Campaign finance reform. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Campaign finance reform is what motivated a 61-year-old mailman from Ruskin, Florida to load up his gyrocopter and 535 letters to Congress on a trailer and drive to within a flight’s distance from the U.S. Capitol. He wanted to deliver the letters in an attention-grabbing manner in order to shed some light on an issue he is clearly passionate about.
Leaving the politics out of this, here is what we know:
The pilot’s name is Doug Hughes, and he has been planning this flight for almost three years. The friends he told didn’t believe he would pull it off. One of those friends did alert the Secret Service, and Mr. Hughes was interviewed about his plan back in 2013. It appears as if nothing ever came of that interview.
Just weeks before his planned flight, he sat down with Tampa Bay Times to record the video in this article. I don’t know if Tampa Bay Times chose to sit on the video to garner publicity or if it was immediately shared with appropriate authorities, so I won’t speculate on that piece of the puzzle. In summary, the plan has been known by at least one agency in Washington D.C. since 2013, and also known by a media outlet for the last few weeks.
This absolutely could have been thwarted. In the video Doug explains his motive and consistently reiterates his non-violent intentions. Maybe that’s why more wasn’t done.We may never know.
I don’t know Mr. Hughes personally, so I won’t judge the man’s heart or motive. Heck, we share the same desire to not see this country completely collapse. What I can and will do is advise against doing something this dumb to try and shake up the status quo.
(Featured Image Courtesy: ABC News)