Sep
3
NEW ORLEANS - Enter at your own risk, New Orleans. That was the message from Mayor Ray Nagin, who gave residents the go-ahead to return to the Crescent City on Wednesday night at midnight, but with several warnings - many homes were without electricity or working toilets and a dusk-to-dawn curfew would still be in effect.
“It’s my humble opinion that the city is still in a very, very vulnerable state,” Nagin said Tuesday evening.
Millions fled the Gulf Coast in fear of Hurricane Gustav, and many were ready to get back home after spending several days in hot, overcrowded shelters. But as of late Tuesday, there were still nearly 800,000 homes in Louisiana without power, including about 77,000 in the city of New Orleans. Officials said the main transmission lines into southern Louisiana were crippled and they had no timetable of when much of the power might be restored.
The mayor said he had no choice but to begin allowing residents back because neighboring parishes were reopening Wednesday morning. But they, too, face the dangers of downed power lines and trees.
Still, residents who evacuated coastal areas want to return, realizing this was no Katrina, which killed 1,600 people in 2005. Nine deaths have been attributed to Gustav.
Early insurance industry estimates put the expected damage to covered properties at anywhere from $2 billion to $10 billion. That’s high, but well short of Katrina’s $41 billion.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said he won two promises from the federal government that will ease Louisiana’s recovery: the White House approved his “major disaster” declaration request, allowing residents of 34 parishes to receive federal funding for housing and recovery, and a strategic oil reserve will be opened to help reverse a severe shortage of fuel, particularly in south Louisiana.
Initial inspections showed little damage to the Gulf Coast’s extensive oil and gas installations, though resumption of production and refining could still take a few days. Reflecting confidence the industry suffered little damage, oil prices fell $5.75 a barrel.
Some were ready to celebrate, Big Easy style.
In the fishing village of Jean Lafitte, about 25 miles south of New Orleans, the mayor finally relaxed with a seafood boil of shrimp, corn and potatoes after three days of working on a temporary levee of two miles.
“Like the storm, I’m done,” said Mayor Tim Kerner, trying to hold open his heavy, sleep-deprived eyes. “We kept the town dry.”
There was no major partying on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street, though.
Few businesses were open, including grocers or gas stations. But there were signs of recovery. Utility workers, contractors and government employees were allowed to return Tuesday. Banks and other firms were to return Wednesday.
The city expected to begin this weekend bringing back the estimated 18,000 residents who didn’t have the means to evacuate on their own and were sent to shelters in Louisiana and other states on buses, trains or aircraft.
Power outages caused by Gustav forced officials to transport scores of patients from hospitals and other medical facilities for fear they couldn’t survive long without air conditioning.
The state’s secretary of Health and Hospitals, Alan Levine, told The Associated Press these patients were critically ill, and a few were from hospital burn units. As of Tuesday evening, none of the patients had died during the recent evacuation. Officials said early Tuesday evening that about 140 had been transferred, and the number grew during the evening.
Residents were just ready to get back home.
Curtis Helms, 47, left New Orleans on Saturday with only $20 in his pocket and the stripped T-shirt and denim shorts he was wearing. He was still wearing the same clothes Tuesday at a shelter in Alabama and said he only left because Nagin threatened to toss those caught on the street behind bars.
“Right now, I’d rather be home, even with no electricity,” Helms said.
Others questioned the need to evacuate. “Next time, it’s going to be bad because people who evacuated like us aren’t going to evacuate,” Catherine Jones, 53, of Silsbee, Texas, who spent three days on a cot at a church shelter with her disabled son. “They jumped the gun.”
Emergency officials strongly defended the decision to evacuate, saying that with something as unpredictable as a hurricane, it is better to be safe than sorry.
Officials noted that, yes, New Orleans’ levees held, and Gustav struck only a glancing blow. But when trees fell on homes, power lines went down and roads were washed out in parts of south Louisiana, there was no one around to get hurt.
“The reasons you’re not seeing dramatic stories of rescue is because we had a successful evacuation,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. “The only reason we don’t have more tales of people in grave danger is because everyone heeded the instructions to get out of town.”
Source
Jul
20
LYNWOOD, Ill. - Be careful if you have saggy pants in the south Chicago suburb of Lynwood. Village leaders have passed an ordinance that would levy $25 fines against anyone showing three inches or more of their underwear in public.
Eugene Williams is the mayor of Lynwood. He says young men walk around town half-dressed, keeping major retailers and economic development away. He calls the new law a hot topic.
The American Civil Liberties Union says the ordinance targets young men of color.
Young adults in the village, like 21-year-old Joe Klomes, say the new law infringes on their personal style. He says leaders should instead spend money on making the area look nicer.
Jul
20
LYNWOOD, Ill. - Be careful if you have saggy pants in the south Chicago suburb of Lynwood. Village leaders have passed an ordinance that would levy $25 fines against anyone showing three inches or more of their underwear in public.
Eugene Williams is the mayor of Lynwood. He says young men walk around town half-dressed, keeping major retailers and economic development away. He calls the new law a hot topic.
The American Civil Liberties Union says the ordinance targets young men of color.
Young adults in the village, like 21-year-old Joe Klomes, say the new law infringes on their personal style. He says leaders should instead spend money on making the area look nicer.
Jun
19
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - When gas station manager Roger Randolph realized it was costing him money each time someone filled up with $4-a-gallon gas, he hung a sign on his pumps: “No more credit cards.”
He may be the first in West Virginia to ban plastic, but gas station operators nationwide are reporting similar woes as higher prices translate into higher credit card fees the managers must pay, squeezing profits at the pump.
“The more they buy, the more we lose,” said Randolph, who manages Mr. Ed’s Chevron in St. Albans. “Gas prices go up, and our profits go down.”
His complaints target the so-called interchange fee - a percentage of the sale price paid to credit card companies on every transaction. The percentage is fixed - usually at just under 2 percent - but the dollar amount of the fee rises with the price of the goods or services.
As gas tops $4 a gallon, that pushes fees toward 10 cents a gallon. Now stations, which typically mark up gasoline by 11 to 12 cents a gallon, are seeing profits shrink or even reverse.
In a good month, Randolph’s small operation would yield a $60 profit on gasoline sales. But that’s been buried as soaring prices forced the station to pay about $500 a month in interchange fees.
“At these prices, people aren’t making any money,” said Jeff Lenard, spokesman for the Alexandria, Va.-based National Association of Convenience Stores. “It’s brutal.”
Lenard’s group reports convenience stores paid roughly $7.6 billion in credit card fees last year, while making $3.4 billion in profits.
The way interchange fees are structured has long annoyed retailers, prompting calls for relief.
Legislation pending in the U.S. House and Senate would allow merchants to bargain collectively with major credit and debit card companies.
The National Retail Federation says gas prices point to the unfairness of the system: Gas stations are paying more in interchange fees because the price of gas has gone up, while the cost of processing credit or debit cards remains the same.
“We have always contended that it doesn’t cost Visa and MasterCard any more to process a $1,000 transaction than it does a $100 transaction,” said J. Craig Shearman, vice president of government affairs at the retail federation.
The credit card companies say fees are just part of the cost of doing business.
MasterCard has capped interchange fees for gas purchases of $50 or more, said company spokeswoman Sharon Gamsin.
Accepting MasterCard also gives gas stations “increased sales, greater security and convenience, lower labor costs, and speed for their customers at the pump,” Gamsin said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Visa argues that the fees are offset “by the tangible benefits to stations and their customers, such as the ability to pay at the pump,” the company said in a statement to the AP.
Absent congressional action, gas stations are seeking other relief, including discounts to customers who pay in cash.
Shipley Energy, which owns 23 Tom’s Convenience stores in Pennsylvania, has partnered with a new credit card company, Revolution, which charges smaller interchange fees.
Bob Astor, wholesale fuels business manager for Shipley, said those savings get passed on to customers as cheaper prices at the pump. Customers who pay with the card get an automatic 10 cent discount.
Gas stations in South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey and Arizona are among those offering cash customers a discount, with savings from four cents to 10 cents per gallon.
The Connecticut General Assembly recently passed legislation to make it easier for stations to offer discounts for cash purchases, bidding to cut consumer prices by 10 to 12 cents on average.
Discounts for cash customers may not, however, be the stations’ salvation.
The National Association of Convenience Stores reports about two thirds of transactions at gas stations were with credit or debit cards in 2007, a figure expected to rise this year.
“The problem with cash discounts is, if people don’t have the cash or don’t want to spend the cash, you’ve inconvenienced them,” Lenard said.
The experiment at Mr. Ed’s Chevron, though, has paid off so far.
The station has been in business for 44 years and the ban on plastic hasn’t scared many people off, Randolph said.
“We’ve got generations of customers who come here,” he said. “Most of them have accepted it.”
Source
May
21
SECAUCUS, N.J. - The Chicago Bulls expected to be in the playoffs, not the lottery. This will ease the sting a little. The Bulls won the NBA’s draft lottery Tuesday night, giving them the right to choose between star freshmen Michael Beasley and Derrick Rose.
Coming off a miserable season and still without a coach, the Bulls vaulted from the No. 9 spot, where they had just a 1.7 percent chance of landing the top choice.
“After this season, we needed a break and I think we just got one tonight,” said Steve Schanwald, the Bulls’ executive vice president of business operations who represented them on the podium.
Chicago will almost certainly choose between Beasley, the Kansas State forward who averaged 26.2 points and an NCAA-best 12.4 rebounds, or Rose, the point guard who carried Memphis within minutes of the national title.
“We’ll have an opportunity to get close to those guys. We’ll really take a long look at what makes the most sense for our basketball team,” executive vice president of basketball operations John Paxson said on a conference call. “Having the pick puts you in a unique position to make your team better.
“I certainly understand this was pure luck. Now it’s our job to make the most of it.”
The Miami Heat, who had a 25 percent chance of landing the top pick thanks to their NBA-worst 15-67 record, fell to second. The Minnesota Timberwolves will go third.
The Seattle SuperSonics, who moved up to No. 2 last year to pick Rookie of the Year Kevin Durant, fell from second to fourth. Memphis will pick fifth, followed by New York, the Los Angeles Clippers, Milwaukee, Charlotte and New Jersey.
Indiana has the 11th pick, followed by Sacramento, Portland and Golden State. The lottery settled the top three spots. The remainder of the first 14 picks are determined inverse order of their record.
The NBA draft will be held June 26 in New York.
Chicago came into the season with high expectations after reaching the Eastern Conference semifinals last season. But the Bulls never recovered from a dismal start and finished 33-49. They fired coach Scott Skiles on Christmas Eve and have already decided not to retain interim coach Jim Boylan.
The Bulls failed to land the coach they wanted, Mike D’Antoni, but the position became much more appealing Tuesday, giving them a chance to draft first for only the second time. The Bulls, who took Elton Brand No. 1 in 1999, could turn this time to hometown star Rose, who D’Antoni said was like Jason Kidd with a jump shot.
“Everybody was picking us to go to the conference finals last year, actually to the NBA finals because we won 49 games the year before and pushed the Detroit Pistons to six games in the second round last year and we have a very exciting good corps of young players, and we added Joakim Noah to that mix,” Schanwald said. “Now we will get a chance to add another great player, a really great player. So it is very exciting for us.”
Chicago got the No. 2 and 9 picks the last two years from New York as a result of the trade for Eddy Curry. Schanwald gave a fist pump early on when he realized he would move up, then took a deep breath and pumped both fists after beating out the Heat, represented by All-Star guard Dwyane Wade.
Only twice have teams with the worst record won the lottery since the current format began in 1994. Though the lottery is weighted to give teams with the poorest records the best chance to win, the long shots keep finding a way.
Last year, Portland and Seattle moved up to grab the top spots, taking Greg Oden and Durant. Again, two star freshmen are the top prizes.
“Obviously the lottery as a precursor to the draft is a time of great hope,” commissioner David Stern said.
The Bulls already had a busy offseason planned. Besides hiring a coach, they have to make contract offers to restricted free agents Luol Deng and Ben Gordon.
Now they’ve got another decision: Beasley or Rose?
“As I sit here tonight, what I think is again you’ve got two players who are different and unique,” Paxson said. “One is point guard. The point guard is a natural leadership position on a team. It’s something every team covets. And the other … just has the unique ability to put the ball in the basket, just will be a go-to scorer.
“I’m certainly not going to throw myself into this thing and do something quickly.”
Nor will the Heat. President Pat Riley likes both players, but implied the pick could even be traded.
“Based on their performance and what they did in one season, both of them showed that they can help their team win,” Riley said. “Both showed enough physical maturity to be dominant at times as a 19-year-old. All of the intangibles when it comes to competitive desire and when it comes to leadership and character and all of those things, we still have a lot of work to do in terms of a lot of players in the draft.”
The Bulls’ surprising victory should quickly restore interest in the underachieving team. Interviewed immediately following the result, Schanwald read the number for callers to buy season tickets.
“I thought it was a waste of time. I thought coming here was an absolute waste of time. I knew I would get a great meal out of it, but I thought it was a waste of time,” Schanwald said of the Bulls’ chances.
“I’m on top of the world. I feel great. It’s the most exciting day of my life.”
(This version CORRECTS Beasley’s stats).)
Source
Apr
25
ON DEADLINE: Bill Clinton is no brother
Filed Under Most Pepular, News | Leave a Comment
WASHINGTON - Imagine, for just a minute, the pain of America’s first black president.
Not Barack Obama - Bill Clinton.
That’s about the only explanation for Clinton’s lack of brotherly behavior lately: He’s in pain.
He is a figurative black man watching an actual black man soak in all the love that black voters used to save for him.
Suddenly, he looks oh so white.
The former president’s love affair with black America hasn’t soured to the point that he’ll be chased out of his office in Harlem. But black people might revoke Clinton’s honorary brother card if, out of his pain, he keeps hating on Obama. He’s treating the Illinois senator like an unworthy heir to his racial legacy.
At first, Clinton’s slips of the lip about black voting habits and the like could be chalked up to election-year politics. Why wouldn’t an ex-president try to cajole his party’s most loyal voters into supporting his candidate of choice? Especially when that candidate is his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The problem is, nobody bothered to tell Clinton that honorary blackness is also temporary. No matter how much he’s done on the subject of race, his brother privileges are always up for renewal.
Clinton learned this the hard way - by watching black people throw support to Obama en masse while kicking aside Hillary Clinton’s complaints about the man. If anybody knows what Obama is doing to seduce black voters, it is Bill Clinton. After all, Clinton pushed the very same buttons to claim the black vote for himself when he first ran for the presidency 16 years ago.
“I think that they played the race card on me. We now know, from memos from the (Obama) campaign, that they planned it all along,” Clinton groused to the aptly named radio station WHYY on the day before the Pennsylvania primary.
He did not produce the memos or any evidence that they exist, and the Obama campaign denies the accusation.
Still, Clinton accused the Illinois senator of putting an unfair spin on his comparison of Obama’s South Carolina primary victory to Jesse Jackson’s caucus wins there two decades earlier. Black leaders, black voters and most impartial observers in the media saw Clinton’s remarks for what they were - a brazen attempt to marginalize Obama as a “black candidate.”
What gets to Clinton, more than anything, is the fact that even black voters who question the Illinois senator’s “blackness” still shield Obama against a slap from somebody outside the family - in this case, Clinton himself.
In a game of race cards, Obama wins.
“These were words that came out of his mouth,” Obama said of Clinton, “not words that came out of mine.”
Situations like this give blacks a firm impression that the Clintons “are committed to doing everything they possibly can to damage Obama to the point that he could never win,” Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., told The New York Times.
“When he was going through his impeachment problems, it was the black community that bellied up to the bar,” Clyburn said. “I think black folks feel strongly that this is a strange way for President Clinton to show his appreciation.”
Just days before the Pennsylvania primary, Obama dipped into the Clinton racial playbook of old when he blunted Hillary Clinton’s attacks with a simple brush of his hand on his shoulder, mimicking rapper Jay-Z in his music video, “Dirt Off Your Shoulder.” The gesture - clearly deliberate because Obama did it twice then grinned all big - spoke to black voters just like Clinton did in 1992 by playing a saxophone on “The Arsenio Hall Show” from behind a pair of dark sunglasses.
The message then, and now, was, “I’m the one to vote for, black people, because I’m cool like that.”
Clinton remembers a time when he could do no wrong in black people’s eyes. Up until the day he left office seven years ago, most blacks agreed with author Toni Morrison’s observation that Clinton was the nation’s first black president because it would be hard to find anybody who could be blacker than Clinton and occupy the White House at the same time.
Along came Obama - who, ironically, is of mixed race - and immediately, Clinton lost his black street cred.
Even Morrison thought so. She clarified the first-black-president title she’d bestowed on Clinton, and embraced Obama.
While Clinton bellyaches about Obama’s good fortunes with black people, Obama basks in the support of powerful blacks like billionaire Oprah Winfrey, who dared anybody to suggest her choice of candidates was purely a black thing.
“Don’t play me small,” she said.
It’s Clinton who looks small. He continues to whine about the trouble he’s caused himself.
“You got to really go some to play the race card with me,” Clinton spewed on WHYY. “My office is in Harlem. And Harlem voted for Hillary, by the way.”
Off mike, Clinton asked: “I don’t think I have to take any (expletive) from anybody on that. Do you?”
Actually, sir, you do. But black people feel your pain
Source:
Apr
22
Hamas: No plan to recognize Israel
Filed Under CNN News, News, Top Stories | Leave a Comment
JERUSALEM (CNN) — After talks with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Hamas’ exiled leader Khalid Meshaal said Monday the militant group has no plans to recognize Israel.
Former President Jimmy Carter, above, held meetings with exiled militant Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal.
“We agree on the [Palestinian] state with the borders of June 4, 1967, Jerusalem as its capital, fully sovereign without settlements, the right of return, but without the recognition of Israel,” Meshaal said at a news conference in Damascus, Syria.
Earlier in the day, Carter said that Hamas is prepared to accept peace with Israel if the Palestinian people approve any agreement that may be negotiated with the Jewish state.
Carter’s comments came after controversial meetings Friday and Saturday in Damascus, Syria, with exiled militant Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal.
“If President [Mahmoud] Abbas of the Palestinians and Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert reach an agreement for peace, and if it is submitted to the Palestinians and the Palestinians approve it… Hamas will accept it,” Carter said in a Monday interview with CNN.
Carter’s series of meetings with top Hamas officials this past week have drawn condemnation from the U.S. and Israeli governments for engaging in diplomacy with a group they consider a terrorist organization.
Carter’s tour of the Middle East has also included a meeting in Cairo, Egypt, with two senior Hamas politicians before his meetings with Meshaal.
“I’m not a negotiator, I’m just trying to understand different opinions and communicate, provide communications between people that won’t communicate with each other,” Carter said Tuesday at the beginning of his trip.
Most Israeli officials have refused to meet Carter during his trip, angry over his insistence that Israel should talk to Hamas. Many Israelis disagree with Carter’s observations about Israeli policies toward Palestinians in his recent book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”
U.S. and Israeli officials believe Carter’s meetings with Hamas will achieve little, and could actually harm the Middle East peace process.
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“Regrettably, Hamas will try to take political advantage of this,” Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch told CNN on Friday. However, he added, “I think President Carter’s sincere — this man worked hard on peace.”
Later Friday, at a State Department briefing in Washington, spokesman Sean McCormack said, “I don’t think people are going to confuse the efforts of a private citizen … with the very clear policies of the United States government.”
“We think it is not useful for people to be running to Hamas at this point and having meetings with Hamas,” said U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.
For the Israelis, a military solution is an elusive one — but reaching out to Hamas, Israel insists, will not bring peace.
“Hamas is conducting war against the citizens of Israel,” said Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to Britain. “What do you say to people who say: ‘Why don’t you talk, try and talk, and not to shoot?’ ? It sounds very good but the question is, at what stage do you do that?”
And McCormack said Friday: “We find it very odd that one would encourage to have a conversation between the Israeli government and Hamas, which doesn’t even recognize the right of the Israeli government to exist. So how can you have — is that really the basis of a conversation?”
Carter, the man who helped broker the historic peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in the late 1970s, has said he’s simply on a “study mission” to support peace, democracy, and human rights in the region.
“It’s my dream and my hope, that someday in my lifetime, hopefully this year, we’ll see a major breakthrough,” Carter said
Source:
Mar
18
Tar Heels No. 1 in final AP Top 25 poll
Filed Under Sports | Leave a Comment
North Carolina, the overall No. 1 seed for the NCAA tournament, finished No. 1 Monday in The Associated Press’ final poll of the season.
It was the sixth time, and first since 1998, the Tar Heels (32-2) led the final rankings. UCLA and Kentucky have finished No. 1 in the final poll eight times and Duke has done it seven. Ohio State was No. 1 in the final poll last season and the Buckeyes went on to lose to Florida in the championship game.
North Carolina, the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season and tournament champions, was No. 1 for the last three weeks of the season and for a total of 14 weeks, including the preseason poll.
The only others to reach No. 1 this season were Memphis for five weeks (three unanimous) and Tennessee for one week.
A record 49 schools were ranked this season, one more than in 1992-93. The poll started in the 1948-49 season and expanded to its current 25-team format in 1989-90.
North Carolina received 53 first-place votes and 1,779 points from the 72-member national media panel.
Memphis, UCLA and Kansas, the other No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament, were second through fourth and were the only other schools to receive first-place votes.
Memphis (33-1), the Conference USA regular-season and tournament champions, was No. 1 on 13 ballots and had 1,710 points. UCLA (31-3), which swept the Pac-10 titles, had five first-place votes and Kansas (31-3), which shared the Big 12 regular-season title with Texas and then beat the Longhorns in the tournament championship game, was No. 1 on one ballot.
Tennessee was fifth after changing places with Kansas from last week and the top 10 was completed by Wisconsin, Texas, Georgetown Duke and Stanford. Butler was 11th, followed by Xavier, Louisville, Drake, Notre Dame, Connecticut, Pittsburgh, Michigan State, Vanderbilt and Purdue.
The last five ranked teams were Washington State, Clemson, Davidson, Gonzaga and Marquette.
Clemson (24-9) moved back into the poll after being out for one week following its win over Duke in the ACC semifinals and a loss to North Carolina in the title game.
Indiana (25-7) fell out of the poll for the first time this season. The Hoosiers, who were 22nd last week, lost to Minnesota in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten tournament, their third loss in the last four games.
Ten schools were ranked in every poll this season, with North Carolina, UCLA, Memphis and Kansas spending the entire season ranked eighth or higher. The others ranked all season were Georgetown, Tennessee, Michigan State, Washington State, Duke and Texas.
Indiana, Butler and Marquette were ranked for all but one week. Kentucky, Syracuse, Virginia and Kent State were this season’s one-week wonders making just a lone appearance in the Top 25.
Nine schools from the 16-team Big East were ranked this season. The Pac-10 had seven and the ACC and Southeastern Conference had six each.
Source: Yahoo News
Mar
18
Cyrus’ child is no Destiny
Filed Under Entertainment | Leave a Comment
LOS ANGELES - Hannah Montana is leaving destiny behind.
Miley Cyrus, whose given name is Destiny Hope Cyrus, has filed papers in Los Angeles Superior Court to change her full legal name to Miley Ray Cyrus.
The 15-year-old singer and TV star is the daughter of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, who filed the papers last Friday with wife Leticia. Her father writes in the filing that the request was “to make her commonly used name the same as her legal name.”
The name-change request was first reported by the celebrity Web site TMZ.com.
Miley Cyrus has said her father gave her the nickname “Smiley Miley” as a baby because of her sunny disposition. On the Disney Channel tween hit “Hannah Montana,” she plays a teen who hides her singing stardom.
Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus are hosting the Country Music Television ceremony together at Nashville’s Belmont University on April 14.
Source: Yahoo News
Mar
18
Delta pilots say no deal with Northwest
Filed Under Business | Leave a Comment
ATLANTA - Delta Air Lines’ pilots union has told company executives it can’t agree on seniority issues with its counterpart at Northwest Airlines, raising serious doubts about the prospect of a combination of the two companies as Delta prepares to overhaul its operations.
The disclosure was made Monday afternoon in a letter from the head of the pilots union at Delta, Lee Moak, to rank-and-file Delta pilots.
Moak said the union will not “chase a transaction for transaction’s sake.”
The letter does not mention Northwest, but describes the union that Delta’s pilots had been negotiating with as the only one they were focused on talking with. Multiple officials close to the talks have said in recent months that the other company was Northwest Airlines Corp.
The letter talks about the discussions with the other carrier in the past tense, suggesting at least for now there won’t be further talks.
The two carriers don’t need a pilot seniority integration deal in advance to move forward with a combination, but Delta Air Lines Inc. executives have said they would not move forward with any combination unless the seniority of their employees was protected.
A Delta-Northwest combination deal could move forward without a pilot seniority agreement, but that would be up to the boards of the two companies.
At least one airline analyst, Calyon Securities’ Ray Neidl, sounded doubtful that will happen, at least in the near term.
“Northwest is an attractive target for a number of airlines. Delta probably would have been the best fit,” Neidl said. “At this point, now I’m not sure if anybody is willing to pull the trigger in this presidential election year.”
Seniority is important for pilots because those at the top of the list get first choice on vacations, the best routes and the bigger planes that they get paid more for flying. It’s also the reason pilots don’t often leave to go work for another airline.
Moak said that this past weekend, he told union leaders he had received a communication from union leaders at the other carrier.
Moak said the other carrier stated that it was only willing to discuss its latest proposal, which Delta’s pilots union believes would jeopardize the seniority and career expectations of Delta pilots.
Moak did not detail the other carrier’s proposal. Several people close to the talks have said Northwest pilot union negotiators had previously proposed putting thousands of younger Delta pilots at the bottom of the merged company’s pilot seniority list.
“I declined and informed the MEC and Delta’s senior executives that the two MECs were unable to reach an agreement on an acceptable seniority list integration,” Moak wrote.
Moak suggested Delta pilot leaders are frustrated that “the results of their efforts will never be actualized.”
Dave Stevens, head of the pilots union at Eagan, Minn.-based Northwest, said he believes “an equitable method exists to combine a seniority list and to achieve a consolidation that is mutually beneficial to both pilot groups.”
Delta spokeswoman Betsy Talton said in an e-mail to The Associated Press late Monday that the company is currently not providing updates on a strategic review by its board of directors, which the company has previously said could include a possible consolidation transaction. She said a special committee of the board remains active. Northwest spokeswoman Tammy Lee declined to comment.
In his letter, Moak said it is uncertain what will happen next for Delta with oil prices recently having cracked $111 a barrel.
“In broad terms, Delta’s senior executive team and the Delta board of directors decide the direction of the company, and that direction may or may not include consolidation,” Moak said.
Delta plans to announce Tuesday an overhaul to its business plan to deal with soaring fuel prices. CEO Richard Anderson said in a message to employees Friday that the changes will be “comprehensive,” but he did not provide details, including whether the plan will include job cuts.
Delta, the nation’s third-largest carrier, is based in Atlanta.
A combination of Delta and Northwest, which at one point had been projected to be worth $20 billion, would create the world’s largest airline in terms of traffic.
Not too long ago, Delta and Northwest seemed all but certain to announce a combination. But the impasse over seniority involving the pilots unions became a major sticking point.
People close to the Delta-Northwest talks have said the pilots unions had agreed on a comprehensive joint contract, a significant equity stake for pilots and big pay raises for some, but had not been able to agree to how seniority for the 12,000 pilots would work under a combined carrier.
Delta shares fell 37 cents, or 3.9 percent, to $9.23 in trading Monday while Northwest shares lost 59 cents, or 6.2 percent, to $8.92
Source: Yahoo News