File Under: "Presidential Memos": Make The Sequester As Painful As Possible

Congress won't let the post office stop Saturday mail delivery, but the president will let the FAA close 149 air traffic control towers. Both are non-stories. By Monday, the story will be forgotten.

Bloomberg is reporting:

The U.S. will close 149 air-traffic control towers run by contractors at small- and mid-sized airports on April 7 as a result of automatic budget cuts at government agencies, a trade group said.

The Federal Aviation Administration spared 24 towers on its original list of 173 subject to closing, the Contract Tower Association, which represents companies running the facilities, said today in an e-mail. All towers being shut down are run by private companies, not the government as at larger facilities.

Advocates for pilots and airports said shutting the towers will harm safety and impose economic hardship on businesses such as flight schools that rely on controllers to guide planes. 

This will have no effect on the "flying public." This onlyu affects "general aviation" -- i.e., the small, private planes, and jets. Private jets and planes can still use these runways, but they will have to take-off and land on their own. Sort of like North Dakota and Alaska bush pilots have been doing for decades.

The closure will only affect "contract" workers, contract towers.

But, the memo from the White House, and I'm paraphrasing: make this as painful as possible. Send out the press release but don't provide the impact. Which. Is. None.

What amazes me is that the US government was funding 149 airports that weren't needed. Probably more.

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By the way, the 2016 GOP presidential nomination speech has been written. The president provided the boiler plate today (no link; the story is easily found):

"Something has been broken in Syria, and it's not going to be put back together perfectly immediately — even after Assad leaves," Obama said. "But we can begin the process of moving it in a better direction, and having a cohesive opposition is critical to that."

That was the boiler plate. Here's the 2016 GOP presidential nomination speech:

"Something has been broken in the United States, and it's not going to be put back together perfectly immediately — even after Mr Obama leaves. But we can begin the process of moving it in a better direction, and having a cohesive opposition is critical to that."

And so it goes.