European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - September 14, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes sunday september 14,1986 columns George will you can t Tell the airlines without a scorecard perhaps it is a personality defect insufficient spontaneity failure to Mellow out and go with the flow hut some airline passengers Are finding de regulation distressing. They must pull up their socks and face two facts. Deregulation has been Good for the masses. An the masses Are making lying a mess. The masses Are so very Well numerous. One craves a sense of the predictable when one is boarding an aluminium tube to be hurled by strangers through great Heights at High speeds. It is unsettling to reach the ticket counter of Republic air lines which used to be North Central before it was Wisconsin Central and Sec a sign cheerily announcing hey. By the Way we re now Northwest. Do not be misled by the insignia on your plane from Aspen to Denver. Rocky Mountain airways is really Continental express just As Aspen airways will soon be United express. Delta is buying West Ern but new York air is still new York air. However its schedule is sometimes a Surprise to its own employees including the one who was positive there was a 10 30 a.m., a Ashing on to Laguardia flight. Until she checked and exclaimed Well i la be. What is going on capitalism for one thing. For another democracy. It is no pretty but aesthetics Aren t every thing. This column is being composed on a plane. A flight attendant has just said that when i say if the traffic flow we want to go with has congealed again Pur trip ends we will have earned Var ious bonuses what no Tupperware including rights to free flights on various other airlines including Frontier. Wrong. The flight attendant has Las week s list now hopelessly out of Date. Frontier is no More. In 40 splendid years. Frontier flew 87 million persons 47 billion Miles through the Mountain West s stimulating weather with extraordinary numbers of take offs and landings and Only one Pas Senger fatality. Now Frontier is a fatality crushed by among other things fierce Competition with bigger boys United and Continental at a Hub Airport Denver s Stapleton. Of 229 carriers licensed to operate since 1978, 133 Are now gone. Yet airline Tom Wicker employment hit a record High in i98s. Why because in just two years Passen Ger bookings have soared from 319 Mil lion to 410 million. Why because Dur ing the past decade the Cost of the average ticket has fallen 20 percent in inflation adjusted terms. Last year 85 percent of All travellers used discount tickets and the average discount was 55 percent. Deregulation is conservatism that Dis comforts the comfortable. Affluent fliers can still pay for first class but they too suffer from the congested terminals de lays and other effects of deregulation. People flying coach arc at least getting economic compensation. Deregulation May seem like applied a paganism but the legislation was passed in 1978 by a democratic Congress at the Behest of a democratic president. Its effects have established it As the most potent anti labor legislation in decades. Under regulation airlines became Cas Ual about labor costs because the Federal government allocated routes and ratified fare increases to protect profitability. Entry of new carriers into the deregulated marketplace was at least initially easy. So the most powerful effect of de regulation was to confront the established carriers which had High labor costs with new competitors that enjoyed labor Cost advantages. Some carriers Braniff Continental forced wage concessions by going into bankruptcy. In most cases Competition sufficed to enforce wage concessions. Re consolidation May soon result in say just six or eight big carriers. Delta plus Western makes the fourth largest How Ever there will still be fierce Price com petition to entice the marginal flier onto All those expensive aircraft that must be amortized. Competition has encouraged Hub and spoke systems in which carriers feed in and out of Central airports. Piedmont for example uses Dayton As a Hub Hub and spoke systems allow tight schedules that facilitate intense use of aircraft. Do the aircraft get less attention from the thinned maintenance Crews the airlines say they also say delays Are concentrated at the few busiest airports Twenty five airports have 70 percent of All traffic that fact Means Only that the persons least Likely to be delayed Are those going where the fewest persons go. That is accurate As was the statistician who said that the football team that won six lost 17 and tied two had won 75 percent of the games it did not lose. Airports increasingly resemble bus terminals because air travel which a generation ago was an elite enjoyment now is As accessible As bus travel. Airline de regulation is powerful evidence for this conservative Contention conservatism often is the True populism because less government often Means a More open egalitarian society. C Washington Post California right angers trying to unseat Bird right wingers who piously insist that no senator should vote against jus Tice William Rehnquist because of his political and constitutional views have been conspicuously silent about the right Wing Republican Effort to oust chief Justice Rose Bird from the califor Nia supreme court because of her views. Rehnquist s votes and opinions have been so consistently opposed to individual rights As to preclude the likelihood that they might change if he were confirmed As chief Justice. No reason remotely so compelling has been advanced for the right Wing Effort to Force Bird off the California court. As the Justice department s Legal counsel in March 1970, it is now known Rehnquist drafted a proposed constitutional Amend ment that would have halted significant school desegregation. It would have permitted the kind of Freedom of Choice plans under which virtually no desegregation had been accomplished in the South and authorized slates to use a neighbor Hood plan that would result in segregated schools even if segregation was the intent of the school Board. Undoubtedly Rehnquist drafted the amendment at someone else s request perhaps someone who hoped to sabotage the far reaching school desegregation policies the Nixon administration announced in March 1970. The draft amendment and its justifications addressed to Egil Krogh jr., a White House Deputy nevertheless Echo a memorandum Rehnquist wrote when he was a Young supreme court clerk. In that document the future Justice argued that the old separate but equal doctrine had been Correct now he claims that the memo actually expressed the views of the late Justice Robert Jack son. But the proposed amendment of 1970 is clearly Rehnquist s work and his justification written at the time argued for its Validity stating for instance that he believed the Case for the neigh boyhood schools he favored to be More weighty than the arguments against even if such schools were segregated. The Youthful memo the proposed constitutional amendment and the re Cord of Rehnquist s votes and dissents since he joined the supreme court in 1971 establish a Strong presumption that he was and remains opposed to school desegregation beyond the abolition of the separate school systems once maintained in the South. That is a sound and up Nisan reason for voting against his confirmation. To remove Bird and two other threatened justices from the Cali fornia court on the other hand would be a Triumph of ideology and partisanship Over the concept of an Independent judiciary As Well As a perversion of the state s system of Public confirmation of judges performances a system never intended As a referendum on the sub stance of issues before the court. But that s what it is turning out to be As the Well heeled anti Bird forces Center their Campaign not on the fitness of the justices but on the emotional Issue of the death penalty falsely charging that the Bird court is preventing Legal executions and turning murderers Loose. The anti Bird Campaign is rather like hitting someone whose hands Are tied. Its targets Bird pointed out in a speech to California broadcasters often have had to make unpopular decisions be cause they must always be governed by the Rule of Law and guided by the Constitution and the Bill of rights in protect ing Freedom of speech religion opinion and ideas. Justices cannot moreover Campaign like politicians or speak in slogans. There Are no responsible opponents on the ballot against which to measure them. They cannot accept party support and they represent an institution that As Bird told the broadcasters deals in subtleties at a time when simplification masquerades As understanding. With com plex issues at a time when Quick fixes Are valued far More than lasting m unlike William Rehnquist she seethe role of the courts primarily As a pro Tector of the Bill of rights she said in an interview and that role is never going to be a but Only a Strong court system can insist that every one have their a the n
