Hal Womack 3-dan
2008-01-30 01:45:58 UTC
MUNI: MINI OR MAGNUS? RIDE FREE vs. CHRON CLAN
By Hal Womack 3-dan
http://www.myspace.com/halwomack http://www.flickr.com/photos/halwomack/
Riding free on MUNI = an important issue of interest in the life of
our City.
Many people are attracted to San Francisco because we can live here
without owning a private automobile. I came here in 1978 partly for
that reason and partly because of the reputation of the world-famous
SF Go Club at the grand temple in Japantown under the leadership of
Shinji Dote (1928-2001). By contrast, I doubt that anyone at all has
come here in this period in order to be able to read the CHRONICLE
more conveniently, even in the last millennium when Herb Caen was
still writing for the original pre-Hearst enterprize under the DeYoung
heirs --if I may say so frankly WADRT [= "With All Due Respect To"] my
host site. {Please see Note 4 below.}
Back on board the fare affair: We note the reported discontinuance
alias perceived failure of the "free ride" experiment in Austin,
Denver and Trenton. How about abroad? Does any major city on our
Planet offer free mass transit?
{City Controller Ed Harrington...who chairs a special mayor's panel
looking at ways to stabilize Muni's finances, said the notion of free
Muni should be shelved because it likely would attract hundreds of
thousands of new riders and prove detrimental.
"The odds are," Harrington said, the initiative "would become so
successful that you'd destroy the system." --Full text of article
copied below.}
To discontinue a progressive program precisely because it becomes
hugely successful = a symptom of a terminally corrupt social system
like, for example, war crapitalism under the degenerate, inbred
Demublicans who make "nepotism* look like an ethical advance. So for
the moment let's assume that we have pulled down the mass murderers
from office and have established justice. What then for fare policy on
MUNI?
Well, we shift the money flow to finance a seriously expanded public
transit system at the expense of the private automobile. This will
save our air and should also allow us to speed individual transit time
by minimizing traffic jams. "Everbody has a car, so no one can get
anywhere." --Has the reader had that feeling lately? Which's just
another way of asking has she been in a traffic jam.
The second important objection which reporter Rachel Gordon mentions
= the social rather than the engineering & investment aspect:
"Drivers and longtime passengers complained that the free rides
attracted rowdy and destructive joyriders." The two categories in
question here = A) The homeless and B) Young bucks aka bachelors from
the poor & oppressed classes.
The sad fact that A) Sizeable numbers of our fellow citizens are
sleeping in doorways and perishing miserably in the Winter streets
does adversely impact the community as a whole in various ways, even
besides the heartless zombiefication phenom of the boorzhies misled by
the CHRON.
To take one example, a well-ordered society would surely be tempted
to strut itself with a 24/7 library. Under current conditions,
however, just as free public transit could turn into a homeless
shelter on wheels so likewise for the late night stacks. Come the
Revolution, compadre, we shall house everyone, even keeping sheltered
the boorzhies hooked on their happy pills**, by far the gravest kind
of destructive drug addiction in JAM ("Jewish-American eMpire"). When
we shall have first hung*** the main malefactors of JASPerdom and
thereby shall have begun to establish a proper government of our Home
Planet, public morale will be much improved.
Likewise for the rambunctious young bucks hailing from ghettos
rendered fatherless by the massive arrests in the number of 2,000,000
behind bars at present. (For every one prisoner per capita in Japan,
the USA has more than twelve.) A black American is more than nine
times as likely to be imprisoned as is a white. Because the niggers
are more violent? Pray consider that for the last available year of
1995, the U.S. national murder toll is reported at 16,692 (including
"nonnegligent manslaughter"), whereas our best estimate of the number
of Iraqis murdered by the U.S.Government since 1990 = 3,000,000 [three
million] and this number exclusive of many thousands of murders
committed under the auspices of the same perp in Afghanistan, Lebanon,
Palestine and Colombia. Of the American breeds, blacks and Latinos are
least likely to support
U.S. imperial crimes, Jews most likely and normal alias "gentile"
whites somewhere between the devil and the darkies.
The above basic data by way of touching on the social aspect of
American public transportation. Closely related thereto = the fact
that the military & secret police complex = the main enemy of the
American people and the local police are quite hooked up with the
Federal murder machine. Almost needless to say that this fundamental
political fact complicates the scene in the back of the bus. After the
thorough cleansing of PD's across our land, I reckon that the City can
make some novel arrangement with taxi drivers to maintain order on our
future free, 24/7 MUNI and BART.
I have a particular personal involvement in this issue, since in July
of 1981 my attempt as the operator of the #14 Mission St. trolley to
collect the fare from Reuben Igafo led to my permanently losing 20
points of vision in my left eye. Barehanded I held the 6'4" 240 lb.
Samoan for the cops and he wound up doing 6 months behind the assault.
During that period before pulling out my coaches from the Potrero
Division at the beginning of the shift, I was flipping the cigarette
ad posters and using a magic marker to write on the blank side slogans
like "HANG REAGAN FOR WAR CRIMES IN CENTRAL AMERICA!" But of course
the D.A. would as soon have made a golf date on the moon as
investigate the possibility that some Federal spook instigated
Mr.Igafo's attack.
Further reflections on the social psychology of MUNI and our local
customs WRT fare collection: I have permament scars in the crooks of
both arms from selling plasma in the years before hiring on with MUNI.
I was well aware of how it felt to be shut out of the high-paid realms
symbolized by names such as Lockheed Martin,
Raytheon, Halliburton and Stanford. Going through training, I thought
I would surely let all the po' boys ride free. And so I did for
months, without the slightest fear of complaint from management for my
'tude. One of my "line trainers" (i.e, a working operator detailed to
help break in rookies, as opposed to a permanent member of the
instruction department; this particular man later became president of
our local union) made a point of looking out the left-side window as
passengers were boarding, showing a studied indifference to whether
they paid the fare and, as I recall, handing out transfers on request.
MUNI from that day to this AFAIK refrained from disciplining operators
on the point of fare collection, precisely lest the operators become
injured in the attempt to do so and then sue the Company for having
put them at risk.
Nearly three decades later I still remember clearly the scene which
changed my mind on that point. I was southbound on the #14 at Mission
& 30th, boarding passengers. A Chicana maiden, demure & pious,
carefully counted out her coins, which appeared to mean something to
her, and dropped them in the box. Shortly thereafter a young street
hustler flashed his roll of greenbacks and swaggered on by to the back
of the bus. At that moment I revised my 'tude re _laissez passer_:
Henceforward, if anyone on my bus was going to pay the fare, then
everyone was. That led to a further adjustment of calculation
regarding the size of various intending passengers. A case by case
evaluation being too taxing, I decided that as a matter of policy
regardless of how big he was, I would insist that he pay. A third
alternative, which I considered only briefly but which has now
reappeared as today's Page One story, was to hang on the cashbox a
sign reading "Ride This Bus Free!"
When Willie Brown was first running for Mayor, a free passage MUNI
was one of his many transitory notions. Alas, he implemented only the
disasterous ones like doubling the size of the taxi fleet and forgot
the good one. The fact that Mayor Gavin Newsom at least entertained
this idea shows that he has at least some surviving brain cells.
Whereas Phil Bronstein's rude play of the story serves to remind us
that the CHRON = the rottenest institution in town. From cheering on
imperial slaughter in Fallujah or Jenin to thumbing its paper nose at
our hometown poor, the CHRON clique distinguish themselves by their
criminally mean-spirited bootprint on our minds.
Their recent endorsement, however, of the presidential bid of Senator
Barak Obama may somewhat mitigate this indictment.
Should Obama after all win to the White House, then will he prove to
be merely one more Israeli machine-gunner in the service of his
rabbinical masters firing on the children, a la Colin Powell or Condi
Rice?
And, furthermore, when President Obama comes to San Francisco, will
he pay full fare on MUNI ?
................................................................................
* From the Latin "_nepot_" for "nephew".
First use in English: "1669 S. PEPYS Diary And then home and got my
wife to read to me again in The Nepotisme, which is very pleasant."
Did you know that the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY can now be accessed on-
line through your public
library?
** "Antidepressants are the most frequently prescribed class of drugs
in the US, with about 60,000 prescriptions written every working
hour."
Stan Cox, "The Depressing Truth About Anti-Depressants" in
COUNTERPUNCH 1/26/08.
http://tinyurl.com/2wtvdw OR
http://www.counterpunch.org/cox01272008.html
*** Poetic license & shorthand here, as often explained previously. A
brief hanging by the feet and ceremonial bloodletting for a tiny
handful of the prime perps before casting them down into their
dungeons. Capital punishment
in peacetime a sign of deep derangement of the state so acting.
(#4)
to ***@sfchronicle.com
date Jan 29, 2008 5:16 PM
subject CHRON Black List?
Dear Rachel Gordon,
I am about to post a comment on your MUNI fare policy story to the
Usenet
newsgroup "ba.transportation" and also to four other related ng's.
A few minutes ago I attempted to post to the CHRON a digest within the
CHRON space
limit for comments but so far it fails to appear or to receive any
acknowledgement
whatsoever from the CHRON.
A few weeks ago I posted a comment to the CHRON which was removed
without notice
only moments later. Will you please be so kind as to tell me whether
the CHRON has
banned me from its "comments" feature?
FYI I will forward you separately my Usenet post.
Sincerely, Hal Womack
--
(.sig follows below)
Hal Womack
24/7 tel.# = 415/788-5701
San Francisco CA 94133
U.S.A.
http://www.myspace.com/halwomack
http://blog.myspace.com/halwomack
4TJAM?
{= "For Truth, Justice And the Milky way"}
"BEtween Just yoU & Me & the TELephone KOmpany" =
BEJUMTELKO
===================================
Free ride? Fat chance: Muni fares will stay
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Eliminating fares on San Francisco's Municipal Railway - an idea Mayor
Gavin Newsom wanted explored - would worsen delays, overcrowding and
financial burdens on the already strained transit system.
That bleak assessment by private consultants who evaluated the free-
rides idea has led Newsom to quietly abandon the concept, top
administration aides told The Chronicle on Monday.
"It's not something that we plan to pursue at this time," said Stuart
Sunshine, the mayor's top transportation aide.
Newsom asked transit officials in March to study a no-fare system,
saying at the time, "If it could happen here, it could happen
anywhere." His suggestion was aimed at luring people out of their cars
to reduce air pollution and traffic.
The consulting team hired by the city, led by Sharon Greene &
Associates, looked at what happened when other jurisdictions adopted
free transit programs. In larger cities, such as Austin, Texas,
Trenton, N.J., and Denver, ridership increased by nearly 50 percent.
If that happened to Muni, which now provides nearly 700,000 trips on
an average day, the annual operating and maintenance costs would rise
by nearly $69 million. Muni's annual budget is about $670 million.
The extra costs would come from paying more drivers, maintenance and
cleaning crews, supervisors and security guards.
In addition, the city would have to add an estimated 267 buses and
streetcars to its fleet of about 1,000 at a cost of approximately $537
million. New storage and maintenance yards also would be needed to
accommodate the new vehicles.
Muni also would have to figure out how to run more streetcars through
the tunnels. The consultants warned of bottlenecks and added delays.
The system already has problems running on schedule.
Muni currently needs an estimated $100 million to $150 million more a
year to make the significant service improvements voters demanded in
1999 but have yet to see.
Even if the money were available, it would take five to 10 years to
purchase the new equipment and expand the maintenance capacity.
City Controller Ed Harrington, a veteran City Hall fiscal watchdog who
also chairs a special mayor's panel looking at ways to stabilize
Muni's finances, said the notion of free Muni should be shelved
because it likely would attract hundreds of thousands of new riders
and prove detrimental.
"The odds are," Harrington said, the initiative "would become so
successful that you'd destroy the system."
The consultants' draft report, a copy of which was obtained by The
Chronicle, said, "Conceptually, fare-free service would appear
consistent with San Francisco's 'transit-first' policy, which requires
the city to promote alternatives to car travel. However, without
significant improvements made to the system's infrastructure in order
to increase reliability, fare elimination alone may actually make
public transit a less viable alternative to other modes of travel."
Newsom, in asking for the study, speculated that the amount of money
Muni now spends collecting and counting fares isn't much different
than it gets at the fare box.
But actually, the consultants found, the difference is considerable.
Costs related to fare collection add up to about $8.4 million a year.
Muni collects nearly $112 million a year in fare revenue.
Muni charges $1.50 for a regular cash adult fare - $5 for a cable car
ride - and $45 for a standard monthly FastPass. Discounts are offered
to the disabled, seniors and youth.
Many transit agencies across the country have offered free rides -
some systemwide and some in limited geographic areas, such as the
programs in Portland, Ore., and Seattle that let people board for free
in the downtown areas.
The experiments in Trenton, Austin and Denver were abandoned, and
higher costs were cited as just one reason. Another reason: Drivers
and longtime passengers complained that the free rides attracted rowdy
and destructive joyriders.
Only a handful of systems that began a systemwide free-boarding
program within the last 20 years continue to offer the service, the
consultants found. All of them, in such places as Logan, Utah, and
Clemson, S.C., are relatively small operations.
Closer to home, the East Bay city of Emeryville provides free bus
shuttle service around town and to and from an Oakland BART station.
In Bay Area: The president of the Board of Supervisors demands that
the mayor return transit money used to pay the salaries of mayoral
aides. D5
Muni at a glance
-- Average daily ridership: almost 700,000
-- Annual operating budget: $670 million
-- Annual revenue from fares: nearly $112 million
-- Annual cost to collect fares: $8.4 million
E-mail Rachel Gordon at ***@sfchronicle.com
http://tinyurl.com/3635l5 OR
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/29/MNFQUNU4C.DTL
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
================================
Other Resources:
Abir Aramin, age 9, murdered by the Jews
on Tuesday, January 16, 2007, her picture:
http://tinyurl.com/2l6ogh
An Israeli mother, a Jewess, comments on the story:
http://tinyurl.com/3amvos
http://www.rafahtoday.org/
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/fiveisraelis.html
...............................................................
Here's the link to what I wrote on the eve of SonnaBush's (fronting
for Aerial Shaboom) invasion of Iraq:
http://tinyurl.com/2xcvdo
(The tag end of the piece was stuck on rather roughly by the HANDSTAND
editor & could profit from a bit of pruning.)
If any reader can find another article from that critical moment which
has better stood the test of time, will she please be so kind as to
tell me about it?
...........................................................................
For Susan Abulhawa's new novel of Palestine, SCAR OF DAVID (2006)
http://www.scarofdavid.com/blog/index.php?page_id=5
OR
http://tinyurl.com/2n77bo
...................................................................
http://www.americanfreepress.net/
FINAL JUDGMENT by Michael Collins Piper, first published in 1994 and
now in its 6th edition, lays out the Jewish background to the JFK hit
in >600 fascinating pages (which badly need editing, evenso --attn:
M&W).
(See the AFP site above also for the moving letter of 29 November 2006
from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, directly addressed to
"Noble Americans" --maybe your local jewspaper forgot to pass it along
to you?)
On the AFP site linked above I just now (Tuesday 071211)
found the following Michael More out-take from Sicko about a certain
northern country:
http://tinyurl.com/23zgxu
.....................................................................
Five Principal Joojingo or "JJ" resources:
1. http://www.aipac.org/
2. The Bronfmen @ http://www.acbp.net/
3. http://www.jinsa.org/home/home.html
4. http://www.adl.org/
5. http://www.hasbara.co.il/
Four Righteous Jewish Antidotes:
1. http://www.ostrovskyfineart.com/index.htm
2. http://www.nkusa.org/index.cfm
3. http://www.israelshamir.net/
4. http://tinyurl.com/3c9jm8 OR
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/18/136217
........................................................
All rise,
http://www.counterpunch.org/dolby04032007.html
This clip was the first time I ever saw Marvin Gaye perform. The word
in my mind = "composure".
..........................................................................
Kidz Today:
A) Iron Maiden The Trooper By Gauchos
B) The Impeach Bush Club Parade
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4606006427048738351
...............................................................
Flag of USrael:
Loading Image...
http://www.ussliberty.org/
http://www.aztlan.net/women_martyrs.htm
http://www.jewwatch.com/
http://margaritaville.com/
[cartoon panel]
http://tinyurl.com/2kyyc9 OR
Loading Image...
.............................................
http://www.hizbollah.org/
http://tinyurl.com/2r3stp
Loading Image...
http://tinyurl.com/3dlhhb
http://www.currentissues.tv/
http://www.waco93.com/
("Nadine Eats Pizza in Ramallah")
http://www.israelshamir.net/Contributors/Contributor47.htm
http://tinyurl.com/yqd75d (Akaber Zaid)
http://www.counterpunch.org/levy03272006.html
http://vcnv.org/
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=1
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=491
http://www.americanempireproject.com/index.asp
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html
Loading Image...
http://www.nelsonmandela.org/
Loading Image...
http://www.sf911truth.org/
http://www.documentaryphotographs.com/
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
http://www.aztlan.net/
http://www.valleyofthewolvesiraq.com/high/main.html
http://www.johnkaminski.com/
http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/index.php
http://antiwar.com/
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/index.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
http://www.infowars.com/
http://english.wafa.ps/default.asp
http://www.araboo.com/site/arab-aaug-asq-9777
http://www.al-awda.org/
http://www.imemc.org/
http://www.vcnv.org/
http://www.ziopedia.org/content/view/3301/58/
http://antiwar.com/
http://www.cnionline.org/
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=
http://www.honestmediatoday.com/index.htm
http://prorev.com/indexa.htm
http://www.thankyoult.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
http://www.deiryassin.org/index1.html
http://www.marwenmedia.com/index.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage
http://www.thehandstand.org/
http://www.malaysiasun.com/
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/
http://tinyurl.com/79t3d
http://tinyurl.com/yt4tym ("Let It Be!")
http://www.fuckinggoogleit.com/
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,150 for "free your mind, the rest will
follow".
By Hal Womack 3-dan
http://www.myspace.com/halwomack http://www.flickr.com/photos/halwomack/
Riding free on MUNI = an important issue of interest in the life of
our City.
Many people are attracted to San Francisco because we can live here
without owning a private automobile. I came here in 1978 partly for
that reason and partly because of the reputation of the world-famous
SF Go Club at the grand temple in Japantown under the leadership of
Shinji Dote (1928-2001). By contrast, I doubt that anyone at all has
come here in this period in order to be able to read the CHRONICLE
more conveniently, even in the last millennium when Herb Caen was
still writing for the original pre-Hearst enterprize under the DeYoung
heirs --if I may say so frankly WADRT [= "With All Due Respect To"] my
host site. {Please see Note 4 below.}
Back on board the fare affair: We note the reported discontinuance
alias perceived failure of the "free ride" experiment in Austin,
Denver and Trenton. How about abroad? Does any major city on our
Planet offer free mass transit?
{City Controller Ed Harrington...who chairs a special mayor's panel
looking at ways to stabilize Muni's finances, said the notion of free
Muni should be shelved because it likely would attract hundreds of
thousands of new riders and prove detrimental.
"The odds are," Harrington said, the initiative "would become so
successful that you'd destroy the system." --Full text of article
copied below.}
To discontinue a progressive program precisely because it becomes
hugely successful = a symptom of a terminally corrupt social system
like, for example, war crapitalism under the degenerate, inbred
Demublicans who make "nepotism* look like an ethical advance. So for
the moment let's assume that we have pulled down the mass murderers
from office and have established justice. What then for fare policy on
MUNI?
Well, we shift the money flow to finance a seriously expanded public
transit system at the expense of the private automobile. This will
save our air and should also allow us to speed individual transit time
by minimizing traffic jams. "Everbody has a car, so no one can get
anywhere." --Has the reader had that feeling lately? Which's just
another way of asking has she been in a traffic jam.
The second important objection which reporter Rachel Gordon mentions
= the social rather than the engineering & investment aspect:
"Drivers and longtime passengers complained that the free rides
attracted rowdy and destructive joyriders." The two categories in
question here = A) The homeless and B) Young bucks aka bachelors from
the poor & oppressed classes.
The sad fact that A) Sizeable numbers of our fellow citizens are
sleeping in doorways and perishing miserably in the Winter streets
does adversely impact the community as a whole in various ways, even
besides the heartless zombiefication phenom of the boorzhies misled by
the CHRON.
To take one example, a well-ordered society would surely be tempted
to strut itself with a 24/7 library. Under current conditions,
however, just as free public transit could turn into a homeless
shelter on wheels so likewise for the late night stacks. Come the
Revolution, compadre, we shall house everyone, even keeping sheltered
the boorzhies hooked on their happy pills**, by far the gravest kind
of destructive drug addiction in JAM ("Jewish-American eMpire"). When
we shall have first hung*** the main malefactors of JASPerdom and
thereby shall have begun to establish a proper government of our Home
Planet, public morale will be much improved.
Likewise for the rambunctious young bucks hailing from ghettos
rendered fatherless by the massive arrests in the number of 2,000,000
behind bars at present. (For every one prisoner per capita in Japan,
the USA has more than twelve.) A black American is more than nine
times as likely to be imprisoned as is a white. Because the niggers
are more violent? Pray consider that for the last available year of
1995, the U.S. national murder toll is reported at 16,692 (including
"nonnegligent manslaughter"), whereas our best estimate of the number
of Iraqis murdered by the U.S.Government since 1990 = 3,000,000 [three
million] and this number exclusive of many thousands of murders
committed under the auspices of the same perp in Afghanistan, Lebanon,
Palestine and Colombia. Of the American breeds, blacks and Latinos are
least likely to support
U.S. imperial crimes, Jews most likely and normal alias "gentile"
whites somewhere between the devil and the darkies.
The above basic data by way of touching on the social aspect of
American public transportation. Closely related thereto = the fact
that the military & secret police complex = the main enemy of the
American people and the local police are quite hooked up with the
Federal murder machine. Almost needless to say that this fundamental
political fact complicates the scene in the back of the bus. After the
thorough cleansing of PD's across our land, I reckon that the City can
make some novel arrangement with taxi drivers to maintain order on our
future free, 24/7 MUNI and BART.
I have a particular personal involvement in this issue, since in July
of 1981 my attempt as the operator of the #14 Mission St. trolley to
collect the fare from Reuben Igafo led to my permanently losing 20
points of vision in my left eye. Barehanded I held the 6'4" 240 lb.
Samoan for the cops and he wound up doing 6 months behind the assault.
During that period before pulling out my coaches from the Potrero
Division at the beginning of the shift, I was flipping the cigarette
ad posters and using a magic marker to write on the blank side slogans
like "HANG REAGAN FOR WAR CRIMES IN CENTRAL AMERICA!" But of course
the D.A. would as soon have made a golf date on the moon as
investigate the possibility that some Federal spook instigated
Mr.Igafo's attack.
Further reflections on the social psychology of MUNI and our local
customs WRT fare collection: I have permament scars in the crooks of
both arms from selling plasma in the years before hiring on with MUNI.
I was well aware of how it felt to be shut out of the high-paid realms
symbolized by names such as Lockheed Martin,
Raytheon, Halliburton and Stanford. Going through training, I thought
I would surely let all the po' boys ride free. And so I did for
months, without the slightest fear of complaint from management for my
'tude. One of my "line trainers" (i.e, a working operator detailed to
help break in rookies, as opposed to a permanent member of the
instruction department; this particular man later became president of
our local union) made a point of looking out the left-side window as
passengers were boarding, showing a studied indifference to whether
they paid the fare and, as I recall, handing out transfers on request.
MUNI from that day to this AFAIK refrained from disciplining operators
on the point of fare collection, precisely lest the operators become
injured in the attempt to do so and then sue the Company for having
put them at risk.
Nearly three decades later I still remember clearly the scene which
changed my mind on that point. I was southbound on the #14 at Mission
& 30th, boarding passengers. A Chicana maiden, demure & pious,
carefully counted out her coins, which appeared to mean something to
her, and dropped them in the box. Shortly thereafter a young street
hustler flashed his roll of greenbacks and swaggered on by to the back
of the bus. At that moment I revised my 'tude re _laissez passer_:
Henceforward, if anyone on my bus was going to pay the fare, then
everyone was. That led to a further adjustment of calculation
regarding the size of various intending passengers. A case by case
evaluation being too taxing, I decided that as a matter of policy
regardless of how big he was, I would insist that he pay. A third
alternative, which I considered only briefly but which has now
reappeared as today's Page One story, was to hang on the cashbox a
sign reading "Ride This Bus Free!"
When Willie Brown was first running for Mayor, a free passage MUNI
was one of his many transitory notions. Alas, he implemented only the
disasterous ones like doubling the size of the taxi fleet and forgot
the good one. The fact that Mayor Gavin Newsom at least entertained
this idea shows that he has at least some surviving brain cells.
Whereas Phil Bronstein's rude play of the story serves to remind us
that the CHRON = the rottenest institution in town. From cheering on
imperial slaughter in Fallujah or Jenin to thumbing its paper nose at
our hometown poor, the CHRON clique distinguish themselves by their
criminally mean-spirited bootprint on our minds.
Their recent endorsement, however, of the presidential bid of Senator
Barak Obama may somewhat mitigate this indictment.
Should Obama after all win to the White House, then will he prove to
be merely one more Israeli machine-gunner in the service of his
rabbinical masters firing on the children, a la Colin Powell or Condi
Rice?
And, furthermore, when President Obama comes to San Francisco, will
he pay full fare on MUNI ?
................................................................................
* From the Latin "_nepot_" for "nephew".
First use in English: "1669 S. PEPYS Diary And then home and got my
wife to read to me again in The Nepotisme, which is very pleasant."
Did you know that the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY can now be accessed on-
line through your public
library?
** "Antidepressants are the most frequently prescribed class of drugs
in the US, with about 60,000 prescriptions written every working
hour."
Stan Cox, "The Depressing Truth About Anti-Depressants" in
COUNTERPUNCH 1/26/08.
http://tinyurl.com/2wtvdw OR
http://www.counterpunch.org/cox01272008.html
*** Poetic license & shorthand here, as often explained previously. A
brief hanging by the feet and ceremonial bloodletting for a tiny
handful of the prime perps before casting them down into their
dungeons. Capital punishment
in peacetime a sign of deep derangement of the state so acting.
(#4)
to ***@sfchronicle.com
date Jan 29, 2008 5:16 PM
subject CHRON Black List?
Dear Rachel Gordon,
I am about to post a comment on your MUNI fare policy story to the
Usenet
newsgroup "ba.transportation" and also to four other related ng's.
A few minutes ago I attempted to post to the CHRON a digest within the
CHRON space
limit for comments but so far it fails to appear or to receive any
acknowledgement
whatsoever from the CHRON.
A few weeks ago I posted a comment to the CHRON which was removed
without notice
only moments later. Will you please be so kind as to tell me whether
the CHRON has
banned me from its "comments" feature?
FYI I will forward you separately my Usenet post.
Sincerely, Hal Womack
--
(.sig follows below)
Hal Womack
24/7 tel.# = 415/788-5701
San Francisco CA 94133
U.S.A.
http://www.myspace.com/halwomack
http://blog.myspace.com/halwomack
4TJAM?
{= "For Truth, Justice And the Milky way"}
"BEtween Just yoU & Me & the TELephone KOmpany" =
BEJUMTELKO
===================================
Free ride? Fat chance: Muni fares will stay
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Eliminating fares on San Francisco's Municipal Railway - an idea Mayor
Gavin Newsom wanted explored - would worsen delays, overcrowding and
financial burdens on the already strained transit system.
That bleak assessment by private consultants who evaluated the free-
rides idea has led Newsom to quietly abandon the concept, top
administration aides told The Chronicle on Monday.
"It's not something that we plan to pursue at this time," said Stuart
Sunshine, the mayor's top transportation aide.
Newsom asked transit officials in March to study a no-fare system,
saying at the time, "If it could happen here, it could happen
anywhere." His suggestion was aimed at luring people out of their cars
to reduce air pollution and traffic.
The consulting team hired by the city, led by Sharon Greene &
Associates, looked at what happened when other jurisdictions adopted
free transit programs. In larger cities, such as Austin, Texas,
Trenton, N.J., and Denver, ridership increased by nearly 50 percent.
If that happened to Muni, which now provides nearly 700,000 trips on
an average day, the annual operating and maintenance costs would rise
by nearly $69 million. Muni's annual budget is about $670 million.
The extra costs would come from paying more drivers, maintenance and
cleaning crews, supervisors and security guards.
In addition, the city would have to add an estimated 267 buses and
streetcars to its fleet of about 1,000 at a cost of approximately $537
million. New storage and maintenance yards also would be needed to
accommodate the new vehicles.
Muni also would have to figure out how to run more streetcars through
the tunnels. The consultants warned of bottlenecks and added delays.
The system already has problems running on schedule.
Muni currently needs an estimated $100 million to $150 million more a
year to make the significant service improvements voters demanded in
1999 but have yet to see.
Even if the money were available, it would take five to 10 years to
purchase the new equipment and expand the maintenance capacity.
City Controller Ed Harrington, a veteran City Hall fiscal watchdog who
also chairs a special mayor's panel looking at ways to stabilize
Muni's finances, said the notion of free Muni should be shelved
because it likely would attract hundreds of thousands of new riders
and prove detrimental.
"The odds are," Harrington said, the initiative "would become so
successful that you'd destroy the system."
The consultants' draft report, a copy of which was obtained by The
Chronicle, said, "Conceptually, fare-free service would appear
consistent with San Francisco's 'transit-first' policy, which requires
the city to promote alternatives to car travel. However, without
significant improvements made to the system's infrastructure in order
to increase reliability, fare elimination alone may actually make
public transit a less viable alternative to other modes of travel."
Newsom, in asking for the study, speculated that the amount of money
Muni now spends collecting and counting fares isn't much different
than it gets at the fare box.
But actually, the consultants found, the difference is considerable.
Costs related to fare collection add up to about $8.4 million a year.
Muni collects nearly $112 million a year in fare revenue.
Muni charges $1.50 for a regular cash adult fare - $5 for a cable car
ride - and $45 for a standard monthly FastPass. Discounts are offered
to the disabled, seniors and youth.
Many transit agencies across the country have offered free rides -
some systemwide and some in limited geographic areas, such as the
programs in Portland, Ore., and Seattle that let people board for free
in the downtown areas.
The experiments in Trenton, Austin and Denver were abandoned, and
higher costs were cited as just one reason. Another reason: Drivers
and longtime passengers complained that the free rides attracted rowdy
and destructive joyriders.
Only a handful of systems that began a systemwide free-boarding
program within the last 20 years continue to offer the service, the
consultants found. All of them, in such places as Logan, Utah, and
Clemson, S.C., are relatively small operations.
Closer to home, the East Bay city of Emeryville provides free bus
shuttle service around town and to and from an Oakland BART station.
In Bay Area: The president of the Board of Supervisors demands that
the mayor return transit money used to pay the salaries of mayoral
aides. D5
Muni at a glance
-- Average daily ridership: almost 700,000
-- Annual operating budget: $670 million
-- Annual revenue from fares: nearly $112 million
-- Annual cost to collect fares: $8.4 million
E-mail Rachel Gordon at ***@sfchronicle.com
http://tinyurl.com/3635l5 OR
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/29/MNFQUNU4C.DTL
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
================================
Other Resources:
Abir Aramin, age 9, murdered by the Jews
on Tuesday, January 16, 2007, her picture:
http://tinyurl.com/2l6ogh
An Israeli mother, a Jewess, comments on the story:
http://tinyurl.com/3amvos
http://www.rafahtoday.org/
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/fiveisraelis.html
...............................................................
Here's the link to what I wrote on the eve of SonnaBush's (fronting
for Aerial Shaboom) invasion of Iraq:
http://tinyurl.com/2xcvdo
(The tag end of the piece was stuck on rather roughly by the HANDSTAND
editor & could profit from a bit of pruning.)
If any reader can find another article from that critical moment which
has better stood the test of time, will she please be so kind as to
tell me about it?
...........................................................................
For Susan Abulhawa's new novel of Palestine, SCAR OF DAVID (2006)
http://www.scarofdavid.com/blog/index.php?page_id=5
OR
http://tinyurl.com/2n77bo
...................................................................
http://www.americanfreepress.net/
FINAL JUDGMENT by Michael Collins Piper, first published in 1994 and
now in its 6th edition, lays out the Jewish background to the JFK hit
in >600 fascinating pages (which badly need editing, evenso --attn:
M&W).
(See the AFP site above also for the moving letter of 29 November 2006
from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, directly addressed to
"Noble Americans" --maybe your local jewspaper forgot to pass it along
to you?)
On the AFP site linked above I just now (Tuesday 071211)
found the following Michael More out-take from Sicko about a certain
northern country:
http://tinyurl.com/23zgxu
.....................................................................
Five Principal Joojingo or "JJ" resources:
1. http://www.aipac.org/
2. The Bronfmen @ http://www.acbp.net/
3. http://www.jinsa.org/home/home.html
4. http://www.adl.org/
5. http://www.hasbara.co.il/
Four Righteous Jewish Antidotes:
1. http://www.ostrovskyfineart.com/index.htm
2. http://www.nkusa.org/index.cfm
3. http://www.israelshamir.net/
4. http://tinyurl.com/3c9jm8 OR
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/18/136217
........................................................
All rise,
http://www.counterpunch.org/dolby04032007.html
This clip was the first time I ever saw Marvin Gaye perform. The word
in my mind = "composure".
..........................................................................
Kidz Today:
A) Iron Maiden The Trooper By Gauchos
B) The Impeach Bush Club Parade
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4606006427048738351
...............................................................
Flag of USrael:
Loading Image...
http://www.ussliberty.org/
http://www.aztlan.net/women_martyrs.htm
http://www.jewwatch.com/
http://margaritaville.com/
[cartoon panel]
http://tinyurl.com/2kyyc9 OR
Loading Image...
.............................................
http://www.hizbollah.org/
http://tinyurl.com/2r3stp
Loading Image...
http://tinyurl.com/3dlhhb
http://www.currentissues.tv/
http://www.waco93.com/
("Nadine Eats Pizza in Ramallah")
http://www.israelshamir.net/Contributors/Contributor47.htm
http://tinyurl.com/yqd75d (Akaber Zaid)
http://www.counterpunch.org/levy03272006.html
http://vcnv.org/
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=1
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=491
http://www.americanempireproject.com/index.asp
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html
Loading Image...
http://www.nelsonmandela.org/
Loading Image...
http://www.sf911truth.org/
http://www.documentaryphotographs.com/
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
http://www.aztlan.net/
http://www.valleyofthewolvesiraq.com/high/main.html
http://www.johnkaminski.com/
http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/index.php
http://antiwar.com/
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/index.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
http://www.infowars.com/
http://english.wafa.ps/default.asp
http://www.araboo.com/site/arab-aaug-asq-9777
http://www.al-awda.org/
http://www.imemc.org/
http://www.vcnv.org/
http://www.ziopedia.org/content/view/3301/58/
http://antiwar.com/
http://www.cnionline.org/
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=
http://www.honestmediatoday.com/index.htm
http://prorev.com/indexa.htm
http://www.thankyoult.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
http://www.deiryassin.org/index1.html
http://www.marwenmedia.com/index.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage
http://www.thehandstand.org/
http://www.malaysiasun.com/
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/
http://tinyurl.com/79t3d
http://tinyurl.com/yt4tym ("Let It Be!")
http://www.fuckinggoogleit.com/
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,150 for "free your mind, the rest will
follow".
