A Couple of Interesting LA TIMES Columns
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A Couple of Interesting LA TIMES Columns
Here's a couple of interesting columns I ran across in today's LA TIMES related to the airlines.... see if you agree... 
http://latimes.com/news/columnists/l...news%2Dcolumns
November 30, 2001
Steve Lopez:
Points West
What Rights Are Left After Sept. 11?
Jason Steinberg, a photojournalism student from Long Beach, was on the way to his Aunt Gail's house in Phoenix for Thanksgiving dinner. While waiting for a Southwest Airlines flight at LAX, Steinberg began taking photographs.
"I'm doing a project for class about the aftermath of Sept. 11," says Steinberg, 26, who works as a customer representative at a hospital when he is not at Los Angeles Harbor Community College.
After passing through a security checkpoint, Steinberg took a quick photo of a female National Guard trooper, with passengers in the foreground. The guard did not approve.
"She demanded my film, and I rewound it right away in case she popped the camera open and ruined it," says Steinberg.
He should have counted himself lucky he doesn't resemble a Middle Easterner. There's no telling how long he'd be locked up without explanation while authorities eavesdrop on his telephone conversations with Aunt Gail.
But Steinberg felt uncomfortable about having so easily surrendered his film. Didn't he have the right to take a photograph in a public place? So he went back to ask for an explanation.
He says the trooper, an airline representative and a cop told him it was a security risk, and his film would be destroyed. End of conversation.
Good work. No telling what might have happened if the Al Qaeda network had gotten its hands on that hot photo.
(The real security risk, actually, is having transportation boss Norman Mineta serve as chief apologist for an airline industry that continues to drag its feet on examining checked-in luggage for explosives.)
I checked with the Guard and LAX, and neither has any specific policy prohibiting photography. So Steinberg, it appears, simply ran into an overzealous team of junior crime busters.
All of which prefaces a question:
Have we slid headlong into a police state, using Sept. 11 to justify everything from locking up bewildered Yemeni immigrants to strong-arming Kodachrome away from photography students on their way to Aunt Gail's for Thanksgiving?
Actually, before continuing with that thought, I should clarify something.
Anyone who had a role in the death and destruction of Sept. 11 could be locked up until Afghanistan is a stop on the pro golf tour, as far as I'm concerned. Any lawful attempt to nail them, or to find so-called sleeper terrorists, is fine by me.
And although I'm sympathetic, I won't be contributing to the defense fund of the otherwise law-abiding Arab immigrants picked up for visa violations. Anyone who doesn't have their papers in order ought not to be carping and moaning about the law suddenly being enforced.
But having said all that, the Bush administration has gone positively medieval. So much so that it's really beginning to terrify people, including some who are usually on its side.
"How can you talk about full partnership when nobody let us know that this executive order was coming?" U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) demanded of a Justice Department official, called on the carpet this week in Washington.
Specter, a former prosecutor, was horrified that President Bush, U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and a few others in the Star Chamber cabal are running their own private government, freezing out Congress and everyone else.
It almost sounded like a report from Comedy Central, but Bush wanted to try suspected terrorists before secret military tribunals. The Justice Department, meanwhile, has locked up scads of people without naming them or charging them. And they've been eavesdropping on their telephone conversations.
There's no strong indication yet that they're pulling out fingernails or bringing the thumbscrews and rack up from the basement, but there's no way to know for sure.
It'd be easier to justify these tactics if the government had cracked the back of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. But after rounding up more than 1,000 people, they've come up with a big goose egg.
Not one person has been connected to any act of terrorism. The names of more than 500 detainees have still not been released. Six hundred others had minor immigration violations, and none of the 93 facing criminal charges are accused of terrorism.
"Due process should be observed, and it's not. Full disclosure should be observed, and it's not," Jim Zogby of the Arab American Institute told me.
"People's lives are being taken apart because they have an Arab surname and a minor violation on their visa, and I don't see it getting any terrorists. I see it dragging people through the mud."
Here in L.A., Jason Steinberg is watching the federal proceedings with a little more interest than he did before Thanksgiving. He feels no particular kinship with detainees, obviously. All he lost was a roll of film. But he wonders if the Justice Department's Gestapo model has emboldened authorities everywhere.
Steinberg hasn't given up on his confiscated film, by the way. Once you've surrendered a freedom, no matter how small, you begin to understand its true value.
*
Steve Lopez writes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at [email protected]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://latimes.com/news/opinion/la-0...ent%2Dopinions
November 30, 2001
John Balzar:
Coffee, Tea Without Me
We're forgetting one thing in our discussions about air travel. That is, some of us were plenty fed up before Sept. 11.
Congress, of course, hasn't faced facts. And airlines simply won't--which they have proved again lately. So, from a tragedy comes a moment of clarity: We don't have to take it anymore, or at least not so often.
I've spent most of my life on the move. I was bitten early and hard by the adventure bug. So you won't hear me complain that travel is arduous. That's where our stories come from, where we test our resourcefulness and learn our lessons. But air travel, and the whole industry built up around it, is less arduous than merely dehumanizing. I used to keep an inventory of affronts, from the reduced breathing oxygen in airplanes to the flight crews with the countenance of prison guards, but it was too depressing.
There are no lessons to learn from these odious cattle drives, except that the person next to you paid half as much for a ticket. There are no tests of resourcefulness, except one's threshold for indignity. And the stories? We've heard them all.
Efficiency has ruined the airline industry: It's like a bird so ravenous for growth and profit that one day it opened its mouth too wide and began to swallow itself.
Single-minded price competition arising from deregulation eliminated what was pleasant about traveling. Like medieval gladiators, airlines defined the future as nothing more than a fight to the end. The single goal was and is to vanquish competitors so that survivors, eventually, can reap the boundless profits of monopolists. Thus, we watch the worst-ranked airline in the country spend its energy not on fixing service but on gobbling up another airline to expand market share.
Sept. 11 made headlines of this absurdity. The airlines, remember, had insisted that the traveling public could not be "inconvenienced" by real security checks. Imagine. Airlines worried about inconveniencing passengers.
The result? A compliant Congress slapped a $50 assessment (in cash and loan guarantees) on every man, woman and child to compensate the airlines for our loss of faith in them.
But this plunder of public resources won't serve for me. It's not just safety; travel is a game of odds, and the odds are still very good for airline passengers. Rather, this moment of clarity allows us to question the process, and consequently the purposes, of modern air travel.
I've decided I just don't want to fly. I will, of course, because sometimes I must. But for those discretionary trips, and I mean both business and recreation, I'll apply my resourcefulness to find ways and reasons not to.
You can join me in a new mileage program. Every time we get 20,000 miles, we'll reward ourselves by not taking a flight.
Flying had become a habit, a social fashion. Suddenly, the beaten-down holiday crowds at the airport now look to me like people in Nehru jackets and beehive hairdos.
The Travel Industry Assn. is spending a bundle on patriotic advertisements, insisting that we have a duty to travel and prove our "American character" and our "American courage."
Oh really? How about the duty of the airlines? This once-proud industry had the perfect chance to rethink its practices. Instead, it grabbed an easy bailout and offered nothing back. Just more of the stretched-thin logic where any flight that is not overbooked is undersold, where every seat must be smaller than the person who sits in it, where employees are chattel and customers are wallets, and where strong-arm lobbying makes up for management's misdeeds.
No thanks. I'll see less of my distant family, I know. And I'll miss some tropical beach time. I'll have to do my next interview on the telephone, not over lunch. But there is much to enjoy closer by, and I'll thank the airlines for reminding me of the wisdom of Thoreau, who said, "It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village, to make any progress between his door and his gate."
http://latimes.com/news/columnists/l...news%2Dcolumns
November 30, 2001
Steve Lopez:
Points West
What Rights Are Left After Sept. 11?
Jason Steinberg, a photojournalism student from Long Beach, was on the way to his Aunt Gail's house in Phoenix for Thanksgiving dinner. While waiting for a Southwest Airlines flight at LAX, Steinberg began taking photographs.
"I'm doing a project for class about the aftermath of Sept. 11," says Steinberg, 26, who works as a customer representative at a hospital when he is not at Los Angeles Harbor Community College.
After passing through a security checkpoint, Steinberg took a quick photo of a female National Guard trooper, with passengers in the foreground. The guard did not approve.
"She demanded my film, and I rewound it right away in case she popped the camera open and ruined it," says Steinberg.
He should have counted himself lucky he doesn't resemble a Middle Easterner. There's no telling how long he'd be locked up without explanation while authorities eavesdrop on his telephone conversations with Aunt Gail.
But Steinberg felt uncomfortable about having so easily surrendered his film. Didn't he have the right to take a photograph in a public place? So he went back to ask for an explanation.
He says the trooper, an airline representative and a cop told him it was a security risk, and his film would be destroyed. End of conversation.
Good work. No telling what might have happened if the Al Qaeda network had gotten its hands on that hot photo.
(The real security risk, actually, is having transportation boss Norman Mineta serve as chief apologist for an airline industry that continues to drag its feet on examining checked-in luggage for explosives.)
I checked with the Guard and LAX, and neither has any specific policy prohibiting photography. So Steinberg, it appears, simply ran into an overzealous team of junior crime busters.
All of which prefaces a question:
Have we slid headlong into a police state, using Sept. 11 to justify everything from locking up bewildered Yemeni immigrants to strong-arming Kodachrome away from photography students on their way to Aunt Gail's for Thanksgiving?
Actually, before continuing with that thought, I should clarify something.
Anyone who had a role in the death and destruction of Sept. 11 could be locked up until Afghanistan is a stop on the pro golf tour, as far as I'm concerned. Any lawful attempt to nail them, or to find so-called sleeper terrorists, is fine by me.
And although I'm sympathetic, I won't be contributing to the defense fund of the otherwise law-abiding Arab immigrants picked up for visa violations. Anyone who doesn't have their papers in order ought not to be carping and moaning about the law suddenly being enforced.
But having said all that, the Bush administration has gone positively medieval. So much so that it's really beginning to terrify people, including some who are usually on its side.
"How can you talk about full partnership when nobody let us know that this executive order was coming?" U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) demanded of a Justice Department official, called on the carpet this week in Washington.
Specter, a former prosecutor, was horrified that President Bush, U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and a few others in the Star Chamber cabal are running their own private government, freezing out Congress and everyone else.
It almost sounded like a report from Comedy Central, but Bush wanted to try suspected terrorists before secret military tribunals. The Justice Department, meanwhile, has locked up scads of people without naming them or charging them. And they've been eavesdropping on their telephone conversations.
There's no strong indication yet that they're pulling out fingernails or bringing the thumbscrews and rack up from the basement, but there's no way to know for sure.
It'd be easier to justify these tactics if the government had cracked the back of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. But after rounding up more than 1,000 people, they've come up with a big goose egg.
Not one person has been connected to any act of terrorism. The names of more than 500 detainees have still not been released. Six hundred others had minor immigration violations, and none of the 93 facing criminal charges are accused of terrorism.
"Due process should be observed, and it's not. Full disclosure should be observed, and it's not," Jim Zogby of the Arab American Institute told me.
"People's lives are being taken apart because they have an Arab surname and a minor violation on their visa, and I don't see it getting any terrorists. I see it dragging people through the mud."
Here in L.A., Jason Steinberg is watching the federal proceedings with a little more interest than he did before Thanksgiving. He feels no particular kinship with detainees, obviously. All he lost was a roll of film. But he wonders if the Justice Department's Gestapo model has emboldened authorities everywhere.
Steinberg hasn't given up on his confiscated film, by the way. Once you've surrendered a freedom, no matter how small, you begin to understand its true value.
*
Steve Lopez writes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at [email protected]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://latimes.com/news/opinion/la-0...ent%2Dopinions
November 30, 2001
John Balzar:
Coffee, Tea Without Me
We're forgetting one thing in our discussions about air travel. That is, some of us were plenty fed up before Sept. 11.
Congress, of course, hasn't faced facts. And airlines simply won't--which they have proved again lately. So, from a tragedy comes a moment of clarity: We don't have to take it anymore, or at least not so often.
I've spent most of my life on the move. I was bitten early and hard by the adventure bug. So you won't hear me complain that travel is arduous. That's where our stories come from, where we test our resourcefulness and learn our lessons. But air travel, and the whole industry built up around it, is less arduous than merely dehumanizing. I used to keep an inventory of affronts, from the reduced breathing oxygen in airplanes to the flight crews with the countenance of prison guards, but it was too depressing.
There are no lessons to learn from these odious cattle drives, except that the person next to you paid half as much for a ticket. There are no tests of resourcefulness, except one's threshold for indignity. And the stories? We've heard them all.
Efficiency has ruined the airline industry: It's like a bird so ravenous for growth and profit that one day it opened its mouth too wide and began to swallow itself.
Single-minded price competition arising from deregulation eliminated what was pleasant about traveling. Like medieval gladiators, airlines defined the future as nothing more than a fight to the end. The single goal was and is to vanquish competitors so that survivors, eventually, can reap the boundless profits of monopolists. Thus, we watch the worst-ranked airline in the country spend its energy not on fixing service but on gobbling up another airline to expand market share.
Sept. 11 made headlines of this absurdity. The airlines, remember, had insisted that the traveling public could not be "inconvenienced" by real security checks. Imagine. Airlines worried about inconveniencing passengers.
The result? A compliant Congress slapped a $50 assessment (in cash and loan guarantees) on every man, woman and child to compensate the airlines for our loss of faith in them.
But this plunder of public resources won't serve for me. It's not just safety; travel is a game of odds, and the odds are still very good for airline passengers. Rather, this moment of clarity allows us to question the process, and consequently the purposes, of modern air travel.
I've decided I just don't want to fly. I will, of course, because sometimes I must. But for those discretionary trips, and I mean both business and recreation, I'll apply my resourcefulness to find ways and reasons not to.
You can join me in a new mileage program. Every time we get 20,000 miles, we'll reward ourselves by not taking a flight.
Flying had become a habit, a social fashion. Suddenly, the beaten-down holiday crowds at the airport now look to me like people in Nehru jackets and beehive hairdos.
The Travel Industry Assn. is spending a bundle on patriotic advertisements, insisting that we have a duty to travel and prove our "American character" and our "American courage."
Oh really? How about the duty of the airlines? This once-proud industry had the perfect chance to rethink its practices. Instead, it grabbed an easy bailout and offered nothing back. Just more of the stretched-thin logic where any flight that is not overbooked is undersold, where every seat must be smaller than the person who sits in it, where employees are chattel and customers are wallets, and where strong-arm lobbying makes up for management's misdeeds.
No thanks. I'll see less of my distant family, I know. And I'll miss some tropical beach time. I'll have to do my next interview on the telephone, not over lunch. But there is much to enjoy closer by, and I'll thank the airlines for reminding me of the wisdom of Thoreau, who said, "It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village, to make any progress between his door and his gate."
