[Mpls] Now the Governor has the strike he wanted

[WizardMarks]

Steve Sumner wrote:

>To state that the Governor wants to see a strike, with people off the job,
>and other people's lives being disrupted by the interruption in bus service
>is reckless and irresponsible journalism.  To keep pressing this story makes
>you folks look very foolish.  I don't like to see the strike, but the union
>members need to realize that the money isn't there to support the kind of
>plan that they are looking for.
>
WM: Thanks for calling me a fool, Steve, I surely do appreciate it. 
However, the money certainly was there to support our only, very basic 
mass transit when Pawlenty came into office. It's one of those no option 
cost deals like the heat bill, the rent.

What I said was that the governor engineered this strike. His toll roads 
idea will get support once the strike gets going. The group that has 
been lobbying for inter-suburban roads will be screaming because all 
those suburban people MCTO hauls will now have to drive private vehicles 
even more miles, thereby making it harder for them to get where they're 
going. When the bulk of one's transit system is bus, then the state and 
the union can always reach a compromise because they have to and, in the 
past, both sides have wanted to reach a compromise.

There is, however, no way to look at a transit strike with this 
footprint and not see union busting. The stance the state is taking 
looks like union busting, walks like it, talks like it.  To pretend it's 
anything else is disingenuous. To make the please "we have no money," is 
contemptible. Of course we have the money. Pawlenty wants to use it 
elsewhere.

Transit work is blue collar work. It's repetitive, hard labor in hulking 
vehicles playing in the traffic with humans aboard, ahead, behind, and 
around. Cities that function at all need reliable, vested blue collar 
workers in great numbers. Its one of the jobs (it has been one of the 
jobs) where uneducated people could make a life for their families get 
out of poverty with the hope that they can send at least some of their 
kids to college or trade school. It has a symbiotic relationship with 
what makes any city functional. Taking the stance Pawlenty's man Bell 
takes is to cut off one's nose to spite one's face. This, I hardly need 
iterate, is not a good idea.

>WizardMarks, Central
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