Much ado about nothing.

· 336 words · 2 minute read

Small political rant about the news media here.

Pelosi wants a military jet to take her places. That’s perfectly fine and within the scope of the speaker of the house job. There’s lots of noise being made from both sides about this though. She wants a jumbo jet capable of carrying over a hundred people for just her and a few staff. The military has a number of planes available that are more reasonably sized for the people she wants to bring.

According to numbers I’ve heard, the C-32 jumbo-jet which is equivalent to a 757 and costs 22 thousand an hour for fuel alone, a round trip with paying all of the crew of the plane, maintenance, etc supposedly costs 300,000 per one-way trip. This seems a bit high to me, but I’ll go with it.

The former speaker flew in a C-20 jet, which is equivalent to a Gulfstream 3 Business jet. It supposedly costs under 100,000 per one-way trip to fly.

The whole thing is a big misunderstanding though. They want a plane that flys coast to coast without refueling. the C-20 can’t, the C-32 can. The misunderstanding is, people on the right think that she was being given a C-37A Gulfstream 5 business jet which is the size of a C-20 but can go coast-to-coast without refueling. (It supposedly costs 100,000 per one-way trip.) Her staff was offered this and rejected this compromise and continued asking for the larger, far more expensive jet. (Funny how this is at the very last section of the article where most people won’t ever read it.)

The right is missing the idea that she wasn’t initially given a Gulfstream 5 equiv like they thought. The left is missing the fact that we WANT her to have a military jet, (Dead Link) and want her to be able to get there without refueling, just not with the horribly expensive monstrosity. We want efficiency, and are tired of the Spend-spend-spending spree that both the republicans and democrats have been going on for decades.