Proposed Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights

[Sign the Petition]

All American air carriers shall abide by the following standards to ensure the safety, security and comfort of their passengers:

• Establish procedures to respond to all passenger complaints within 24 hours and with appropriate resolution within 2 weeks.
  


• Notify passengers within ten minutes of a delay of known diversions, delays and cancellations via airport overhead announcement, on aircraft announcement, and posting on airport television monitors.
  


• Establish procedures for returning passengers to terminal gate when delays occur so that no plane sits on the tarmac for longer than three hours without connecting to a gate.
  


• Provide for the essential needs of passengers during air- or ground-based delays of longer than 3 hours, including food, water, sanitary facilities, and access to medical attention.
  


• Provide for the needs of disabled, elderly and special needs passengers by establishing procedures for assisting with the moving and retrieving of baggage, and the moving of passengers from one area of airport to another at all times by airline personnel.
  


• Publish and update monthly on the company’s public web site a list of chronically delayed flights, meaning those flight delayed thirty minutes or more, at least forty percent of the time, during a single month.
  


• Compensate “bumped” passengers or passengers delayed due to flight cancellations or postponements of over 12 hours by refund of 150% of ticket price.
  


• The formal implementation of a Passenger Review Committee, made up of non-airline executives and employees but rather passengers and consumers – that would have the formal ability to review and investigate complaints.
  


• Make lowest fare information, schedules and itineraries, cancellation policies and frequent flyer program requirements available in an easily accessed location and updated in real-time.
  


• Ensure that baggage is handled without delay or injury; if baggage is lost or misplaced, the airline shall notify customer of baggage status within 12 hours and provide compensation equal to current market value of baggage and its contents.
  


• Require that these rights apply equally to all airline code-share partners including international partners.

[Sign Petition]

http://www.strandedpassengers.blogspot.com/

http://www.petitiononline.com/airline/petition.html

School Closings and $1.3 Million in Travel expense?!

As Detroit students did without, district spent $1.3 million on trips
"I can't get hand sanitizer for my kids. ... That is a disgrace." Heather Miller, a math teacher at DPS Marquette Elementary

February 9, 2007
BY JENNIFER DIXON and CHASTITY PRATT
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

During the same period, district officials rang up another $240,000 for catering. The tab included $100,000 to an unlicensed Eastpointe business based in the home of a Detroit elementary school principal.

Beyond that, records show the district spent $700,000 on travel to conferences and other events across the country, from San Diego to Miami to Reno, Nev. The district curtailed out-of-town spending last month after the Free Press began scrutinizing expenses.

In all, Detroit Public Schools spent more than $1.3 million for travel, hotels, workshops and catered meals while the district faced the nation's worst school financial crisis, shuttered schools and lost students by the thousands.

District officials said federal, state and local grants paid for nearly all travel and hotel costs.

Government education officials, however, said much of the grant money could have helped students more directly, as in hiring more teachers to reduce class sizes or by purchasing special-education equipment. The district can hire a starting teacher for about $70,000 a year in pay and benefits.

DPS officials acknowledge they had discretion in how to spend the money. But district spokesman Lekan Oguntoyinbo insisted the district kept a close eye on expenses and spent the money to improve student achievement.

"We're not doing anything here that is unethical, illegal or a disservice to the taxpayers," he said.

"We're spending these funds judiciously."

Not wrong, but excessive?

Critics said they have no quarrel with teachers, administrators and board members' need to get professional training, some of which is not always available locally or online. The spending was a sliver of the district's $1.3-billion budget. Even so, the critics said, it seemed excessive in a financial crisis.

Tom Watkins, former state superintendent, said justifying travel by citing a grant is a "game that people use -- 'The grant made me do it.' "

Watkins said he couldn't imagine that a private foundation or educational agency would refuse to let a district spend its grant money on necessities like teachers and equipment instead of a trip or a catered luncheon.

"It's a matter of priorities," Watkins said.

Even some DPS board members questioned the wisdom and volume of the spending. The district lost $100 million in state funding this year because of declining enrollment and is proposing to close 52 school buildings.

"We just have to do a better job all the way around, being more efficient in spending dollars," board member Tyrone Winfrey said. "We have to make sure we take the children into account first."

Board President Jimmy Womack said that regardless of whether grants were used, the spending must be wise.

"What was the money for? Could it have been used in a better way?" Womack asked.

Since early January, the Free Press sought records related to the Detroit area hotel expenses, catering and travel. But the district released few records and said the documents could not be located without extensive, costly searches.

The Free Press did obtain a list of budgeted payments to vendors from Nov. 1, 2005, to Nov. 1, 2006, through the DPS procurement department. It outlined $1.3 million for hotels, catering companies and local restaurants, travel agencies and tour companies. But the list did not detail the nature of all the events, how many officials attended or who spent what.

The total also did not include money spent by district employees who made their own travel arrangements and were later reimbursed. Nor did it include out-of-town restaurant tabs and other incidentals, suggesting the true travel costs were much higher.

In all, hundreds of thousands of dollars in spending remain unexplained.

Among last year's travels, the district sent people to the Hotel del Coronado near San Diego, the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco, the Hilton at Walt Disney World in Florida and the Doral Golf Resort and Spa in Miami.

[Rest of the Story...]

The Real Simpsons found!!

What if Homer and his comical family were real?*

[Click for video]

Religion is 'married' to Politics!? No Way!

There seems to be much handwringing in the media about whether religion and politics seem too cozy. This constant accusation is leveled every election cycle against Evangelicals who flex their rightful political muscles in national and state elections. This, obnoxious griping, usually begets the same old tired gossip.

[whisper] "shhh... did you hear?"

no...what?

[exclamation] "Religion and Politics are married!!"

*gasp*

The conversation about whether politics is married to religious faith is a good one if it were true. It appears that this dull accusation is presumed factual, yet painfully devoid of a supporting cast of evidence. So instead of doing the work for the accuser, let’s engage this accusation from a different angle.

For discussion sake, let’s say, that ‘if’ the religious & political canoodling gripe is true, and that ‘if’ is a real big ‘if’ because...

[cue Entertainment Tonight intro music]
Yes, that's right, Ladies and Gentlemen, you heard it here first, the exclusive celebrity announcement that Politics and Religion have as in the past are only ‘seeing each other as friends’ at this time.

This is due to the fact that Politics has been married and divorced more than anyone can count and mostly *that Politics has shown himself to be quite the dapper fellow with the ladies.

[*replace with 'because the chicks really dig him and they want him badly']

Religion in America has always had the hardest time making him commit to even protecting her, let alone any kind of long term relationship!

"Gurrl, Puhlease!!"

Her head has helped her certainly where her heart hasn’t, and it has helped to know the stakes and her competition as well. Politics seems to have many admirers and all of them have desired to wed him, but he has proven too shrewd for all the girlz. Because, boys will be boys, and Politics wants to have his cake and eat it too. ...and guess what ! ...that’s exactly what all of his lovers let him do. He doesn’t have to wed anybody, but he gets to bed them all, *he’s got it made!

[*insert 'he's a playa!']

All of his lovers make him the best pastries imagined, with so many strings attached, yet it rarely satiates him for long. He, being the biggest, most cunning and noncommittal of them all, enjoys every little dainty, and soon cuts every string and moves on to the highest bidder.

Religion in America has known of his flirty and promiscuous ways for a while now. Her great-great-great-grandmother Religion in Rome bedded Politics some fifteen hundred years ago when a nice looking chap named Constantine thought she was kinda cute. Of course, the most hurtful of all, was when she was run off as a little girl by Politics and her very own jealous mother, Religion in England and Europe who made her life miserable.

Resolved, she made it her unyielding commitment to never fall in love with him or ever get in bed with him. She has also known that Politics’ lovers are more wealthier and much prettier and even worse, willing to go much more further than her. So what does a single girl like Religion in America do if she needs her garbage picked up and keep bad guys from stealing her income and security? Well, she made the best decision a girl can make, she decided that she could be a good platonic ‘friend’ of Politics, and keep him at arms length, always willing to forgive him but never missing a moment to yell in his insolent and prurient face.

I know what you are thinking. What could be the advantage of not being on Politics’ booty-call speed-dial?

Well, you see, this girl knows a secret, her own value! She has something many of his competing lovers don’t always have together...and that is all of her voting power and even more powerful, her intestinal and moral fortitude.

So when good-old-boy Politics, calls her up for the ‘once-every-term’ night on the town and later asks for more of her usual amount of votes, she asks him and thinks about what he has done for her lately. She’ll check up on Israel and see how her friend has been treated lately. Sometimes even after all this, she’ll decide its better to sit at home till next term. But other times she’ll send in a good amount of her votes, because he will impress her with grandiose speeches or symbolic gestures...and then she’ll say to herself, "Gurl, Politics has been friendly lately, and he has been listening better this last term, and I think he might do something next term."

She knows, that it has been in her interest to pay attention to him, because his many lovers will get him to do a great deal that affect her. Rarely, will she ever vote all her votes, that is usually saved for when she’s really angry with her duplicitous neighbors, Secular Atheism, Promiscuous Media and Covert Socialism, among others in America.

She’s learned a great deal from her tumultuous ‘friendship’ with Politics, but the best lesson has certainly been to keep your friends close and your enemies closest.

Jaison J. Raju

together forever? or...forever stuck?

Archaelogical Discovery!

These two individuals, a man and a woman died together in an embrace.

Click here

sometimes nice guys finish first...

"Dungy said after Sunday's game that he is most proud that he and Smith are good Christians, that they have shown you can do it "the Lord's way" and succeed in the NFL. I often wince when athletes and coaches thank God after a victory, but note that Dungy did not attribute the win to his religion. He merely said, in his own way, that he was proud of reaching the pinnacle of his profession without compromising his ideals. " Michael Rosenberg

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/6443470