{"id":403,"date":"2005-12-15T18:26:42","date_gmt":"2005-12-16T01:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/?p=403"},"modified":"2005-12-15T18:26:42","modified_gmt":"2005-12-16T01:26:42","slug":"let-me-be-the-first-to-make-a-nancy-sinatra-reference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/?p=403","title":{"rendered":"Let me be the first to make a Nancy Sinatra reference."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDaddy, where were you during the Great Transit Strike of 2005?\u201d \u201cWhy, honey, the exact same place I was during the Great Blackout of 2003 (or was it 2004?) — sitting in a Manhattan apartment, getting stoned, and wondering if the bar scene was going to be really boisterous. Then I remembered I was really stoned and went to sleep early.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not trying to be too glib about the Big Inconvenience, but considering that sometime between midnight tonight (should the strike actually take place) and midnight tomorrow, someone, somewhere will compare their circumstance to Katrina or the Tsunami, and there\u2019s a good chance it will be in front of a hapless local news reporter trying to find a better spin for the \u2018it really sucks to walk story\u201d, I guess I\u2019m excusing myself a wee bit for stifling a yawn.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s not a yawn worthy situation, considering how far apart the two sides are, and what myriad levels of incompetence are being revealed by this. We are all used to media-savvy grandstanding (the Times<\/em> found a TWU member — who apparently works in a part of the subway that lacks potable water — that claimed they were treated like \u201cFourth World\u201d peoples), and massive gaps in the relative positions. All these ostensible leaders are staking out drastic ground to justify their pay and chauffeured rides (isn\u2019t it ironic that all the public transit employees and union reps get ferried by car? Wouldn\u2019t it be cheaper and more symbolically satisfying to give out free MetroCards?).<\/p>\n

The union wants a 6,000% raise, and the right to retire next week, and the MTA wants the staff to perform their own appendectomies and to commit suicide upon retirement. Perhaps they aren\u2019t that far apart, but I haven\u2019t been looking that closely.<\/p>\n

And who can blame them for being at loggerheads? After talking all of 75 minutes on Tuesday, everyone threw up their hands… and probably when to a hockey match. The union is claiming the MTA is hiding evidence of the surplus, a claim the MTA shrugged off as less than ridiculous because everyone knows there\u2019s not a chance in hell that MTA actually has that much of a grasp of their finances.<\/p>\n

The big news today was that the head of the MTA, Peter Kalikow was going to join in the negotiations<\/em>. Yup, it was news that he was going to, you know, come to work today. Which is a sight better than our governor — off in New Hampshire, raising money for his political consultant jobs program — was doing.<\/p>\n

Yes, that\u2019s right. Scratch a local or state issue rife with incompetence that ranges from the everyday abysmal and scales up to borderline criminal, and you will find the goofy grin of the world\u2019s luckiest Westchester pasty. Working overtime to be get himself remembered as the worst governor of his generation, Pataki\u2019s all-thumbs-prints are everywhere, from appointing people who are worse at numbers than circulation managers at the tabloids, to pandering to suburban voters by forcing unequal fare increases, to now standing idly by while the one of the greatest public transit systems grinds to a halt a week before one of the most important tourist weeks (and one of the coldest Decembers on record) of the year.<\/p>\nSurely the TWU has to get real healthcare costs and pension expense (and recognize that evaporating pensions and retirement benefits in the private sector are going to make the typical base of support far less sympathetic to their retire at 55 deal), and the MTA has to get real, at, well, managing the books (you can\u2019t credibly argue you have long-term financial planning issues when you report swings from surplus to deficit and back in a single fiscal year), but none of these things would seem as dire, or insurmountable if we had a leader. <\/p>\n

Then again, maybe Pataki spends his \u2018crisis\u2019 times the same way I do, which would go a long way to explaining his inaction. But that\u2019s not what I\u2019m paying him to do, and can you imagine a more annoying stoner? He\u2019d never have his own (yammering about how he\u2019s can\u2019t get busted, cause of his job), and would probably want to spend the whole night eating Cheetos and watching the Young Ones<\/em>. Come to think of it, I\u2019d better make sure I\u2019ve got some Cheetos; Metro-North is saying they\u2019re going all in on this too\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDaddy, where were you during the Great Transit Strike of 2005?\u201d \u201cWhy, honey, the exact same place I was during the Great Blackout of 2003 (or was it 2004?) — sitting in a Manhattan apartment, getting stoned, and wondering if the bar scene was going to be really boisterous. Then I remembered I was really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}