Delta Airlines cuts ties with the NRA, angers, alienates conservatives, risks major state tax break (exemption, office)
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"Remember when companies tried to stay out of politics? I’d imagine Delta Air Lines is recalling those days very fondly. The airline bowed to pressure from liberal activists to stop offering a group discount to the National Rifle Association’s annual convention. Now it’s facing a backlash from Georgia Republicans. Given that Delta’s headquarters and biggest hub are in Atlanta, that’s a big problem.
Delta is wanly protesting that it wasn’t trying to make a political statement but to keep out of politics altogether. But it ended the discount in response to a political pressure campaign. And the company made a point of announcing its decision on Twitter, rather than quietly informing the NRA. If anyone at Delta thought that this wouldn’t be taken as a swipe at the NRA, that person really needs to make some time to meet a few human beings while visiting our planet....
I don’t, of course, mean to suggest that a single boycott will lead to the dissolution of the Republic. The danger lies in the totalizing impulse it signifies, in which every activity, no matter how small, takes on some greater political implication. If we decide to make every single thing in our lives political, we risk becoming so estranged that we can no longer resolve our disputes through politics."
This article is just plain out silly
1.
Sooo.... It's "political" to remove discount from NRA............ but it not "political" to fact the NRA discount even exist in the first place. If anything Delta not giving discount to the NRA is Delta getting more out politics and being neutral .......
The right wing has become so off the wall there attacking companies for not giving them benefits that they not entitle to even have.
Then deem supporting their view as not being political...... but not supporting their political views as being political.
second off.... "Remember when companies tried to stay out of politics?" what heck do you think the NRA is itself. The Gun companies fund the NRA.
Quote:
"In its early days, the National Rifle Association was a grassroots social club that prided itself on independence from corporate influence.
While that is still part of the organization's core function, today less than half of the NRA's revenues come from program fees and membership dues.
The bulk of the group's money now comes in the form of contributions, grants, royalty income, and advertising, much of it originating from gun industry sources.
Since 2005, the gun industry and its corporate allies have given between $20 million and $52.6 million to it through the NRA Ring of Freedom sponsor program. Donors include firearm companies like Midway USA, Springfield Armory Inc, Pierce Bullet Seal Target Systems, and Beretta USA Corporation. Other supporters from the gun industry include Cabala's, Sturm Rugar & Co, and Smith & Wesson.
The NRA also made $20.9 million — about 10 percent of its revenue — from selling advertising to industry companies marketing products in its many publications in 2010, according to the IRS Form 990.
Additionally, some companies donate portions of sales directly to the NRA. Crimson Trace, which makes laser sights, donates 10 percent of each sale to the NRA. Taurus buys an NRA membership for everyone who buys one of their guns. Sturm Rugar gives $1 to the NRA for each gun sold, which amounts to millions. The NRA's revenues are intrinsically linked to the success of the gun business.
The NRA Foundation also collects hundreds of thousands of dollars from the industry, which it then gives to local-level organizations for training and equipment purchases."
"Remember when companies tried to stay out of politics? I’d imagine Delta Air Lines is recalling those days very fondly. The airline bowed to pressure from liberal activists to stop offering a group discount to the National Rifle Association’s annual convention. Now it’s facing a backlash from Georgia Republicans. Given that Delta’s headquarters and biggest hub are in Atlanta, that’s a big problem.
Delta is wanly protesting that it wasn’t trying to make a political statement but to keep out of politics altogether. But it ended the discount in response to a political pressure campaign. And the company made a point of announcing its decision on Twitter, rather than quietly informing the NRA. If anyone at Delta thought that this wouldn’t be taken as a swipe at the NRA, that person really needs to make some time to meet a few human beings while visiting our planet....
I don’t, of course, mean to suggest that a single boycott will lead to the dissolution of the Republic. The danger lies in the totalizing impulse it signifies, in which every activity, no matter how small, takes on some greater political implication. If we decide to make every single thing in our lives political, we risk becoming so estranged that we can no longer resolve our disputes through politics."
I can't believe how thin-skinned that editorial is.
Conservatives really care about their discount privilege.
So much that they will break the 1st amendment and abuse power in corrupt ways to pressure a company to get it back in a tit-for-tat move.
Delta isn't acting corruptly. They aren't abusing power. They are practicing their rights. They are also moving to a more moderate position... no discounts to any politically divisive groups.
Cagle, however, abused his power, acted in a corrupt manner, and used the power of our great state to violate Delta's 1st amendment rights.
I tend to have more respect for new sources that factually call out abuses of power in their editorials.
What you say. My observation is that many posters are incredibly naive about the long game in politics and what major corporations consider paramount to their long term interests. It is why so many sound like the sky is falling.
Cagle needs to put a stopper on Williams. The consumer tax bill got passed more easily than it would have right at the moment. Delta's showboating with their NRA move, gave Cagle a chance to polish his conservative bonafides and Delta got slapped as a result. Still Delta is anchored to Atlanta. It would take much, much more for them to leave ATL, lock, stock and maintenance facilities. Delta will get their fuel sales tax soon enough.
GE did not leave CT over politics, it was economics. GP did not leave OR due to politics, it was about business goals and synergies. Porsche, NA and MB, NA came to ATL because their businesses could thrive, not because of gay pride, gun control or whatever. Georgia has been among the top if not the top state for business in the U.S., for most of this decade. Despite Georgia's stifling, backwards and neanderthal like conservative bent to its politics.
Amazon is about being the market, not just dominating the market. That is the ball their eye is on. They will not let this little spat distract. If ATL for HQ2 can help Amazon further their goal of being markets, they will come.
B2R be nice in 'splainin things, the ways of the adult world. I am being blunt. We are effectively, saying the same thing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll
Yeah, I certainly agree with those sentiments that it is extremely short-sighted to not want the best for the state economically because of fear of what may happen politically.
But to the conservative OTP Georgians who don't want corporations like Delta and (especially) Amazon to execute massive expansions in Atlanta, many of them really don't care about the overall positive impact on the state's economy because many residents (particularly out in isolated rural areas) may not always directly feel the positive impacts from the economic expansions that continue to happen in Atlanta.
Add in the anxiety of outer-suburban, exurban and rural conservatives about how the ongoing economic expansion in Atlanta can, and likely will, further add to the ongoing demographic changes that are in progress around the Atlanta region and you have the motivation for many deeply conservative exurban and rural residents to want to push back against an Atlanta-based economic expansion that they feel both saps their economic prospects and political strength. To them, economic expansion in metro Atlanta comes at the expense of their rural and exurban political and economic power.
Many (though definitely not all) outer-suburban, exurban and rural residents look at the economic expansion in Atlanta and see a future in Georgia that looks like the present in such states as Illinois, New York, Maryland and even Virginia where population growth in urban areas has led to the dominance of progressive urban and metropolitan interests in those states' political climates at the expense of conservative rural interests.
I agree that what Casey Cagle did was certainly not helpful to the state's economic prospects.
But Casey Cagle was actually pushing for the Delta fuel tax exemption to be voted on and passed through the Georgia Senate but could not get the support of the Republican senate caucus to vote on the larger tax cut that was pending with the fuel tax exemption for Delta after Delta had announced that it was dropping discounts for NRA members, which many (if not a majority) of Georgia state legislators either are or are aligned with through other even more pro-gun organizations.
(...To run for office as a Republican in politically deep-red states like Georgia, one often must be aligned strongly with the NRA and/or other pro-gun groups that are further to the right on the political/cultural/social spectrum than the NRA... Being pro-gun pretty much is a pre-requisite for a successful career in Republican politics at the state level in most red states, including Georgia.)
Georgia Republican state Senator and fellow gubernatorial candidate Michael Williams of Cumming, who just absolutely detests and despises and hates Cagle with every fiber in his being and viciously attacks Cagle every day to his face in the well of the Georgia Senate, has attested that Cagle was pushing for the Georgia Senate to vote on the state income tax cuts with the Delta fuel tax exemption attached to them, but could not get the Georgia Senate Republican caucus to vote on the tax cuts with the fuel tax exemption attached to them after Delta announced their disassociation with the NRA.
So Cagle, knowing that he did not have the support of the Senate Republican caucus to push through the state income tax cuts with the Delta fuel tax exemption attached to them, had the Delta fuel tax exemption ripped out of the state income tax cut bill and announced on Twitter that he would not support the passage of any tax cut bill with the Delta fuel tax exemption in it until Delta reinstates discounts for NRA members.
Cagle, who generally pretty much is the corporate community's hand-picked candidate for the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race, took the public stance against Delta as a way of attempting to outmaneuver a disruptive hard-right Trump-style Republican gubernatorial candidate like Michael Williams, whom Cagle and Georgia legislative leadership knew would run with this Delta/NRA issue and use it to appeal to the GOP's base of social conservatives if a business-oriented moderate like Cagle did not get to it first.
Cagle basically took this public stand against Delta over their disassociation with the NRA as a way of outmaneuvering a hard-right Trump-style business-averse candidate like Williams (who would go on an active public campaign against corporations like Delta and Amazon if given the opportunity after rising in the polls) and to firm up support from the Georgia Republican Party's base of social conservative voters who have not always been truly comfortable with a candidate and politician like Cagle whom see view as being too moderate.
Yea, remained neutral by removing themselves from the debate via a PRESS RELEASE for the THIRTEEN PEOPLE who used the discount in 2017. lulz
Hey Delta, no one included you in the debate in the debate in the first place. Chest thumping at its finest and still shocked at the number of people who are so naive in taking the bait.
Yea, remained neutral by removing themselves from the debate via a PRESS RELEASE for the THIRTEEN PEOPLE who used the discount in 2017. lulz
Hey Delta, no one included you in the debate in the debate in the first place. Chest thumping at its finest and still shocked at the number of people who are so naive in taking the bait.
Taking what bait? What are we being baited into?
And are NRA supporters also "taking the bait"? Please don't say no.
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