Cruising Along with Ted Cruz

Jim Hightower's Lowdown

A Republican senator once tried excusing the egomaniacal right-wing nastiness of his colleague, Ted Cruz declaring, “sometimes Ted is his own worst enemy.” I said to myself: “Not while I’m alive he’s not.”

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But now, I’m reassessing, because Cruz keeps descending deeper into self-pity and self-destruction. For example, he’s recently been trying to gut a consumer-friendly rule requiring airlines to make automatic, hassle-free refunds to passengers when their flights are unduly delayed or cancelled. However, kissing up to his airline political donors, Ted’s amendment would put the hassle back in refunds, requiring abused passengers to file written requests to the various impenetrable corporate bureaucracies of airlines to get their money back – maybe… someday.

In fairness, though, Cruz has been working hard to make air travel much easier for one class of travelers: US senators and House members, plus their staffs and families! He wants to make us common taxpayers fund “airport security escorts” for him and other privileged ones, moving them ahead of everyone and zipping them through the screening and boarding process. This, Ted explained, will help in “keeping the flying public safe.”

He really means keeping the public from seeing or interacting at airports with public officials like him. You might recall that, while hundreds of Texans were literally dying during the state’s power grid’s failure in 2021’s calamitous deep freeze, Ted was photographed in tropical attire at Houston’s airport, waiting to board a flight to Cancun, fleeing the cold and his constituents. By getting special airport escorts, though, so-called public servants like Cruz won’t be exposed to public view.

Hello – of all the public needs crying out today for taxpayer funding – where would you rank providing an airport escort for Ted Cruz?

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