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Dallas Morning News
Dec. 29 editorial, “Southwest Airlines’ chaos signals a need to protect stranded travelers.”
Mistakes and bad luck are part of life and business. However, providing responsive and compassionate customer service is how a business rebounds from a reputation-damaging moment. On this point, Southwest has a long trek ahead. And for the entire commercial aviation industry, Southwest’s meltdown should rekindle a much overdue discussion of the rights of stranded passengers.
Even in the best of times, air travelers have mostly hate-hate relationships with air travel based on high fares, limited leg room, and belligerent fellow travelers in the middle seat. A federal airline passenger bill of rights covers bumping of passengers from flights, obligations to seat young children next to a parent, ticket price transparency, baggage rules and a wide variety of rights cloaked in a lot of mitigating and confusing fine print.
However, how much help a stranded traveler gets depends on individual airline policies and the decibel level of squeaky wheel complaints. In the past, federal transportation regulators have helped passengers obtain refunds with threats to take enforcement action against noncompliant airlines and ticket agents.
The irony is that the aviation industry had a preview of this mess. In 2021, Southwest canceled more than 2,000 flights over a four-day period in October, and Spirit, a much smaller airline, canceled thousands of flights, stranding flight crews and passengers for several days that summer. Spirit’s problems were blamed on the airline’s inadequate technology backbone, bad weather system outages and staffing issues linked to downsizing. Sound familiar?
What happened over the holiday weekend is an unacceptable operational failure that can and must be corrected for the sake of the economy and the traveling public. Passengers must be compensated when they don’t get the service promised. It’s not just what’s right, but good business, too.
— Dallas Morning News Editorial Board
Houston Chronicle
Dec. 28 commentary, “What Texas can learn from George Bailey’s ‘Wonderful Life.‘”
The so-called “Texas Miracle,” for example, relies, in part, on low-paid work and a perpetually exploited underclass. We, as a state, view capitalism as an ends to enriching a few, and not a way to support the kind of society we want to live in: full of opportunity and supportive of a strong middle class.
While Texas does celebrate opportunity and seems to draw people who take those risks to innovate and build, often the downside is not considered: the corners that are cut, the workers whose health and safety aren’t prioritized, the environmental protections that are waived away, the tax structure that doesn’t support educating our leaders of tomorrow.
Nationally, despite indications that the economy is strong, many of us have experienced a different reality. The economy is growing, we are told. Unemployment is down. Corporate earnings are robust. And yet, even as inflation seems to be easing somewhat, it’s still outpacing recent wage gains. For folks on fixed incomes, inflation has hit even harder.
This seeming contradiction reflects the gaps between the ways we understand The Economy in popular discourse and the actual economic system we live in. Much of the essential labor we rely on — raising children, caring for the elderly, fostering community — is often left out of economic models and measures, as feminist economists have long argued.
There was a moment during the pandemic when this seemed especially apparent and the country seemed to collectively realize that, instead of a functional social safety net, we mostly just had women filling the gaps.
“If people are taking care of a sick family member or a child or a grandparent, within the home, that is valuable work but it isn’t measured in GDP,” explained Diana Strassmann, Rice University professor and the founder of the journal, Feminist Economics.
“If what we really want to optimize is human well-being, we should care about care work,” she said.
— Houston Chronicle Editorial Board
San Antonio Express-News
Re: Dec. 22 editorial, “Report shows how little state cares for women.”
SAN ANTONIO — At long last, our state’s preliminary maternal mortality and morbidity report has finally published, and as expected, its findings are dire. The delay until after the November election, we suspect, is because of those dire findings.
What does it say about our state that at a time of rapid medical advancement, those who are pregnant are at so much risk? And what does it say that the risk is even higher for Black pregnant people?
It says Texas officials don’t care enough about women’s health, much less ensuring equity when it comes to accessing health care and vital treatment. It says that Texas Republicans talk big about unborn children but give comparatively scant attention to those who give birth.
When our state formed the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee in 2013 in response to a new law, the multidisciplinary professionals found Black women were more than twice as likely as white women, and more than four times as likely as Hispanic women, to die from pregnancy and childbirth. The 2022 joint biennial report paints a similarly grim picture.
The committee reviewed 118 maternal deaths from 2019 and found 52 were pregnancy-related, 42 were pregnancy-associated, but not related; and 24 cases could not be determined.
— San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Dec. 23 editorial, “Dean verdict was in. Did judge really need to slap mayor, council member for reacting?“
Former Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean is convicted and sentenced for killing Atatiana Jefferson, and after three long years, our city and Jefferson’s family can try to move forward.
Well, not quite. First, we must wait for state District Judge George Gallagher, who presided over the trial, to declare whether two Fort Worth leaders will be punished for daring to speak about the verdict. On Dec. 16, he imperiously summoned Mayor Mattie Parker and City Council member Chris Nettles for a Jan. 4 hearing to answer contempt of court charges for violating a gag order.
We’ll stipulate that Gallagher, like any judge, must ensure that verdicts are untainted by bias, that jurors are not swayed by public statements and that a defendant’s rights are upheld. When there’s a conflict with other priorities, a judge must make a difficult call.
Gallagher was in his rights to enforce a gag order, as both Parker and Nettles were sworn witnesses in the case dating to hearings on Dean’s request to move the trial to another county. But in this case, it was an overreach.
The jury’s verdict was in and announced when Gallagher took his action. Jurors had yet to sentence Dean, but they were unlikely to be exposed to comments by Parker and Nettles.
Gallagher should have given greater consideration to the gravity of restricting the speech of two Fort Worth leaders at an important moment in a case with vital implications for the community.
— Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board
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