like I live in rural montana where most of the population is reactionary and racist and it is objectively less violently authoritarian here than nyc

26 points
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Why not just make the subway free and fund it with a tax on wallstreet? I’d run for mayor on that platform and be elected. Also, how does the Governor have any say over the city subway system?

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17 points

You would get heart attack gunned with a platform like that.

If it were that easy to just run on good ideas, then make them happen, it would have happened once in our history.

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IDK, New York has a habit of electing the worst Mayors possible. That place is electorally cursed

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24 points

The landlord associations and the police cartels would simply not let you win

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11 points

Also, how does the Governor have any say over the city subway system?

The MTA is a state run agency that was formed in part to undermine the downstate political machine led by Robert Moses who is like the archetypal 20th century carbrained racist that was instrumental in the destruction of poor and minority neighborhoods to build highways and who purposefully sabotaged the development and operation of New York’s mass transit systems for literal decades. His legacy lives on in the lack of rail connections both in NYC proper but also across most of Long Island. There’s also a rich history of belligerence between the state government and city government, and like a lot of places especially in the northeast US a product of that is a spaghetti bowl of adversarial, duplicative, and parochial governing and rulemaking bodies that all get to have a say and dip their beaks.

Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo constantly fought over shit like petty children. Cuomo’s enormous ego tripping was especially noxious, leading to high-profile controversies like the last-minute shitcanning of the repair of an old but crucial subway tunnel that ran under the East River that got flooded during Hurricane Sandy. This also resulted in nixing a really promising busway pilot the MTA had planned after an extensive, nasty community engagement process that would’ve seen 14th Street in Manhattan closed to mostly everything but buses that would replace subway service during the 18 months it would take to do the repairs. This, among other political encumbrances, was likely a large factor in Andy Byford’s resignation barely two years into the job. Cuomo is that much of a shitheel that he sandbagged and ostracized a guy his own board appointed either as a way to stick it to the NYC mayor or because Byford was actually trying to turn things around, getting recognized for it, and putting pressure on Albany to act.

All of this type of shit has left scars all over the state and it’s just sad in the end. So many communities decimated by poor planning and political dick-swinging. As much as I miss living there—because it is truly a cool place to live/work/visit and riding trains and buses everywhere is dope and it’s one of the only places in Amerikkka you can actually do that—I don’t think I could ever hack it in NYC today. It just seems like it’s become so much more of an oppressive place since I moved out a decade ago, but maybe it’s also that I’m not a carefree lib anymore lol. Either way, fuck all these pigs and fuck this absolute clown shit.

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7 points

Then Byford came up to Toronto and faced some similar issues with our municipal vs provincial arguing over transit. Bad luck Andy.

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4 points

Now he’s back in the US working for Amtrak on high speed rail, but haven’t heard much about his progress since he started last year beyond corridor studies (and I know he’s once again been handed a pretty shit deal, since HSR wasn’t a funding priority in Amtrak Joe’s vaunted infrastructure bill).

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36 points
*

Instead of tackling the actual problem by giving the homeless and people suffering from mental illness and/or drugs help as needed, let’s just install military police chuds whom aren’t going to do jack shit.

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12 points
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Oh they’ll do something: they’ll harass and fuck with the most vulnerable and harassed people in society and lots of other random people too.

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11 points

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41 points

ban people convicted of a violent crime on the subway from public transit

This is some Half-Life 2 “anticitizen” shit

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28 points

That’s really going to help them turn their lives around

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35 points
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I wish liberals were just honest about it. If you want to vote for Genocide Joe, don’t lie about it. Be proud, about your choice. Don’t mangle game-theory or pretend you are some kind of prescient elder making HARD choices about evil. Just say you are comfortable with genocide and the status quo and that is why you will only vote for Capitalists.

Undesirables need to be put in their place by the ever-funded police.

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12 points

running a full background check before you can catch the train

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12 points

NYC has been a fascist police state every time I’ve ever been there

Fuck that place.

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