of thousands of people world-wide, has just hit a new low... and we're scratching our heads trying to understand the rationale -- outside of the fact that the President and others in Washington have attacked the multi-billion dollar industry and its hundreds of thousands of affiliated jobs for cheap political points. 

This time, New York Mayor and Helicopter pilot(!) Michael Bloomberg seems to be positing that homeless shelter over-crowding in the city of New York might be blamed on... bizjet owners!!!!

???? WTF? Over...

OK... let's repeat what was actually said and see if any of you can make more sense out of this "Bravo Sierra" than we can (and for the record... we can't... at all).

“You can arrive in your private jet at Kennedy Airport, take a private limousine and go straight to the shelter system, walk in the door, and we’ve got to give you shelter,” said Bloomberg, on a recent radio show. “That’s what the law is. I didn’t write the law.”

Even homeless rights advocates aren't buying the hyperbole. Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless, replied that, "It’s pretty ludicrous to claim that there are people flying in private jets and taking private limos to the shelter system... He didn’t seem to want to take responsibility for the fact that there are more than 50,000 people sleeping in city shelters, including 21,000 children.”

Bloomberg, one of the richest guys in the world, seems to be the latest politician attempting to make political hay by blaming anyone but themselves for problems that they may, in part, have some responsibility for. And worse, after over four years of public excoriation of what was once one of this Nation's most prominent (and admired) industries, the corporate jet and private aviation industries have been under near-constant attack, often without reason or simple verification, for ills imagined by those looking to pass the buck.

And as a result, they are experiencing horrific problems, laying off tens of thousands of people and watching an inventive, valuable and often critcally important national resource swirl the drain.

But this... this Bloomberg quote not only sets a new low, but makes one wonder when we might have to institute some manner of "sanity/stupidity" protection system against politicians and public officials who resort to bizarre and indefensible nonsense to deflect criticism or examination of the real issues that this country needs to address.

But then again, and to quote the late and great Will Rogers... "Thank God we're not getting all the government we're paying for..."

FMI: www.gama.aero, www.nbaa.org