The Associated Press’s Calvin Woodward exposes political dancing at its finest: every 2008 presidential candidate purports to help the middle class, but they each have radically different interpretations of exactly who that is.

Once each candidate’s tax plans and promises are examined, Woodward found that “middle class” definitions range from poverty level to those living the high life on $200,000 salaries.

The real middle class, of course, are conventionally defined as those households with income between 80-120% of the national median income - or, by today’s standards, $35,200-$52,800. Read the rest of this entry »

Random, inconsistent rules make air security seem pointless and arbitrary to even the most patient traveler.

My disdain for the Patriot Act notwithstanding, I consider myself fairly conservative when it comes to issues of national security. It’s not so much that I buy into the post-9/11 fear mongering, but I really don’t mind if I need to be x-rayed, metal detected, frisked, swabbed, or otherwise accosted under the guise of “national security” when I travel by air.

But the fruitlessness of being a sheep was revealed to me while traveling through London’s Heathrow airport last week. Both the United States and United Kingdom have banned liquids on aircraft for slightly over a year now, in response to “general threats”. But it’s beginning to feel rather arbitrary to me. In October, I traveled through Heathrow security with a nearly-full bottle of Dr. Pepper, and it was okay. No one glanced at the young white female in need of a sugar rush. But last week, I had to take one last guzzle of my Dasani water before surrendering it over to authorities, who then assured me that, “don’t worry, starting tomorrow you can carry liquids again.”

Huh? Read the rest of this entry »

The first three parts of our “Airline Livery and Airline Branding” investigative series have shown that, despite multi-million dollar marketing budgets, airlines often get branding wrong when it comes to their airline liveries. In this penultimate installment of our series, we’ll examine five airlines who are on the right track with their liveries. But perhaps more intriguingly, these airlines represent hail from three separate continents, companies old and new, and approach their branding from diverse perspectives.

As we fly at supersonic speeds above the clouds and towards the top of our list, the diversity in this section of our investigation goes to prove that branding can be done - and done well - in a myriad of different ways. Read the rest of this entry »

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is awaiting results from a commission studying ways to reduce traffic and carbon emissions in Manhattan. The results are likely to include a congestion charge for entering Manhattan, modeled after the congestion charge in London, England.

New York - the “City that Never Sleeps” - is also the “City that Swells”, growing from 1.6mil people in Manhattan alone to 2.8mil during working hours. This says nothing of tourists, who also flock to the borough and its many landmarks. Although New York is known for its public transportation system (72% of Manhattan residents use mass transit, compared with an average of 5% across the rest of the United States), that’s still not enough to quell the traffic.

Bloomberg’s congestion charging plan would put more money into public transportation, while also making a move to cut dangerous pollution levels within the city. Read the rest of this entry »