NYC

[Disclaimer: this post is a bit of a mess and I keep revising it to try to say what I really think.]

It’s Steve and Jen’s news blog, especially since Steve and Jen disagree on the strike and are both writing about it.

I started reading this blog again after Tom Moody wrote about the strike and linked to it.

I will say I think the union is managing its PR and strategy rather badly. We should be reminded constantly of how incompetent/devious the MTA executives are, including their ability to “find” an extra $1 billion in the budget once in a while, or the fact that in a time of supposed terrorist threats, they are closing token booths and forcing us to rely on turnstile exits that will cause a huge number of deaths in an emergency. See more by Ray Sanchez on MTA security. Now would be an excellent time for Bloomberg to start pushing to have the MTA become a city-controlled agency, rather than a state one, but he’s busy acting more like a billionaire than a mayor at the moment.

I will say I’m troubled by the actual strike. I don’t think it had gotten to the point where a strike was necessary. I don’t know what leverage a union has in this age, but a strike by transit workers hurts so many working people in the city.

… remind yourself that Cindy Sheehan managed to visit 21 states and over 50 cities and towns before being threatened with arrest. She had to come to NYC for that.

Tom Moody has more. Allegedly it was over the use of amplification, but the city wouldn’t give them permits after they were requested, and Union Square can be a noisy place.

They should have added some religious content. People like the “Black Israelites” in Times Square are allowed to yell anti-white and anti-gay crap and Holocaust denials, using bullhorns, under the courts’ view of the First Amendment. It’s interesting that the denial of permits by the NYPD for things like a Cindy Sheehan visit don’t seem to cause the same concern.

Cindy Sheehan speaking out in Union Square with Al Zappala, who also lost a son in Iraq photo: Sarah Ferguson

[Image from a Village Voice article

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Updated: Via a comment, Kim Arnold just provided a link to some of her video and images from the Union Square rally.

I found it sad, knowing that people like Muhammad Ali are there, to read that people went wild over Hillary Clinton’s “star power.” I was more than sad — horrified was more like it — to learn that one of the other people in Singapore to lobby for NYC to host the Olympics is Henry Kissinger. I guess it’s one of the few places outside of the USA he can still visit without risk of arrest.

I don’t want the Olympics here, and obviously no thinking person does either if they have that man representing us. I agree with Todd Gibson on what hosting them would mean:

a month of lockdown and police-state presence in 2012 that will make last summer’s Republican Convention look like a fire drill.

Closed token booth [source]

As I’m sure my readers have noticed, I rarely post about politics anymore. I’m too disgusted. A political system that allows the subways go begging for enough funds to keep token booths open, even in high profile locations like Rockefeller center, and NYC schools to crumble, but lets our elected leaders spend public money subsidizing sports stadiums for rich team owners, is one too ridiculous to comment upon. I’ve had it. The current proposals are for the state and city to spend at least $180 million directly on infrastructure for the new Mets stadium in Queens, and that doesn’t count things like property tax diversions and tax-exempt bond borrowing. The Yankees got a similar deal. A good source for this info is a site called Field of Schemes.

As a free-lancer, I paid my quarterly estimated taxes yesterday to the feds, the state, and the city (including a tax NYC has called the Unincorporated Business Tax just for people like me). I can’t stand the idea that it’s going to subsidize professional sports when so much that really matters is going begging.

And by the way, the next time the NYPD complains about their pay, suggest that their corporate bosses should kick in some money. I guess the War on Terror is under control if they have time to raid Kim’s Video looking for mix CDs, and bring along a “representative” of the Recording Industry Association of America to help them round up and arrest five people working at Kim’s. They kept them all in jail overnight.