FedEx’s disinformation campaign is flying high

In “Congress should move forward with vital air safety bills” (June 21), David J. Bronczek, president and CEO of FedEx Express, laments that the FAA reauthorization bill remains in limbo:

“The holdup is a 230-word provision inserted into the House bill that would change the federal labor law that governs FedEx Express, one of the world’s largest airlines. The provision is extraneous to the legislation, having no broad impact on air safety or infrastructure upgrades.

{mosads}FedEx Express is not an airline; at least not in the way most regular people think of airlines. It is, in reality, a package delivery company that uses both airplanes and trucks to provide its services. So is UPS. And it, too, uses both airplanes and trucks to deliver its packages.

The provision being debated is actually an effort to remove an extraneous provision which gave FedEx this special treatment in the 1996 FAA re-authorization bill in the first place.

The provision isn’t “anti-competitive.” Indeed, just the opposite. All it does is level the playing field by taking away what amounts to letting FedEx “hit from the ladies’ tees.”

This provision doesn’t “unfairly benefit one company.” This provision repeals a previous provision that has unfairly benefited one company, FedEx, for over a decade.

FedEx has been trying to justify this special treatment under the law by referring to its so-called “integrated air-ground delivery system.” Now consider for a moment exactly what this would mean if a real airline took the same position.

Suppose Delta expanded its operations by adding a taxicab service and called it Delta Express. And borrowing from the FedEx fantasy, let’s say Delta claimed its new taxicab drivers were picking up and dropping off passengers as part of an “integrated air-ground delivery system.” Would any objective person think those new Delta Express cab drivers were pilots who should be treated under federal labor law differently from every other cab driver in the nation?

This is not a complicated issue. This provision in the FAA bill rights a wrong in federal labor law.

From Chuck Muth, president of Citizen Outreach, a free
market/limited government grassroots advocacy organization, Henderson, Nev.

Gen. McChrystal a hero to regular Americans

Reviled by the Commander in Chief Barack Obama for conduct unbecoming an officer, Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s actions make him a hero to the regular folk who usually find themselves in the front lines of presidents’ wars.

Valuing the lives of his troops more than his own military career, Gen. McChrystal fought the good fight when he publicly revealed his serious doubts about President Obama’s ability to win the war in Afghanistan.

Americans are weary of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and are eerily reminded of the Vietnam War escalated by Presidents Johnson and Nixon.

Thousands of American men were drafted to their death in the incompetently fought Vietnam War by President Nixon who continued President Lyndon Johnson’s Cold War strategies. Meanwhile, President Nixon and his advisers discussed, for months, with South and North Vietnam’s leaders, whether the shape of the table where peace talks were to be held should be round or rectangular.

Like Nixon, Obama’s vanity forces him to punish McChrystal for his honesty while more of our brave troops come home to us in a rectangular box from Afghanistan.

After denouncing the ugly history of western world imperialism in the Middle East in his 2008 Cairo speech, today, Obama and his Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admit Afghanistan must be indefinitely occupied by American troops and American advisers to prop up the Obama-installed Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai.

{mosads}General McChrystal knowingly risked his rank and military career with his criticisms of the Obama administration. But he did it to save the lives of our brave troops.

The risk our commander in chief takes is having history synonymously record his name with that of Johnson and Nixon.

From Helen Logan Tackett, Fullerton, Calif.