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April 19th, 2010
09:00 AM ET
Airports cash in on tax dollars by giving away free flights
(CNN) – CNN's Special Investigations Unit has been tracking small airports across the country that are using your tax dollars to stay open. What got our attention is how some of them are getting the money.
They're offering free parking. Even free flights. Confused? We were, too. Our Drew Griffin headed to West Virginia to get some answers.
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Why do some folks always blame someone else. I'm still not sure how we went from a story about an airport to not eating burgers. In the coming months, vote them all out, democrats or republicans. Maybe they will stop the nonsense, start listening to the AMERICAN people and we will finally have change we can believe in.
Fort Collins/Loveland CO has a similar story. Also those "economic development" numbers tend to be rather bogus. The state aviation dept. puts out similar numbers here. I got the details of the report one year. It was classic fodder for a statistics class on how to abuse data to "prove" a point. They claimed many, many millions of dollars of economic development. The assumptions they made were patently ludicrous, and were based on a total of 242 survey collected in the entire state. There's a whole industry built around generating glowing (but truly unrealistic) 10 year plans for small airport that the FAA requires every 5 years...
You left out a few facts. The Air National Guard also has use of this airport. The runway extention allows larger planes to land. And the 10 foot fence is to keep the whitetail deer off runway.
Typical! And the government wonders why no one trusts it. The corruption is way out of hand and 4 out of 5 Americans who say they do not trust the government? That is 4 out of 5 people who have experienced the corruption I bet.
GOP washington. – Clarksburg is represented by 2 DEMOCRATIC senator and a DEMOCRATIC representative.
At least check first before pulling out the party blame game.
Just blogged about the volcaneo, Free flights well get to work, people are stranded, Oh wait,(no profit), (NO CHANCE) tell that to the passengers!!!!
I would love to ask, where are the rest of these stories?
You put leaders on certain stories, and, then, we never hear the follow up on them. Or wait for hours to hear the clincher. Some stories you repeat every 1/2 hour on the hour. And, remain in limbo on others.
Tired of hearing about Tiger woods and his personal affairs.
Tired of hearing about Palin and Bochman and their rants that make little to no sense. You give air time about gun control, when no one is even determining taking away any guns. Most people who do this rant should not own a gun with their mental ablilites being so flawed and paranoid. God told Palin there should be no separation of church and state? Sound like Bush talking to God and justifying invasion of Iraq.
Stories, I wish you would finish. Where is the follow up on the guy during Katrina that the tanker went through his house, and, all his family died?
Where is the end of the story or follow up on the ranchers that are killing wild horses, running them and their babies so much that their feet are bloody stubs?
I can barely eat a burger anymore...with out thinking of this. Makes me sick. I am planning on going vegetarian more and more.
Getting together whole list of stories you never finished up on.
Since when do businesses depend on all government money for everything, they do?
And, they wonder why people are upset, when we hear of this stuff continually going on for dinky airports that have 3 planes taking off and all this subsidy money. No wonder Americans are going broke.
Take a bus, a cab, and go to larger airport.
OK, I'll bet that many of these airports are located in rural districts represented by GOP Congressmen. Now, lets just see if they, GOP Congressmen, will decry free parking and free flights at airports in their districts (using federal tax dollars) as wasteful Washington spending.
So if I flew 29 people a day around my backyard I would quality for a million dollars ? Time to set that trampoline up..
Perhaps someone on a congressional budget committee will see this and say – uhm, let's get real.
Silly me, I've been working for a living for the past 30 years. Scamming the government seems to be a lot easier.
That is such a great marketing tactic. I am glad you investigate. That money could be used in soooo many places.
Keep up the good work.