Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, April 25, 2026
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23 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Man, I almost didn’t know what day it was without the new open forum. 😉
We are negotiating with Iran! Actually, we’re not! Yes, we are!
That’s your news summary for this weekend.
US military doctrines:
1990s Air-land war.
2000s Shock and awe
2020s Whine and complain.
I watched Kimmel’s roast of the Orange Ass, and I highly recommend it.
Spoiler alert: he doesn’t stop with El Taco.
Then again, he had a target-rich environment.
Moving the discussion on Spirit and El taco to today’s forum.
One thing people misunderstand about airlines is the nature of their assets. You see fleets of hundreds of planes, each worth tens to hundreds of millions. Thing is, most of those planes don’t belong to the airline. they belong to a lessor that leases them to the airline. If the airline is liquidated, the leased planes go back to the lessors.
Spirit’s fleet is about 130 planes. I’d be surprised if as many as 40 were owned by the airline*.
What’s more valuable than that is the highly trained personnel, from cabin crew to mechanics, the airport slots, the frequent flier program, the credit card affiliation, and maybe some routes.
Spirit isn’t a big airline in the country where it operates. Meaning it would be targeted for merger or takeover by airlines of similar size. JetBlue and Frontier seemed to have moved on. airlines like the big 4 (United, American, Delta, and Southwest), would rather buy pieces of Spirit at liquidation proceedings. And they’d rather hire laid off staff as new hires without seniority, which allows for a very small salary.
* I forget how big Mexicana’s fleet was when it went kaput in 2010. But I vividly recall reading only 9 of their planes were owned by the airline. The rest were leased.
@Kathy:
The fleet size was 69 planes.
@Kathy:
In the late 1990’s, I worked for a billionaire who decided he wanted to own a film and TV production company. Worked for him under a one year contract, helping him get the company off the ground – which was merely a vanity project for his wife.
At the time, his net worth was in the vicinity of 2.8 Billion. He made his fortune buying the jets from Airbus and Boeing and leasing them to the American, United, KLM, British Airways, etc, etc, becoming the single biggest owner of jets in world. It was a very good business.
Sadly he lost most of his fortune after selling his company to AIG in an all stock transaction before AIG’s stock value dropped 90% in the late 2000’s. But it’s relative. He’s still worth 300-400 million.
@CSK:
Thank you. For some reason, I remembered more…
@Kathy: I’ve always thought of Trump’s style as Schlock and Appall.
@Kathy:
That’s according to Wikipedia
@EddieInCA:
I don’t know if it’s still a good business, but it’s still a huge one. airlines take care of everything, like maintenance and insurance. When you hear an airline made a huge order, the majority of it will be handled by one or more lessors.
@CSK:
I looked in Wikipedia. I must not have searched well enough.
He’s playing Indian Poker.
(He can’t see his own card.)
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
This is his attempt at face-saving.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
He doesn’t need to see it. Manypeoplesaythat he only draws the Royal Aces. Always the best cards.
@EddieInCA: You know, just knowing that there are film and television production companies that are basically hobby/vanity businesses explains a whole lot.
Stopped into an oxfam shop today in Belgium.
Was browsing book titles and spotted three by some chap called Michael Grant.
Gone-Verlaten, Gone-Leugens, and Gone-Licht.
All at eye level.
@Jay L. Gischer:
Oh, you have no idea. I bet WR could tell you lots of stories about being wooed by companies that talked a good game, but when it came to write a small $25K check, balked. I learned very early in my career that if they won’t cut the $25K check early in the process, they won’t fund the $25M movie later on down the road. I was lucky in that the billionaire I worked for actually produced a few films, one which I found and developed for him, based on a book I found. But there are a whole lot of executives in Los Angeles and New York, working in Vanity Productions, LLC, that will never produce a film or tv series, yet pay executives handsomely to pretend to be in the business.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown: You gotta love the “too much work” excuse. The presidency is not supposed to be a sinecure to my understanding.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
lol.
In Birmingham the game is called “Rubery brag”, after the infamous psychiatric hospital.
Everyone can see everyone else’s hand, but not their own.
Games tend to end in violence, in my limited experience.
@Mimai:
Michael Grant?
Who he?
😉
CNN is reporting a shooter at tonight’s press dinner has been killed by security.
Conflicting reports state shooter is in custody.
How did a shooter get in a secure area?
Now CNN is reporting that a Secret Service agent has been shot and rushed to hospital.
I think the NRA really needs to get back to focusing on teaching gun safety and target practice.