So United Airlines recently declared bankruptcy, which is not surprising given the generally poor fiscal state of most American air carriers. The company also recently decided that it had to default on $9 billion of pension obligations [washingtonpost.com– try bugmenot.com for a registration], which will affect 120,000 employees and retirees. I understand that when a company is in such severe financial straits, there comes a place where you have to take a step as drastic as that. If there isn’t the money, there isn’t the money. But I don’t understand what United’s CEO says later in the same article:

Last week, United Chief Executive Officer Glenn Tilton testified to the Senate Finance Committee about $4.5 million he is receiving from United to replace benefits he had accrued over a 32-year career at Texaco, his previous employer. Tilton said that the default will not affect the payment, and that he has $1.5 million left to collect. He said this does not represent a double standard because United promised him the money in his contract.

This guy is a jackass. Of the highest order. He’s a multi-millionaire. He runs a company whose 80-year-old retirees are now applying for jobs at Wal-Mart to make ends meet, and demonstrating by his actions that his own $4.5 million is more important than the retirement benefits of his employees. True, maybe a few million dollars wouldn’t stave off a pension default for long, but nonetheless it points quite clearly where his true loyalties lie.

I fly to Chicago for work on a fairly regular basis. Since O’Hare is a United hub, they are almost always the cheapest, and about two years back I got a frequent flyer account to take advantages of the regular trips. But now, I feel sick about this. I don’t know if I can patronize a company run by a man who acts like this, who insists on being overpaid even when his company is screwing over the people who were most loyal to it. I think I’m going to cut up my frequent flyer card and mail it to Mr. Tilton. This makes me so angry I’m having trouble finding the words.

Well, it apparently doesn’t say we’re “innocent until proven guilty” in the Constitution. It does have this cute little bit about not being “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law”, but hey, what does that mean? In 1895, the Supreme Court decided to step in and clarify the issue a little more:

The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law. [156 U.S. 432, 454] It is stated as unquestioned in the textbooks, and has been referred to as a matter of course in the decisions of this court and in the courts of the several states. […] Concluding, then, that the presumption of innocence is evidence in favor of the accused, introduced by the law in his behalf, let us consider what is ‘reasonable doubt.’ It is, of necessity, the condition of mind produced by the proof resulting from the evidence in the cause. It is the result of the proof, not the proof itself, whereas the presumption of innocence is one of the instruments of proof, going to bring about the proof from which reasonable doubt arises; thus one is a cause, the other an effect. To say that the one is the equivalent of the other is therefore to say that legal evidence can be excluded from the jury, and that such exclusion may be cured by instructing them correctly in regard to the method by which they are required to reach their conclusion upon the proof actually before them; in other words, that the exclusion of an important element of proof can be justified by correctly instructing as to the proof admitted. The evolution of the principle of the presumption of innocence, and its resultant, the doctrine of reasonable doubt, make more apparent the correctness of these views, and indicate the necessity of enforcing the one in order that the other may continue to exist.

Damn activist judges. 🙂

So apparently three people were asked to leave a Bush town hall meeting in Denver a few weeks ago [Washington Post, try bugmenot for a free registration]. They did or said nothing disruptive, but were nonetheless “forcibly” ejected because one of them had a bumper sticker on their car that read “No Blood for Oil”. When asked about it, Press Secretary Scott McClellan said that the White House did “welcome a diversity of views at events”, but:

If they want to disrupt the event, then I think that, obviously, they’re going to be asked to leave the event. There is plenty of opportunity for them to express their views outside of events; there are protest areas.

Emphasis mine. Later in the same briefing, McClellan stated “If they’re standing up and disrupting an event, like I said, they’re going to be asked to leave.” But that’s not what he said. He said that if they want to disrupt the event, and that’s a very big distinction. If people are interrupting and disrupting and disregarding civil discourse, well, then there’s something to be said for asking them to leave. But these folks didn’t do anything. They just sat there, and they were asked to leave, because the organizers thought they were going to be disruptive. Isn’t there something in the Constitution about “innocent until proven guilty”? Did I just hallucinate that?

Also, in what way exactly does that “welcome a diversity of views”? It seems to me that when President Bush comes out to speak directly with the American people, situations somehow are arranged so that he ends up speaking only to people who already agree with him. And those aren’t conversations, but pep rallies. I think somebody at the White House needs to look up the words “welcome” and “diversity”, because they apparently don’t know what they mean.

I love my father very much, but he and I disagree on many political issues. Once, when I was complaining about this very issue, he said something to the effect of “why do I need to hear what the other side has to say if I already know what it is?”. At the time, I accepted the point, but the more I thought about it, the more troubled I got. That’s exactly the problem right now, all around the country. We as a nation don’t listen to each other (though I think Dad and I do). We get our news from different sources, sources that emphasize what we want to hear. We disregard or ignore what our opponents have to say, under the pretense that we’ve already heard it. What happened to consensus building? What happened to compromise, to finding middle ground? Why do we automatically assume that people who disagree with us are unreasonable?

So I was walking through the grocery store today, and I ran across one of those fitness magazines. It had a picture of a thin, busty, blond-haired woman wearing what I assumed was one of those harnesses that Himalayan explorers wear so that they don’t fall off of mountains. Of course, mountaineers also wear things like parkas and, well, pants, while this woman had nothing else but what the good Lord (and likely a whole platoon of plastic surgeons) gave her. I must confess my eyes lingered a moment (forgive me), but what also caught my attention was written in large type over the magazine’s title: “For Women!”.

It is not a new observation that most modern magazines, targeted for either sex, feature pictures of scantily-clad women, presumably because men like them and women want to be them. While in recent years we men have made significant steps to close the unhealthy-body-image gap (did you know there’s now skin moisturizer for men? Seriously, if I wanted to moisturize I’d go to the friggin’ pool), women still bear the brunt of societal pressure to live up to some impossibly high standard of beauty. It’s a little disturbing that since we all, men and women, are collectively obsessed with these kind of images of female “beauty”, we need extra instructions to determine which magazines are for whom.