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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Georgia not so Peachy

Georgia not so Peachy

by | 94 Comments

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I mentioned this in the podcast but I think it deserves a post. Kelly Yamanouchi, who covers Delta for their hometown paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is all over the Delta NRA story. Here’s the gist:

Delta offered a “discount” for the NRA. Anyone who travels regularly knows that these discounts are hot garbage. Delta’s NRA discount was only used for 13 tickets.

When the fact that the NRA isn’t simply a hobbyist organization but an extremist cult was brought to Delta’s attention, they axed the discount. The Georgia legislature retaliated by rushing through a bill to take away a tax break from Delta. The governor signed it today.

Delta’s response was essentially a “fuck you” to Georgia. They’re not backing down, and in addition to eliminating the NRA discount, they’re going to get rid of discounts for any other group that is controversial.

As Yamanouchi pointed out in another article, Delta broke a commitment to keep Northwest’s headquarters in Minneapolis after acquiring them. Delta has a long history of being in Atlanta but they could move.

What a shitshow over 13 tickets.

Reader Interactions

94Comments

  1. 1.

    David Fud

    Queue the “absolutely stunningly galactically stupid idea.” Republicans in primaries don’t realize that other folks can hear them after all of the dog whistling they have done for so long. I doubt the Delta employees around here are impressed, especially since they more or less can’t carry guns on the job anyway. There is reporting the governor Deal will do something “administratively”, though what that is, isn’t exactly clear.

  2. 2.

    Anne Laurie

    Too lazy to google, but I also ran across an article this morning saying that the Georgia legislators may’ve screwed Atlanta out of whatever chance it had of winning Amazon’s “HQ2” competition. Whether or not you think handing Amazon the key to your town is a good idea (I most sincerely hope they *don’t* pick Boston, which is also on the short list of finalists), Atlanta obviously wanted the business. Jeff Bezos’ ninja MBAs won’t have much respect for a bunch of politicos who’ll screw over a company as big as Delta for fear of a noisy bunch of gunfondlers…

  3. 3.

    Tenar Arha

    Another one to add to my list of things I never thought I’d see a GOP legislature or governor do: drop a tax break for any business for any reason.

    I doubt Delta will move since having a southern hub in a non-desert state is convenient, & they’ve probably got a lot invested in airport facilities. Delta might decide on giving donations to Democratic legislators though, just for s&g. And to make a point not to mess with them.

    (? GA Dems should probably start working up a plan on how to handle that before the airline tries to roll them).

  4. 4.

    bluehill

    Between the steel tariffs and this, the pro-business party has a strange way of being pro-business. When does the NRA start boycotting Walmart?

  6. 6.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    The party of free enterprise! Except when companies make decisions that are contrary to their cultural beliefs. Then they must be annihilated.

  7. 7.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    @bluehill:
    The GOP is only “pro-business” so long as they are able to line their own pockets and secure permanent power, as well as beat down their cultural and political enemies.

  9. 9.

    Adam L Silverman

    This is just weird:

  12. 12.

    Mike J

    Governor Jay Inslee Verified account @GovInslee
    Hey @Delta – @CNBC’s #1 state to do business is open for business.

  15. 15.

    cain

    Delta just saying “We’re looking at other options” is enough to fuck the Republicans over. It will be interesting to see what Republicans would do over such a threat. Watching them back down would be awesome.

    Then again, they could pull a NC, and prefer to go down in flames.

  16. 16.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    @cain:

    Then again, they could pull a NC, and prefer to go down in flames.

    And if that happens, that might push GA to be purple.

  18. 18.

    RSA

    The Georgia legislature retaliated by rushing through a bill to take away a tax break from Delta.

    It’s a shit show all around. Right, the Georgia legislature retaliates against a powerful corporation for its socially relevant decision, but my first reaction to the story was about the legislature proposing the tax break in the first place, one with benefits flowing mainly to one specific corporation. That’s so open to corruption… and yet it’s pretty much taken for granted that this is okay for a government to do.

  19. 19.

    Adam L Silverman

    Hmmm…

  21. 21.

    bystander

    I’m watching Last Word with Ari Tonight, and I give Susan Page for completely remaking her physical appearance over the years without ever once coming close to speaking the truth.

  22. 22.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    @RSA:
    Is Delta the only airline with tax breaks? I would think it wouldn’t be corrupt (from the perspective of favoring one corporation) if all airlines operating within the state were given the same tax breaks.

  24. 24.

    Brachiator

    Georgia is serious about their love of guns. Serous. There’s a city that once passed a law requiring gun ownership. What’s extra nuts here is that the governor is bending over backwards not to protect guns, but to protect a special interest group, the NRA. This is as unhinged as a Trump Twitter rant.

    The big lie from a state legislature is that Delta gives discounts to Planned Parenthood. This is insane, but it tells you a lot about how these idiots’ minds work. Killing babies, bad. Kiling teens, not as bad and protected by the Constitution.

  25. 25.

    Jay C

    It seems to me like the GA lege’s decision to yank Delta’s fuel-tax break over the NRA-discount crap has little (or nothing) to do with the actual business decisions, but is a sort of ostentatious “virtue-signaling” (“depravity-signaling” is more like it IMO) to the gunhumper lobby that the GA GOP has their backs – at least as far as making quasi-empty gestures is concerned. It still remains to be seen what they’ll get for standing up for those 13 flyers….

  26. 26.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman: Oh, right, I’d forgotten that!

    So today’s BS was just arguing, once they’d cut off their own noses, how much better it made their faces look.

  29. 29.

    Another Scott

    @Jay C: Yup.

    I haven’t read the links, but IIRC there was a story on the radio that said the tax break was only $40M or so (out of $41B in annual revenue, $5.7B after tax last year). It’s money, but not a huge deal. Good publicity is worth much, much more to them.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  30. 30.

    James E. Powell

    What a shitshow over 13 tickets.

    But it’s not over 13 tickets. This is a battle to save White America and Freedom and Manly Culture!

  31. 31.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman: Somebody hacked Donny Jr’s wife’s phone?

    She’s been in the news, at least locally, because the geenyus who sent a threatening letter with ‘white powder’ in it got busted. And I’d assume her electronics were supervised a little less scrupulously than that of her spouse. So some basement scammer may’ve figured, why not, tinker with the address book?

  33. 33.

    Feebog

    Delta is a huge employer in Atlanta. But they aren’t going anywhere. The Atlanta metro area is pushing six million. There simply is no other comparable population center anywhere in the Southern U.S. shit show indeed.

  34. 34.

    Adam L Silverman

    @satby: Here’s Eichenwald’s rundown on the story:

  36. 36.

    efgoldman

    @RSA:

    the Georgia legislature retaliates against a powerful corporation for its socially relevant decision

    Steve (from ATL, natch) and i talked about this, very late last nite. Apparently the krazies (both RWNJs and the union people he talks to) throwaway logic for no discernible reason. See also the proposed railcar plant that Snotty Walker nixed in WI.

  37. 37.

    Another Scott

    @Adam L Silverman: Zooks. That would explain a few things…

    Kinda weird that (roughly) “Hope Hicks acknowledged that Trump used it in the 1980s…” when she is now, what, 29? Google tells me her birthday is October 29, 1988. Funny to see her “acknowledge” something that happened before she was born…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  38. 38.

    Tenar Arha

    @RSA: I’ve been super torn bc I think this “let’s give tax breaks to corporations for more jobs” is race to the bottom fuel for a while. It’s one of the many reasons I hope Amazon doesn’t end up in Massachusetts, like @Anne Laurie said.

  39. 39.

    satby

    God, I’m liking this guy:

    Randy Bryce
    @IronStache
    ·
    Feb 28
    I’m a gun owner. There’s no doubt in my mind that we should:

    1) Require universal background checks
    2) Mandate a 48 hour waiting period for purchases
    3) Ban military-style assault rifles, along with accessories like high-capacity magazines and bump stocks

    This is common sense

  41. 41.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott:

    I haven’t read the links, but IIRC there was a story on the radio that said the tax break was only $40M or so (out of $41B in annual revenue, $5.7B after tax last year).

    It’s an annoyance, but the tax break that Delta and other companies are getting from Trump more than makes up for this.

    On the other hand, Georgia may be conforming to the new federal tax law. The fantasy is that this will make the state more competitive and attract investment.

    The reality may be altogether different.

  42. 42.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman: He’s not a global mastermind:

    A Massachusetts man who works at a Catholic Charities child-care center was arrested for allegedly sending white powder in an envelope to Donald Trump Jr. — part of a series of hoax missives sent to prominent people across the country, officials said.

    The suspect, 25-year-old Daniel Frisiello, of Beverly, Massachusetts, was arrested this morning after investigators tracked him down through a company that sells a $10 prank known as a “glitter bomb,” a cardboard mailing tube that spills glitter everywhere when opened, according to a criminal complaint…

    The second letter was sent to Nicola Hanna, the interim U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, and referenced a child pornography defendant, according to officials. The third envelope was sent to Michele Dauber, a law professor at Stanford University involved in the effort to recall Judge Aaron Persky, the Santa Clara County jurist who sentenced former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner to six months in county jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman at a fraternity party…

    The fourth letter went to Sen. Debbie Stabenow, of Michigan, and referenced Larry Nassar, the former U.S. gymnastics doctor convicted of abusing his patients.

    The fifth letter was sent to California congressional candidate Antonio Sabato Jr., calling him an “awful person.” …

    Kind of a grab-bag of grievances. The local tabloid Boston Herald says he’s the archetypical specimen who actually still lives in his parents’ basement —

    …Frisiello’s lawyer, Scott Gleason, said his client has been on medication all his life, but he would not say for what.

    Gleason described him as “very much an overwhelmed young man who has got some issues and some difficulties that he’s been dealing with through his life. But I am optimistic and confident that when all of the facts play out, there will be a very good understanding of what transpired, and I’m expecting the best to work out.”…

    Beverley’s a nice upper-class enclave. More proof, if needed, that getting help for someone with mental-health issues can be complicated even for people with money and education.

  43. 43.

    RSA

    @? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?, and others: You’re right, of course. The tax break could have been a well-reasoned economic decision in the state’s best interest (and I mean that without irony). It can be hard to tell, which I guess is why people try to avoid the appearance of bias.

  44. 44.

    Another Scott

    @Adam L Silverman: Hey, he’s just a “performance artist” “playing a character”. Of course that “character” is Harvey W, but …

    :-/

    Yeah, whoocouldaknowd?!?!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  45. 45.

    frosty

    @Tenar Arha: “I doubt Delta will move since having a southern hub in a non-desert state is convenient”

    Old Southern saying in the railroad days: I don’t know if I’m going to Heaven or Hell but I know I have to change in Atlanta.

  47. 47.

    Steve in the ATL

    @cain:

    Then again, they could pull a NC, and prefer to go down in flames.

    Historically, in Georgia commerce has trumped cultural issues. That seemed to change a bit when culture warrior David Perdue won the senate nomination over the pro business dude. It’s getting weird here.

  49. 49.

    Anne Laurie

    @Steve in the ATL: Me, I’m hoping it’s what the behaviorists call an extinction burst. When a behavior that was previously rewarded suddenly fails to elicit the expected reward, an organism will first respond by increasing the frequency and urgency of that behavior (e.g., when pushing the button no longer means a food pellet drops out of the chute, the lab rat will start pounding on the button furiously, or even attack the chute). “Normally”, after this increase in response energy fails to work, the organism will stop pushing the button. It takes some organisms longer than others to figure out, though.

  50. 50.

    WaterGirl

    @Adam L Silverman: What does he mean by “I’ve left Newsweek?” Has he really left newsweek? (google says no.) Is the implication that he left newsweek because of this story?

  52. 52.

    efgoldman

    @Steve in the ATL:

    That seemed to change a bit when culture warrior David Perdue won the senate nomination

    All of a piece with the mouth breather flying monkeys taking over the party.

  54. 54.

    Adam L Silverman

    @WaterGirl: He was on an extended medical leave of absence after some alt-righter/4Channers tweeted gifs at him to induce an epileptic seizure. Which it did. A very, very bad one. They were able to track down who sent the gifs and they’ve been charged with a variety of crimes.

    Newsweek has also, as he’s discussing, gone under a radical, negative publisher and editorial change. So I don’t know if he’s going to make a full and formal break.

  57. 57.

    efgoldman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Fortunately it was just a hoax.

    But if he’d lived in one of the ammosexual states, say FL or TX, it could have been a lot worse. It’s relatively difficult to get an assault weapon on MA

  59. 59.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Fortunately it was just a hoax.

    Or, as the Cato Institute might describe it, a free market failure!

    Young white man with grievances can’t even buy ricin or anthrax through the mail, thanks to big-government nanny-ism! And if he should grow frustrated and resort to placebo mailings in an attempt to open a free and fair exchange of views, then jackbooted government agents will strongarm Glitterbombs.com for his address and sift through his garbage, seeking retribution under color of law! Even when that address is in a very white community of people with money, instead of some tenement hellhole teeming with brown folk and immigrants!

  60. 60.

    WaterGirl

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s very helpful, thanks. That’s awful about the seizure. I hope they get some serious jail time. I don’t know about in humans, but one of my earlier dogs started getting seizures and if he had a really bad one, he was never quite the same. Do we know if this did permanent damage to Kurt E? Even thinking about this makes me sick.

  61. 61.

    Raven

    Everyone who knew shit about this was against it until these dumb fucks 86d it.

    CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. – Jet fuels and children’s education don’t seem to have much in common except in Clayton County.

    A proposal at the state capitol would eliminate state sales taxes on jet fuel, and in Clayton County, those tax dollars make up a big part of the public education budget.

    That’s why county leaders met with parents on Saturday to discuss possibly losing $20 million over the next two years.

    In front of a packed cafeteria, Clayton schools superintendent Morcease Beasley said his district could lose a large portion of its budget.

    “It would be about 17 percent of our SPLOST budget,” he said. “Now which corporation, Delta included can maintain its level of operations with a reduction of 17 percent in its revenue? That is not moral. We wouldn’t allow Delta to experience it, so why would we allow our children to experience such?”

  62. 62.

    Steve in the ATL

    @efgoldman:

    It’s relatively difficult to get an assault weapon on MA

    Can you not just buy one in live free or die NH and drive back to MA?

  65. 65.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Raven: Clayton County is heavily black. Shocking that the Georgia legislature would try to screw them over bigly to help a giant corporation littlely.

  66. 66.

    Wag

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Interesting. The drug in question, diethylpropion, is a stimulant used primarily for weight loss. It is a pharmacological cousin of the amphetamines. Per the NIH;

    Diethylpropion is used as part of a short-term plan, along with a low calorie diet, for weight reduction. It is used in obese patients who have not been able to lose weight with diet and exercise …

  67. 67.

    Adam L Silverman

    @WaterGirl: Here are the details:
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/technology/social-media-attack-that-set-off-a-seizure-leads-to-an-arrest.html
    https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14959168/kurt-eichenwald-fbi-arrest-strobe-epilepsy-twitter
    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/man-arrested-for-allegedly-sending-newsweek-writer-a-seizure-inducing-tweet/

    And from when the attack occurred.

  71. 71.

    Wag

    @WaterGirl:

    Time to get the hell off Twitter. Twitter is a cesspool. Nothing on Twitter is positive enough to balance out the shit that flows out of its intertubes.

  76. 76.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Adam L Silverman: “Metabolic imbalance” – I love the way these very general phrases are used for…whatever.

    I recall a situation many years back when a locally rather well-known person was picked up running naked down the street. The cause, it was said, was a “chemical imbalance in his brain.”

  78. 78.

    cain

    @Wag:
    Depends.. I follow a lot of Free Software/Open Source developers and my twitter is just fine. So is my facebook. Gotta hang with the right people.

  79. 79.

    efgoldman

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Can you not just buy one in live free or die NH and drive back to MA?

    Sure. Or you could drive to PA or VA or GA or a gazillion other places. The key word was “relatively.” Takes some real effort. Also for the shlub in question, it would require leaving his mother’s basement.

  81. 81.

    clay

    @Adam L Silverman: Weirdos all around. From the link in that tweet:

    In a telephone call from Newsweek, Bornstein, Trump’s current doctor, said he would only answer questions if I could identify the location of Mount Sinai. Assuming he was referring to the world-renowned hospital, I replied “Manhattan.” He said that was incorrect, and asked the question again. I asked if he meant the actual Mount Sinai and he said he had not specified anything. I replied Mount Sinai was in Egypt, in the Sinai Peninsula. He said that was wrong and hung up. (While Mount Sinai is in Egypt, the location of the Mount Sinai described in the Bible as the location where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, if that is what Bornstein meant, is the subject of debate among religious scholars.)

  82. 82.

    efgoldman

    @efgoldman:

    Takes some real effort.

    Also wouldn’t surprise me if MA state troopers lurk in the parking lots of well-know, close-to-the border death dealers in NH and stop the cars w/MA plates when they cross back over the border. That’s what they do w/MA registrations they spot in the (much cheaper) NH state liquor stores.
    NH’s business model is based on getting non-residents to pay as much as possible.

  86. 86.

    J R in WV

    @magurakurin:

    Actually, reading about United staff repeatedly attacking customers of color, American flights with major problems, we quit flying with any airline domestically but Delta, if they can get us where we’re going.

    Abroad we go with Air France, which is a completely different experience.

  90. 90.

    Citizen Alan

    @clay:

    Surely it would be some form of anti-gamma radiation. Instead of green and physically powerful, it turned him into a bloated, sickly orange slob. And while the Hulk may be cognitively impaired, he remains kind to and protective of the weak instead of turning into a degenerate sadist.

  91. 91.

    PaulWartenberg

    I live in Florida.

    I actively avoid flying Delta because of the Atlanta Hub, an utter nightmare that nearly every flight out of my state has to go through (at least Southwest provides flights straight to where I need to go).

    With this move, I can see Delta relocating their Hub to say Nashville or Birmingham or Charlotte in order to retain control of the southeastern markets. But none of those airports are currently large enough to be THE Hub for the entire region, meaning Delta would have to “break up” their Hub and start thinking outside that box.

    SO DO IT, DELTA. DESTROY THE ATLANTA HUB. DO IT! DOOOOOOO EEEEEEEETTTTTT!

  94. 94.

    BruceJ

    @Adam L Silverman: Here’s the rest of the email: I, Lara Trump, the esteemed wife of President’s Son Eric Trump have acquired a Strongbox full of $18 (millions) USDollars that I wish to transfer out of Lagos Washington DC and earnestly request your help”

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