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Yes, I'm just busting them out. In this chapter, Terry embarks on a project to prove he's sane and ends up wondering if the psychiatrist is. He worries about Eurick getting enough, and Eurick worries about bad precedents, and Mary lies for Terry, and Terry offers to eat salted plum for Jack.
Next chapter the shit hits the fan again.
As comic relief from the weight of worldly disasters, let me point out that the bus strike is going into its third week soon, and the metro board has only just today met again, in closed-doors session, and will not list which members voted against settling with the drivers back when they had a chance. There has been a heavy disinformation campaign going, in which it's repeated over and over that the Metro drivers make the fourth highest hourly wage of municipal bus drivers anywhere in the US. Though wages are not the issue: health care benefits is.
Also, let's just contemplate that hourly wage for a moment, okay? It's $24 an hour. This is less than teachers make -- I'm not arguing they should make more, just referring back to the wage discussion that's been going on here in the second least-affordable community in the Unbited States -- one of the big publiuc stories that's been going around the last five years or so is that teachers don't make enough to live here, they can't buy a house on their wages, they can't pay the rents. Okay. If $25/hour is a lousy wage for teachers, why is $24/hour a scandalously high wage for drivers? Yeah, yeah, teachers are professionals and they have to go to graduate school and pay off their loans and stuff, and so maybe they should make more than other workers, but that's not the point. The point is that if a certain hourly wage is not enough for a worker to live in a community, then another, lower, wage can't possibly be scandalouly high, can it?
The issue with the health care benefits is pretty simple. It's that old back door, two-tier issue again -- you guys keep the old benefits and the new guys get the shaft. It's the fight that's been going on all over the map the last couple years.
If you want to learn about the Pakistan earthquake, you should visit Kathryn Cramer's blog.
Next chapter the shit hits the fan again.
As comic relief from the weight of worldly disasters, let me point out that the bus strike is going into its third week soon, and the metro board has only just today met again, in closed-doors session, and will not list which members voted against settling with the drivers back when they had a chance. There has been a heavy disinformation campaign going, in which it's repeated over and over that the Metro drivers make the fourth highest hourly wage of municipal bus drivers anywhere in the US. Though wages are not the issue: health care benefits is.
Also, let's just contemplate that hourly wage for a moment, okay? It's $24 an hour. This is less than teachers make -- I'm not arguing they should make more, just referring back to the wage discussion that's been going on here in the second least-affordable community in the Unbited States -- one of the big publiuc stories that's been going around the last five years or so is that teachers don't make enough to live here, they can't buy a house on their wages, they can't pay the rents. Okay. If $25/hour is a lousy wage for teachers, why is $24/hour a scandalously high wage for drivers? Yeah, yeah, teachers are professionals and they have to go to graduate school and pay off their loans and stuff, and so maybe they should make more than other workers, but that's not the point. The point is that if a certain hourly wage is not enough for a worker to live in a community, then another, lower, wage can't possibly be scandalouly high, can it?
The issue with the health care benefits is pretty simple. It's that old back door, two-tier issue again -- you guys keep the old benefits and the new guys get the shaft. It's the fight that's been going on all over the map the last couple years.
If you want to learn about the Pakistan earthquake, you should visit Kathryn Cramer's blog.
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One advanctage is that our press has no pretensions of being "liberal" -- before it was bought out by -- I forget who bought them before Ottaway, they were the family possession of the McPhersons, who are right-wing Republicans from the rapacious beginning of the town. I see that there's no longer a McPherson name on the masthead, but there was until recently. The ironic thing is that the McPherson who was our state senator had to move drastically to the left because even the right-wing farmers in South County look liberal in today's weidly skewed political spectrum. And now they've gerrymandered Santa Cruz right out of the Monterey Bay and stuck us in with Palo Alto and the Peninsula, which is short-sighted on the part of the Democrats who did it.
I can ramble, can't I -- anyway the talks begin again today.
I never did get back to that split thing we were talking about a couple months ago, and the reason is that the more I read the more confused I became and I found I didn't have anything cohesive to say -- not, "gosh, Mike, you're right, I was deceivfed by the propaganda," nor "gosh, look at this -- there's a strong argument for these guys."
I'm right now taking a wait and see attitude. As long as everybody honors everybody else's picket lines, for now.