Interstate 27 hypocrisy from Ronny Jackson

Ronny Jackson and other Texas Congresscritters love to attack Washington ... while still sucking at the federal teat. Latest case in question? Interstate 27. 

It doesn't need to expand from Laredo to Colorado, let alone further north, but that's the plan, with an added map at this piece.

Per that piece, I could halfway see the I-127 spur connecting to I-25 at Raton, New Mexico. Actually, I could more than halfway see that, if that's IT north of Amarillo. If you do that, you don't even need an I-27 north of Amarillo to roughly follow US 287 and US 385. Trucks and cars can just take I-25 all the way up north.

As for southward below Lubbock? Connecting to Midland/Odessa I can accept. 

Southeast of there? Forget it. 

Mexican goods destined for western US states can keep coming via Juarez, as they already do.

Special watchdog needed for airline safety

That’s the bottom line from the Department of Transportation’s inspector general.

The report says a quasi –independent watchdog within the Federal Aviation Administration would do more than the FAA’s own plan that would allow whistleblowers to directly report safety and inspections concerns to top officials.

The DOT inspector general’s findings were based on FAA’s slow reaction to whistleblowers talking about Southwest Airlines inspection blowoffs earlier this year.

For more on the Southwest inspections story, look up old blog posts with my Southwest tag.

The inspector general, in light of that, also recommends airplane inspectors be rotated between assignments, something the FAA has resisted.

I agree it’s a great idea, but good luck getting that done in a federal bureaucracy.

Hypocrisy alert – new EPA CAFÉ has massive Cali loophole

If you are aware of global warming issues, you of course know how the Environmental Protection Agency stiffed California’s request for a waiver on Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

You’re also aware that California, and coattail states, have sued the EPA.

Well, those allegedly strict new CAFÉ increments for 2012 that Transportation Secretary Mary Peters announced yesterday?

There’s a big loophole directly related to California’s suit.

When the Bush administration announced proposed regulations Tuesday to raise fuel economy standards for cars and trucks to 31.6 miles per gallon by 2015, even some environmentalists applauded. But then they read the fine print.

Tucked deep into a 417-page "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" was language by the Transportation Department stating that more stringent limits on tailpipe emissions embraced by California and 17 other states are "an obstacle to the accomplishment" of the new federal standards and are "expressly and impliedly preempted" by federal law.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown called it a covert assault on California's rules. Environmentalists said the language will be used by automakers in their legal challenges to two recent federal court rulings that sided with the states.

Yes, count me as one who applauded. Well, I’ll not be burned by Mary Peters again.

And, some California senators aren’t going to be fooled again, either:

“It’s the belief of the department that by legislating national fuel economy standards that Congress wants national fuel economy standards,” said Brian Turmail, a Transportation Department spokesman.

But that view rankles California officials, who noted that during the debate last fall, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, won assurances that the bill would be neutral on whether California and other states could proceed with their own rules.

The document also had Transportation noting that an appeal to two federal district court rulings that California had the right to such waivers was being appealed by … hold on to your hats … the auto industry.

California officials said there’s a reason the industry opposes its efforts: While the new federal standards would raise fuel economy to 31.6 miles per gallon by 2015, California's rules would require the U.S. vehicle fleet to get 36 miles per gallon by 2015.

And, that’s not all. Transportation is ready to actively fight California:

The agency said it is considering adding language to its final rule stating that “any state regulation regulating tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles is expressly preempted” under federal law.

Roland Hwang, the vehicles policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the document appeared to be an effort to bolster the legal case of the auto industry.

“We fully expect to see this rule being quoted by the automakers in their court cases in trying to overturn the Fresno and Vermont decisions,” Hwang said. “It’s the same argument we’re hearing from the automakers.”

So much, again, for the formerly Big Three being environmentally minded. As far as I care, all three can go bankrupt. But, take the ever-more weaselly Toyota with you.

How Toyota can make the Prius, and from a purely business POV, know this is a great way to increase auto sales share, and still side with the Big Three on this is just fucking unbelievable. And unacceptable.

FAA trying to avoid American grounding repeat

That said, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters defends last week’s grounding of American Airlines’ MD-80 fleet.

“No one at all was well served by what happened last week, and we want to prevent that to the extent possible,” Ms. Peters said. “But … based on what we knew and the data we saw, it was not an overreaction.”

That said, Peters is either more guileful than any other member of the Bush cabinet, or else she’s not really part of the team, because it sounds like she doesn’t believe “deregulation is always better.” She wants to fix some things. Specifically, in the press conference, she announced several steps to improve Federal Aviation Administration oversight:

• A program to track safety inspections and alert officials when they are overdue.

• A national team of safety inspectors to focus on the biggest safety risks.

• The appointment of five outside experts to evaluate the FAA’s safety oversight program, which has come under heavy criticism from Rep. James Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

If she is serious about that, and the five aren’t simply a bunch of hacks, or this isn’t just a stalling process, I’m all for it. I don’t want to junk the current incentive for airlines to voluntarily report problems to the FAA, but I want to get rid of some of incestuous relationships, such as what FAA managers had with Southwest.

Maybe we need to stipulate you can’t go from the FAA to the airline you last inspected, if you want to work in the private sector.

Southwest Airlines safety probe mushrooms

Calvin Scovel III, the U.S. Department of Transportation inspector general, has found that Southwest Airlines has violated more federal safety regulations than previously reported, and that the Federal Aviation Administration has more enforcement problems than previously reported:

It also discovered that FAA managers in North Texas didn't act on questions — raised as early as September 2005 — about whether decisions to let Southwest off the hook violated the FAA's own guidance about how its amnesty programs should be used.

“FAA’s oversight in this case appears to allow, rather than mitigate, recurring safety violations,” the inspector general found.

That’s bad news for both Southwest and the FAA. How bad? This bad:

The inspector general's report cites weaknesses in that model, known as the Air Transportation Oversight System. The system apparently missed that inspectors hadn't checked Southwest’s program for complying with airworthiness directives since 1999, according to the ongoing review. That check was 90 months overdue, the review found.

By the time the airline told the FAA about the error for which it was penalized, in March 2007, “21 key inspections were overdue for at least five years,” according to the inspector general’s investigation.

Five to seven years overdue? As many as 21 key inspections overdue?

Southwest’s legendary founder, Herb Kelleher, is in the hot seat before the House Transportation Commission as I write. Herb’s legendary charm isn’t going to defuse this problem. Nor is Gary Kelly’s “don’t look here, move along” attitude that was brought out in the first days after FFA announced its original findings about Southwest failing to do fuselage inspections.

And, we don’t even know just what those inspections were supposed to be about. Electrical wiring? Pressurization? What?

And, the FAA? Its airline-centric self-reporting system may not need to be totally scrapped. But it does need a full overhaul, not just cosmetic changes.

It probably won’t like these words:

“It is misfeasance, malfeasance, and bordering on corruption,” said committee chairman Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn. “If this were a grand jury proceeding, I think it would result in an indictment.”

The FAA just announced some changes yesterday:

• Clarifying complex airworthiness directives to reduce confusion among airlines.
• Adding a system for inspectors to report complaints about how managers deal with safety questions, to protect against concerns that managers may grow cozy with airline employees.
• Instituting a new rule to prevent inspectors from immediately going to work for the airline they regulated.

Of course, inquiring minds will ask why inspectors were allowed to do this in the first place, and cite that as Example No. 1 of the need for more thorough-going FAA reform.

Example No. 2 would be the FAA’s former policy of being more hands-on and detective-minded in its inspections, something Clay Foushee (see bottom hyperlink) would like to resume.

But wait — that’s not Southwest’s only problem.

In addition to the $10.2 million fine the FAA levied on Southwest last month for not inspecting fuselages on its 737s, it could face another fine for not properly doing rudder inspections.

An FAA inspector from North Texas, Bobby Boutris, told lawmakers today that Southwest disclosed the error to an FAA manager last year but continued to operate the jets for 10 days. The airline should have grounded the 70 jets after self-disclosing the error, according to the inspector.

Boutris is the whistleblower who flagged the too-cozy relationship between FAA inspector Douglas Gawadzinski and Southwest that allowed the airline to keep flying jets even without the fuselage inspections.

That “coziness,” not just with Southwest, but between the FAA and all carriers, is what Clay Foushee wants to investigate. Foushee is the lead investigator for Oberstar.

As for Republican complaints that Oberstar hasn’t involved them in the investigation, or that issues at hand haven’t been shown to concern other airline-connected oversight agencies, show me a Republican worried about too little regulation and I’ll show you a Republican who’s been dead 20 years.