No, YOU want the relationship to change. There are already tools out there like salary.com, glassdoor.com, various others for the people who want to voluntarily disclose their personal income information for others to see.

What this bill does is effectively dox those people who would rather keep their financial information private. The reasons for that don't matter. It's their business; not mine or yours. I guarantee there is more than enough information disclosed by the mandatory reporting requirement of this bill to de-anonymize multiple individuals at medium-sized businesses and probably the entire staff at small businesses.

This is a huge step backwards in the effort to protect the privacy and control of one's own personally-identifiable information. Especially when this is the type of information that can directly aide identity theft, targeted advertising and spear phishing.

That's a very common arrangement in many labs, control rooms, factories or any facility related to infrastructure. I would wager that every factory I've been in has at least one DOS-era x86 PC somewhere on site running an air compressor, boiler, CNC machine or some other kind of industrial thing you can't really tell what it does but looks very expensive and heavy.

Someone who makes $25k per year pays very little or more probably no Federal taxes in the USA. However your point is still valid in that this indiscriminately takes money from those who either didn't go to college or who paid off their own college and gives it to people who are well into the upper middle class.

Yes I build things all the time, and apply for permits, and spend a shitload of time of arguing with the often-incompetent people in that office.

It usually ends up being cheaper (and more importantly less hassle) to just do what the inspector says, even when that inspector is completely wrong. That is exactly the problem with the system as it is. The administrative agencies have purposefully made it so difficult to disagree with them that only "very rich assholes", as you put it, have the time and money available to take on these kinds of fights. The rest of us just have to bend over and take whatever they are handing out with no realistic alternatives. This is not a fair or reasonable system that respects due process in any way, shape or form. Opening up a path to the courts to address regulatory over-reach is a good thing for everyone.

No, this is like a random government bureaucrat claiming that you built an unsafe structure in your back yard, and you disagree with his opinion. Instead of him just being able to go to his "administrative law judge" buddy inside the same department of the same agency under the same management structure, and have them automatically rule against you; you can at least plead your case to a real judge who is at least not directly affiliated with either party in the disagreement and can make some semblance of a fair ruling. The current ALJ system in Federal agencies is nothing more than an unchecked "me too" click on whatever enforcement actions the agencies want to pursue.

It's getting really fucking obnoxious. Every update they add more and more bloat and rearrange the UI.

The issue is that the bandwidth is not really "extremely close", but it is closer than it ever has been before in the US. It's actually quite further apart than many other types of radio communication. Given an assumption of reasonable designs, both radar altimeters and 5G networks should be able to work just fine on these new bands. The issue is that detailed, real world testing on actual instruments deployed in the field was not done by the FCC. The FCC made the decision to open up the new frequencies based on models and assumptions that radar altimeters should be fine. The FAA has said that the testing has been insufficient to date, but also was not particularly proactive in doing testing early on. The agencies have mostly been moving on hoping the other would back down, and so far neither has.

The manufacturers are stuck between two immoveable federal agencies. It costs a manufacturer millions of dollars and years to get an instrument through FAA certification. If they were to go back and evaluate instruments that were potentially decades old, and that had been approved under standards applicable at the time, there is no reasonable outcome for them. One, there's no legal requirement to do so, so spending the engineering time and money on it isn't a great business move. Two, if they find a problem there probably isn't much that can be done to repair / patch / upgrade obsolete-ish electronics anyway so they look like the bad guy telling their customers they need an expensive upgrade. Three, if they don't find a problem, they can't really rely on that result anyway because it's being done outside of an official FAA testing process so it doesn't carry much legal weight.

The testing was done long ago, but no one officially had the responsibility to do anything about it, so no one did.

The FAA had already approved all of the radio altimeters out in the field, an instrument that has been used for decades, and which there are thousands of flying every day. These were all approved under a standard testing protocol which included a large unused guard band around the radar frequencies. The FAA has said since the beginning that there was already a standard, and the instruments were tested and approved under that standard, and that changing the width of the guard bands around radio altimeters could cause interference, but that regulating frequencies in use was an FCC responsibility.

The instrument manufacturers made instruments that met and passed the standards in place at the time they were built.

The aircraft owners have fleets of working, approved instruments, and really don't want to and shouldn't have to pay for upgrades to these instruments that are currently working as designed just because some new noisy neighbors are moving in. There may not even be drop in replacements available for older model aircraft, requiring extensive (and expensive) rework and recertification.

The FCC saw an opportunity to bring in $90,000,000,000 by auctioning one of the guard bands adjacent to the radar frequencies, leaving a much smaller guard band instead. They hand-waved a safety analysis literally just by saying something to the effect of "any properly designed modern equipment should work just fine", but never did any real testing of a sampling of actual radar instruments used in the field; including any that may not have been "modern" or "properly designed". They claim their techniques of modeling were sufficient, but in reality fall significantly short of the kind of testing aircraft systems are subjected to.

The telcos claim it's not their responsibility because they already paid a shitload of money for the frequencies which they say were sold/leased legally and therefore they shouldn't have to pay for upgrades to aircraft instruments their 5G networks are now potentially jamming.

The 5G frequencies used in Europe are further away from the frequencies used by radio altimeters than the 5G frequencies that will be used in the USA. The USA had a large reserved guard band around the aviation frequencies, but the FCC decided to ignore that and sell the frequencies to cell companies anyway.

In the US, aviation is almost exclusively regulated at the federal level. State laws usually just cover things like registering and/or taxing the value of the aircraft.

The FAA has a permitting process to authorize air shows or other similar kinds of events.

They would mostly care about the lack of proper procedure for the stunt to be done safely. There is a permitting process for events like air shows or filming movie stunts in which one has to have approved plans, safety review, etc all approved by the FSDO (regional FAA office). As part of that process the FAA may choose to issue a TFR (temporary flight restriction) to limit other air traffic in the area of the risky event. I'm sure they would also require ground fire fighting equipment and medical equipment to be readily available as well as some remote control means to ensure the plane crashes into a predetermined spot. Failure to follow established procedure some something like this would likely be deemed reckless and endangering the public.

If he was to commit insurance fraud, that would certainly be illegal outside of the realm of the aviation laws, probably under the laws in the state the the crash happened or where his insurance policy was issued.

Not necessarily. There are some trigger thresholds that would require reporting to the NTSB, but just the facts taken on the face being a simple engine failure in a single engine plane, little / no damage on the ground, and no injuries; this is not necessarily a mandatory report event. There is a clause that requires reporting "substantial" damage to an aircraft, but there is some legal wiggle room there. They go on to describe some aspects of what substantial means, but they specifically exclude engine failures, landing gear damage, bent or dented parts and some other things. IMO, this would be reportable, but there is clearly some gray area where reasonable people could differ.

There are a number of regulations ("Federal Aviation Regulations" which fall under 14 CFR of United States law) they could potentially cite against him, but I'm thinking something like:

 91.13 Careless or reckless operation. (a) Aircraft operations for the purpose of air navigation. No person may operate an aircraft in a careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another. (b) Aircraft operations other than for the purpose of air navigation. No person may operate an aircraft, other than for the purpose of air navigation, on any part of the surface of an airport used by aircraft for air commerce (including areas used by those aircraft for receiving or discharging persons or cargo), in a careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another.

or

 91.105 Flight crewmembers at stations. (a) During takeoff and landing, and while en route, each required flight crewmember shall - (1) Be at the crewmember station unless the absence is necessary to perform duties in connection with the operation of the aircraft or in connection with physiological needs; and (2) Keep the safety belt fastened while at the crewmember station.

or

 91.119 Minimum safe altitudes: General. Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes: (a) Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface. (b) Over congested areas. Over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons, an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft. (c) Over other than congested areas. An altitude of 500 feet above the surface, except over open water or sparsely populated areas. In those cases, the aircraft may not be operated closer than 500 feet to any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure.

There are many others, but all will come down to whether or not they believe the engine failure was real or staged.