Trump’s defenders said the five-week government shutdown in December and January proved that we can get along without having all those bureaucrats wasting, frauding, and abusing the taxpayers’ hard-earned money. Who needs government oversight anyway? All they do is create red tape that hinders the capitalists from making money, and all those needless regulations just get in the way.
A software fix to the MCAS flight-control feature by the FAA and Boeing had been expected early in January, but discussions between regulators and the plane maker dragged on, partly over differences of opinion about technical and engineering issues, according to people familiar with the details. Officials from various parts of Boeing and the FAA had differing views about how extensive the fix should be.
U.S. officials have said the federal government’s recent shutdown also halted work on the fix for five weeks.
The FAA concluded the delay was acceptable because its experts agreed with Boeing that there was no imminent safety threat, according to one person briefed on the discussions. The FAA also determined that steps taken after the Lion Air crash to inform pilots world-wide about the system’s operation were adequate to alleviate hazards.
So Trump’s temper tantrum about the mythical wall was just a harmless bit of theatre. What could have possibly gone wrong? All those out-of-work bureaucrats got their back pay, didn’t they? And besides, those two planes that crashed? They were from Indonesia and Ethiopia; it’s not like they were real Americans or anything…
People are dying because of Trump.
