|
|
I recently heard that there were about three billion websites now operating around the world, but instead of saying like a sensible person "That’s enough" I’ve decided that means there’s always room for one more, and here it is. I took its title from a sports column we used to have in New York which lives in the memory of all its old readers. It featured characters like Al Weill, the fight manager with the wonderful built (sic), Professor Ilitch of the Prosperity Institute with his Secret Play for beating the horses, available to the public for a reasonable price, Phainting Phil Scott, the English heavyweight, and other such individuals often found in the vicinity of Madison Square Garden or Belmont Racetrack.
Not to mislead, I don’t intend to write sports or introduce unusual characters found on my travels, but instead to deal in a general way with issues that bother me, and now and then to retail a joke or a story or a verse that will be a appreciated by a cultivated audience such as I hope to attract. How will I know they’re cultivated? Because I attracted them.
The benchmarks that will find me on a search engine are Catholic, ex-cop, law and order guy, tackles issues with originality and humor too. That’s me. The judges are you.
|
|
|
|
Last week I used material provided me by a lawyer I once faced in arbitration which I considered amusing for its hysterical tone in dealing with my efforts at self-defense against a flim-flam perpetrated by his clients.
Of course, looking back on it after many years of inattention I began to realize that I shouldn’t have just laughed at the abuse but should have done something more about it. This idea came to me much too late, though, and can only be composted by now, being ineligible for recycling.
Last week’s brief against me accused me of scandalous, scurrilous and defamatory statements almost paranoiac in their tone. After this warmup he reached back for his fastball and dwelt on my regrettable lack of truthfulness and addiction to unfounded allegations. All these came from a lust for mindless revenge and a propensity for wholesale character assassination. (All this taken verbatim from brief filed with court).
I stood up to this barrage pretty well, although requiring treatment for third-degree burns, contusions and abrasions, and traumatic hypoglaphobia. I have made almost a full recovery and am no longer restricted to a liquid diet.
As I’ve explained previously, this was a union case and a typically bitter one. They tend to be like that because of the tendency of union leaders to sell out their members to advance their own interests. It’s similar to the way in which ‘human resources’ officers in corporations, who are usually women, side against female employees who are molested by executives. A lawyer who specialized in such cases told me he’d never seen this fail when the HR ladies set out to protect their sinecures.
It happens in police departments too, which have unions even though they’re semi-military. In the higher ranks especially they tend to forget the union side and embrace the military one. This doesn’t mean that they reject pay raises which are keyed to those obtained by the lower, un-military types who threatened things like job actions and strikes.
All the hoo-ha I’ve been describing here and all the mudslinging directed at me by my union can be blamed on the fact that the union did not deal with business people but with politicians. Politicians were our real employers and they are a different breed. A worker in a normal apolitical business can depend on improving his life in step with the progress of his employer. Contrary to union propaganda no normal businessman tries to profiteer by cheating his workers. Instead he is constantly on the lookout for better workers, the kind who will bring in business and whom he’ll reward for it. Anyone who’s ever supervised employees knows good ones are the key to his success and must be treated right.
Civil service doesn’t work that way. There’s no bottom line, no accountability, no incentives for workers, just a cozy arrangement whereby connections count and achievements don’t. Pushover unions fit right in to this structure because unions aren’t merit-conscious any more than politicians, their civil-service employers.
Should I be denouncing unions when my uncle was the president of one and my godfather the head of its biggest local? What about my contention that they’re superfluous in private business? Wasn’t the transport union dealing with private business men? So why endorse the union out of nothing but family loyalty?
The answer to that is no, the unions weren’t dealing with businessmen.. The New York subways became operative in 1904 when the Interboro Rapid Transit Co. opened its first line in Manhattan. Two other private companies, the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Co. and the Independent Subway followed their lead into the 1920’s. All the lines were connected so as to serve the whole city.
Every one of these companies was eventually driven into bankruptcy and forced to turn over its property to the City to be run by its politicians. They deserved it, they were the responsible parties.
How’d they bankrupt the subways? Easy The fare in 1904 was 5¢ a ride. In 1944 after two world wars, the Roaring Twenties boom and the Depression, it was still the same. The nickel fare was sacred to the pols and their customers, the sophisticated New York public, who thought they were getting the bargain of all time, not noticing that sales taxes and all othetaxes went up continually because somehow the trains had to be kept running even if the fare wouldn’t do it.
Who paid for this charade? First the workers who went underpaid despite all the unions could do, the riders who found that inadequate revenue resulted in similar service and the city as a whole, which lost business and people to the suburbs. There were also the stockholders of the subway companies, whose stock became worthless when the lines stopped making money. Mitt Romney himself would have given up on the outfit.l
How’s all this connect to my own adventure? Well, it was a civil service story and civil service is a racket, as I’ve said. A reformer like myself, who sets out to inject some sense into the operation finds himself sold out by his union stooging for the management which throws them table scraps once in a while to keep them quiet. On top of this one finds oneself under bombardment by a shyster lawyer flinging mudpies nonstop by command of the union.
Did I find private business any better when I went into it? Yes and no. Most of it was on the level, but not all. So…in 1994 they went out of business. |
|
|
|
|
|
