Total Number of Delta Passengers Who Used an NRA Discount: 13
Costliest virtue signal ever?
Caving to the online mob can be mighty costly as Delta airlines learned Thursday.
Monday, Georgia’s Senate blocked a fuel tax incentive bill designed to help out Delta after the airline capitulated to the demands of gun control activists and canceled discounts for NRA members.
Republican legislators promised to strip tax incentives from the bill unless Delta made up with the NRA and reinstated the discount. That never happened. Thursday, Georgia’s Senate passed the bill, but without lucrative fuel tax incentives for Delta.
Amazingly, only 13 Delta passengers have ever utilized the NRA discount, making Delta’s decision a frontrunner in the ‘We Blew Millions on Pointless Virtue Signalling’ race.
USA Today reported Friday:
The Georgia legislature removed a jet-fuel tax break from a larger tax package Thursday. Lawmakers were upset that Delta, which is headquartered in Atlanta, dropped the National Rifle Association from a discount-fare program in an effort to appear neutral on gun policy.
After the firestorm, Delta will review all its marketing programs to avoid those that might become political, CEO Ed Bastian announced Friday.
But the airline said only 13 passengers ever bought tickets with an NRA discount. That translates into each discount costing the airline about $3 million in tax breaks.
“We are in the process of a review to end group discounts for any group of a politically divisive nature,” Bastian said in a note to employees.
Delta attempted a Swiss maneuver, saying they were simply trying to stay neutral:
“Delta’s decision reflects the airline’s neutral status in the current national debate over gun control amid recent school shootings. Out of respect for our customers and employees on both sides, Delta has taken this action to refrain from entering this debate and focus on its business. Delta continues to support the 2nd Amendment.”
Unfortunately for Delta, we live in a time where you will be made to choose, or else.
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Comments
Get woke, go broke.
Good one.
It’s clear though (and, not merely from Delta’s posturing on this latest issue) that corporations have made a decision, on this score — that it’s better to attempt to kowto to, and, attempt to appease the Leftist mob, than to truly stay “neutral” vis-a-vis political issues. From a business perspective, management and Boards clearly also see some self-congratulatory, “social justice” plaudits to be won, as with “diversity,” “sustainability” and other corporate initiatives that largely pay obeisance to Leftist orthodoxies.
From a political perspective, we already know full-well that, in most industries, increasingly, management and Boards are dominated by Leftists who are attempting to advance Leftist agendas and goals under the fig leaf that such decisions allegedly improve companies’ pools of employees, are part of a strategic “vision,” and, ultimately inure to shareholders’ benefit.
I wonder if GA uses the jet fuel tax revenue for airport operations or maintenance? It seems silly to give one airline so much in tax relief. I bet they didn’t pass the previous tax savings to its customers.
Of course, it was even sillier to announce that if Delta reinstated the discount they would give them the tax relief.
I sure hope GA doesn’t go for some of the infrastructure money for airport renovation when they give away money from users.
“Delta doesn’t help matters refusing to talk about the kinds of organizations that receive discounts.”
Except when virtual signaling.
Entering into discount promotions with all kinds of groups IS being politically neutral. It is doing business with everybody. The claim that laying out an “except for you” mat for NRA members is being neutral is blatant CYA dishonesty.
Delta decided to choose sides. Nobody made them. Their garbage-brained management says “stand with us in issuing the defender-free ‘gun free’ invitation to slaughter everyone’s children or you are customer’s non-grata.” Dirtbags. The sooner they go out of business the better.
Exactly, Neutral is what FedEx did.
Fedex did the right thing. They maintained the status quo. Not only did Delta take sides they compounded their choice with a lie. When chastised for their political choice their CEO suddenly claimed they were breaking ties with all controversial political entities. In reality all political entities are controversial to the disagreeing side. This lie is just a cover for his screw up. It might wash with the board but most 2nd Amendment supporters should be able to see it for what it is. He took sides without thoroughly thinking of the repercussions.
Life is full or tripwires.
Wonder what the talk at the next stockholder’s meeting will be about? There has got to be some major explaining.
Since the airline industry is so heavily regulated by the Feds, I wouldn’t be surprised if some arm twisting in the back room was applied. The gamble is will they gain from this or not where it counts… in D.C. Georgia is a state… Feds can “nudge” the rest of Delta’s routes. 40 million could be a drop in the bucket for doing the bid of a successful Dem/Prog election season.
Delta Blew It!
Delta was just about the most uber-conservative of airlines not many years ago.
This shows how much the communist-terrorist America Haters have creeped into everything!
Something ain’t right here. It’s not like the Delta board was blindsided by this decision. They also knew that almost no one was using the discounts. I think this goes beyond virtue-signalling. Especially since virtual signalers usually stand down when their own money is at stake.
Something just ain’t right.
The reason they did this is because they KNEW nobody was using the discounts.
They rightly thought it wasn’t a popularly used discount.
They WRONGLY thought that they could publicly virtue signal about ending it on this issue because they erroneously thought that nobody was using the discount because ‘the public’ was on the side of gun control (rather than the much more obvious answer that it was never actually publicized so nobody really knew about it).
They BADLY misjudged the potential fallout from their little public wokeness announcement. If Delta were smart they’d immediately fire whoever thought the public announcement was a good idea.
Lucy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now that Corps. may express themselves as people/individuals, they are entitled to same blowback as individuals who shoot from the lip. There are consequences for those actions, no excuses. When corps. stayed out of the political scene, they continued to grow and prosper, unlike Delta who has no backbone other than to jump on the prevailing bandwagon, and then gripe about there losses that were self imposed. Corps., stay out of politics.
The CEO of Delta Airlines broke a fundamental rule of business – stay out of politics. Delta, and others, crossed this line and sided with some customers against other customers. What this says is they value the money of the left more than they value the money of other people just because they own guns and support the 2nd Amendment to the Bill of Rights. Many of those people Delta gave it’s political support to will never, or hardly ever, use it’s services. And now many gun owners, NRA or not, will never use Delta’s services. In the long run Delta loses.
If Delta had kept the NRA discount they would not have lost ANY business because 95%of the people did not know they gave a discount to NRA members. BUT they choose to believe the lies of the main stream media that EVERYONE was on the gun control band wagon. But woe to them for believing the main stream media. They might not make that mistake again. Or they might because they are stupid Liberals!
The left is very effective at the boycott have. Actually, the left is generally well organised and its the people, grupos and organisations that are supporting liberal activision that absolutely has to be targetted by conservatives!
Much like an army in the field, if you take away all the support that props them up the people in the field will whither and die on the vine.
VERY effective …
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=374125
This entire Delta Airline situation is nothing more than each side demanding that everyone clearly show what side they are on. This effort is extremely destructive in that it forces a brother against brother mentality while doing zero to address the real issue.
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Try this exercise. Plot the rise in school, shootings with the number of guns lawfully owned in America. Is there any correlation? None what so ever.
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Now plot the rise of school violence (measured in terms of attacks against teachers in the classroom, violence of all sorts in schools, etc. [This will be difficult because of policies enacted by the Left that hides this data in an effort to make schools appear more safe and capable than they really are]) with the Left’s demands that teachers not be allowed to discipline students, schools not allowed to discipline students, schools not allowed to discipline or expel students at rates that do not mirror the racial characteristics of the school, and so froth. Is there a correlation here? Yes. As the Left demands less and less consequence for bad behavior in schools, students learn that they can get away with just about anything so the violence escalates.
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Now plot the increase in school violence against the number of school shootings and ask if there is a correlation. The answer is “Yes!”.
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The problem here is not guns rather it is the clear trend by the Left to remove all authority and discipline from school thus allowing the schools to become more and more violent. These school shootings clearly show the failure of Leftist policies in the classroom, but the Left cannot allow anyone to see this so they muddy the water by creating great fanfare with blaming the gun, blaming the NRA, blaming the lawful, and so froth. Like programmed robots, far too many react exactly as determined by our programming and by input from the MSM with the result being these silly and, in the grand scheme of things, utterly unimportant arguments about the removal of tax breaks for an airline that does not support the NRA to the level others deem appropriate.
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Is it not time we started focusing on the doughnut and not the hole?
The only thing I disagree with is that there is not really a rise in school “shootings”, now in school violence then yes.
It’s hard for me to sort out the maze of motor fuel taxes in Georgia, but I “think” we’re talking about repealing a 1% sales (not excise) tax on “jet fuel” (not “aviation gas”). I have read that this may cost Delta $23 million per year. That’s probably a drop in the bucket for Delta which spends around $5 billion per year for fuel.
As the tax break only applies to Delta, and Delta is a corporation based in GA, it isn’t likely to be a “…repeal of a 1% sales tax…”. A sales tax would apply to all jet fuel sold, regardless of company and where the company is based. It is more likely to be a break on Delta’s state corporate tax for whatever taxes Delta is paying for Jet A or A1. As I think we’ve all read the widely reported $44 million as the value of the break, it may or may not be $23 million you have read. In any event, millions of dollars removed from profit can make a significant difference in the amount of tax owed, no matter what the expense for the fuel was as an operating cost.
Waiting for any reaction to Dick’s Sporting Goods decisions about selling certain firearms because of social pressure from SJWs. Same virtue signaling.
An author I follow on Facebook recently went to Dick’s to find some shoes.
Found ones he liked, then ordered a pair from Amazon … on his phone …while in the store!
Now why would he do that? Amazon forbids the sale of any firearms at all.
I’m sure that the necessity of being a Federally licensed dealer, and the severe restrictions on the transport of arms have nothing at all to do with their refusal to sell weapons.
Dick’s removed AR-15’s after Sandy Hook. I was a regular customer at that time, but have not been there since.
It is always a bad idea to knuckle under to a mob. Because they are never satisfied and will soon make another demand.
It is also a bad idea to anger customers.
I am especially puzzled when Sporting Goods Stores listen to SJW. Do these people, the SJW mob people, ever patronize Sporting Good Stores?
What a surprise!
Who would have guessed that the CEO of Delta was the first MBA with a participation trophy !
I’ve been playing around with some numbers to better understand the NRA’s real influence. I first went to Open Secrets and found that the NRA is not even a top 20 political donor.
Then I did some searches and found a Politifact piece written in Oct., 2017.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/oct/11/counting-up-how-much-nra-spends/
According to Politifact, the NRA spent $203 million on all political activities (not just donations to politicians) between 1998 and 2016. That amounts to a bit more than $10 million per year, but let’s round to $10 million for simplicity.
I won’t link to them here – you can search on Google yourself if you want – but I’ve seen estimates that the number of gun owners ranges between about 30% and 45% of the population. At the low end of 30%, that means there are about 100 million gun owners.
So the NRA spends about $10 million a year on all political activities representing a constituency that likely exceeds 100 million people.
That is $0.10 per year per gun owner. One dime.
Just remember that the next time the liberty hating leftists talk about how powerful the NRA is. The NRA is not powerful because they spend $0.10 per gun owner. They are powerful because there are likely at least 100 million gun owners.
From the sources cited, it appears that the amount of direct donations to candidates is dwarfed by other expenditures such as contributions to PACs and for lobbying. That amount is not insignificant,but how much value to the candidate is it to have your name on a mailer? And I would think that the NRA selects whose name goes on those mailers, or in the ads, based on the candidate’s past performance (if an incumbent) or their stated position(s) if a challenger.
Not that it needs to be pointed out to this crowd, but all this shows that the screaming at people about “how much does the NRA give you!” has little to do with anything other than making the screamer feel good about themselves.
This correct.
Many politicians have constituencies which reside in areas where firearms ownership is still cherished, to some extent. Tor these politicians, an NRA endorsement can be golden. Why? Because the NRA, thanks largely to the anti-gun crowd, is seen as the leader in the fight for the rights of gun ownership [the reality is somewhat different]. So, monetary donations to specific candidate does not have to be substantial for the politician to benefit from an NRA endorsement.
In the heat of the debate, Delta may have found themselves looking at that NRA program. Upon realizing how pitifully subscribed it is, they had a choice:
1) Send 13 letters out that said “With only 13 participants in this program, it is really not sustainable. We are therefore cancelling it effective next month. We thank you for your business, and hope that you can find a suitable replacement program for it.”
Or,
2) Announce to the world that they find guns to be too scary for their delicate sensitivities.
One way – nobody would have known or cared; the other way – everybody knows and cares. Pick one.