Trent Palmer (YouTuber Bush Pilot Channel) Suspended By FAA

Bell206 said:
No. But why bring up Hoover here? I see zero similarities between Hoovers case and Palmers. So don’t quite follow the point you’re trying to make.
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You can't possibly fathom being the pilot at the pointy end of the skewer, can you? All those who are must have done something to deserve it.

I'm sure it will never happen to you. After all, it's a real big sky out there. Fly safe, brother.
 
DJTorrente said:
You can't possibly fathom being the pilot at the pointy end of the skewer, can you? All those who are must have done something to deserve it.

I'm sure it will never happen to you. After all, it's a real big sky out there. Fly safe, brother.
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What exactly do you think happened here? You've offered vague anti-government rants, but I haven't seen you articulate what you think actually is wrong about what happened in this case.
 
Lindberg said:
You've offered vague anti-government rants
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DJTorrente said:
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." -Federalist 51
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Quoting Madison in the Federalist Papers is an anti-government rant? Mmmm-kay.

"Further the affiant sayeth naught."
 
Lindberg said:
What exactly do you think happened here? You've offered vague anti-government rants, but I haven't seen you articulate what you think actually is wrong about what happened in this case.
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DJTorrente said:
Quoting Madison in the Federalist Papers is an anti-government rant? Mmmm-kay.

"Further the affiant sayeth naught."
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Apparently the Federalist papers were written as a result of Trent Palmer…Impressive!
 
Albany Tom said:
... But I do know that we need to defend the rights of the slow and stupid, the annoying and arrogant, the ones we don't like, even those working against us, or those freedoms will go away. I'm not the one that figured that out, and I kinda hate it sometimes, but believe it to be true. ...
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Mencken said the same: The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
 
MRC01 said:
Mencken said the same: The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
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So not being allowed to buzz houses is oppressive?
 
Anthem said:
freedom from what ? freedom from violating the FAR's ? Then hey - I'm going to go buzz the white house because, well I should have the "freedom" to do so. . . People are treating this as a violation of basic human rights or something. . . there is no "right" to flying.. its always been a privilege. And there is no right to fly wherever you want and however you want. but somehow people think there is because the FAA administers those regulations ???
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Ed Haywood said:
So not being allowed to buzz houses is oppressive?
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The point is a generalization. The evidence suggests that Palmer is likely guilty in this case. But since the decision was based on assumptions rather than incontrovertible evidence, it is the camel's nose in the tent that could in the future be applied in cases where the pilot is not guilty. In this case the assumptions were reasonable based on common sense, but they won't necessarily be so in the future.

One can understand the principle while also believing Palmer was guilty.
 
DJTorrente said:
You can't possibly fathom being the pilot at the pointy end of the skewer, can you?
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Sure I can. But what I can also fathom is that some pilots at the pointy end are one sandwich short of a picnic. In Hoover’s case, they pulled his medical, so he followed the established system, got his medical back, and continued to fly. Plus they changed the system due to this event.

Palmer, like Jacobs and the Red Bull 182 pilot, intently decided to exchange common sense for clicks, then tried to play the established system and in the end, all had their azz handed to them. Regardless, I think if Madison, Jay, or Hamilton had the opportunity to hear his appeal they too would have revoked Palmers ticket since they all were big supporters for the rule of law.
 
MRC01 said:
Mencken said the same: The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
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A scoundrel was defended. He lost.
 
MRC01 said:
The point is a generalization. The evidence suggests that Palmer is likely guilty in this case. But since the decision was based on assumptions rather than incontrovertible evidence, it is the camel's nose in the tent that could in the future be applied in cases where the pilot is not guilty. In this case the assumptions were reasonable based on common sense, but they won't necessarily be so in the future.

One can understand the principle while also believing Palmer was guilty.
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Incontrovertible evidence? I don't have incontrovertible evidence the sun will rise tomorrow, but you believe it. That's far from the point though because "incontrovertible evidence" isn't the standard of proof.

And what assumptions do you believe the decision was based on?

Also, what reason do you have to believe that a hypothetical case based on hypothetically unreasonable assumptions would come out the same way as a case based on reasonable assumptions?
 
DJTorrente said:
Some can. Others, not so much.
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I would like to understand the principle. What is it? In Federalist 51, Madison makes the case for the separation of powers in our tripartite government, which we have and which Palmer availed himself of. So what's the important principle that wasn't followed here?
 
Lindberg said:
That's far from the point though because "incontrovertible evidence" isn't the standard of proof.
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“Incontrovertible evidence” isn’t the standard of proof in ANY judicial proceeding. However, it IS one of the two standards of proof on the internet. The other is “wild speculation.” Both are applied selectively within the same discussion by the same internet users. What courts and the internet have in common is that the standard of proof is the single most important thing to understand before diving into any argument.
 
MRC01 said:
The point is a generalization. The evidence suggests that Palmer is likely guilty in this case. But since the decision was based on assumptions rather than incontrovertible evidence, it is the camel's nose in the tent that could in the future be applied in cases where the pilot is not guilty. In this case the assumptions were reasonable based on common sense, but they won't necessarily be so in the future.

One can understand the principle while also believing Palmer was guilty.
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The correct generalization is that the rule of law functioned as designed. You and other Palmer supporters are applying the wrong standard of evidence. The law says the standard of proof for this action is the preponderance of evidence, not incontrovertible evidence. Following the law, the court must decide based on which argument is more likely to be true, not whether the charges have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. They did that, to the letter.

When a citizen can challenge a 4 month suspension of a privilege all the way to the second highest court of the land, and get a good faith review consistent with the law, I'd say we have a pretty damn free society.
 
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Ed Haywood said:
The correct generalization is that the rule of law functioned as designed. You and other Palmer supporters are applying the wrong standard of evidence.
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I agree and I'm not a Palmer supporter. I thought that was clear from my post, when I said I believe he's guilty.
 
Ed Haywood said:
The law says the standard of proof for this action is the preponderance of evidence, not incontrovertible evidence.
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Ah, I thought only civil courts used Preponderance of Evidence. I assumed Administrative Courts had to follow Beyond Reasonable Doubt, the same as Criminal Courts.
 
WDD said:
Ah, I thought only civil courts used Preponderance of Evidence. I assumed Administrative Courts had to follow Beyond Reasonable Doubt, the same as Criminal Courts.
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Why would you think that? They're not criminal. Suspensions and fines are "civil penalties."
 
The real problem here is that the regulations are vague. It's OK to be closer than 500' "if necessary for takeoff or landing". So what is "necessary"? For that matter, what is "careless or reckless" or a "congested area"? If there's objective criteria, I have no problem with it. Trent's trying to land there was probably bad judgement, but I can see how he thought it might be OK based on his understanding of the regulations. But when it's an "I can't define it but I know it when I see it" that's a slippery slope to calling virtually any behavior criminal. Non-objective law is an evil thing.
 
flyingron said:
Why would you think that? They're not criminal. Suspensions and fines are "civil penalties."
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Civil is citizen vs citizen. When it’s Gov against Citizen, and fines, jail time, etc are on the table the higher Beyond Reasonable Doubt is used. So yes, I assumed that was same for all Government vs Citizen courts.

Don’t have much court experience in my life to draw on here.

But I did stay in a Holliday Inn ……..
 
BTW, FWIW, my hunch is that yeah, he did unnecessarily buzz the neighbors while looking for a place to land. Or just got careless and a bit sloppy which resulted in buzzing.

Now, what’s the over / under betting on how long this thread goes?
 
WDD said:
...

Now, what’s the over / under betting on how long this thread goes?
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It's not that hard to get a thread shutdown... just need a few posters to accept lintatai
 
Dana said:
The real problem here is that the regulations are vague. It's OK to be closer than 500' "if necessary for takeoff or landing". So what is "necessary"? For that matter, what is "careless or reckless" or a "congested area"? If there's objective criteria, I have no problem with it. Trent's trying to land there was probably bad judgement, but I can see how he thought it might be OK based on his understanding of the regulations. But when it's an "I can't define it but I know it when I see it" that's a slippery slope to calling virtually any behavior criminal. Non-objective law is an evil thing.
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Exactly. If it were unambiguous or egregious, the debate wouldn't last 28 pages (well maybe it still would ;)).
 
WDD said:
Civil is citizen vs citizen. When it’s Gov against Citizen, and fines, jail time, etc are on the table the higher Beyond Reasonable Doubt is used. So yes, I assumed that was same for all Government vs Citizen courts.
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No, that's wrong. The question isn't who the parties are but the nature of the penalties.

www.law.cornell.edu

civil penalties (civil fines)

www.law.cornell.edu www.law.cornell.edu
 
WDD said:
Civil is citizen vs citizen. When it’s Gov against Citizen, and fines, jail time, etc are on the table the higher Beyond Reasonable Doubt is used. So yes, I assumed that was same for all Government vs Citizen courts.

Don’t have much court experience in my life to draw on here.

But I did stay in a Holliday Inn ……..
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One way to think about it (although probably not a universally accurate way) is that criminal courts punish by taking away your rights while civil penalties only take away your privileges. If you are caught driving drunk, you might experience both sides of the equation. If you are found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, you might be sentenced to jail. If the driver licensing agency of your state determines by a preponderance of the evidence that you broke the rules of the road, then they might suspend your driving privileges.

There are lots of ways to find yourself on the other side of a courtroom or administrative hearing room from the government. It’s just that most people experience between zero and two of them directly and are exposed to the rest only through incompetent news reporting, if at all. (Hopefully nobody thinks that reporters are more accurate with legal news than they are about plane crashes.)
 
Dixiebluesky said:
So some people here are of the mind that the guy had no intention of landing and he was simply buzzing the house?
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Either this, or that even if he did intend to land there, it was an inappropriate place to land.
The first requires knowing his true intentions at the time, which only Palmer himself can know.
The second is an interpretation of regulations that necessarily have some wiggle room because they can't cover every possible situation in detail.
Hence the ambiguity in either case.

If it were a criminal case, he would have presumption of innocence and the onus of proof is on prosecutors to prove beyond reasonable doubt.
"Preponderance of evidence" means go wherever it suggests, even if only 50.00001% in that direction. This implies no presumption of innocence to overcome.
In my view, the preponderance of evidence suggests he violated the regs. Yet I'm not sure it is convincing enough to rise to the level of "beyond reasonable doubt".

Note: I'm not suggesting the civil regs under which we fly are oppressive or capricious, nor that FAA enforcement is. Only that there is some ambiguity, and not because the regs are somehow flawed, but necessarily so, and the FAA will use this as they see fit to fulfill their mission. Every pilot should know this and fly accordingly - don't push the limits of the regulations and tempt the FAA. Palmer didn't do this, and even if he actually was innocent (which I doubt), shows the kind of poor judgement we try to weed out during pilot training. He seems to have some of the 5 hazardous attitudes: impulsivity, macho, invulnerability.
 
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