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NPR reports
Passengers on a United Express flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky., were horrified when a man was forcibly removed--violently wrenched from his seat and physically dragged down the aisle. [...] Videos of the scene have prompted calls to boycott United Airlines.
[...] The Chicago Department of Aviation [...] says the actions of the security officers were "not condoned by the Department" and that one individual has been placed on leave pending a review.
[...] Passengers had already boarded on Sunday evening [April 10] at O'Hare International Airport when United asked for volunteers to take another flight the next day to make room for four United staff members who needed seats.
The airline offered $400 and a free hotel, passenger Audra D. Bridges told the Louisville Courier-Journal. When no one volunteered, the offer was doubled to $800. When there were still no bites, the airline selected four passengers to leave the flight--including the man in the video and his wife.
"They told him he had been selected randomly to be taken off the flight", Bridges said.
[...] The man said he was a doctor and that he "needed to work at the hospital the next day", passenger Jayse D. Anspach said.
[...] Both Bridges and Anspach posted videos of three security officers, who appear to be wearing the uniforms of Chicago aviation police, wrenching the man out of his seat, prompting wails. His face appeared to strike an armrest. Then they dragged his limp body down the aisle.
Footage shows the man was bleeding from the mouth as they dragged him away. His glasses were askew and his shirt was riding up over his belly.
"It looked like he was knocked out, because he went limp and quiet and they dragged him out of the plane like a rag doll", Anspach wrote.
Previous: Days After United Settlement, Baggage Handler Locked in Cargo Hold on NC-to-DC Flight
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @04:56AM (5 children)
What's actually conservative about any of those people?
The fact that the majority of self-identifying conservatives agree with those positions.
Laws to enforces those positions are proposed and often passed by conservative state governments on a regular basis.
North Carolina's HB2 made a LOT of headlines and even the "repeal" is still off the charts on bigotry.
Texas and Arkansas are trying to pass them right now [nbcnews.com] and the votes are practically party line.
Mike Pence, the goddamn republican Vice President, signed a law in 2015 to legally validate businesses that discriminate against teh gays. That one got a lot of press too because he caved after enough businesses boycotted.
These are mainstream conservative views. [rollingstone.com]
Even in 2016 only 29% of conservatives support gay marriage. [pewforum.org]
Their psychos come out of the woodwork, much like the crazies on the left.
Sorry but the scales are far from balanced. The crazies on the left are a tiny minority that get boosted more by mainstream conservatives looking to rationalize their opposition to all things 'liberal' than they do by their own efforts. You don't see any 'liberal' states even considering "anti cis" laws.
I don't know what you think "conservative" means, but in the USA conservative is the big tent that started filling up with the dixiecrats, then the anti-Jimmy-Carter, racist wing of the white evangelicals (which are the majority) and with Donald Grump its pretty much absorbed all the remaining authoritarians. Before 9/11 muslims were about 50/50 republican/democrat, not any more.
Even the so-called Libertarians have lost their way as their accommodation of conservative illiberalism has made modern american libertarianism philosophically arbitrary anti-leftism and withered.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday April 13 2017, @05:35AM (3 children)
Then I suppose I genuinely don't know what the fuck I am anymore.
I'm a godless cynic who generally wants to see the middle/lower-middle class not get stamped out of existence. I'm worried about income equality as I can't envision a way to not see the disparity of wealth as inherently oppressive in a post-Reagan capitalist economy. I generally support the idea of single payer healthcare, but I think the monstrosity that is the ACA was worse that what we had prior. I'd never own a gun, but I don't blame anyone else for wanting one, so I'm generally in support of that.
So that seems pretty liberal, but that being said, I'm also an asshole who doesn't give a damn about any identity politicking. Don't get me wrong, I'm not actively against that crap. I just don't care and don't want to hear about it. The gays want to get married? Sure, whatever. Some obnoxious do-gooders from the local college protest about it and it inconveniences me? I'm going to roll my eyes and be utterly snide. I don't really care about the illegals from Mexico coming here, but I'm not going to pretend they're not doing it illegally either. The Wall is a rock opera, not something I want to see along our southern border. At the same time, I also think that globalism is a race to the bottom for everyone except the megacorps. I don't feel I'm entitled to have an honest opinion about abortion one way or another, as I'm a dude and it's never affected me even indirectly. Generally I like "live and let live".
Well, that's all the big ones, so what political leaning does that make me closest to? My liberal friends call me conservative; their token Republican. I used to laugh and tell them I don't make enough money for that. But given how we've reached such great heights of crazy, I feel like I could say that about any affiliation.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @06:58AM
I also think that globalism is a race to the bottom for everyone except the megacorps.
This chart [netdna-cdn.com] might change your mind.
That doesn't mean there haven't been losers, but on balance there is a lot less misery in the world now.
And going forward from where we are today, automation in our own backyard is the greatest risk to working class.
Remember the jobs at that Carrier plant that Trump 'saved' from moving to Mexico even before he was inaugurated? He did it by giving them ~7 million in tax dollars.
The CEO straight up said he was going to take that money and invest it in automating those people out of their jobs anyway. [businessinsider.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 13 2017, @05:03PM
Then it sounds like you're a Bernie-voting progressive in today's political climate. You've basically echoed my own stances on all these issues. But you've let the right-wingers scare you away from the liberal/progressive side by equating them to all the identity-politics nutcases and inflating the perception of that group's size and power.
I don't know why your liberal friends would call you "conservative"; you haven't espoused a single conservative viewpoint there at all, perhaps a few centrist ones. Are all your "liberal" friends a bunch of nutty far-left college students or something? The gun thing is the only one that's not super-liberal, but even here remember that Bernie was bashed on this issue by the stridently anti-gun Hillary camp, because he represents rural Vermonters and isn't as strongly anti-gun. But even here, I'd call your position "centrist" from a modern American point-of-view.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @08:00PM
First, "middle class" is a bogus term.
The term seeks to divide a class in order to weaken it.
There are only TWO classes: The Bourgeoisie and The Proletariat i.e the Ownership Class and the Working Class; those who make money from wealth and those who make money from labor.
...and if you settle for "Conservative", the best you'll ever get is something that has already existed. 8-(
The AC who replied first pointed to a chart that specifies poverty/extreme poverty.
That's interesting and all but...
What about the gains that the USAian Working Class made which have been clawed back by The Ownership Class? [nakedcapitalism.com]
Productivity vs compensation (whole page) [nakedcapitalism.com]
Economist Prof. Thomas Piketty wrote a 696-page analysis of 250 years of Capitalism.
What he determined is that that economic system, with its separate Ownership Class, a system which concentrates wealth, leads to a governmental system that is also "owned" by that same group; the gov't is essentially unresponsive to the majority--so, even if there is a veneer of egalitarianism (elections), you can't call that system "Democracy"; it's Oligarchy.
One form of this system, which throws in Nationalism, is called "Fascism".
If you look around in the USA today, you will recognize many traits of that extremism in play.
The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism [ratical.org]
The way to avoid this/reclaim Democracy is via broader ownership of the means of production.
That economic system is called Socialism.
It is a method of production where The Workers and The Owners are the same people and there are no non-productive people in the loop.
Socialism, properly defined, is DEMOCRACY EVERYWHERE.
Italy instituted a program in 1985 which seeks to turn laid-off people into business owners.
They will allow a group of 10 or more to get their unemployment insurance payments in a lump sum to start a worker-owned cooperative.
The scheme is called The Marcora Law. [google.com]
It has been monumentally successful in northern Italy.
A third of the economy in the region of Emilia-Romagna is from co-ops.
There are over 8100 of them in that region alone.
If you want things to get better, I don't see a way to that that does not involve replacing Capitalism (absentee owners who produce nothing) with Worker-Owned Cooperatives AKA Democracy in the Workplace AKA Socialism.
Find a Marcora Law page that you like, blockquote from it, and email that quote/link to your Congresscritters.
Next election cycle, repeat that for every candidate on the ballot.
If one picks it up and runs with it, throw your support behind him/her.
Prof. Richard Wolff has a weekly broadcast/webcast that covers a lot of this.
His presentations are not the slightest bit dry.
Pacifica Radio station KPFA in Berkeley has an excellent archive of those. [kpfa.org]
New downloads become available Fridays, after about 11:15AM.
Using a media player with speed control/pitch control, you should be able to get through a 1-hour program in under 40 minutes.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 13 2017, @04:57PM
Excellent post; this makes my point much better than I could have. You really should get yourself a normal account because AC posts are frequently filtered or auto-downmodded (I do it myself as AC comments tend to be trolls); if this is indicative, your comments are too valuable to be lost among a morass of AC trolls.