I’m moving a little slow this morning. Yesterday Jim & I moved the top of the old glass-topped table out of the dining room and into the garage, making room for the new dining room/poker table that’s to be delivered this morning. Then we headed to the Sportie for steak dinners (a deal at $3.99) and beers. I ended up hanging out and talking to various folks through the evening (including getting hugs from a couple different cute gals) and found myself walking home at 2am. Oops. Oh well, it was a good evening out. Gotta remember to do that once in a while.
- Interesting, the Met Council, union met again to discuss bus strike on Wednesday, and they’ll meet again on Monday. Hopefully there’s actually some progress happening in the talks. [daily]
- Old news (that I didn’t get to linking to right away): Callers to Pawlenty: Settle transit strike. The interesting bit is at the end of the article, where it says:
So if you’re holding a 31-day pass, I’d suggest sending it in to get your money back from the Met Council. It’s not really going to hurt their bottom line at this point, but you’d might as well have the money, rather than leaving it in their pockets. [press-patch]The council announced it would reimburse Metro Transit customers for 31-day passes that have been useless since the strike started. Expired passes that were activated before March 4 can be exchanged for multiple seven-day passes or refunded.
Holders should mark their pass so it clearly indicates whether they want an exchange or a refund and send it, along with their name and mailing address, to: Metro Transit, Attention: Convenience Fares, 560 Sixth Ave. N., Minneapolis, MN 55411.
- According to the ATU 1005 website, there’s a rally this Saturday (April 10) at the State Capitol, and Metro Transit and ATU negotiating teams are scheduled to meet on Monday, April 12, 2004.
- Also, via the ATU website, on Wednesday, April 7, 2004 , the Minnesota House voted (search for
[TRANSFER OF TRANSIT OPERATIONS.]
) not to privatize Metro Transit by a vote of 54 for and 78 against. Now being the libertarian-leaning-guy I am, you’d think I’d be for privatization, right? Sadly, it’s more complicated than that. The reason we need the government to provide transit is that government has made it impossible for a truly free private market to operate a transit line.
This is a problem I often see with deregulation. In many cases, I think regulation is necessary because government has regulated something else. It’s a huge domino effect, and privatizing transit just wouldn’t work without a bunch of other deregulation. You’d have to allow private companies free access to the transit market, and that’s not going to happen without striking a number of city, county, state, and possibly federal ordinances from the books (federal makes the list, because I could see a real metropolitan-area transit system for the Twin Cities going to Hudson, which would mean crossing a state line, which gets into federal complications).
We’ve built huge layers of government in this country over the past two-hundred years. Striking down one piece of regulation without adjusting everything else is probably going to be more disruptive and worse for the people than leaving it in place. That doesn’t mean I’m for more government by any means. I just want to see the adjustments take place, and few legislators see a big-enough picture (I’m not claiming that I do, either) to be able to make those adjustments intelligently. It’s a hugely complex system, and if it were a piece of computer software, I’d start by trying to diagram the interactions. When I got a headache from that, I’d consider throwing it away and starting over (at which point years of development time would be spent, and we’d never ship. That might not be all that bad of an outcome, now that I think of it).