Rant One, wherein the ShortWoman lambasts Stupid Airliner Tricks
Today we are told that, once again, certain British Airways and Air France flights have been canceled due to security concerns. As you may recall — the CNN article points this out if you do not — similar flights have been canceled in the last five weeks. Indeed, one of the flights in question is the exact same flight number as one of the previously scrutinized flights.
Now then, imagine you have tickets on one of these flights. What do you do? You find another way to get where you need to go. This is true whether you are a businessman, a tourist, or a terrorist. If there is, as U.S. Intelligence claims, a valid threat to these flights, then the answer is improved screening of passengers and cargo on those flights. This appears to have been the case with some other flights. Canceling the flights moves the terrorists to an undisclosed location. Insert Dick Cheney joke here. Indeed, since it would appear that the forces of good are wise to the alleged plot against British Airways Flight #223, a terrorist with any functional brain cells whatsoever would have decided another — almost any other — flight would make an easier target.
According to the Washington Post, the decision to cancel these flights was made by the British and French respectively. United States officials had told them these flights would only be allowed in American airspace if armed marshals were aboard. Europeans have different ideas than Americans about security and firearms in general. Clearly they did not take well to the idea of being told how to run things, told to put men with guns on airplanes. Perhaps they determined that the supposed terrorist threat was less credible than the threat of putting a known gunman aboard, even one with a security clearance.
Speaking of targets, does anyone find it the least bit suspicious that of all the airlines that have Heathrow/Dulles flights, only Air France and British Airways are publicly known to be the subject of such concerns?
If you are planning international travel, you might want to have a couple of alternate arrangements in the back of your mind.
Rant Two, in which Employment Data is once more manipulated
Yesterday, I heard the audio clip of President Bush saying “People are finding work.” Today, Reuters is following up on that claim, and Treasury Secretary John Snow’s assertion that the job creation numbers must simply be wrong.
Today’s theory is that both job creation and employment numbers are undercounted because of the self-employed. In short, the employment numbers look worse than they really are because of all the Amway distributors, people selling furniture they make in the garage, people who “make up to $1000 per week in your spare time on your computer,” and one-person businesses doing everything from home repair to tax preparation. Oh yeah, the numbers are also skewed by all those people who are contractors, a subset of the self-employed whose clients — or all too often, singular client — may be flouting IRS rules in an attempt to avoid paying benefits and to sidestep certain other liabilities. Make no mistake, this is a group of people who may or may not be making a living wage, are unlikely to have health insurance, are unlikely to have anything in the way of retirement savings, are unlikely to ever create jobs and hire employees. A substantial number of self-employed people are a lingering cold away from economic ruin.
This excellent Slate article is perhaps the most comprehensive and best written item I have read recently on employment/unemployment statistics and reality. Here’s a little bit from the middle:
The payroll survey is less likely to capture the self-employed, newly formed businesses, or domestic employees. So it could be that the millions of Americans who have been laid off are busy starting companies, or working full-time as self-employed consultants. All of this entrepreneurial energy would show up in the Household Survey and be good news for the economy.
Alternatively, the millions of Americans who are self-employed could simply be frustrated in their efforts to find full-time, salary-and-benefits-paying work at established companies. In other words… they’re self-employed because they’re unemployed. That would be bad news for the economy, and it probably wouldn’t show up in the Household Survey.
I count myself in the camp that thinks a substantial number of the “self-employed” are that way because it’s better than nothing.