Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/23/passenger-on-plane-confronts-r.html
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Not to defend a GOP legislator, because fuck GOP legislators, but taxpayers’ money, the government’s money, and government employees’ money are three distinct things, and pretending that they’re all the same is a move straight out of the right-wing playbook.
If that guy paid for his seat with his own money, he has a right to it.
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Can’t everyone see that he’s an important man doing important things in an important manner? Who let this rabble up here?
Also, has the Republican party started caring about optics all of a sudden? I figure this is GOP business as usual, ad infinitum.
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He didn’t pay for it with his own money.
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The office bought him a coach ticket but he got upgraded for free because of how frequently he flies.
Just spoke with an ethics officer in the House who says accepting the upgrade does not violate the rules, as it’s an equal opportunity offering–he is receiving this the way any other person with this many frequent flyer miles would, not specifically because he is a Congressman
Let’s be clear. It’s the principle of the thing. It’s as crass as eating food from the soup line you’re serving to the poor, when you have food at home.
A nice gesture would have been to tell the steward to see if there were any passengers for whom flying was a unique experience due to finances, and offer it to them.
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Good for the passenger for confronting this tone-deaf and arrogant GOP politician.*
[* redundant, I know]
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More like “eating from the soup kitchen that stopped serving poor people a month ago when you have food at home.”
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The Model of shaming TGOP douche bags has been proven to fail, 100% of the time I might add. We have to hit’em where it hurts, in the ballot box!
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Silence is “fair enough”? Oh no, no, no.
Except the right wing was literally attacking Maxine Waters for this yesterday
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Well, then maybe she oughta get up, then.
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the point is that he’s on the government dime (and probably relatively well off to boot), while other government employees aren’t getting paid because of the choices the GOP is making - prioritizing a wall over the well being of people who are impacted by the shutdown.
And presumable his own money comes from his paycheck which comes from his job as a legislator… a group of government employees who have no been impacted by the shutdown…
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Every time I come up with something new in my head that would be completely wrong, backwards, hateful and condescending for someone to do to me, within the month, usually much sooner, the GOP scrambles to create another waste of life that does just that.
These people aren’t even in a race to the bottom. They found the bottom and dug a thousand foot pit past that already. How does a political party so perfectly raise people like this? It’s a real skill to create somebody with absolutely no morals and no soul that actively wants to fuck over their own species.
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A government that’s one third less funded is one third less legitimate. If these people want to be rulers of the ashes, they’d better understand that the ash have other plans.
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Ha! You’re expecting a republican congresscritter to have tact and class? Fat chance on that!
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You know, I could have seen Senator Nancy Kassebaum having done it, because she was a good person, but yeah…the GOP is not the same anymore.
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And his frequent flyer miles were
Paid for by tax-payer’s in the first place
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Considering all the egregious amount of bullshit that these people have been a party to, hassling them for getting a first class upgrade seems like really small potatoes. Maybe we could save our outrage for things that actually matter. If it’s all outrage all the time, people will stop listening.
The point that some would make is…we can have both. Which is true.
My point would be…allow others to be outraged by what outrages them. I concur this is somewhere between not an issue at all and small potatoes for me; but if this is the hill someone else wants to die on…let them.
I predict that politicians (installed by, and servicing their ultra-wealthy donors) will eventually travel exclusively on government (taxpayer) funded private jets in order to eliminate the embarrassing risk of encountering angry citizens who are being exploited by the policies they enact.
