Airlines' Revenues Soar

From the very informed Web site AirlineFinancials.com today, domestic airlines are reporting record revenues as fares and fee revenues steadily rise:

"By the end of this week, AirlineFinancials.com  LLC is projecting the seven largest US airlines will have collectively reported $152 million in profits from $33.3 billion in revenue for the 4^th quarter. This will be record industry revenue for any 4^th quarter and the 3^rd consecutive year of 4^th quarter profits after 10 years of losses. American and United were the only two airlines to report a loss and not have record revenue for the 4^th quarter.

For full year 2012, AirlineFinancials.com LLC projects these seven airlines will collectively report $3.7 billion in profits from a record $140 billion in revenues. For the first time since the 1990’s, excluding American, every airline will have annual profits for at least three consecutive years. American has not reported an annual profit since 2007.

For the year, every airline will report record revenues with four of the seven also reporting record annual profits. Unfortunately for the industry, these records come with a paltry 2.6% profit margin which is 50% less than industry margins were in the later 1990’s.

Since 2001 –year of the tragic 911 attacks-- in spite of the last three years of record revenues and profits, the industry has accumulated a staggering $23 billion in net losses! This compares to $23 billion in accumulated net profits for the six years prior to 2001.  

***

Individual airline projections for fourth quarter 2012-

Projections exclude special items and one-time charges

• United (UAL) -                      $146 million loss from $8.8 billion revenue
• Delta (DAL) -                        $239 million profit from $8.7 billion revenue**
• American (AAMRQ) -          $  88 million loss from $5.9 billion revenue*
• Southwest LUV) -                $  46 million profit from $4.2 billion revenue**
• US Airways (LCC) -            $  38 million profit from $3.3 billion revenue**
• JetBlue (JBLU) -                  $    5 million profit from $1.2 billion revenue**
• Alaska (ALK) -                     $  58 million profit from $1.2 billion revenue**

* Reported last week

** Record revenue for fourth quarter

Individual airline projections for full year 2012-

Projections exclude special items and one-time charges

• United (UAL) -                      $647 million profit from $37.2 billion revenue
• Delta (DAL) -                        $ 1.7 billion profit from $36.8 billion revenue**
• American (AAMRQ) -          $130 million loss from $24.9 billion revenue*
• Southwest LUV) -                $400 million profit from $17.1 billion revenue
• US Airways (LCC) -            $528 million profit from $13.8 billion revenue**
• JetBlue (JBLU) -                  $137 million profit from $5.0 billion revenue**
• Alaska (ALK) -                     $352 million profit from $4.7 billion revenue**

* Reported last week

** Record profit for year

###

 

Another Mass Shooting: Gunman Kills 5, Including 3 Children, in Albuquerque

[UPDATED JAN. 21]
As the gun crowd jammed gun shows and celebrated Guns Across America rallies around the country, and assault rifles were hot sellers while supplies lasted, still another homicidal lunatic with an assault rifle shot five people to death Saturday night in Albuquerque, N.M. The murdered children were ages 9, 5 and 2. The boy charged in the murders is 15.

[UPDATED JAN. 21) -- The victims were identified today as Greg Griego, 51, his wife Sara Griego, 40, and three of their children: a 9-year-old boy, Zephania Griego, and daughters Jael Griego, 5, and Angelina Griego, 2. The shooter was identified as Nehemiah Griego, 15, who has been charged in the murders.]

[The church Web site has removed recent information on the Griego family, but past church bulletins described Greg Griego as a member of the "pastoral staff," not as the pastor. He is also described as the head of the church's prison outreach ministry.]

[According to the Albuquerque Journal on Monday, "Griego had converted his backyard barn into a halfway house for released prisoners, according to neighbors. He also held services at the county jail’s “God Pod,” where he gave inmates spiritual advice."]

A local TV station, KRQE, had this initial report on Sunday:

"ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) -- Police are investigating multiple murders after they say a teen fatally shot two adults and three young children in southwest Albuquerque.

Deputies responded to a home on 2806 Long Lane in southwest Albuquerque after reports of a 
possible homicide a little after 9 o'clock Saturday night. When they arrived, deputies say the found several victims and weapons inside the home. [Including an assault rifle that was used in the shooting]

An adult man, an adult woman and three children around elementary age were found dead with multiple gunshot wounds."

[Greg Griego, identified as the dead clergyman, appeared in a 2003 news report as the chaplain at the county Detention Center. He was at the center of a neighborhood controversy over  his plan to open a halfway house on Long Lane. It is not clear if that is the same Long Lane address as the site of last night's shooting. As chaplain at the detention center, Griego was described in a 2003 news account as the overseer of  the prison ministry for Calvary Chapel of Albuquerque.]


Meanwhile, the NBC affiliate, KOB, reports today that "Police believe the teenager used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in the shooting."


###

A Day at the Gun Show

Speaking of gun shows, here are some snapshots I took earlier this month at a gun show on a weekend day at the Pima County Fairgrounds just outside Tucson.

As at gun shows across the country, crowds were bigger than usual, ammunition and magazines were selling out, and the hottest items on many lips were the Bushmaster AR 15 rifle. You know, the same kind of semiautomatic assault weapon that that homicidal maniac borrowed from his gun-nut mother to massacre 20 little children and six teachers a month ago at that grade-school in Connecticut, after he murdered his mother at home.

The rifle is so popular that the boys from the NRA, manning their usual booth near the entrance to the gun show to drum up membership (which is flagging), were promoting one as first prize in a raffle, $10 a ticket. Gun owners told me that the AR 15s are almost impossible to find now. All sold out.   A used one that used to go for $800 is now in the $1,800 range, one said.

By the way, gun dealers I talked to said they love those well-intentioned "gun buy-back" programs that are increasingly popular as a reaction against gun violence. "You can get at least $50 for any old piece of crap in Grandpa's closet," one said. 

I occasionally go to the local gun shows to check out the doings. Most noticeable to me on this one was the unusual number of people who brought the kiddies along, including some in strollers in which a rifle was also being carried.  Alas, no photos allowed inside the sacred hall. So these from outside will have to do.

Sign in an SUV parked in Tucson gun-show lot

### 

Gun Control Evidently Needed At Gun Shows

People attending gun shows around the country on Saturday were wounded by accidentally discharged firearms in three separate incidents.

In Raleigh, N.C., three people were wounded by gunshots at a crowded gun show when a gun was fired accidentally after a security guard asked the owner to open his bag for inspection.

The shotgun’s owner brought the weapon to the quarterly Dixie Gun & Knife Show at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds to sell it privately. The show closed early because of the shooting but will resume tomorrow.

According to the Raleigh News & Observer newspaper: "The shooting took place the same day as gun-rights supporters held a Gun Appreciation Day event in downtown Raleigh."

Also, in Indianapolis today, there was another gun-show gunshot wounding. A man loading a gun outside the Indy 1500 Gun and Knife Show at the State Fairgrounds was accidentally shot when his .45 caliber semi-automatic discharged Saturday afternoon around 4.15 p.m., according to WISH-TV, a local station. The man, Emory L. Cozee, 54, was walking back to his car and loading his .45 when he accidentally shot himself in the hand.

Meanwhile, in Medina, Ohio, a man was wounded in an accidental shooting Saturday afternoon at a gun show at the Medina Fair Grounds. Police said a gun dealer was checking out a semi-automatic handgun he had just bought when he accidentally pulled the trigger. The gun was loaded, it seems. The round hit the floor and struck a man standing nearby in the leg and arm.

Quazy, huh?

###

In Retreat, TSA Pulling 'Backscatter' Naked-Image Scanners from Airports

The roughly 200 of the 800 or so whole-body images being used at 200 U.S. airports -- the backscatter ones made by a company called Rapiscan -- will be removed by the TSA, which lost a battle with Congress over the issue of the naked images the machines record.

This today from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which has led the fight against the machines on the ground of privacy intrusion:

***

Latest News - January 18, 2013

TSA to Pull Naked Body Scanners Out of US Airports

The US Transportation Security Administration will end the contract for backscatter x-ray devices. As a consequence, all devices that produce a detailed naked image of air travelers will be removed from US airports. Beginning in 2005, EPIC and then a coalition of privacy advocates, scientists, legal experts and lawmakers urged the TSA not to deploy the devices. The groups petitioned DHS Secretary Napolitano to suspend the program pending a thorough review. The agency went forward and EPIC sued. In EPIC v. DHS, the DC Circuit held that the devices could be used as long as passengers were able to opt-out. The federal appeals court also ordered the agency to "promptly" begin a public rulemaking. That process will likely begin in March 2013. For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. DHS and EPIC: Body Scanners.

***
###

Much-Hyped Boeing 787 Dreamliners Grounded by FAA

All that hype written by breathless reporters who got taken for a ride on the initial flights of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes was fascinating, but ...

The FAA has temporarily grounded the planes in the U.S. after a series of mishaps and malfunctions.

The FAA action applies effectively only to United Airlines, which is the sole domestic carrier currently flying the new airplanes. But other aviation authorities around the world may take similiar actions, per a recommendation by the FAA. There are a total of 50 Dreamliners, Boeing's newest airplane, in active fleets globally.

Here's Boeing's statement on the FAA action:

Boeing Statement on Federal Aviation Administration 787 Action

CHICAGO, Jan. 16, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Boeing Chairman, President and CEO Jim McNerney issued the following statement today after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an emergency airworthiness directive that requires U.S. 787 operators to temporarily cease operations and recommends other regulatory agencies to follow suit: 
"The safety of passengers and crew members who fly aboard Boeing airplanes is our highest priority.
"Boeing is committed to supporting the FAA and finding answers as quickly as possible. The company is working around the clock with its customers and the various regulatory and investigative authorities. We will make available the entire resources of The Boeing Company to assist.
"We are confident the 787 is safe and we stand behind its overall integrity.  We will be taking every necessary step in the coming days to assure our customers and the traveling public of the 787's safety and to return the airplanes to service.
"Boeing deeply regrets the impact that recent events have had on the operating schedules of our customers and the inconvenience to them and their passengers."

###

Packing For the Airport (Continued)

Gun concealed in a book

 

Gun concealed in a stuffed animal

A year ago, here and elsewhere, I started calling attention to the shocking numbers of guns, most of them loaded, that our fellow citizens were carrying with them to the airport.

The TSA keeps a weekly tally. For all of 2012, 1,542 firearms were found by TSA screeners in carry-on bags at checkpoints -- 1,215 of them (78.7 percent) loaded. In 2011, by comparison, fewer than 1,200 firearms were found in carry-on bags, so the number is definitely rising.

Some people caught with guns at airport checkpoints are clearly planning to take them onto airplanes, and have made a deliberate effort to try to conceal the weapon from screeners. By and large, these appear to be stone idiots who have no terrorist or criminal intent but think they have a god-given right to carry a concealed weapon anywhere they go.

But most people caught packing guns at the checkpoints claim that they simply forgot they had them, which is by any estimation (including that of responsible gun owners) a definition of knucklehead. Gunsmanship 101: You should always know where your weapon is. Duh.

When TSA screeners find a gun, they call the local cops. What happens after that is up to local law enforcement and local law. In most cases, the sanction (if any) is light. In many cases, cops tell gun-toting passengers to simply take the weapon back out to their cars and then return to the checkpoint unarmed. Above is the TSA's chart showing which airports draw (so to speak) the largest number of knuckleheads who evidently forget they're packing heat. The chart is for all of 2012.

And of course, the fact that 1,500-plus guns are found, some of them carefully concealed, at checkpoints indicates that an unknown number of guns slip through and are carried onto planes routinely.

Here's a link to the TSA's year-end report on guns and other weapons found at checkpoints in 2012.
###

Shame in Westchester (Cont'd)

The media love a familiar Narrative, and are developing one in the plight of the employees at the Gannett-owned Journal News newspaper in Westchester County, N.Y.  You know, the newspaper that decided it needed to "shame" its neighbors who happened to hold legal handgun permits and so published a story with an online searchable database showing the names and home addresses of about 40,000 handgun-permit owners in Westchester and Rockland counties. 

That Narrative seems to be: Brave Newspaper Under Siege. And yes, the Journal News is kind of under siege now for publishing public information.

But as I have argued, publishing it was a cheap stunt -- cheap in every sense of the word. To me, it was clearly motivated by a misguided (misguided in every sense of the word) impulse to gain marketing points by shaming legal handgun-permit owners, and directly pandering to the waves of revulsion about guns that followed the horrific massacre of schoolchildren and teachers in Connecticut on Dec. 14.

The newspaper has exhibited no sign that it is truly interested in reporting on genuine gun issues, such as the proliferation of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, or the disturbing gun culture, like the gun culture that included the Connecticut homicidal maniac's gun-nut mother (whom he also killed), who encouraged his interest in guns and from whom the murderer obtained the assault rifle that he used in the massacre. Actual reporting takes effort and costs money, you see.

Instead, in its timing, the newspaper sanctimoniously sought to implicitly tie legal handgun-permit holders to the Connecticut horror and to all too many similar horrors. The newspaper's pious position was that providing the searchable database was a matter of serving public safety. It clearly was no such thing. It was an impulse to shame.

To me, the immediate ramification caused by this stunt was that it helped to change the public conversation -- from welcome outrage over the gun culture and the voracious marketing of assault weapons, to the affront to the rights of legal handgun-permit holders and the concurrent gross invasion of their privacy. As a few sensible critics in the media pointed out, just because you can publish something doesn't mean you should.

But sure enough, the media narrative now seems to have settled comfortably on the sharp and sometimes ugly negative reaction to the newspaper's stunt. That reaction -- with threats being made to the newspaper's employees -- came from  the usual suspects in the gun-nut culture. But let's not overlook the fact that there was also sharply negative reaction from progressive-minded citizens who thought, as I do, that the newspaper had engaged in a spectacle of grossly bad journalism, for the worst of reasons: marketing and scolding (as misguided as that turned out to be for the publisher and editors).

So because the gun-nut culture now has the newspaper in its rhetorical sights (while the newspaper has hired ... um... armed guards in reaction), we now are encouraged to shift our sympathies to a perhaps beleaguered Journal News, bastion of journalistic courage?

Well yes, I do sympathize, but not with the courage part.  Stirring up the gun nuts can be a very clarifying learning experience, and let's hope the Journal News does what any responsible news organization should do now -- which is, reporting out the story honestly and thoroughly. And yes, alas, they need to be careful, because the gun nuts are armed and dangerous when roused to action.

This cheap stunt had unfortunate consequences, but among them was a derailing of the gun-control issue and a reinvigorating of the gun-nut lobby, which always traffics in the politics of grievance and paranoia -- right at the time when we had the bastards on the run.

Here via New York Magazine is a sensible editorial on the damage that publishing the permit-holder database arguably did to the growing gun-control movement -- here.

###

USEless Travel News?

The perennially derided USA Today, with much of its circulation distributed free to people at hotels or in other places where they are traveling,  used to be a contender in travel news. And if you wrote about travel, and especially airlines or hotels, you needed to pay attention to what USA Today was up to.

What the heck happened?

Any look at the USA Today travel coverage these days is baffling, and I'm truly sympathetic toward the excellent USA Today travel reporters who used to cover news and solid features. But look at today's typical USA Today travel offering online. It's nearly all lame-brained "rankings," that is, lists of things that somebody somewhere has decided to rank, based on some criteria unknown. Here's what you get today: "Nine Ways to Lose Weight on Vacation" ... "Best Hotel Bathrooms in Las Vegas" ... "Coziest Hotel Fireplaces Across USA..." Et cetera.

That sort of "news" is driven by marketing people alone, and it's ginned up to generate online clicks, not to inform readers in any cogent way. My opinion: Within  a year, USA Today will finally admit that the game has finally ended, and will drop its anemic print edition that now basically litters hotel corridors, and go entirely online. And that's just sad.

###

American Airlines, US Airways One Step Closer to a Merger

Well, the media are going to insist on calling it a merger, but we all know that US Airways is planning to acquire American Airlines once American's parent company AMR emerges from bankruptcy.

This announcement today from US Airways -- issued as a "joint statement" between US Air and American -- indicates that the train is on schedule (to mix metaphors):

TEMPE, Ariz., Jan. 4, 2013 — US Airways Group, Inc. (NYSE: LCC) today issued the following statement:

"American Airlines and US Airways, with participation of committee counsel for the Unsecured Creditors Committee, are pleased that they have completed discussions with the Allied Pilots Association and US Airline Pilots Association intended to develop a framework for the terms of employment for pilots, as well as a process for pilot integration, in the event of a merger between AA and US during restructuring.  This memorandum of understanding was approved by the Allied Pilots Association’s Board of Directors and by USAPA’s Board of Pilot Representatives.  This memorandum of understanding will assist all of the stakeholders, including the Boards of AMR and US Airways, in making an informed decision as to whether a merger should ultimately be pursued.  The MOU is one of several elements to be considered before a decision on a merger can be made.  Details regarding the MOU are still covered by the terms of a non-disclosure agreement so they cannot be further disclosed at this time."

###

Heads-Up Zipsters: Avis Buying Zipcar for $500 Million

Not sure what this means for the very popular Zipcar car-sharing network, but here goes, from the press release today:

"Avis Budget Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:CAR) and Zipcar, Inc. (Nasdaq:ZIP), the world's leading car sharing network, today announced that Avis Budget Group has agreed to acquire Zipcar for $12.25 per share in cash, a 49% premium over the closing price on December 31, 2012, representing a total transaction value of approximately $500 million. ... The Boards of Directors of both companies unanimously approved the transaction, and Zipcar shareholders representing approximately 32% of the outstanding common stock have agreed to vote their shares in support of the transaction.

Car- sharing has grown to be a nearly $400 million business in the United States and is expanding rapidly in major cities around the world. Zipcar has led this industry, leading in innovation and world-class service. Zipcar now has more than 760,000 members, known as Zipsters, with a market-leading presence in 20 major metropolitan areas in the United States, Canada and Europe, and fleet positioned at over 300 college and university campuses."

Here's a link to the full announcement.

For anyone asking, what the heck is Zipcar, here's some background.

###

First Wonderful Irony of 2013

News about the Gannett newspaper in Westchester County, N.Y., that chose to publish a detailed searchable database list of the names and home addresses of thousands of legal handgun-permit holders in Westchester County and neighboring Rockland County. (While neglecting to do any actual reporting on illegal weapons or the proliferation of assault weapons). 

The paper, the Gannett-owned Journal News, has hired armed guards for its headquarters in Nyack and a suburban office in Rockland County  because of "negative" reader e-mail and phone calls. 

From Politico:

"The Journal News of West Nyack, N.Y., has hired armed security guards to defend its offices after receiving a torrent of phone calls and emails responding to the paper's publication of the names and addresses of area residents with pistol permits.

"RGA Investigations, a private security company, "is doing private security on location at the Journal News as a result of the negative response to the article," according to a police report first obtained by the Rockland County Times (Nanuet, N.Y.) and shared with POLITICO. The guards "are armed and will be on site during business hours through at least January 2, 2013." 

The report from the weekly Rockland County Times report is headlined, "The Journal News Is Armed and Dangerous." It says:  

.

"A Clarkstown police report issued on December 28, 2012, confirmed that the Journal News has hired armed security guards from New City-based RGA Investigations and that they are manning the newspaper's Rockland County headquarters at 1 Crosfield Ave., West Nyack, through at least tomorrow, Wednesday, January 2, 2013.

"According to police reports on public record, Journal News Rockland Editor Caryn A. McBride was alarmed by the volume of 'negative correspondence,' namely an avalanche of phone calls and emails to the Journal News office, following the newspaper's publishing of a map of all pistol permit holders in Rockland and Westchester."

(By the way, there is an interesting and overlooked good story in journalism these days, and that's the growing energy of some weekly papers in markets where the daily is a big fat lazy corporate slug. An example I can think of offhand is the weekly Nogales (Arizona) International and its singularly aggressive reporting on border issues in southern Arizona (as well as other local issues). The only daily that has indicated any real interest in digging at these critically important border stories stories is, weirdly enough, the Los Angeles Times, based 450 miles away but increasingly smart about the overlooked important news in southern Arizona.)

Anyway, back to Westchester County: The publisher and the editor of the Journal News had been piously defending the decision to publicly shame their neighbors (and readers) who have gun permits, the clear implication being that these legal permit-holders somehow are linked to the horror of the shootings of schoolchildren and teachers in Connecticut last month by a homicidal maniac using an assault weapon that he borrowed from his gun-nut mother (who he also murdered).

But now the Journal News is itself packing heat because of ... some negative reader e mail?

According to the Rockland County Times (quoting the Clarkstown police report),  the newspaper hired RGA Investigations (run by one Richard Ayoob) after its Rockland County editor, one Caryn A. McBride, filed two police reports about "perceived threats." One of those reports said that McBride became alarmed by a reader-mail in which the writer wondered (according to the police report) "what McBride would get in her mail now."  The editor told the police there was other "negative correspondence" in reaction to the Journal News publishing the public database of names and addresses of gun-permit holders.

Police said the e-mail that so alarmed Editor McBride  did not constitute an offense and did not contain an "actual threat," the Rockland County Times noted.

But still, it's probably best not to write a negative letter to the editor of the Journal News till the heat goes away.

After all, they know where you live -- and they have guns.

 ###

Seasick On the Queen Mary

I've never taken a cruise, and you couldn't get me on one with a gun to my head. One reason, among hundreds of others, is that waaaaaay too often, we see reports like this of infectious illnesses on cruise ships:

The cruise liner Queen Mary 2 has been sidetracked by an outbreak of what appears to have been norovirus contagion that sickened over 200 passengers and crew during a 12-day Christmas cruise in the Caribbean that was to have ended on Thursday. According to the latest update by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 201 of the ship's 2,613 passengers have become ill and 14 of the 1,255 crew, and the main symptoms of the illness -- which the CDC  lists as still "unknown" in origin -- are vomiting and diarrhea.

Norovirus, the common culprit in cruise ship contagion outbreaks, is one of those awful illnesses that is spread from person to person and caused by contaminated food or water.

The CDC says that two of its environmental health officers and an epidemiologist will board the Queen Mary 2 on its expected arrival in Brooklyn on Thursday to conduct an assessment.

The Queen Mary 2 operates under the Cunard Line brand of the Carnival cruise giant. In June of 2011, the Queen Mary 2 flunked a Vessel Sanitation Program health-inspection by the Centers for Disease Control and Inspection. According to Cruisecritic.com, CDC inspectors found dozens of violations, including some involving ice machines. "The word 'filthy' is used in the report five times," says the Cruisecritic.com item. Oddly, the excellent Cruisecritic.comhttp://www.cruisecritic.com/news/ -- which I found on a few occasions in the past to have exhibited some interest in critical cruise news -- seems to be slow on the uptake on this story. I'm guessing holiday schedules are why.

The Queen Mary 2 is currently "at sea" and steaming toward New York, according to the Cunard Web site.

This -- from a passenger on board the ship -- is interesting via the message board on the Queen Mary 2 that is on Cruisecritic.com:

"I don't understand how the number of crew members reported ill is so disproportionately low when compared to the number of passengers reported ill. ...  I just don't know how it is possible that the crew escaped infection to the same extent that passengers were affected, especially considering the crews exposure. We know that not all passengers report being ill, for various reasons. ... Perhaps crew members also have reasons for not reporting to sick bay?

Anyway:

Here's a link to the CDC situation report on the current crisis.

Here is a link to the CDC report on the failed inspection in June 2011.

###

Best Year-End Retrospective...

... is by the invincible Dave Barry, of course, and good for the Washington Post for giving him enough space in the Sunday magazine to write this one right. (And for recognizing actual funny when they see it, something newspapers routinely fail to do).

My own favorite is July. Link.

###

Wing and a Prayer in Iran

Here's one of the things you get when you mix civil society with obsessive and fanatical religiosity:

From today's Times: "Under a directive announced Wednesday by Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, all aircraft will be prohibited from flying across the country during the Adhan, or call to prayer, when many devout Muslims pause to face toward Mecca and pray."

That's a five-times-a-day ritual. Link.

"Buh-bye!"

Also, "serious attention" will be given by the religious police in enforcing more strict Islamic dress codes for women at airports.

"Allahu akbar!"

###

Travel Mess. Hey, It's Late December!

Map, via Flightview.com (as of 6.26 p.m. EST), shows lots of yellow lights at major airports. That's not good! Red dots are worse. Look for more red dots as this winter storm spreads northeast.

The TV weatherpeople all have their hair on fire, but hey, it's late December! It's winter and it snows. News reports breathlessly talk about the "killer storm," and keep track of the "death toll" (12) -- but you know what? People die during bad weather all the time. (They even die during good weather). Ask any hospital emergency room doctor or EMS technician. So the "death toll" in any routine storm is usually meaningless, except as a way to dramatize bad weather and give it some kind of a narrative.

It's just crappy weather. 

But one factor that's actually new: Airlines have shrunk domestic capacity to the point where there is absolutely no slack in the system. A cancelled flight often means a day's delay for a connection, in that case.

###

Shame in Westchester County

In my 40-plus years in the media business, as I suppose it's now and forever to be called, I have come to certain empirical conclusions, among them that there is nowhere to be found any personage quite as sanctimonious in general as the publisher or editor of newspapers owned by the rapacious Gannett organization.

Strong words, but I can back them up through hard-nosed and long observation, though my own experience at a once-good-quality Gannett paper in South Jersey was actually salubrious over 30 years ago. However, it lasted for only exactly one year, as the investigations editor, before the worthies at far-off corporate headquarters realized with an aghast start that we were spending entirely too much money on actual journalism. With stunning speed, they lowered the boom one afternoon in a truly remarkable bloodbath that had the intrepid publisher and editor gone by nightfall, and the new publisher installed, with his name already painted over to replace the old one in the publisher's parking spot, by the start of business the next morning. (They'd grabbed the executive for the job from another Gannett paper and abruptly shipped him out, overnight bag in hand, by company jet, to make their statement. I was mightily impressed by the ruthless efficiency, and began sending out my own resume forthwith.)

Anyway, we have the case now of a publisher and an editor of a Gannett paper in Westchester County, N.Y., the Journal News, who somehow thought it would be a grand idea (inexpensive, too) to ask the authorities for the names and home addresses of every single holder of legally registered handgun-permits in Westchester and two adjacent counties, and to publish that exhaustive database, accompanied by an online interactive map to pinpoint the dangerous gun-owners' homes.

A public service! cried the publisher, one Janet Hasson. The editor, one CynDee Royle (yes, she spells her name that way) defended the move as important journalism, given the current raw emotions over the latest mass shooting massacre in Connecticut. [No explanation was offered, then, of why no attention was been paid to rifles, including the semi-automatic assault weapons that figured in the recent massacres.]

Anyway, lots of handwringing in the industry has ensued over the Journal News initiative, providing those pious journalism ethicists who have infiltrated the profession like Saudi morality police with another brief raison d'etre.

So far, the debate seems to be focused almost entirely on whether the public was served by this, with copious attention paid to those who said it was, given the critical issues involving guns. Equal attention (balance must be served, you know) was given to those who said the publication of the database created public safety concerns for legal gun-permit owners, among them police officers and judges, not to mention battered wives, who might, shall we say, have some cause to ensure defense from enemies lurking within the shadows. True enough, that.

(You might also note that the publication merely posted a database of public records obtained through a Freedom of Information request to public authorities. Beyond that, there was no actual journalism involved; no attempt to report on the wide world of differences between legal handgun permits and assault-weapons permits, not to mention illegal guns and the whole sordid world of assault-weapon gun marketing. That, of course, would require spending money on reporting, and I have already provided personal anecdote on the consequences of that, in a different context.)

Nor was any indication given that causing a great public and media commotion by disseminating the names and home addresses of legal handgun permit-holders, in this context, at this time, might have the very real effect of muddying waters that had recently begun to clear on the debate over gun control in this country. Suddenly, the NRA and its stooges, who had been in deep defensive crouches, have wide-open access to the bully-pulpits again, thanks to the "public service" journalism of the Journal News of Westchester County, N.Y. Suddenly, gun control common sense might have lost the initiative.

Just because you can legally do something, like obtain and publish that database, doesn't mean you should do it.

Editor CynDee Royle (that's really how she spells her name), said the following to her own paper,  safe in the knowledge that her statement would not be uncharitably questioned: "We felt sharing as much information as we could about gun ownership in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings.”

It went unremarked-upon in that paper, naturally, that this statement seemed to draw direct a connection between the thousands of legal hand-gun-permit holders (and Journal News readers) in the Lower Hudson Valley and the homicidal maniac who used his gun-nut mother's assault rifle to murder those little children and teachers in Connecticut two weeks ago. 

Local reaction was sharply negative to the Journal News stunt. "They've put me on the same level as a sex offender," one local woman told the Washington Post. (Link)

Incidentally, no attention that I have seen has been focused on what I regard as probably the real motives of the sanctimonious publisher and editor (and of course the reporters and various sub-editors and graphics specialists) who pulled this stunt, which I regard as execrable, utterly irresponsible journalism.

Given my own position that this is not a public service but rather a base journalistic disgrace, I'm looking for a motive, and the one I see is: Shaming. This, in my opinion, was an outrageous attempt by self-righteous journalists to publicly shame those who have handgun permits. Evidently, someone at the Journal News thought that guns in general were simply bad, with the clear implication that anyone who has a legal handgun permit needs to be carefully watched by neighbors.

There is precedent for this kind of civic thinking, as Mr. Hawthorne noted some time ago.

Internet reaction to this Journal News stunt has been vociferous. One blogger has gotten a lot of mileage by posting the names and addresses of the publisher and editors, as well as the CEO of the Gannett company. Name of blog: For What It's Worth.

Meanwhile, Editor CynDee Royle, startled by the personal attention online, has evidently gone to the mattresses, as they used to say in the mob. Or at least the virtual mattresses.

Here's a link to the original self-righteous News Journal story. It's a reminder, if those of us who toil in the responsible warrens of this beleaguered profession need another one, of why so many people hate the media.

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Department of Worthless Surveys, Air Travel Division

Whenever I see that the source of a particular piece of news is the U.K., I slip on my skeptical specs.

And here today we see, getting some mileage in slooow-day news reports where editors know nothing about travel (which is nearly all of them), a survey on flight attendants' pet peeves about passengers that seems to reflect realities that haven't been real in several decades.

It's via Skyscanner, a British (uh-oh) site that purports to have its finger on the pulse of air travel, and purports to have surveyed 700 "cabin crew members" (translation: flight attendants) on their complaints about passengers. (I'm waiting for a survey of passengers on their complaints about flight attendants, but oh well).

Annotated in my italics:

Top complaint (26 percent); "Clicking fingers to get your attention." Now really, when is the last time you saw that on a flight, or even had the presumption that a flight attendant had the time, or inclination, to respond? 

No. 5: "Talking through the safety demo." Yes, let us not deny the flight attendant the opportunity to explain how to buckle that seat belt without distractions from a passenger in the middle seat of row 28, arms pinned to his side as the five-hour flight begins, gasping for air.

No. 6: "Asking for more blankets/pillows." More?!!

No. 8: "Asking for a different meal." Different meal?!! They don't even pass out peanuts these days.

No. 10: "Asking for a specific brand of drink." Coffee, tea, or you're under arrest for disrupting a flight.

Here's the link to this giddy survey.

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Crazy in America

[UPDATED] 
Christmas Day brings more detailed news of still another horrific shooting massacre, this one caused by a lunatic in upstate New York who set a house fire on Monday in order to ambush responding firefighters. The gun he used for the killings was the same model of semi-automatic-like assault rifle, a Bushmaster .223 (a civilian version of the military M16), as the weapon  used by another lunatic to kill those little children and those teachers in Connecticut less than two weeks ago.

The New York Times story on the latest shooting (link) is far better than the Rochester paper's (and the Buffalo News only runs wire, sadly, and, pathetically, so on Wednesday does the hometown Rochester Deomocrat & Chronicle, a Gannett paper, natch).  The killer shot and murdered two firefighters, and injured two others as they responded to the fire. Today, authorities found the body of another victim, believed to be the killer's 67-year-old sister, in the rubble of the burned house in Webster, N.Y. 

The killer, this Spengler, had a long rap sheet. In 1981, the Times story says, "he pleaded guilty to manslaughter for bludgeoning his 92-year-old grandmother to death with a hammer. He was imprisoned until 1998."

(Wait a minute, you and I are asking: He hammered his granny to death and got off with manslaughter and a sentence of less than 20 years? Explanation, please!)

But I was taken with a statement from the understandably deeply grieving fire chief, Gerald L. Pickering (emphasis mine): “We know that people are slipping through the cracks, not getting the help they need. And I suspect that this gentleman slipped through the cracks. Maybe he should have been under more intense supervision, maybe he should not have been in the public, maybe he should have been institutionalized, having his problems dealt with.”

I take no issue with a deeply distraught fire chief, but I do with the tenor of the times and with journalism, this reflexive assumption that somebody like this murdering psychotic needs "help." Let's examine that for a minute. A fellow who bludgeoned his grandmother to death, who is known locally as a dangerous lunatic, who proclaims that he wants to kill as many people as he can, who sets a fire in order to ambush firefighters, four of whom he shoots and two of whom he killed (plus the victinm found today in the rubble, so far publicly unidentified) -- this man does not need our "help." Rather, it's we who need help. Society needs help in the form of protection from a murdering maniac like this.

Chief Pickering is exactly correct when he says that "maybe he should have been institutionalized." That is, locked up -- not for his own good, to hell with him, but for the good of society.

To the extent that the mental health industry actually cares about treating the severely mentally ill (and the evidence is, the industry cares not very much at all for that mostly futile, largely unrewarding chore), the touchiest clinical subject at hand is the idea of institutionalizing the severely mentally ill who pose real and present danger to society. There is, for one thing, no money to be made in that. And, of course, there is the horrific history of the grim state-run mental hospitals (most of which were basically patronage mills for the benefit of state politicians).

On the other hand, until the insane asylums were emptied out in the 1960s and 1970s, there was, in fact, a place for society to keep people like Spengler (and the maniac who shot those children, and the other maniac who shot my congresswoman Gabby Giffords and all those others in Tucson, ad infinitum) away from the rest of us.

The subject of some form of reinstitutionalization is enormously complex and fraught with social danger, especially in a health-care system in which mental health services are a profit center, as they have been since the 1980s. Who decides? But I would submit that in a case like Spengler, institutionalizing him was not even a close call. And  Lanza in Connecticut, or Loughner in Tucson, among others in our pantheon of mass murderers probably would have had no problem making the cut, either, in an intelligently and honestly run mental health system.

In a note left at the crime scene before he shot himself, this Spengler clearly self-diagnoses: homicidal maniac. "I still have to see how much of the neighborhood I can burn down and so what I like doing best: Killing people," the note reads in part.

Incidentally, the promise inherent in deinstitutionalization was that after we closed the horrible industrialized public insane asylums, we would establish in their place effective, adequately funded community mental health centers, emphasis on "community," where a range of critical-care services would be available, and where clinical psychiatrists and other trained professionals would be able to closely monitor cases from a local perspective. In other words, a Spengler or a Lanza or a Loughner would be on the radar, at least.

[UPDATE: Wednesday's Times has an op-ed piece by a psychiatrist named Paul Steinberg who assumes the sanctioned industry position on whatever the hell schizophrenia actually is -- which officially sanctioned position is, that it is a diagnosable physical disease (hence treatable with reimbursement under insurance policies, at least for those who have enough insurance).  Steinberg mentions another homicidal mass murderer, the one who massacred 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007 (emphasis mine): "At Virginia Tech, where Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people in a rampage shooting in 2007, professors knew something was terribly wrong, but he was not hospitalized for long enough to get well." The assumption being that this particular homicidal maniac might have gotten  well through intervention and therapy, rather than that society could have been protected through custody.]
 
After deinstutionalization and the concept of genuine community mental health clinical care went terribly wrong, nearly all mental health money flowed toward luring the worried well into treatment. As the psychiatry establishment, long a kind of orphan child in medicine, sold its soul to profiteers, it gained unaccustomed hospital-industry respect as financial rainmakers, if not as physicians. The promise of deinstitutionalization and community mental health. focused on the truly mentally ill, was cynically dashed. The desperate homeless roaming city streets were only the most visible, and in many ways benign, consequence. The Spenglers and Lanzas and Loughners and were the real payoff. (Abetted, of course, by the gun lobby that ensured that homicidal maniacs could be armed to the teeth with the latest in murderous assault weaponry).

The subject of critical mental-health care is on the table again, and I'm currently working on a revision and update of my 1994 book "Bedlam: Greed, Profiteering and Fraud in a Mental Health System Gone Crazy" (St. Martin's Press), under a new title, "Crazy in America," and a new publisher.

The book is focused on the greatest health-care financial fraud of them all, the pillaging of the mental-health-care system by rapacious for-profit psychiatric hospitals and affiliated therapists, including alcohol and addiction charlatans, in the 1990s. But the book also provided a primer on the sordid history of mental-health care in this country, where the money all started flowing toward the "worried well" who had insurance to bilk, and away from the truly crazy, who tend not to have much insurance coverage to bilk, tend to resist treatment, and in many cases are impossible to cure anyway.

"Bedlam" will be reissued, in a revised edition, as "Crazy in America," in the spring.

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