United Airlines (United Continental Holdings, Inc.) brutally dragged a Kentucky doctor off of an overbooked flight to make room for some United employees to fly. If you haven’t seen one of the many videos filmed by other passengers on the plane, there are many to choose from here.

What really bothers me is that our corporations are not punished for their misdeeds.  (I still haven’t seen those responsible for the Great Recession even charged with a crime.) United has a relatively small PR problem to deal with.  They will fix it by “reviewing” their procedures, and will refund all of the passengers on that flight.  But it’s not even a half drop of water in the bucket.  Even though this man was assaulted without provocation and a crime was committed, no one will go to jail. No one will be punished.

United has an annual revenue stream of 36 billion dollars.  Refunding passengers and paying off the inevitable lawsuit is nothing to them.  Because the American public has no resolve and no memory, a meaningful boycott won’t happen. This will be a tiny pebble in the road for United.

The United CEO initially justified the airline’s actions, calling the man “disruptive and belligerent” without even knowing the details.  Belligerent is how I would describe United airlines. No other passengers have described the doctor that way.

The entire air-travel industry, along with security theater provided by the morons employed the TSA and Immigration, continues to be entirely dysfunctional. (They don’t hire anyone who can think for themselves.)

I just returned from a long distance train trip where I met an Australian woman who was traveling from New York to L.A. She told a story of how she was detained in a back room upon arriving at a New York airport because of an small issue with her passport.  She was treated like a criminal until the issue with the passport was resolved.

Personally, I haven’t flown in over a decade due to “security theater” asking me to drop my pants at the checkpoint. That was the last straw for me.