Sigh

I'm a little ticked at the sudden "Airline Passenger Bill of Rights" idea invoked in the wake of the JetBlue stranded airlines fiasco.

Several things bug me about it: first, just like the overused "War on XXX" (War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Terror) I think invoking a Bill of Rights-style (Patients' Bill of Rights, etc.) concept cheapens the actual Bill of Rights. That's a seemingly stupid point, but it takes the fundamental freedoms that, bundled together, make America a desirable place to be, and transforms it into a euphemism for citizen outrage. I'm sorry people were stranded, but if there's an Airline Passenger Bill of Rights, then how about a Highway Commuter Bill of Rights, a Public Transportation Bill of Rights, and a Shopping Mall Consumer Bill of Rights, too? Lame! Seems to me that people should just be going after JetBlue and/or the FAA (or the TSA?) for boning up the process so that the passengers were stranded.

A second thing that bugs me is how quickly and vehement the response has been to these people trapped 11 hours on a plane. Again, it's lame and irritating, but I couldn't help but think of the hapless people in New Orleans, who had a helluva lot more going on than the JetBlue passengers, and where was the help for them? I think there's more than a little class and race bias in the publicity around the JetBlue thing, and the push for reform, compared to New Orleans, which is still a mess, and is likely to remain so for a long, long time, victim of not-so benign neglect (some of which created the problem to begin with). But inconvenience some airline passengers, and it's suddenly a big issue. Why? Because they had cellphones with cameras, captured those Kodak moments?

A third thing that pissed me off was how JetBlue's stock went up in the wake of the JetBlue fiasco! My rule of thumb about the stock market is this: if it's bad news for working people and consumers, then the stocks go up; good news for everyday people, and the stocks go down. That's common enough to be, in my eyes, almost a truism. Chrysler axes thousands of workers, and I bet its stock goes up. A company lets its workers unionize, its stock'll go down. So, we have JetBlue blowing it, utterly failing to do what people are paying it to do, and it gets rewarded on the stock market. It's that topsy-turvy kind of accounting that lets CEOs garner massive salaries and benefits packages even as their companies tank. Enough, already.

Obama, Okay?!

I'm also fed up with the "is he REALLY black" nonsense surrounding Obama. At least we're early enough in the campaign that hopefully this whole line will be used up by the time the primary season really kicks into gear, but for now, it's annoying as hell. Give the man a break -- there are way bigger issues afflicting the US currently than whether Obama is really black, a line which conservative Alan Keyes dredged up in his ill-fated campaign against Obama in 2004.

Hard Knox

I'm watching a special on Fort Knox on the History Channel, and it's kinda pissing me off. The imperial tone associated with the Depository, it highlights the remoteness and scary aloofness of the government with regard to the American people, as the National Security State continues to evolve.

I thought they said about $100 billion in gold is kept there. Since the US went off the gold standard, and since the gold stored there isn't circulating, I can't help but wonder what it's doing there, what purpose it serves? Or is it just an exercise in government inertia?

It's like the equivalent of stuffing money in your mattress, in a sense. Unless it's being used covertly or something. Maybe it's being paid out to the owners of our government (e.g., creditors). I don't know. Why's it there?

Maybe we charge governments to put things there, like the ultimate strongbox or something.

Even when they had people visit in 1974, to ostensibly dispel rumors that there was fuck-all in there, they only showed the visitors one room full of gold! To my cynical, sarcastic, ironic, jaded Gen X self, I'm thinking "What about the other rooms??" People who saw the gold in that room said "Yeah, I saw gold!" but I'm thinking *Pff. One room's worth.*

They only audit 10% of the gold in there, I guess.

But if it were revealed that there wasn't so much gold in there as was claimed, that would probably cause some kind of economic meltdown, so maybe that's why all the secrecy's surrounding it.

With so much secrecy around it, we can't really know. Hence the problem with secrecy in a purportedly democratic government, yes?

State of the Union

I really hate the State of the Union address. It really reinforces how clearly there is a political class in this country, and how far removed from the experience of everyday Americans our political "representatives" are.

I'd like to see a new form of national service, where everyday American voters get eventually elected to Congress, instead of it being the province of well-heeled political entrepreneurs and opportunists. Something to stir the pot, make our democracy (or republic) actually democratic and/or republican, instead of only embracing it in formal ways.