Wednesday, March 3, 2010

MTA hearing turns ugly

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

People are pissed in general due to the municipalities mismanaging $ and then making it up by taking more from the general public. Something has got to be done! Please channel this energy and vote out all incumbents, especially the democrats who keep stealing from their respective constituency. That means you Rangel, you Meeks, you Smith, you sampson, you Espada, etc.....

Anonymous said...

How dare you people speak to power like that! You think we care about your problems and concerns!? You think TRUTH means anything in our empire of LIES! You are nothing but cattle to be fleeced and butchered at our pleasure. Little people with big mouths. We have big people with big guns and alot of plastic restraints. And they will stomp you down because they think they are part of us. That's all it takes. Just watch your idiot box, eat the GMO food we feed you, take the poison filled vaccines, pay your taxes and be grateful we don't take it all. You are nothing, you own nothing. We own you peasants. Now do what you're told and know your place already.

Anonymous said...

IT is such a fake when slush fund Christine Quinn and Atlantic Yards Crony Marty Markowitz speak at these hearings. These fakes have access to the MTA board and can speak privately with them. Why waste the people's time pretending to be outrage when we know these politicians are part of the problem. if Quinn help fund the mta school pass instead of her slush fund or Marty didn't divert million of MTA money to Ratner then we wouldn't be here in the first place. bunch of fakes.

Anonymous said...

It did my heart good to see all the young people venting their rage at the "establishment". Reminded me of the old days in the sixties. We knew how to throw a good demonstration back then.

GIVE THEM HELL! THEY ARE STEALING FROM YOU! DON'T BACK DOWN! THE WAR IS NOT OVER!!!!!

Lino said...

"Reminded me of the old days in the sixties. We knew how to throw a good demonstration back then."

Yeah, and ended up with sex, drugs and rock&roll.

Those young people could have brought this government to it's knees by simply stopping -ALL- activities that profited the system.

If they had simply refused to buy sodas-music-clothes and stopped registering for the draft, refused to attend school etc, within a month the heads of industry would have gone to the White House and told Johnson or Nixon "how it's gonna be" and that stupid criminal war would have ended.

The Baby Boom generation had unprecedented power..and blew it on garbage.

Missing Foundation said...

Ah they made a mistake.

Should have held the hearings in Queens where people are so polite, and respectful, because they know that if not, the politicans will ignore them and they will get nothing.

Queens Crapper said...

Actually, they did...the night before in Flushing.

kingb said...

i hope at least some of this anger is directed towards the greedy TWU, demanding pay raises and benefit enhancements in the middle of a fiscal crisis, helping to bankrupt the MTA & state with their insane retirement packages, blocking any sort of reform/technology that enhances service and reduces cost (since it means fewer of their precious obsolete jobs) and contributing to an overall horrendous transit experience for New Yorkers with their wonderful customer service.

three headed beast - Albany/MTA Mgmt/TWU...They all are evil & corrupt

Anonymous said...

I love how bloomberg campaigned on standing up to the MTA, but hasn't uttered a word about this, or shown up at a hearing. So many people duped by his slick campaign.

Anony2 said...

"You are denying people the right to speak"

No, YOU'RE denying the people the right to speak by letting minions read statements from politicians who did not deem this important enough to bother showing up.

Anonymous said...

The only way the incompetent idiots at the MTA will hear us is if everyone gets on the buses and trains without paying. When no one pays then they will start listening. If everyone does it the 10 transit cops on patrol that night will be so overwhelmed they will not be able to stop it. (All the police Dept is is smoke and mirrors there are not as many cops as you think there are out there.) All we need is to be united, but unfortunately it will never happen.

And to the guy that is complaining about the TWU being part of the problem, they are just innocent bystanders. They need to make 40 50 60 thousand dollars in this city just to survive. Thats Blooomturd's fault not theirs. The MTA management are the crooks. Mangaement makes 6 figures. And yeah they have attitudes sometimes but eveyone has bad days at work especially working in the conditions that they work in.

linda said...

i think it's an outrage!! how dare they pull people out like that and they didn't get a chance to be heard. the MTA is full of shit! they have more than one set of books or did everyone forget the damn lie back in the day. bloomberg the dumb ass should of been there standing behind what he thinks are the ones who voted for his ass. how is he going to explain this to NYC especially if they don't give out free METRO cards to the students, which is funded through city and state. he is the one building schools out of communities and busing younger children everywhere, which is costing way over the cost of metro cards.. he better step up and protect commuters.

Klink Cannoli said...

American Mob Rule
We need a Socrates in Washington right now.

In the last three months, we’ve been reduced to something like the ancient Athenian mob — with opportunistic politicians sometimes inciting, sometimes catering to an already-angry public.



The Greek comic playwright Aristophanes once described how screaming politicians — posing as men of the people — would sway Athenian citizens by offering them all sort of perks and goodies that the government had no idea of how to pay for.


The historian Thucydides offers even more frightening accounts of bloodthirsty voters after they were aroused by demagogues (“leaders or drivers of the people”). One day, in bloodthirsty rage, voters demanded the death of the rebellious men of the subject island city of Mytilene; yet on the very next, in sudden remorse, they rescinded that blanket death sentence.
Lately we’ve allowed our government to forget its calmer republican roots.
We’ve gone Athenian whole hog.

- Victor Davis Hanson

kingb said...

"And to the guy that is complaining about the TWU being part of the problem, they are just innocent bystanders"

innocent?? ha!

i know this is an expensive town, but that doesn't mean we have to pay above market rates for labor, much of which doesn't even need to exist. and whats more hurtful is the early retirement, underfunded pension plans, overtime abuse and healthcare perks. I wish we all got $1M salaries & free healthcare for life. But this kind of over-generous compensation for public employees is simply unsustainable.

labor is the biggest expense for any organization so simply ignoring that when discussing financial problems isn't gonna solve any problems. yes that includes bloated mgmt salaries & unnecessary consultants as well, but the TWU cannot be excluded from that discussion.

Anonymous said...

As far as the "greedy TWU", the TWU contract is basically the same as all of the other city unions, so what makes them so wildly greedy?

Inflation lessens the value of the dollar every year, so people getting can get a "pay raise" while their real wage stays flat, or even declines. This happened to me in 2008 - I got a small raise in my private sector job, but factoring in inflation I actually got a salary cut.

As far as the fiscal crisis, this is what the TWU heard in 2005 as well. Every time the TWU gets a contact they hear there's a fiscal crisis.

A fiscal crisis is not like an earthquake or hurricane. It is man-made. The banks pay off politicians and cry on the news that they need deregulation or else, they deregulate, collapse, get TARP taxpayer bailouts, then pay big profits to shareholders and bonuses, and we are told there is a fiscal crisis. The financial people who create the crisis pay themselves and the shareholders richly from taxpayer money, and the MTA schmoe making $40k a year is told to tighten his belt because there's a financial crisis - the same song and dance they gave in 2005.

Also, the MTA is a corporation that doesn't have to show its books to the government or people, so they are a private corporation when it suits Walder's purposes, yet the TWU can be held under the Taylor law, which disallows government employees from striking. If you want to look at the books, the MTA is a private corporation, you want to arrest workers from striking, the MTA suddenly transforms into a government agency.

Miles Mullin said...

Klink

If you want to understand history or politics study the Romans.

They taught us all we need to know.

Everything since is a rehash.

Klink Cannoli said...

It's been a steady stream of digest for the last few years, Miles. With trips to core ideologues; Marx Cicero, Machiavelli, Muhammad, et all. Recently it's been back to basics a la Founding Fathers. What an education! Still searching truth...

Piddle around with the historian V. D. Hanson. You may enjoy his Modern to Grecian/Roman comparisons.

Anonymous said...

the present Greek economy is in wonderful condition... NOT.

READ:nytimes.com....."E.U ENDORSES GREEK AUSTERITY EFFORTS "

the 1960's gang is now ruining the U.S. economy and THE CONSTITUTION.
OBAMA CARE IS OBAMANISM.

Miles Mullin said...

You are at the right place, Klink. Keep plugging. The Founding Fathers are all around you here.