Gov't First Class bookings

Rohit Khare (rohit@bordeaux.ics.uci.edu)
Wed, 08 Apr 1998 15:13:03 -0700


[Of course, some officials AREN'T allowed to book coach: when I had dinner
with Warren Christopher, he had to pay his own way back to LA in FC for his
own portection -- and the gov`t kicks in the FC ticket for the SS agent
behind me (which explained why *he* was so jumpy when I jumped over Warren
to catch my flight :-) --RK

PS. From Today's Papers a few days ago - 4/6/98 ]

In Sunday's column, Maureen Dowd pointed out that when Ken Starr was
pressed recently to justify the $30 million he's spent so far
javerting Bill Clinton, Starr replied that hey, he always flies
coach on his investigatory jaunts to Little Rock. In the adjacent
op-ed, Robert C. Reich reported that first- and business class seats
now account for more than 22 percent of airlines' domestic passenger
revenue, up from just 9.5 percent in 1987. And according to Sunday's
LAT, a dozen California members of Congress routinely use government
funds for upgrades to first class or for first-class tickets. The
LAT dilutes the effect of this story by not mentioning any of the
dirty dozen by name until after the jump inside to page 22. The
reader has to wait until the tenth paragraph to learn that former
Rep. Ronald Dellums routinely booked first class seats for his
trips, at a cost to taxpayers of six times the basic government
rate.