Delta loses $40 million Georgia tax break after ending NRA discount that benefited … 13 passengershttps://hotair.com/archives/2018/03/02/delta-loses-40-million-georgia-tax-break-ending-nra-discount-benefited-13-passengers/That’s some mighty expensive virtue-signaling.
And it is virtue-signaling, of course. Delta insists absurdly that it’s not taking a side in the great gun-control debate by rescinding the NRA group discount, just exiting the debate entirely. But rescission is, of course, taking a side insofar as it deviates from the company’s status quo. At a minimum, they’re broadcasting that they find the NRA sufficiently unsavory at this point not to continue to grant the organization a perk that other interest groups enjoy.
It’s impossible under the circumstances to read that as anything but a rebuke to gun owners more broadly. If they had rescinded the NRA discount months ago over, say, the group’s weird culture-war ads, that would be one thing. But to do it after the Parkland shooting, in a political context in which student spokesmen are pushing for aggressive gun regulations while accusing the NRA and the Republicans to whom it donates of killing children is, emphatically, taking a side in the broader debate.
Maybe it’s in the company’s financial interest to do so. But they’ll be starting in a hole.
“While Delta’s intent was to remain neutral, some elected officials in Georgia tied our decision to a pending jet fuel tax exemption, threatening to eliminate it unless we reversed course,†Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in a Friday memo to employees obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Our decision was not made for economic gain and our values are not for sale. We are in the process of a review to end group discounts for any group of a politically divisive nature.â€
A Delta spokesman said only 13 tickets were sold under the group travel discount for the National Rifle Association.
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