Let prosperous oil companies adopt struggling airlines
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
Since the oil companies are obviously doing very well and the commercial airlines very poorly, here’s an idea.
Team the biggest energy companies with their struggling best customers, the airlines.
Exxon adopts American Airlines, Conoco Phillips adopts United Airlines and so on down the line.
Try a sweetheart pricing deal for a trial period and see how it works.
The oil giants should be able to shave enough off each gallon of aircraft fuel to ease the pinch for an industry that the country needs.
Equipment safety, timely transportation of people, timely delivery of products all depend on airline profitability,
Success through adoption would provide a public relations coup for Big Oil, a favorite whipping boy of the politicians. It would also get the leftists in Congress off the destructive idea of slapping a destructive excess profits tax on energy companies.
Exxon, Conoco Phillips and the others already face enough problems from Congress. They can’t conduct deep sea drilling in the Atlantic or Pacific. They can’t drill 100 miles off Florida, despite the fact that China drills for oil in Cuban waters 60 miles off Florida, courtesy of the Castro Brothers. They can’t drill in the tiniest square of Alaska’s frozen solid tundra. They can’t use Rocky Mountain shale, which holds three times as much oil as all of Saudi Arabia.
So come on! Don’t just sit there! Do something about it!
Tim Russert
The death of Tim Russert last week shocked many.
Russert, host since 1991 of “Meet the Press” and one of the best reporter-interviewers in broadcast history, leaves big shoes to fill at NBC.
His preparation for interviewing guests was legendary. Many quivered wondering which of their own words he might confront them with.
Several aspects of Russert were less pleasing. The worst was that he too often lent his considerable prestige to one of the sleaziest political operations on TV, namely the MSNBC cable channel.
One recoiled seeing this giant of journalism regularly joining hacks such as Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell on various MSNBC panels. All three regularly blur the line between editorial opinion and supposedly slant-free hard news reporting.
It was no fault of Russert’s that his death brought into focus another undesirable feature, the converting of working journalists into rock stars.
The weeklong orgy of mourning launched by NBC and spurred on by MSNBC reflected no credit on the network, the channel or journalism. Russert himself likely would have found it disgusting.
Mayor Fahey calling it quits?
Mike Fahey has been a good mayor for Omaha.
His recent showing the door to MECA’s David Sokol – only to be forced, it is said, by a triumvirate of power players to open the door again – didn’t however reflect well on Fahey.
The political message from Fahey’s action was a major hint to this writer that he has decided to call it quits as mayor.
Fahey has taken a lot of criticism for his handling of police and fire pensions and perks. He made enemies aplenty, spearheaded by South Omaha interests, in leading the successful drive for a new downtown stadium to replace Rosenblatt Stadium. His out front role in annexing Elkhorn did not endear him to voters there.
Firing Sokol gave a powerful bloc of Fahey opponents yet another issue to coalesce around for mayoral election day.
We have no independent sources to back up one unusual side angle. Several Omaha World-Herald reporters have written that Warren Buffett, Walter Scott and Ken Stinson applied the heat for Sokol’s reappointment, supposedly threatening to withdraw pledges for private funds vital for the new stadium.
It was a poor show for Fahey to let personal pique lead him to try to get rid of Sokol. It would have been a worst one if pique over the Fahey mistake would cause three respected leaders to threaten to kill a vital component of financing a stadium which all have described as vital to Omaha.
June 2008
