Category Archives: business news

business news, national news

No legislative remedy needed for United Airlines mistake

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It took no time at all for a member of the U.S. Senate to weigh in with a legislative solution to an incident that has outraged millions of Americans.

Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., has announced plans to introduce a bill that would make it illegal for a commercial airline to remove a ticketed passenger from an airplane.

I detest these kind of legislative responses to vast public outrage.

You know the story. United Airlines the other day tried to evict a passenger after seeking volunteers to vacate the flight to make room for four UAL employees who needed to fly from Chicago to Louisville. The airline picked names of passengers at random. One of the passengers refused. So the airline called in security officials, who then manhandled the passenger badly, pulling him off the plane after knocking out a couple of his teeth and breaking his nose.

The passenger, a physician who said he needed to see patients the next day — and just couldn’t surrender his seat on the flight — has vowed to sue the airline for damages.

UAL suffers terrible PR damage

Now we hear a member of the Senate weighing in.

Congress does this kind of thing on occasion, as do state legislatures. Public outcry emerges from an event, prompting lawmakers to propose state or national laws to make something illegal.

The way I see it, Congress need not act on this matter. Why? Well, United Airlines has gotten the message from the rage the public already has expressed over this incident. Moreover, I am quite certain executives at other airlines have heard it, too, prompting them to rethink their own passenger-removal policies.

I believe in good government and I am not one to dismiss the need for government to act when the cause merits it. I just don’t think this particular matter requires congressional action.

United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz already has made a mess of his own response. He said initially that airline personnel acted according to policy; then he apologized to the man who got roughed up; then UAL announced air fare refunds for every passenger on that Chicago-Louisville flight.

United Airlines is now reviewing its policy. That’s good enough for me.

My strong hunch is that UAL won’t allow this kind of embarrassment ever to recur on one of its aircraft. I also would be willing to bet real American money that the other air carriers will follow suit.

business news

This isn’t ‘customer service,’ United Airlines

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You’ve just taken your seat on a commercial jetliner. The plane is full. The crew gets on the public-address system and asks passengers to give up their seats in exchange for an $800 travel voucher.

No one takes the offer. The plane is overbooked. The airline, United Airlines, needs to find four seats for UAL employees to occupy to fly to their destination.

No one takes volunteers to leave. So what does UAL do? It selects four passengers randomly. The airline demands they leave. Most of them do, begrudgingly. Then they approach a gentleman, a physician whose name was drawn. He says he won’t get off; he has patients to see at the other end of the flight.

The airline then calls the cops, who struggled with the guy and dragged him off the plane.

Customer service, anyone? is this how you treat folks who shell out good money to use your product, which happens to be an overbooked jetliner?

This incident erupted at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. The plane was bound for Louisville, Ky.

How does the airline justify what occurred?

Someone has some explaining to do

I believe I have a solution: How about United — and all other commercial air carriers, for that matter — stop the practice of “overbooking” their flights? I understand the need to ensure a full airplane, but this is the kind of story that surprises me in one way: I’m surprised we haven’t more of these kinds of incidents already.

The doc had to get to his destination because he had patients waiting for him. Couldn’t the airline have picked another name? Couldn’t it have found another way to get their employees to Louisville?

Some passengers recorded the incident on their cell phones. Some of them were heard yelling their anger at the airline for the rough manner in which they treated the doctor. They were outraged, I’m telling ya.

Interesting, yes? Any one of them perhaps could have given up their seat to avoid the disgraceful behavior and the humiliation suffered by the physician on board. But they didn’t.

Meanwhile, United Airlines had better offer some justification for treating a paying customer in such a brutish manner.

business news

Trump feathering his own nest as POTUS

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CNN just ran one of those “crawls” across the screen that noted the following: Donald Trump is spending his 10th consecutive weekend at a property that has his name plastered all over it.

The president greeted China’s president at Mar-A-Lago in south Florida. He ventured to one of the golf resorts that has the Trump name on it.

He’s been doing this repeatedly since becoming president of the United States on Jan. 20.

I know what the emoluments clause in the U.S. Constitution says about how presidents cannot take money from foreign governments. I also know that the president hasn’t divested himself of his many business interests, such as those ritzy resorts, hotels and such.

My question rests, finally, with this: Is the president fattening his own bank account when he visits these properties while attracting potential business to them?

Public vs. private interests have this way of conflicting with each other … or so one might believe.

business news, national news, political news

Tax returns, anyone? Anyone?

Indulge me for a moment or three.

I remain stuck on an issue that has gnawed at my gut since the moment Donald John Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his campaign for the presidency of the United States.

That’s right. Tax returns.

We haven’t seem them. We need to see them. Trump needs to produce them. We need to know a lot about this individual’s business empire and what about it — if anything — is built on Russian interests.

It’s been nearly two years since the escalator ride. Trump has said many things about those returns. He’ll release them when the Internal Revenue Service completes its audit; then he said he won’t; then his campaign flacks said he would, then they said he wouldn’t.

The IRS says audits don’t prevent release of tax returns. Trump ignores that disclaimer. He did release some single-year returns showing that he paid a lot of money in federal taxes. They showed that, yep, he’s really rich. That’s it.

For that matter, we don’t even know with absolute certainty that the IRS is even auditing the president. The IRS doesn’t comment on individual audits. That means we’re left to take Trump at his word that the audit is ongoing.

Given the liar in chief’s penchant for prevarication, are we really and truly expected to take this man’s word as gospel? I … think … not.

This clown entered the political arena in July 2015. Presidential candidates from both parties have released complete tax returns every election cycle since 1976. Four decades later, we still don’t know about the current president’s tax returns.

It’s time, Mr. President. Come clean.

business news, environmental news, national news, political news

Trump wants more coal jobs … but at what cost?

The president of the United States must be unable to contain himself.

That’s what I believe is happening as Donald J. Trump seeks to undo some valuable environmental regulations designed to do those silly things … such as provide for cleaner air to breathe.

Trump continues to p*** me off. And a lot of other Americans, too.

As Reuters reported: “Flanked by coal miners, Trump enacted his ‘Energy Independence’ executive order at the Environmental Protection Agency. A coalition of 23 states and local governments vowed to fight the order in court.”

What does this mean? Here’s what I believe it does: It rolls back many of the regulations enacted during the Obama administration that are aimed to promote alternative energy production.

You know … things like wind, solar, hydropower. The clean stuff. The sources that regenerate immediately and are far more environmentally responsible than digging and drilling for fossil fuels such as oil and coal.

Trump will have none of that, by golly. He said he’s keeping a campaign promise to bring jobs back to the coal industry. He also pledged to make America totally “energy independent.”

Interesting. The United States already has become the world’s largest producer of fossil-fuel energy. Are we still importing some of the crude? Yes, but our imported-oil-to-domestic-production ratio has been declining steadily over the past decade or so.

I recall during the 2016 presidential campaign how Republicans and other foes of Hillary Rodham Clinton skewered her over remarks she made about supposedly “putting the coal industry out of business.” They never mentioned, of course, the rest of Clinton’s statements in that regard, which dealt with job-retraining for those former coal-mine workers.

Trump seized on Clinton’s statements and beat her senseless with the half-truths about what she had said.

Now he’s signed an executive order to bring all those coal jobs back. At what cost? Are we going to pollute our air with carbon emissions? Are we going to keep contributing — as scientists around the world have affirmed is occurring — to the gradual warming of Planet Earth?

Yes, human activity is contributing to that potential worldwide disaster.

One more point needs to be made.

We have done much to clean our air and water while at the same time producing more energy from more alternative sources than ever before.

The president is just flat wrong on this one.

business news, national news, political news

Health care overhaul? Kaput! Tax reform? That’s next!

Let’s see if we can figure this one out together.

Donald J. Trump and congressional Republicans botched a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, a law that took about a year of tough negotiation and dickering to enact in the first place.

Trump and his pals in Congress tried to do it in the span of 17 days. They failed to muster enough support from, oh, just about any faction within the GOP. TEA Party, Freedom Caucus, party moderates all hated the American Health Care Act, which the Republican congressional leadership pulled out of its backside in the dead of night.

ACA repeal and replace? Gone. Finished. As House Speaker Paul Ryan said, “(The Affordable Care Act) is the law of the land for the foreseeable future.”

What, then, do Trump and the Trumpkins — the gang that cannot legislate its way out of a wet paper bag — want to do now?

Tax reform. Tax reform!

ACA repeal and replacement was complicated enough. Indeed, the president admitted he didn’t realize it could be so complicated. No kidding, Mr. President.

I’ve got your “complicated” right here, though. If you’re going to take on the big stuff, you’ve decided to go after the biggest of them all: reforming the federal tax code.

Presidents of both parties have been saying for decades that the tax system is too complicated, too cumbersome, too this and too that. What have any of them accomplished? Damn little!

The tax system is a monstrous entity that requires careful study, analysis, expertise and patience to repair. Does anyone really think that the president of the United States — based on what we’ve just witnessed — is capable of learning the nuts and bolts of tax policy? Does he really and truly even give a crap about it?

And what about the speaker of the House, who presides over the congressional chamber where all tax policy must originate. How well do you think Paul Ryan did in engineering the House’s role in the cluster fudge that resulted in the ACA replacement meltdown late this past week?

Good luck, gentlemen. You will need all of it you can find if you have any chance of succeeding in this monumental effort.

business news, local news

This plumber did it the right way

I must be living right.

How else does one explain a fruitful experience with a plumber?

We called the plumber 10 days ago to trouble-shoot a kitchen sink issue: the water pressure had slowed to a mere trickle; I tried to clear out the sediment that collects occasionally in the nozzle; it didn’t do a thing.

Thus, the call went out to the plumber.

He answered the call and performed a “routine” service call on the clogged up kitchen faucet. Cost? $92.50. Then he left.

Just a few days later, the faucet slowed way down — again!

This morning I decided to call the plumber back. I phoned the office and told the receptionist about our problem. I mentioned to her that the plumber had done something to “fix” it just 10 days earlier. “I think it’s a ‘call back,'” she said, meaning she didn’t think we’d be charged for another service call.

The plumber arrived a little while later. He repaired the faucet once more. Then he left.

Later that morning, I was running the water. Then — just like that! — it slowed down again.

I was so mad I could’ve spit.

I called the plumber back. Same morning. I told the receptionist that his second “fix” didn’t take.

The plumber returned for the third time in 10 days — and twice in the same morning! He fixed it yet again. No service charge on that call, either.

This time, he got it right. The water is flowing nicely.

The message I want to leave? My wife and I are living the good life, which is so good.

And not all plumbers are out to, um, soak their customers.

business news, local news

Yes, Amarillo matters to Amarillo Matters

I have gotten a little better idea of what is driving a new political action group in Amarillo.

It’s called Amarillo Matters. Its website still doesn’t reveal too much about the organization, other than it cares greatly about the future of the city. As if that’s a novel concept, right?

Here’s the website. Take a look and see if you can glean more than I’ve been able to do.

http://www.amarillomatters.com/about_us/

Still, I’ve been able to determine that it comprises successful businessmen and women, civic leaders, folks who’ve demonstrated a commitment to improving the city.

I hear rumblings about Amarillo Matters backing certain candidates for the City Council; the city is conducting an election May 6, with all five council places up for grabs, per normal.

I don’t know what the future holds for Amarillo Matters, but my hope is that isn’t a flash in the pan, as the Amarillo Millennial Movement turned out to be.

AMM was formed to promote passage of the multipurpose event venue/downtown ballpark referendum that was on the November 2015 ballot. Voters approved the MPEV measure, which was non-binding; the City Council wasn’t obligated to abide by voters’ wishes, but it did.

AMM, though, has vanished. Not a word has been heard by the group. Oh, well.

Amarillo Matters, though, looks as though it might have more staying power.

We’ll all need to see demonstrated future activity as the new City Council takes office after the May election.

I remain the eternal optimist that the city will keep moving forward, even as it gets a push from Amarillo Matters.

business news

Trump tax return reveals … that he’s real rich!

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The release of one year of Donald J. Trump’s tax returns has a kind of Al Capone’s vault feel to it.

Remember when Geraldo Rivera found the vault of the late mobster? He opened it and found — nothin’ man!

So, now we know that in 2005, the president made about $150 million and paid $38 million in federal taxes. Yes, the guy who told us during the 2016 presidential campaign that he worked to pay “as little as possible” in taxes actually paid a lot of them.

That was a dozen years ago.

What about the more recent returns? What about the money he was making while running for president? And what about those international business interests?

Americans haven’t seen the more relevant tax information from the president of the United States.

He told us he would release the returns once the Internal Revenue Service completed its “routine audit.” Except we don’t even know for certain whether the IRS is actually auditing Trump, who’s provided no proof or evidence that an audit even ongoing.

The White House decided to seek to get ahead of a story that had been hyped by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who tonight released the 2005 returns.

As it has been reported, the 12-year-old returns constitute a “nothing burger.”

Where’s the beef? I suspect it lies somewhere within the more recent returns that the president of the United States continues to refuse to release to Americans — such as yours truly — who want to know what is in them.

business news

Trump takes premature credit for job growth?

Donald J. Trump will be able eventually to take credit for job growth.

Just not yet.

It’s interesting to me that some of the chatter today regarding the Labor Department jobs report deals with whether the president should deserve any credit for the big spike in employment.

He doesn’t deserve it. Not this early.

The United States added 235,000 non-farm jobs to payrolls in February. Unemployment ticked downward to 4.7 percent. How did Trump’s economic policies contribute to this trend? They didn’t.

You’ll recall that when Barack Obama took office in 2009, job numbers were plummeting. It took a bit of time for the president’s economic stimulus package to take effect. The former president didn’t deserve blame for falling jobs figures at the beginning of his term.

I also should say he didn’t deserve all the credit for the spectacular job growth that ensued. He deserved some of it.

Eight years later, the nation’s job growth has continued. Joblessness has been cut in half. The annual federal budget deficit has been pared by two-thirds.

Obama handed this economic growth off to Trump. The new president eventually will be able to take some of the credit if the job growth continues well into the first year of his presidency and beyond. I am willing to give him the credit he deserves.

This silly discussion, though, about whether he should crow about job growth during his first full month in office succeeds only in one thing: It rivets attention directly onto the president of the United States, which is all part of the way this guy rolls.