Horrible Failure by American Airlines...

In my experience, there was an overall failure to provide quality service for flight 661 to Ontario, California on 4/26/09.

The details included:
-None of the information screens at the airport listed anything about this flight.
-When asking at other gates for information about where this flight was leaving from, I was given 2 different answers.
-No gate attendants even showed up at the gate until 5 minutes before boarding was supposed to begin.
-I came to find out that the pilot for the flight was called only 15 minutes before boarding was supposed to begin.
-Very little information was offered to the passengers waiting for boarding.
-We were first told that the delays were due to the catering, but later the agent announced that it was due to an earlier international flight. Then the pilot announced on the intercom on the plane that the whole crew was called late for the flight, as if the crew for this flight was just an afterthought, and that was the cause for the delay. Which was it? It would be nice to have been extended the courtesy of a straight answer.
-While boarding, the gate manager at D21 required that I check my bag, the very same bag that I have used for over 100,000 miles of flights with American over the past year. And on top of that I was treated rudely by both him and the other gate attendants. My bag fits in the overhead, and it fit in the tester, but these AA employees saw fit to embarrass me in front of the 120 people waiting to board.
-Also while boarding, I noticed that one of the flight attendants was stuffing a bag much larger than mine into the overhead.
-While pulling out of the gate, the plane experienced a problem with an alternator on the left engine which ultimately grounded the plane resulting in the entire plane being emptied and passengers having to trek across to the other side of the airport after another plane was located.
-After leaving the first plane, I asked the gate attendant to retrieve my bag (which they forced me to gate-check), just in case the flight would be cancelled, since we were told that was a real possibility. It took the gate supervisor, David, over thirty minutes to locate my bag and get it to me, which almost resulted in me missing the new plane.
-When I got my bag to the new gate, I was not asked to gate-check it, because it clearly fits in the overhead bin, as it always has over the last 100,000+ miles traveled with AA.

Overall I am extremely disappointed and dissatisfied in the lack of service provided by the AA gate employees in regard to this flight, and I am lodging a formal complaint. I am surprised at the total lack of respect and dignity offered me, considering the amount of time I spend traveling with AA. Had this been my first experience with American Airlines, I would avoid this carrier at all costs. I would hope American Airlines would instill in their employees a greater appreciation for their customers.

In Order to Form a More Perfect Union...

The Problem: The Federal Government has become Too Oppressive in its Size and Scope.
The original intent of the formation of the federal government was not to be even a fraction of the size it is today. Powers of the federal government were to be limited to those enumerated in the Constitution, and as is laid out in the 10th Amendment anything else is left up to the states. Nobody can honestly deny that the federal government has grown well beyond what is laid out in the Constitution. Welfare, education, social security, the FDA, IRS, FCC, USPS, etc, are just a few examples. One form of oppression is when the citizens of one state are threatened with incarceration in order to extort funds for programs in another state. On top of that, the federal government is now, through a so-called “stimulus package,” is attempting to further regulate and control the states by offering funds (funds spent, but not yet collected, yet another debt heaped onto the next generation) to help with economic troubles if they will submit to further restrictions on states’ rights. Furthermore, no programs in one state should be funded by the citizens of any other state. The design of the United States of America was to bond sovereign states in a union, not put the several states in bondage to said union.

The Solution: Systematically Dismantle the Federal Government as it exists today.
Granted, we as a people have become dependent on many of these programs and administrations that the government overstepped its bounds to create, so eliminating them would be burdensome to the people. Since there is no option of a referendum at the national level, it follows that such programs should be turned over to the states for the people to decide at that level whether such programs should continue exist. In doing so, all programs and entities that are not constitutionally enumerated should not be funded by tax dollars on the national level. Ultimately, if all the national programs are moved into the realm of the states, it may be more expensive at first because of the transition. However, when these programs are put into state hands, they will be at the mercy of the people to a much greater degree than they are today. It will be a long process, but the ultimate result will be a union of strong sovereign states, as intended by the constitution, run by the citizens of those states.

Today we are not the economic superpower we once were. A nation is only as strong as it's components, and the oppression of the federal government has made those components of the United States (the states themselves) weak, and thus our nation is weakened.