Irish CEO invokes Reagan to attack EU

European Union (EU) bureaucrats received a tongue-lashing from Michael O'Leary, CEO of the Irish airline Ryanair, who criticized EU leadership for dishonesty, stifling innovation, and over-regulating and taxing successful industries and companies.

"The reason [other airlines] fail to innovate, and the reason why the airline industry is in such a mess, is because its run by politicians and bureaucrats who like nothing more than to pass another regulation when something is working," O'Leary said at an EU conference on innovation. "I remember Ronald Reagan's quote in the U.S. that the economic policy of government and bureaucrats is always, 'if it moves, tax it; if it keeps moving, regulate it; and if it stops moving, subsidize it;' and I think that's a policy that's much beloved in Brussels [the administrative capitol of the EU]."

O'Leary said "get the hell out of Brussels" to entrepreneurs at the conference in a mocking critique of the EU. "Because Brussels, those of you who know the Star Wars Trilogy, this is the evil empire,' he said. "The Berlaymont is the Death Star, where any hint of innovation is left at the door as you walk in to meet with bureaucrats and politicians, who you can always tell when they're telling lies because their lips are moving."

The airline CEO provided his audience with a contemporary classic of bureaucratic ineptitude. "When I was coming out to the conference this week . . . somebody in the commission very kindly sent me a note saying, 'we'd love to pay for your flight and your hotel and your taxi, and we'll send you a limo to collect you and everything else," O'Leary said, only to find out that the EU would not pay for his flight "because there's a ban on low-fare flights within the commission," he recounted.

"By law you can only pay higher prices," O'Leary summarized, "because -- let's face it -- the European taxpayer is going to pay for it anyway."

The EU was set up at a time when Reagan was a god in Europe and the persons that set it up were anything but bureaucrats.

So although the EU name has not changed, the people and character of the organization certainly have changed.

As with any governmental organization it is a given that eventually bureaucratic minds take over. A bureaucrat is someone that has done NOTHING for the last 30 years and looks back proudly and declares they have NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG in their 30 years of doing nothing.

DOING NOTHING AND SAYING NO are high art forms in the careers of bureaucrats.

DOING NOTHING is never displayed openly for there are always meetings to go to and memos about meetings to write, so DOING NOTHING requires an appearance of doing something. One has to be very clever how to play this charade which is why bureaucrats bond well with each other because it’s so much easier to fake to a faker.

SAYING NO is never said directly. A real good way of saying no to someone that brings a really new good idea would be to respond “Very well then, fill out these forms and we will submit your idea to the steering committee of the subcommittee to the general council which convenes next year”. One should have about a hundred good ways to say NO to be a real effective bureaucrat. And one’s bureaucrat colleagues will fawn over one of their own that has mastered the Art of Saying No.

I like this O’Leary guy. Wish he would run for President here. Too bad he’s a foreigner.....Oh Wait!

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Irish CEO evokes Reagan to attack EU