An article in the Evansville Courier & Press (The Queen & her court – Riverboat gives people look at Ohio River towns) hauntingly shows how important the visits of the Majestic America Line boats are for little river towns like Grandview, Indiana. Every politician and company manager thinking of grounding the Delta Queen should be forced to read this eye-opening article to see what he is doing to the people living along the rivers when taking the Delta Queen away from them.

And it’s not about romantic feelings when a steamboat is coming ’round the bend. It’s about business and it’s about jobs – a lot of business and jobs for these river towns.

There is a general misunderstanding on what happened on the political scene so far regarding the Delta Queen’s exemption from the Safety at Sea Act: The Congress, consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate, hasn’t even voted on an exemption for the Delta Queen yet.

So far it’s only a single, totally uninformed and most likely Union-influenced Representative from Minnesota, Rep. James Oberstar (D), chairman of the Transportation committee, who refuses to present the exemtion to the full House of Representatives for vote. And it’s one single Union-controlled Senator, Sen. Inouye or Hawaii (D), who does the same thing in the Senate. According to an article in the Winona Daily News, the Transportation Committee of the House at least has discussed the issue, citing Rep. Walz, member of this committee: "I voted in committee for the exemption, and my reasoning was … for historical preservation". And it seams that the committee is as uninformed as its chairman is. By the way: Walz is not member of the Coast Guard subcommittee where this issue should belong to.

Let’s not blame the Congress for this, so far. Let’s force Sen. Inouye and Rep. Oberstar to respect basic democratic rules and let the people’s representatives vote on the exemption for the Delta Queen!

Let’s sent a letter-to-the-editor to every newspaper that is repeating the nonsense of "the Congress has denied the exemption". Remind them of the facts, ask them to stop copying the press release of Majestic America Line who originally has published this Congress-denied-exemption nonsense.