Since I am incensed by the illegal transit strike against the people of New York City, I decided to cross-post the comment I wrote yesterday at DailyKos and MyDD. Here are a few observations from my little expedition to two of the largest progressive communities, 111 comments later at DailyKos and 60 later at MyDD.
The Kos community, at least on this subject, proved in the main reactionary, defensive and blindly ideological. I was attacked as a troll, insulted (“May an unfortunate train accident befall you”; “Now fuck off”), and subjected to the most pitiful form of debate: shouting (“Workers MUST be supported, no matter how inconvenient it is,” said one. “There are some things that should be run by private industry and some things that should be run by government. Public transit really, really, should NOT be run by private industry,” said another. “We are the midst of a full scalet [sic.] class war,” wrote a third). There were a few posters with reasoned arguments, but they were largely drowned out by the angry folks. The majority of comments fell into what I would describe as a well worn ideological rut. A poll I left with my post shows 59% of the 137 people who voted “Absolutely” support the NYC strike.
The environment at MyDD was more convivial although the ideological range of the comments was almost as narrow as at Kos. “Cool beans! This is Bob’s first comment. Let’s see if he can back up his conclusions,” wrote the first poster. We then had a more or less constructive discussion. Another thinker, after debating some of my points, concluded of the strike, “I’d like to think another way was possible.” A third even addressed an issue outside the ideological struggle between labor and management: “The news coverage on the strike is pretty one-sided against the workers. They need to do a better job getting their side of the story out.”
The rise of progessive communities on the internet is sometimes cited as one of the few good things to come out of the 2004 election. The evidence to date, however, suggests we are of only marginal importance. Look no further than Howard Dean. To become decisive, progressive communities need to debate a broad spectrum of ideas and welcome as many new people as possible — otherwise, we will have about as much impact as a preacher addressing a choir.
sco says
These days, preachers seem to have undue influence in our political discourse.
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The choir needs a place to get their marching orders. They are (or should be) the batteries that make a movement run. Debate is imporant when trying to craft policy, but frankly the purpose of a Dkos or a Democratic Underground is not to craft policy (can you imagine what one would look like — talk about too many cooks). The great thing about these sites, rather, is that they serve as a repository for news and, essentially, talking points for the Left. They are message machines, not think tanks, though I’m sure they’d like to think of themselves as otherwise.
bob-neer says
If the only message they have to offer is along the lines of “fuck off” to people they disagree with — especially those more, rather than less, sympathetic to many of their goals — they are never going to get anywhere. They will be marginalized and go the way of the folks one sees from time to time handing out copies of the Daily Worker, canvassing for LaRouche, or ranting about the Day of Judgment. Kos has several hundred thousand visitors according to TTLB. The MSM has circulations in the millions. That is where we need to be if we are going to have a real impact. There were, after all, 122 million voters in 2004.
dudeursistershot says
I’d have to disagree here. When you have that many people coming together, it should be a good place to craft policy, not just to be a message machine. It should be a good place to discuss ideological arguments and craft the best ones, and also to craft good political strategy. That’s not how it’s evolved, for whatever reason, but it would bea good place for it.
andy says
Kos in particular and MyDD as well, used to be places of ideas, that is what made the sites so great. But I have noticed over the last year that they aren’t about idealistic visions or even realistic plans and agendas. Instead much of the mega-blogosphere is becoming exactly what Washington is, a cesspool for partisan bickering, a tunnel forcing ever more narrow vision, and a battle field where even thinking that the other side could raise a valid point is tantamount to treason and solid reason for complete banishment. I turned to BMG because you all are still about discussion and debate. This is the same reason I started my own blog, my point of view would get shouted down on Kos so I figured I could fight the war the same way Kos did by starting a blog.
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This is why I am really excited about the changes here at BMG. You guys are awesome for creating a community and hopefully we can, as a community, stay a little truer to the ideal than Kos has been. I feel more and more like he is selling out to get connected and that is ultimately what will kill the revolutionary power of the blog. I see a strange historical parallel between the blog and newspaper actually. Ponder that for a while.
footie says
If you truly what an inside NY view of the transit strike you may want to go the the news blog. Kos and MYDD is much more national in scope.
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/
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“Yet for all the rage and bluster that followed, this war was declared over a pension proposal that would have saved the transit authority less than $20 million over the next three years.”
“not just Mr. Toussaint but some other New Yorkers are questioning whether it was worth it for the authority to go to war over the issue when the authority’s pension demands would apparently save less over the next three years than what the New York City Police Department will spend on extra overtime during the first two days of the strike.”
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52 percent of New Yorkers support this strike.
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Go read Gilly’s blog
david says
over there a while back. The thought police at Kos operate with impressive efficiency – I don’t believe that they speak for the entire readership, but they do speak loudly.
dudeursistershot says
with your quite mild diary, let’s see what they’ll say to mine.
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The ideological blinders at Kos should come down.
dudeursistershot says
that was… er… interesting. now i remember why i stopped reading the diaries at kos
andy says
Did they delete your story?
dudeursistershot says
because it got absolutely ridiculous. Every comment I made was getting troll rated out of existence, and I had more posts calling me things like a “fuckwad” than I could count.
bob-neer says
dudeursistershot says
was cross-post my “48 Hours” post from my blog
cos says
Oh, wow, I can see why you got flamed. That wasn’t just about the NYC transit strike, that was an general, aggressive anti-union screed. I would definitely have pegged you for a Republican troll if I’d seen it, but I probably wouldn’t have posted any comments. It would be as if someone went over there and posted a diary about how important it was to invade Iraq and bring Democracy to the Middle East, and how that was one thing Bush got right, and anti-war liberals are killing the Democratic Party and destroying its credibility on defense and security.
charley-on-the-mta says
Ken, you’re a smart guy, but that post was a total belly-flop. I’ve posted my responses on your site.
cos says
I’m going to leave aside the main point of your post, which I think is pretty good. But I have a very strong negative reaction to your last paragraph, so I’m going to dissect it…
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The rise of progessive communities on the internet is sometimes cited as one of the few good things to come out of the 2004 election. The evidence to date, however, suggests we are of only marginal importance.
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What evidence is that? The evidence I’ve seen is that progressive communities on the Internet are of fairly significant importance. I could cite more concrete examples than is practical to fit in a comment here, ranging from national significance to local politics. A few:
I could go on, but basically, I’m trying to say that the sweeping dismissal you just made is entirely wrong, and based on lack of familiarity with the evidence.
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Look no further than Howard Dean.
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I don’t see how Dean is an example that online progressive communities are of marginal importance. He’s chair of the DNC in large part because of the online progressive community, and as chair of the DNC, he is turning the party around in a big way. And before that, it was the nascent online progressive community of 2003 that was key to him coming from nowhere to becoming one of the three credible candidates for the nomination, and completely reshaping the Democratic primary campaign, and political debate in the country as a whole. “Marginal importance”?
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To become decisive, progressive communities need to debate a broad spectrum of ideas and welcome as many new people as possible
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No. I’m all in favor of debating a broad spectrum of ideas, and welcoming as many new people as possible, but neither of those is a prerequisite for attaining and wielding political power. If that were true, how did the Christian far-right become so powerful? Decisive, even.
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To become decisive, progressive communities need to learn and practice electoral politics. They need to run for office, volunteer on campaigns, contribute to campaigns, and get out the vote.
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If they do all that while at the same time debating a broad spectrum of ideas and welcoming new people, so much the better – as I said, I’m all in favor of that. But your statement is false.
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otherwise, we will have about as much impact as a preacher addressing a choir.
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Preachers addressing their choirs can have a tremendous amount of political impact. Political impact comes primarily from getting people to do things, and one of the most effective ways of getting people to act, is to speak to the choir who already agrees with you, to inform them and/or to motivate them. Achieving political impact in this way is much easier, and more efficient, than doing it through reaching out to new groups and influencing their views to get them to come over to your side. There’s certainly an important place for both of these strategies, but to deny even the existence of the first is blindness.
bob-neer says
Cos, thank you very much for your thoughtful comments. I don’t discount what you write, but I think you need to keep the big picture in view. Dean lost. Kerry lost. The Bush administration is drawing up our budgets, setting our foreign policy, and appointing the judges. I didn’t say that choir preachers don’t have any influence, only that their influence is limited. I’ll give you that Dean won the DNC Chair in large part because of the blogosphere and that some candidates have used the web to raise money, but that is only a good start, not an end in itself. We need to change the terms of the debate by building a coalition of rationalists who can keep their eye focused on what works for the good of everyone (thus the “reality-based” part of our tagline) not on mobilizing a radical fringe. The latter strategy, although admittedly “much easier, and more efficient,” is not likely to produce any substantive change over the next 5-10-20 years. At best, in MHO it will score fleeting local successes, and maybe not even many of those.
cos says
I understand that you’re trying to advocate for the things you’d like to see more people do. I hope you’ll continue to advocate for those things, but making false claims is not an effective way to do it, because you’ll either turn people off or mislead them into believing false claims. I am looking at the big picture, I just think that you’re missing important pieces of it, or eliding over them in order to make your point, and in the process, writing misleading things.
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I didn’t say that choir preachers don’t have any influence, only that their influence is limited.
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Everyone’s influence is “limited” to some extent. Nobody has omnipotence here. But that’s just quibbling, because you’re clearly using “limited” as a near-synonym to “marginal” – what you’re saying is that they have very little influence, compared to others. And that’s simply not true.
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In fact, “choir preachers” in the metaphorical sense we’re using the term, actually have the most influence. They are among the most potent forces in politics, and for good reason. That doesn’t mean they are the be-all and end-all of politics, or that we shouldn’t strive for more. It does mean that belittling their importance and influence is very misleading. Nobody is more politically influential than those who use choir-preaching strategies. Again, how do you think the religious right got their “limited” influence over today’s government?
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Dismissing the influence of the online progressive movement with “Dean lost, Kerry lost” is myopic. I’ve seen it so often it feels like a tired cliche at this point, but the key is that it doesn’t mean what people keep using it to mean.
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1. Dean lost
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That would be a good illustration of your point, if what you’d actually said was something like this:
The progressive movement on the Internet has new and far-reaching power over politics in the US, but does not dominate it. Other forces, that have been around for longer, including the mass media, the conservative movement, and the major political parties, continue to exert their influence. The new progressive movement is now clearly an important player, but is not the most powerful of these players. Still, it’s remarkable how far and fast we’ve come in a few short years.
Dean’s emergence as a major candidate, loss to Kerry, founding of DFA, and election as head of the DNC, is a fairly good illustration of that.
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But what you actually said was that we are “of marginal importance”. You undermine that claim when you bring up Dean. I think that’s because your claim is wrong. It doesn’t mean you’re wrong to advocate what you’re advocating – in fact, I agree with much of it – but please don’t buttress your advocacy with counterproductive and plainly incorrect claims like that one. Hyperbole has its place, but when it’s false, it’s best avoided.
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2. Kerry lost
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Bush focused on a choir-preaching strategy. Kerry emphasized a “reach to the middle” strategy and emphasized it over the choir-preaching aspects of his campaign. Both strategies worked, but Bush’s worked better. Again, I think you’re undermining what you’re trying to say, with the examples you give.
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Also, I’m 100% confident that Dean had a better chance of beating Bush than Kerry did, and about 90% confident that Dean would have actually beaten Bush. And part of that is because Dean was much much better than Kerry at both choir-preaching and reaching out.
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(It’s actually a false dichotomy, if you believe Lakoff’s theory, which I do, but it’s so often misunderstood and misrepresented that I don’t want to contribute to the obfuscation by using it in brief without a full explanation of what I mean)
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People take the “Dean lost” cliche to some ridiculous extremes. I’ve actually read people write that Dean’s campaign showed that his strategy of focusing on Internet fundraising from small donors, and house parties, may not be the right way to go, because hey, he lost, didn’t he? Come on! Whatever the reasons may have been for Dean’s loss, weak fundraising certainly was not one of them! What you’re doing isn’t quite that extreme, but it’s along the same line.
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The latter strategy, although admittedly “much easier, and more efficient,” is not likely to produce any substantive change over the next 5-10-20 years.
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That, I think, is pure ideology. It’s a pretty generalization that is tempting to say and tempting to believe, but is not borne out by experience and history. Substantive political changes, even in recent American history, have come just as often from narrow but committed and active “choirs” as they have from broader coalitions. It’s great to pursue new coalitions and broad realignments, and I fully support you. But the fact is that the choir-preaching strategy is also a proven winner, that has allowed various groups to produce substantive change (both for the better and for the worse).
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Also, they’re not mutually exclusive. The most effective groups do both well. Advocating for the one, is not the same thing as advocating against the other. The former is productive (keep it up!), the latter is not necessarily so, and may be destructive. Just because we want to pursue newer, broader coalitions, doesn’t mean we need to attack the choir-preaching bases that may be providing important energy and activity for us.
truebluedem says
MyDD is the same crap as DK but just less of it.
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I was a bit bothered by your diary because it sounded like you were just venting and not taking into consideration the union views.
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Frankly it is refreshing for me to see the union sticking up for its members like they are intended to do. New Yorkers seem to understand that and the TWU has a 52% approval rating. What the national is doing to the local is just what the DLC did to Dean… they are both afraid of losing their fluffy nest eggs at the cost of the American people.
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Here are two different views on the matter from the global perspective and from a person who makes a living singing in the subways. I hope that they are informative.
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dudeursistershot says
they continued to do the jobs they were being paid $50,000 a year for? Doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment to me. In the private sector (real world) that’s considered “doing your job”.
truebluedem says
they continued to do the jobs they were being paid $50,000 a year for? Doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment to me.
Why bother reading the facts… when your mind is already made up. Are you from the RedState Typing Pool?
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At this time, the Union, under Toussaint, agreed to a belt tightening contract for the good of the city.
andy says
I ask because you don’t seem to mind when people engage in illegal activity to acheive their end. The reality is that the strike is purely illegal. I think that Bloomberg is wise to say that there will be no negotiations until the illegal strike ends. We need to stop allowing the ends justify the needs. I am probably sympathetic to the union’s end but I am not at all sympathetic to their means. And just because a small majority of New Yorkers support the strike doesn’t mean they are right, after all a larger majority of Americans supported the war in Iraq and that certainly didn’t make it right.
truebluedem says
By your reasoning I suppose Ghandi and Martin Luther King also would support the illegal action in Iraq because they also had to go outside the law inorder to change it. Include in that faction American slaves who ILLEGALLY taught themselves to read and write against order of the law….
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/I am not at all sympathetic to their means/
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Pray tell what other means do unions have to enact change…?
andy says
I do love when people are so pleasant. I also take certain pleasure in knowing that I have the ability to top all others and win stupidest comment ever. That is impressive. As for MLK and Ghandi I will admit not knowing enough details. My limited recollection as far as MLK goes is that he didn’t break any “real” laws in his crusade. He certainly challenged the status quo for which he was thrown in jail but I don’t remember any outright, blatant violations of the law.
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As for what things unions can do I think that is obvious. While we are talking about MLK let’s talk about the civil rights situation. Facing a century or more of discrimination and second class citizenship do you think they had time sit around and pout about how hard it is to force change? NO! Unions have tons of options. They could have work slow downs. They could have limited strikes that would not cripple an entire city. The union could have engaged in all sorts of admirable forms of civil disobdience that show commitment to what they believe is right while simultaneously respecting the fact that the union must keep the trains running.
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One last thought. I must be honest and say that if MLK ever explicitly encouraged breaking the law I would have a hard time supporting such actions. We cannot earn a place at the table of democracy by flouting the rules that make democracy work. That said I also see a fundamental difference between breaking a law that is morally and, ironically, legally wrong and a union breaking a law in the course of self-improvement rather than the betterment of an entire society.
truebluedem says
This is the most stupid remark I have ever read
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:::: My limited recollection as far as MLK goes is that he didn’t break any “real” laws in his crusade. He certainly challenged the status quo for which he was thrown in jail but I don’t remember any outright, blatant violations of the law::::
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Hmmm… since when do people get thrown in jail for challenging “status quos”
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I read your bios perhaps
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Kravitz graduated from Swarthmore College in 1986 and the University of Michigan Law School in 1993. He has been pursuing two careers for several years. As a lawyer, he served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Sandra Day O’Connor. He has also worked in the Massachusetts Governor’s Office of Legal Counsel and private law firms specializing in appellate litigation.
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So you are telling me that in your vast legal education… you were taught that Civil Rights activist were thrown into jail for challenging the “status quo” not the legally enforced Segregation Laws.
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By your legal expertise I could be thrown in jail if I challenge the fashion “status quo” of today and wore bell bottoms tomorrow.
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I must be honest and say that if MLK ever explicitly encouraged breaking the law I would have a hard time supporting such actions.
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I had to look at the sign again…for a moment there I thought I was reading writing from Alabama or Mississippi?
andy says
Although I did graduate from law school, the above bio is not mine. Your logic is getting as thin as my patience for this discussion. Let us agree to disagree and please don’t slam anyone without first making sure he or she is the right person to slam. Why mar a good discussion with personal attacks, it just makes you look weak.
truebluedem says
I did graduate from law school
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Where??? How???
bob-neer says
Keep it civil, get your facts straight, and keep an open mind. Your shouting just displays insecurity and uncertainty about the strength of your arguments.
david says
for screwing up as to which bio goes with which comment. In the future, please don’t make mistakes like that. I’m all for vigorous debate, but I do insist that it remain civilized, and I will not hesitate to delete comments, or (as a last resort) ban users, if I (in my sole discretion) deem it necessary to do so.
bob-neer says
I would be deeply offended if someone confused me with David, for example, and I am sure he feels even more strongly should the reverse occur. Andy must be reeling.
andy says
To be lumped into the same category of any of the authors of this blog is an honor (do I get brownie points?)! I would love to have one sliver of the legal experience you all have. I was just upset that the commenter would slam your education.
david says
that transit workers in a city like NY provide an essential public service, not really all that different from police and firefighters. Does that give them a lot of leverage? Sure – in the same way that if cops were to go on strike the city would be a living hell within hours. Would we back cops going on strike? I doubt it.
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There’s a reason that public employees providing essential public services (in which I would include running the MTA) are not allowed to strike: a walkout imposes intolerably high costs on millions of the strikers’ fellow citizens, many of whom are far worse off than they are and would give their left arm to have one of those jobs. It’s not at all like a strike at a private company, even a very large one – those costs are borne in large part by the company and its shareholders, and only indirectly by the public. The transit strike, obviously, is quite a different kettle of fish from that. Some New Yorkers have already lost their jobs, and more undoubtedly will in the near future; businesses are suffering drastically (at the worst possible time of year for retailers) and some will probably fail; the list goes on.
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Does that mean that transit workers shouldn’t have any rights? Of course not. My view has always been that “no strike” laws should be accompanied by mandatory arbitration provisions – when the parties reach an impasse, a judge or some other impartial party decides the issue, and both sides have to live with it. I have no idea why the NY law doesn’t include such a provision – that seems like a gross oversight to me. But if Bob is correct that the union rejected an offer to arbitrate, that gives me pause as to whether the union is playing fair.
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So, I agree that it’s too easy just to say “the strike is illegal, therefore it’s bad” – you are right that the lunch counter sit-ins were illegal, yet today we think they were a good idea. But again, who did the sit-ins hurt? Basically, no one – certainly not millions of innocent citizens just trying to get to work.
andy says
I am not saying that because it is illegal the strike is bad. I think the strike is bad for many reasons, a few I have pointed out, like the fact that is is costing NYC approximately half a billion dollars a day. My point on the illegality is that we, as a society, seem too willing of late to accept any means to justify an end. We do not serve ourselves or our democracy well by allowing laws to be arbitrarily broken for a good cause. If the union would have exhausted every means possible, including some good old-fashioned civil disobdience, I would then say it is acceptable to break the law. I also believe in breaking laws in order to challenge them. But the union is not doing any of this. They struck because they didn’t get the money they wanted.
truebluedem says
They struck because they didn’t get the money they wanted.
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Do you work 40 hours a week?
Do you have a weekend?
Do you have workers rights as an employee if you are discriminated against?
Do you have to labor shoulder to shoulder with children?
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Well then you should thank those GREEDY Union thugs for the benefits you receive every single day…
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Give me a break… the president of the TWU local union first action taking over the job was to reduce his salary by 15,000 dollars and that of his whole team. The strike is about protecting the FUTURE benefits of TWU members.
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Bloomberg is overreaching just like Arnold… he won because Democrats once again put up a shitty candidate that Democrats refused to hold their nose and vote for… However, that does NOT give Bloomberg license to start tearing apart unions … which was also the first thing on Arnolds agenda … Bloomberg will get his come uppence.
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The city instigated this strike just so that they could try and destroy the unions. They pueposely backed the union into a corner to form them to strike and now you are parroting GOP talking points of ending the strile and coming to the table … what a load of nonsense.
bob-neer says
The Village Voice reported Tuesday: “[A] lawyer for the national union condemned the ongoing walkout as unreasonable and unauthorized.”
truebluedem says
Would we back cops going on strike?
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They just call in sick… en masse.
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And yes they have done this in New York…getting down to a skeleton crew and barley remaining within the boundaries of the law.
david says
charley-on-the-mta says
OK, I do have a substantive, and visceral, response to part of your post:
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“The City of Boston and the Commonwealth should learn from New York and examine mass transit privatization here as well. Private firms built the New York and Boston mass transit systems. It is time to see how they might improve it.”
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Wow. Bob, again, all the love and respect in the world, but that’s just a really horrible idea. A recipe for chaos, cronyism, and inefficiency — yes, even worse than at present.
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I like certain government monopolies (actually government supplements, since the T isn’t the only way to get around Boston), when they’re run accountably. I have no faith that that would improve under a privatization regime. Maybe that’s just ideological, but it’s a really strong gut instinct, based on human nature and the way all levels of government seem to work.
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So, if you weren’t expecting flames after that…
dudeursistershot says
Wow. Bob, again, all the love and respect in the world, but that’s just a really horrible idea. A recipe for chaos, cronyism, and inefficiency — yes, even worse than at present.
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There are certain services (school buses, trash collection, etc) which work well when privatized and which ought to be privatized. But privatized transit (and schools, for that matter) would be a disaster. A private company would have no incentive to provide good service, and there would be very little competition in the process anyway. Transit requires a large number of specialized workers. Competitive bidding wouldn’t work because the transition costs in completely replacing the entire management structure and workforce would more than outweigh the money to be made in running it. So you’d just have an even less accountable, monopolic company running it, with no real incentive to provide good service, and plenty to become complacent, corrupt, and just all-around terrible.
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Now, if you were to contract out certain very specific tasks at the T, or even to split the T’s system into segments, I could see contracting out working quite well. If you were to, for example, split the bus system into maybe 6 or 7 sections, and contract out each section, then there could be some true competition. And if you were to let the companies in charge keep all the revenue they collected, then there would be a real incentive to provide good service (good service=more riders=more revenue). Of course, then you’d have people whining about how the corporations get to keep the public’s money or some other such nonsense, so it probably wouldn’t be a viable political option.
dudeursistershot says
the state’s more or less prohibited from actually contracting out anyway because of the absurd Pacheco Law
charley-on-the-mta says
…which I think doesn’t apply to trains, since trains only have one track to run on. In any event, you’d have to regulate the hell out of it, especially regarding low-ridership schedules and whatnot; if you bring the profit motive into the equation, that creates a huge pressure to ax unprofitable things like Owl Service, which we have enough trouble hanging on to; the lack of which really makes this area seem kinda two-bit compared to, say, Chicago or New York.
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On the other hand, it’s still cheaper here. 🙂
david says
unprofitable things like Owl Service, which we have enough trouble hanging on to
“had,” actually – it’s gone now. Its being publicly owned didn’t save it, and the T was dragged kicking and screaming into providing it in the first place. This strikes me as an instance where a competitive market would most likely be a real plus – there is very high demand for a Night Owl-type service, and I can’t imagine that some clever entrepreneur couldn’t figure out how to make it work.
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you’d have to regulate the hell out of it
Well, they tried that with airlines, and it was a disaster. Is the current system better? It’s sure got problems, but on balance I think you’d have to say deregulation was an improvement over what came before. You can fly from Boston to JFK for $40 today – that’s a LOT less than it costs to take Amtrak’s supposedly competitive Acela service.
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I’m not sold on privatization of the transit system in general. But I do think every idea for making things better, including total or partial privatization, deserves a far more serious look than most Dems are willing to give it. The Pacheco law, for one, should be repealed immediately.
dudeursistershot says
would be that the contract would include schedules for the service, headways, routes, etc. And companies would bid to provide this service. With regard to the Night Owl, it could actually be quite profitable service. The problem is that you have greedy unions and their absurd rules, so the T has to pay drivers, I believe, double time after 12 PM or something like that. One of the biggest pluses of privatization is that it would bust up the T unions, allowing market wages, increased flexibility in management, and decreasing the cost of service quite a bit. And if one of the private bus companies became unionized, an open shop company could outbid them.
charley-on-the-mta says
Your anti-union zeal is misplaced, in this case and in others. As it turns out, when you “bust up the unions” and pay people crappy “market wages” — whatever that is — it turns out that you get employees who are less qualified to do the job. And when you pay better, you attract better employees. That’s how the labor market works.
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The problem with the T is not the nasty unions, but rather an entire system — top-down — that has been unresponsive to the public. It’s a tricky matter: you want to keep the system so that it’s free to operate and make good decisions on their own merits, but not make it totally insulated, like the ‘Pike Authority.
dudeursistershot says
that when you pay people less, you get less qualified people, and when you pay people more, you get more qualified people. In a non-union environment. With unions, you get the same less qualified people but are forced to pay them what the more qualified people would deserve. I posted my response to your comments on my blog
charley-on-the-mta says
if you offer more $ (by union pressure or not) do you end up hiring the same folks as if you offer less?
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I’ll have a response to your post soon. Briefly, I think you’re making an argument based on the vacuum of market economics, devoid of any consideration of social justice or general well-being. In other words, your “graphs” are correct, but the argument lacks historical perspective, an understanding of human nature, and heart. And that really gets to what it means to be a progressive.
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Ha — maybe I’ll start posting on my own site again… :4a7d3d609129a9296bf7ac0608c2097
dudeursistershot says
One example which doesn’t really apply in the U.S. is the hiring hall. But in general, regardless of who you hire, they know that they have Big Daddy Union to protect them from harm. They have much less incentive to work hard, and so they become lazy and complacent. So maybe you aren’t hiring the same people, but in the end you get basically the same service and productivity (less, probably).
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The point is, in a society such as ours where relatively few people are in unions, the people in unions become ridiculously overpaid in comparison to most people and nonunion people are burdened by their high cost of labor, and in a society where most people are in unions, everyone makes much less in real wages than they otherwise would because of lost productivity and non-market-wage-induced inflation. In other words, everyone gets hurt by unions. Paying everyone an arbitrary “living wage” is a nice theoretical goal, but unions are simply not the way to get there.
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The point is not that we shouldn’t help the poor, it’s that unions simply don’t help the poor. They hurt everyone, especially the poor. So let’s become the party of new ideas rather than the party of old ones. Let’s dump the deadweight and the old, outdated, failed ideas of the (first 9/10 of) the 20th century and let’s move forward with a new, innovative, visionary ideas.