Letters to the Editor
ondelette
Published Letters: 1988 Editor's Choice: 19
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With all due respect
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The airlines brought this anger largely on themselves. I concede to you that there are quite a few considerations that haven't gone into the Passenger's Bills of Rights ideas. But it isn't very practical to pass a "Passenger's, Employees, and Everyone Else Being Screwed by the Corporate Schmucks That Run Megabusinesses Bill of Rights." So sorry, but the crew and pilots of the airplane are the public face of a very abusive set of moguls.
Maybe the public is really calling for the airlines to be re-regulated. This is just the most colossal example of the public being sold a "deregulation is always better" bill of goods and then finding out it isn't. All of the surrounding industries have been pushing the same crap.
Or maybe the free market might work in the airlines. But not when the only two ways I'm allowed to sort my ticket options are by price and departure time, and the only other parameter I'm allowed is number of stops. Where are the web pages that allow me to pick my flight by inches of leg room, or height of the seat back (I'm taller than average), or the meal menu, or, my favorite, number of clicks above 14% on the humidity? Where are the gradations in price within a flight other than $300 and then next up $2200? Or how about creating other new choices? Discounts on ski passes if I lay over in Salt Lake City? or, or,...
or anything other than be at the airport in the dead of night to strip down to my skivvies, stand and wait on the plane while all the privileged characters with the steamer trunk carry-ons employ one or more flight attendants to hoist their must have stuff into the bins then sit with my knees burning from being pinned against the seat in front of me where a 5'4" person has laid their seat out like a bed scrounge around for $5 in exact change to buy a sandwich if it happens to be something I can eat wait for my nose to go nuts from the dryness while the guy behind me coughs his cold or SARS or whatever on the whole plane for the same reason wait for an hour by the luggage claim my reward for being a good boy and checking my luggage then making arrangements to pick up my baggage the next day -- all assuming that I made my connection.
The executives at airlines ignore me and my kind because they can. Sorry about the invective, but we need some sort of pipeline or wormhole so we can pour it on the people who deserve it.
Maybe the real Passenger's Bill of Rights should say "For each 1000 customer complaints, the CEO of the airlines must spend a day in the stocks in Times Square." See how they put up with discomfort.
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Actually,...
[Read the article: Why do journalists suddenly love Al Gore?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If memory serves...most of us voted for him last time, notwithstanding Nader or the media. It was Reinquist, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas,and O'Connor who didn't.
And, with apologies to another beloved person who lost to W. because of how the press treated her,
Poor journalists! They can't help it. They were born with silver laptops down their throats.
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Jail first, impeachment later
[Read the article: Confrontational investigations, subpoenas, and hearings are the priority]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I started out after reading Glenn's column thinking that we ought to be talking about impeachment. After all, the polling numbers have been there for it for more than a year.
Specifically, about 16 months ago people were asked the question "If the Administration lied in presenting the case for war with Iraq, do you believe they should be impeached?" The response was 47% in favor. A year later, right after the elections, the question was asked again, and 53% were in favor.
Then it occurred to me that some of the rage felt by older people like me is in watching the same things happen again only worse, and the same people cycling back into government regardless of their previous crimes. We are fighting in Iraq based on the wrong beliefs of the Westmoreland supporters during Vietnam. Our Vice President was an aide to Nixon and Ford. Elliot Abrams was found in contempt of Congress during Iran-Contra.
So instead, I guess I agree with Glenn that the first step is investigations and subpoenas on TV, even though I recognize Susan Woods' fears about another telegenic Ollie North (read Men of Zeal if you don't understand her comment).
But I would like to issue one big caveat:
Unless, during the investigations, we take the time and prosecutorial effort to put some of these players in jail, on felony charges, they will be back. So no screw-ups by rushing to immunize witnesses this time. We should have learned that lesson with Ollie North and John Poindexter. This time round, we need a set of legal proceedings that do not allow the same horrible, anti-democratic, abusive players to spend a couple of years in the wilderness and come back again.
I, for one, am sick of investigating the same set of players every 20 years, while they set off war after war after war, and rob the treasury of every last cent in between.