Author: Eliot

There really is nothing Easy about EasyJet

easyJet.com

Dear friends Steve & Mary have returned from living in Australia, and so we will visit them in the UK.  To do this, I did my level best to try and find a cheap flight from Zürich.  “Cheap flight” and Zürich?  Say it isn’t so?!

It isn’t so.

EasyJet advertised a low fare on their web site.  Indeed it was fantastically low at CHF 312.27 for the three of us.  And so I clicked on buy.  But wait, not so fast.  First we had to turn down travel insurance for 71.85  CHF, and then we had to spend 108 CHF so we could check luggage (anyone with a kid checks luggage), bringing the total to 427.

But wait!  Want seats?  Forget it, but you can spend some extra bucks to get on the plane first.  We didn’t.

But wait!  That will be an extra 20 CHF for using your Mastercard over the web.  Only a certain Visa (not all Visas) get you a break on that.

But wait!  They didn’t even accept my Mastercard for reasons passing understanding (of myself or my card’s issuing bank).

So after all of that, we’re flying Swiss.  819 CHF, but at least we can book them.

We don’t need an opposition; we’re the Democratic Party

CNN reports today that Senator Max Baucus has been targeted in an ad campaign over his current health care proposal.  As I live abroad it is hard for me to express strong feelings over the current debate, other than to say that the fastest way to hand Congress to the Republicans is for Democrats to kill health care reform.  We can argue over the wisdom of Obama putting this issue front and center, but now that it is, he and the Congress have to deliver or there will be very serious consequences next Fall.  In fact, it would be a repeat of 1994, only here the consequences would be worse.  Back in 1994 President Clinton didn’t have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and Senator Dole took advantage of that fact.

Open, honest debate is good.  It should be something that everyone allows for, and it was something that Republicans have traditionally suppressed.  However, that debate needs to be respectful, with a recognition that there are many sides to this very complicated issue.  Having seen several national health care systems up close and personal, I’ll just point out that each has its problems.  You cannot have both universal healthcare and the choice of every healthcare option for everyone.  The numbers just won’t add up.  I’ll also mention that in America the argument is not between the government choosing and consumers choosing, but rather between government-regulated insurance choosing and insurance companies choosing.  Consumers already have very few choices, and 46 million people have none.

Grant Us Peace

I suspect we Americans all have very different emotions.  Rather than express mine in my usual verbose way, I’ll simply write two things: my thoughts are with my cousins who lost a father, a brother, and a spouse eight years ago this day.  Their grief is only compounded this week with another loss last week.  My thoughts are with them.  They’re also with my aunt who lost her closest friend, and with my brother and sister who bore witness, and all those suffered losses.

I’ll also just mention some of today’s play list (if you can figure out what most of these songs have to do with this day, you probably are or should be a shrink):

Please share your songs and thoughts.

Are Employees of the CIA above the law?

Update:  CNN’s Peter Bergen points out all the flaws in Dick Cheney’s logic here.

Over the last few days there have been a plethora of conservative commentaries that range in their argument from Dick Cheney accusing the Obama administration of a political vendetta to The Wall Street Journal repeatedly arguing that the prosecutions are just wrong headed (such as this one) to Debra J. Saunders in the SF Chronicle, arguing that the employees in question should be pardoned.  There are at least two problems with the arguments now appearing on the street:

  1. In all cases, torturer sympathizers seem to forget that we, the American People, don’t actually know what happened yet.  That is what an investigation is for.
  2. In some cases, the argument seems to be that members of the CIA who were acting on orders should be shielded by the fact they were just following orders.  We tried people and convicted them, not withstanding that defense, in Nuremberg.  They were known as Nazis.  We as a society need to send a message that no one is above the law.  It may take years to catch up with people who have been politically shielded from their crimes, but they will be brought to justice.
  3. According to the CIA, torture has been shown to be unreliable.

That leaves the argument that the current investigation by the Justice Department is politically motivated.  I would have to say that if one’s politics require one to believe that torture is illegal and immoral, then the answer is yes.  Our morality throughout the world has been called into question.  Do we condone the torturing of human beings?  What, then, separates us from those we accuse of being evil?

On the other hand, I do not see any evidence that this is some sort of game of political Gotcha.  While Debra Saunders writes that General Holder has in the past been inconsistent in his views when it comes to pardons, that means nothing in the context of a factual investigation.

As to Mr. Cheney, let him speak.  He may, at best, be shielded by the fact that the vice president cannot order anyone in the executive branch outside his own staff to do anything.  He would be the wrong person to go after, anyway.  If President Bush ordered a crime to be committed, let him be held accountable, assuming a crime was committed.

Ground Southwest?

AirplaneThis Monday’s Wall Street Journal reports that Southwest Airlines has been flying 82 planes for years with parts of unknown quality in potentially critical locations.  The report states that the pieces in question are supposed to “protect movable panels on the rear of the wings from hot engine exhaust.”  That’s an obfuscated way of saying that the parts protect the aircraft’s flaps. Flaps are deployed at both takeoff and landing.  If those fail, several bad things can happen:

  • If flaps on one wing fail to extend as expected, when the other side deploys, the plane could pitch.
  • If the flaps on both sides fail to deploy, the plane will not slow to a normal landing speed.
  • In the most unlikely event that the integrity of the flaps themselves fails, all manner of bad things could happen.

Most failure modes involving flaps are probably recoverable in and of themselves. However, these sorts of failures happen close to ground, leaving little time to react to problems.

The authors write in the article, however, that, “Both Southwest and FAA agree that the parts, some of which have been on the planes for up to three years without causing apparent problems, don’t pose an imminent hazard.”

While it’s good that they’ve not spotted a failure, many failures go undetected for years, during which metal fatigue sets in.  Often there are indications of impending failure, such as cracks.  Southwest has indicated that they will increase their inspections between now and the time the parts are replaced.

Here’s the rub: because the construction method of these parts is untested, one wonders whether inspections are sufficient to mitigate the problem.  This leaves the FAA with a dilemna: make life miseerable for hundreds of thousands of passengers while SWA corrects the problem or take a risk with the lives of a few hundred people.

One way or another, SWA should face a stiff penalty for putting travelers at risk, and forcing the FAA into this situation.