What is your basis for saying this? Do you have data that shows that
aviation today is contributing more to the Feds than we are getting back
in services? I haven't seen much data on that, but what I saw some years
back showed just the opposite to be true.

This is the 600 pound gorilla in the room at every anti-airport,
anti-aviation meeting, and, as pilots and aviation supporters, we must be
prepared to counter these assumptions. We also must counter some very
ingrained beliefs amongst the electorate.

Sadly, I know what I'm talking about. (I wish I didn't.) As the founder of
my airport support group, Friends of Iowa City Airport, and also my AOPA
airport support network volunteer, I'm involved with this debate every day.
Here are a few thoughts...

- We must counter the assumption that *of course* taxes must go up, because
that's what they always do. Citizens are so used to this preposterous
state of affairs that they don't even question it anymore.

Taxes DON'T have to go up, nor should they. We, the people, should not be
condemned to the concept that we must eternally pay a larger percentage of
our income to government. We must reassert our control of this process.

- We must counter the attitude that "Oh, they can afford to pay it." This
is the classic "divide and conquer" theory of tax implementation that our
government has used successfully against its citizens since 1913 or so, when
the first income tax was enacted. By pitting one group against another,
they are able to obscure the reasons for raising the tax in the first place.
It's a classic, time-honored ploy that over time has resulted in each of us
paying over half of what we earn to our overseers.

- Airways and airports are a public trust, not a private enterprise, same as
highways and roads. My airport costs $112K per year in direct city taxpayer
support, and (according to a 2000 Iowa State University study) brings $5.5
million annually into the local economy. Sounds like a pretty damned good
investment to me. Multiply that times thousands of airports, and you've
spot-lighted the underlying reasons for supporting general aviation.

- Over the last 70 years the federal government (through first the CAA, now
the FAA) has incrementally expanded its control over the the system, some
would say unnecessarily. There is little question that the FAA (as with
most of our federal government) is bloated, top-heavy, slow moving, and
inefficient. Instead of enacting another huge increase in Jet-A taxation to
support this enormous entity, demand efficiency.

These are just a few things to talk about at your next cocktail party. I
don't have time right now to expand these arguments (I've got to head off to
work here shortly), but there are many other tactics to use when confronted
with anti-airport, anti-GA rhetoric. Many are philosophical, many are
factual, and many involve contrasting wasteful government spending habits
against what is actually spent on aviation.

The public is generally ignorant about what GA does for their communities.
If we want to continue to have airports to land at, it's our duty to spread
the good word.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"