A couple of observations:
First, it seems like people drive WORSE in the rain down here for some reason. I'm still trying to figure this one out. You'd think this would be a pretty simple matter of everyday physics: water on the roads means less friction between the tire and asphalt/concrete. Compensate by slowing down just a bit. But apparently folks here in BR take the opposite view, maybe something like this: It's raining, everybody else is taking precautions, so it'll be ok to speed up a bit. And everyone adopts this state of mind, so now it's demolition derby for the morning rush. Damn.

Glimpsed three wrecks on the way into work. Glimpsed is the key word. Not that I like to rubberneck, but traffic in this otherwise minor league town is horrible, mostly because they've never given long-range thought to an overall plan. The bus system is a joke, the roads mostly suck, and we've got what I call an 80/30 mentality: folks either travel 30 miles an hour above the speed limit, or 20 below. Sort of like having NASCAR but with rikshaws thrown into the mix.

Between dodging right-turners-on-red (who've forgotten that you're supposed to wait for the intersection to clear) and light runners, I was able to focus a bit on an NPR story I heard about the transit strike in Los Angeles. In case anyone still thinks NPR is a progressive voice, I encourage them to find the story--I think it might be under a link to Morning Edition.

Haven't really followed the strike news, except to note that it apparently was the last straw that broke the web log back of Arthur Silber and I think Scoobie Davis as well, which is too bad. However, the radio story indicated health care benefits were a big reason for the impasse in negotiations between the transit union and the City. It always comes down to something like health care or pensions, it seems.

What I found interesting were the "person-on-the-street" interviews, all of whom expressed negative views towards the union--some knew about the health care issue--one person said something like (can't make a direct quote, alas, but this is the gist) well, most jobs in So Cal no longer provide this benefit, so why should the transit workers be so lucky? Another indirect quote was along the lines of yeah, the union says one thing, the City says another, and I think both sides are full of it.

The latter remark can be dismissed as that of a pissed off bus rider who is dramatically affected by the strike but doesn't know the basis of it, the former is much more serious: it indicates that the ongoing assault on--well, there's no other way to put it--the assault on compensation for working people is not only continuing apace, but at least some folks see nothing wrong with it.

This report was preceded by a story about how lovely the political situation is in Georgia--no, not Zell Miller country, but Eduard Shevardnadze's little fiefdom. Freedom for the Georgians-on-the-Black Sea means, these days: about 2-3 hours of electricity a day, while the old-age/Senior citizen pension of about $5 dollars a month hasn't been paid at all for almost half a year. Now, I couldn't really get all the story as I was forced to play dodge car in the rain, but I heard the translation of something an elderly woman said--something to the effect that she'd like to see President Shevardnadze buried alive. I guess our President would say that the good news is she's "free" to say that--yeah, free like the song Me and Bobbie McGee--nothing left to lose.

We in the United States are largely insulated from this sort of cynical treatment of the elderly, but we might want to think of the above stories as warning shots. And consider as well the fact that Ken Lay was MORE THAN WILLING TO GAMBLE the pension fund as a last ditch attempt to keep Enron afloat, even as he lobbied Dick and George to keep quiet while he robbed California blind by "gaming" the deregulated electrical market. Keep in mind that the "privatization" of Social Security is simply a scheme to bring billions, if not trillions, of dollars into a stock market that still might be over-valued. The idea that they care about the "little guy" is as absurd as saying Enron cared about their shareholders, many of whom were company employees. Kenny preached a message of faith to his minions, while he adopted an Enlightened Rationalist point of view when it came to his own portfolio. The big-shots at WorldCom did the same.

Remember, these examples are not anomalies--this is how those people behave. And sooner or later, if we allow it, we'll reach a point where we too will have the equivalent of a $5 dollar a month pension that sometimes goes unpaid for six months at a time, while a paid health care benefit for employees will be as lost as the local and inter-urban streecars that used to dot the landscape until GM bought up most of systems and converted them to buses back in the 30s and 40s.