Small Plane Crash in Austin, TX

Found out via Gawker.

CNN reports:

"At this time we have no reason to believe there is a nexus to criminal or terrorist activity," said Matt Chandler, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

From the "Breaking News" bar across that CNN page:

Pilot set his home ablaze before intentionally crashing plane into Austin, Texas, building, federal official says

Austin news probably the best source for info right now. Latest from the Statesman:

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/blotter/entries/2010/02/18/austin_police_say_a_plane.html

Ohmygod, made the crucial mistake of reading those CNN comments.

Given the torching of the house/IRS occupancy of the building, hmm.

Yes, but see, the commenters on CNN KNOW it was a terrorist because LOTS OF LETTERS IN HIS LAST NAME. DON'T YOU SEE?

Here's the Statesman's Twitter page: http://twitter.com/Statesman

And he stole the plane as well? Weird.

From that Gawker page:

UPDATE: An MSNBC producer says via Twitter that local news station KXAN in Austin is reporting that a local pilot set his home on fire with his wife and daughter inside this morning and then flew his plane into the building.

Here's the Tweet they're referring to: http://twitter.com/JesseRodriguez/status/9293171381

Joseph Andrew Stack

And a nation of Malkins goes "DAMMIT"

he has three names - maybe he was trying to assassinate Obama

And I suppose if he'd crashed the plane into a government building he'd be a hero

Uh, well, he did.

Two to one says the right wing rewrite is already in place going from "damn terrorists!" to "he was going to lose his home; Obama's mortgage program is failing!"

He's a hero then!

clearly he's been driven to rage by the socialism gripping america

KXAN, which Wikipedia says is "the NBC-affiliated television station for Austin, Texas," has a live stream:

http://www.kxan.com/generic/news/live_streaming

or is stack short for stackohoummed

Just heard from that stream that the wife and daughter were rescued from the house.

Made of a bit of a pig's ear of this whole thing, hasn't he?

I wonder what the reaction would be if the government said "for every domestic attack on federal buildings, we will raise taxes across the board by 5%"

aside from that insane idle thought, I am kind of numb to this

er rather, numbed by this

btw michelle malkin is not, afaik, talking about this at all.

Think he picked the wrong Echelon.

CNN main page says "Two injuries reported, officials say"

btw michelle malkin is not, afaik, talking about this at all

True enough! At least, not yet.

any profile emerging yet of the person who did this?

The Corner is taking the "just the facts" approach at the moment.

one obvious possibility may explain why michelle malkin -- and The Corner -- isn't making much of this, yet.

are you saying... they're in on it?

lol. no. well, not directly.

plane came from waco, is that right?

i notice hoos hasn't checked in yet

Georgetown Airport.

Or, at least, that's where it took off from.

Sure you don't mean Jamestown?

Jonestown, I mean!

From CNN:

12:32 p.m.: The FAA said the plane departed Georgetown Municipal Airport, north of Austin, about 9:40 a.m., and that the pilot did not file a flight plan.

From that same page: "The IRS said it thinks all employees are accounted for, but they are checking."

In fairness, if my plan was "steal plane, fly it into IRS building" I would also not file a flight plan.

http://www.businessinsider.com/joseph-andrew-stacks-insane-manifesto-2010-2

hoooly shit

There's a link to a possible suicide note going around on Twitter.

yes, that was my hunch.

holy crap the guy was an engineer!!!! (or he says he went to engineering school anyway)

well that was a treat

On the subjects of engineers and dreams of independence, I should digress somewhat to say that I’m sure that I inherited the fascination for creative problem solving from my father.

Uhhhhhh . . .

it's a surprisingly coherent screed for a crazy guy.

there are plenty of coherent crazy people out there; look at many elite university professors, for example

he killed himself and tried to murder others because of taxes, but every other sentence is anti-corporate, anti-authoritarian.

i'm already dreading the pin-head pundit analysis of this...

Things I never knew anything about and things my wife had no clue would ever matter to anyone. The end result is… well, just look around.

'Which is why I had to try and kill my wife and child. Why are you looking at me like that?'

every other sentence is anti-corporate, anti-authoritarian

How very Tea Party!

hey guys i'm here. i've been listening to the local radio coverage of this and last i heard an eyewitness said "this looked 100% intentional" but i hadn't gotten wind of any of this wackiness

holy shit

This all seems very 'a little learning is a dangerous thing.'

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

ohh maybe something like, let's say, "kill myself, kill my family, kill others on the way out." different like that?

exhibit A of the type of person who fucks up his own life in such a poor manner that he can't even look at himself in the mirror and convinces himself it's everyone else who fucked him over.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngextremeexplorer/global/images/360x220_stack_attack.jpg

^^ I lol'ed

CNN:

1:43 p.m. A federal law enforcement official confirmed the name Joseph Andrew Stack and said he owned a house that was burned Thursday. Asked whether Stack set the fire, the official replied, "It appears that way."

Gotta go with Phil/unperson here:

How aggrieved/afflicted could the guy really have been? HE OWNED HIS OWN PLANE.

I was seriously expecting a name check of some public thinker in there somewhere, but his apparently positive evaluation of Communism is all we get?

exhibit A of the type of person who fucks up his own life in such a poor manner that he can't even look at himself in the mirror and convinces himself it's everyone else who fucked him over.

― ('_') (omar little), Thursday, February 18, 2010 1:49 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah the dominant ideology here seems to be "its someone elses fault"

he listed a piano as a business expense for his freelance engineering job?

So basically Falling Down II: Up in the Air

yeah, the guy just kept fucking around in a really stupid manner with money and taxes and kept getting caught, and kept blaming everyone else. sure, the catholic church is corrupt, but no you can't have a piano as a business asset, nimrod.

::cancels new piano order::

im assuming that his wifes undisclosed income was prob as a piano teacher?

ok given, i am prob giving the dude too much credit here, but that at least makes some tiny amount of sense

which leads me to guess that during the audit there was some great moment like:

"uh you cant claim a piano as a business expense."

"but my wife teaches piano"

"uh but your wife doesnt have any claimed income"

"oh hey what is that behind you? is that jennifer aniston?" *makes mad dash for door*

So basically Falling Down II: Up in the Air

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, February 18, 2010 7:03 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d40/spaterbob/252552873-KaneClap.gif

Guy should have just flown over the building and dropped his piano on it. That would have been different.

The Corner chimes in. Stephen Spruiell's probably correct about this:

There is absolutely zero doubt in my mind that we are T-minus fifteen seconds from Mr. Joseph Andrew Stack being renamed "The Tea-Bag Terrorist!" or some such by the media and his crime laid at the feet of the Right

with good reason, given his manifesto, notwithstanding Spruiell's comment that (Stack's) "political views don't fit comfortably into any category I'm aware of." There's a grain of truth to that, but OTOH, the Tea Party movement has some strains within it that don't fit comfortably into right-wing philosophy, but it is foolish to think of the movement as anything other than right-leaning.

man poor art acevedo comin off so provincial in this

so at this point we're just waiting for the highway security cam footage of the plane smashing into the building right

its really fucking incredible that nobody but the pilot died as a result of this

he's like an inverse sully

hahahahaha otm

this guy wasn't very good at anything, was he

really tho

i'm pretty sure what happened was 10 mins before he took off, the boss at the building yelled MIGHTY CONE FIELD TRIP and then there was no one in the building

imo

like a real life frank grimes

lolll xp

Hahah this is totally a Grimey kind of thing!

it's like if there was a mr. bean episode where he tried to do this

granted mr. bean wouldn't have even gotten off the ground (or in the airplane), but still

stack was wile e coyote and the irs is the roadrunner

tax law was the acme corporation

So dude played bass.

CRASH UPDATES: Two bodies recovered at crash site, officials say

fuck.

Oog :(

really bothered by the repeated "don't worry, it's not terrorism" line, which i've seen in several news articles and tv coverage of this.

this gentleman suicide bombed a federal office building with his plane. this is terrorism.

implication seems to be that in many minds terrorism=muslims.

his 'manifesto' is a straightforward defense of suicide bombing in an american context

right. but people draw a distinction between "terrorism" and "domestic terrorism."

well and terrorism usually implies a larger conspiracy and an ongoing effort to incite terror. The political element is important, but it's not the only thing that makes terrorism, terrorism.

To my mind this is more of a disgruntled shooting, albeit with plane instead of gun.

Yeah this change in the public perception of terrorism since 9/11 really bugs me. Once upon a time we used the term for any plane hijack, building bombing, relgious wacko with guns, anti-abortionists etc etc.

Now its just al-quaeda and bugger the rest.

It is hard to inspire terror when you act alone and die. There's no one left to be terrified of.

the worry i would have is that people will regard this dude as either a martyr or a tragic example of what some people are being driven to do by this terrible government/administration *shakes head sadly*

oh you'll see a lot of that over the next news cycle.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/02/18/scott-brown-terrorism-yawn/

It's not really a "yawn," but his reaction is strange.

P.D. says:

You better belive if this guy was from the Middle East, thses asses would be foaming at the mouth.

Digby has more on this don't-pay-taxes scam dude got fleeced by:

Perhaps the most famous such tax protest organization was the California-based Your Heritage Protection Association, which, at one point in the early 1980s, could boast nearly 19,000 members. Its leader, Armen Condo, taught followers how to file papers claiming they were exempt from income taxes and urged them to pay a portion of those taxes to his organization as dues. Condo collected around $2 million before being arrested and convicted of mail and tax fraud in 1982, after which YHPA gradually died off. However, the YHPA was followed by the Pilot Connection Society, founded by Phillip and Marlene Marsh of Fresno, California. The Society sold "untax" kits to members from all 50 states, collecting more than $10 million in fees and dues before the Marshes and five associates were arrested on a variety of charges in 1993

Actor Wesley Snipes, who has tax problems of his own, had a blunt reaction to news about a software engineer who crashed his plane into an office building with nearly 200 IRS employees inside.

In an interview Friday with the Associated Press, Snipes asked, "What's new?"

Authorities say A. Joseph Stack III, who was furious with the Internal Revenue Service, crashed his plane into an Austin, Texas, building on Thursday. Stack and one other person were killed.

Snipes said tax problems have been an issue in the U.S. from the very beginning.

As the actor put it: "I think it was an issue even for the early colonists and the British, so what's new?"

Snipes, 47, was convicted in 2008 of not paying taxes for three years. He was sentenced to three years in prison and is appealing.

Despite his legal troubles, Snipes said, "All is very well. We're very positive, we're very confident that things will work out to our benefit and to our favor."

He brushed off the experience as just another part of living.

"These are the bumps and bruises of life. They build character and you learn from it as you move on."

Snipes says he still doesn't understand why the IRS pursued him.

He added, "I'm not a politician, I'm not saving the world, I haven't created a cure for cancer, I make movies ..."

In 2006, "Survivor" winner Richard Hatch was convicted of not paying his taxes and spent more than three years in jail. He complained that the IRS used him as an example.

In Snipes' opinion, "they were successful."