I meant to note this in an earlier open thread, but over the weekend, some of the state ferries didn’t run for a bit (Seattle Times link).
The Kitsap Sun reports dozens of runs on three routes -Point Defiance-Tahlequah, the north end of Vashon Island, and Port Townsend-Coupeville – were canceled for lack of crew.
Dispatchers ran out of relief and on-call workers who were needed to fill in for regular employees on vacation or medical leave.
This is what happens with years of cuts and cuts and cuts. Service gets cut. Most of the time people are able to make things work but when there are fewer options available, the potential for trouble increases.
Now, I think our Washington State Ferry system is great: I’m glad to have used it and almost certainly will use it again in the future. But I didn’t need any of those particular runs, on that particular day, so by GOP logic, I shouldn’t care about other people inconvenienced. But of course, we’re all a community, so it does harm. And of course the more things like this happen, the more cops and fire get cut from local communities, the more our road and bridge repairs get put off, the more likely any problem is to hit any of us.
The TeaNazis say flat out that the passenger should carry the full cost of the journey. I’ve read some estimates that put the cost of the Seattle/Bremerton ferry line at $45 each way if that were to happen.
They don’t believe in education, they want to shut down libraries, they oppose repaving roads and rebuilding old bridges, they openly say that nobody has the right to clean water or fresh food or medical care. They think that anything, other than military spending for weapons is communism. It apalles me that the “right to life” fucktards will celebrate and cheer when they see little brown babies being burned by white phosphorus and napalm.
It’s perfectly fine to buy 400 copies of a $2 Billion strategic bomber that cannot be flown in the rain, but to spend that same amount on modernizing public schools is tyrannical and just another step toward putting everyone in concentration camps.
One cannot reason with psychopaths. There is no rationale for maintaining an educated, informed citizenry that doesn’t offend their personal value system.
Yes, and yes.
I’ve always held that right-wingers – or whatever label you want to use for that segment of the population that exhibits the traits we all tend to talk about and wring our hands over – have an inability to sense relationships beyond the first order.
We see that with gay rights – only when someone’s son or daughter comes out do they realize that gay people (in their minds, I think, “not me-like people”) are, you know, people.
It’s sometimes characterized by a broader inability to feel empathy.
It’s seen with economic analyses like this – where the much bigger and more important benefits (though less immediate) to things like universally available and excellent schools, or a well run, broadly available ferry service, or even frequent buses, these benefits are completely elusive to such minds.
It’s seen in rants about taxing for Metro buses over on (un)SoundPolitics – to the effect of “those freeloads need to pay the full costs of ever bus run!!” without understanding the larger costs of part of the population not having access to school/doctors/jobs. It’s seen in every rant and yawp from the Teahaddists.
They have very blinkered and very fear-motivated views of the world, and their thoughts mostly revolve around ‘I GOT MINE!!” and “I WANT MORE!” without realizing that we’re all in this together, that your neighbor prospering makes your community stronger and wealthier, that great disparities in wealth are destabilizing and backward and evil.
Funny, that these right-wing analyses are always applied to nice things like buses and ferries and schools in places full of liberals – like Seattle – but never the roads and schools and electricity lines in Moses Lake or Centralia or Pend Oreille – that are paid for by the people in Seattle.
Funny.
There are fewer cops? Wow, all those cops at the ferry sure fooled me.
Oh wait, it’s Sept. 11th, isn’t it? A day that marked the end of forensic science in the US.
Oh, and stay out of the Columbia Building. A high wind could cause it to implode.
@1 The legislator and ferry system historically have set fares at about 85% of costs, so I doubt full-cost fares would be that high.
On the subject of “stretching things until they break…”
As a student of history, I’ve spent some time recently on the American Civil War, concentrating on policy and logistics more than grand battles and strategy.
Studying the Confederate Congress is interesting, it was pretty much a tea-party convention. They opposed extending the draft to owners or overseers of 100 slaves or more. Each state had to consent to national taxation within it’s borders.
The result of lack of funds, occupation of some Confederate territy by Union forces, and the Union embargo created a severe lack of funding in a society which traditionally dealt more with the exchange of products (cotton, tobacco, etc.) than hard currency. The lack of manpower robbed the railroads of the men they needed to maintain and repair the existing lines, much less establish new lines to areas where they were needed.
The end result was that by 1864 the Confederacy had no iron rails with which to make repairs, it’s roadbeds and culverts were collapsing, and the engines and cars where running through makeshift repairs. If railroad iron rails were needed, they had to decide where it was needed least, remove the rails, and re-install them at the place most needed. Sherman’s march through Georgia and South Carolina was marked with his “wreckers pulling up railroad ties and burning them with the rails on top, then taking the hot rails and twisting them around trees so they would be useless. Confederate attempts to reinforce Joe Johnston in N. Carolina were hampered by miles-long gaps in the rail lines.
So what does that have to do with the Ferry Sytem? It just goes to show how extended deferred maintenance and lack of funds causes big problems when an unexpected outside pressure is exerted. It also shows the failure of the Tea Party philosophy as a system of government.
# 1: If the users of the roads and interstates were made to pay their cost of construction and update each time they drove over them, I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost were about $45.00 a trip, also.
“The TeaNazis say flat out that the passenger should carry the full cost of the journey.”
Except when it’s them, in which case they piss and moan worse than anyone else. My wife used to work “immunes” for the Seattle/KingCo Health Department, and there were numerous instances where some self-impressed schmuck or schmuckette decked out in Armani or Prada would come in to get travel shots for a business trip or cruise to the South of Frawnce or a solo jaunt to Thailand to fuck little boys, and spend the whole time criticizing everything, call my wife a “freeloader” for working in the civil service, sniffle about the poor folks they had to share the waiting room with–and then try to haggle over the bill when they were done.
The fleet is stretched thin, with the Hiyu the only spare boat, and it’s utility is deficient. The Samish and Tokitae, which are under construction, will only be replacing two Evergreen State class ferries, which date back to when a former mayor of Seattle occupied the Governor’s Mansion.
A friend of mine recently observed that when he was a kid in the 1960’s he’d never have imagined he’d grow up to live in a dystopian society.