Nancy Pelosi is invisible, says George F. Will
In a not bad considering column, George F. Will urges congressional Democrats to “temper their enthusiasm for impeachment with lucidity”, listening to words of wisdom from others, including Greg Weiner, “Madison scholar par excellence” and author of a new book that Mr. Will has either read or heard about, along with Alexander Hamilton, and, of course, Mr. Will himself.
Well, that’s not the worst advice one could give, in my opinion, but Mr. Will could save himself a little time by suggesting that congressional Democrats simply listen to the woman they elected Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who, when she isn’t accusing Facebook of being a Russian plot, can be pretty lucid herself. (Nancy seems to take it as her duty to say stupid things from time to time, but as a political tactician I suspect that she could even give lessons to the estimable Mr. Will.)
“How Bibi Blew it,” Says Commentary!
There was a time, now a very long time ago, when an inquisitive goy like myself could read Commentary and feel that while clearly in someone else’s house, he was welcome. Well, that was a long time ago, about the time Papa Norman Podhoretz penned the notorious piece “Is It Good for the Jews?” Since I usually preferred to ask myself “Is It Good for the Episcopalians?”, I felt it was time to move on, and occasional subsequent visits did nothing to dispel the notion. But, today, no more, thanks to Vivian Bercovici’s fiercely worded piece, “How Bibi Blew It”, which I can’t quote effectively because I’ve exhausted my freebies for the month. I thought nothing could shake Commentary’s devotion to Bibi and his Likudist ways, but, clearly, I was wrong. Again!
Why can’t New York have nice subways? Josh Barro gets halfway to the bottom of this mystery
Over at New York magazine, Josh Barro has a pretty good, and pretty thorough, column, exploring why other cool cities, like London, and Paris, and Berlin, have cool stuff that New York doesn’t, coming to the frustrating conclusion that overlapping governmental authorities and extra-governmental players—a federal government, three state governments, half a dozen city governments, dozens of competing agencies, entrenched unions and pollical pressure groups, slow everything down, so that everything costs three times as much.
Well, that’s almost half right, but according to the New York Times, the new subway that New York is building, the “East Side Access", is even higher priced, “seven times the average elsewhere in the world,” according to Brian Rosenthal’s own in-depth study, “The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth,”, the price for that mile being $3.5 billion, inflated by good old-fashioned corruption—not the tacky, envelopes full of cash corruption, though there’s some of that—but good old-fashioned legal corruption—“the real crime isn’t what’s illegal but what’s legal,” as the saying goes.
For years, The Times found, public officials have stood by as a small group of politically connected labor unions, construction companies and consulting firms have amassed large profits.
Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show.
Construction companies, which have given millions of dollars in campaign donations in recent years, have increased their projected costs by up to 50 percent when bidding for work from the M.T.A., contractors say.
Consulting firms, which have hired away scores of M.T.A. employees, have persuaded the authority to spend an unusual amount on design and management, statistics indicate.
Public officials, mired in bureaucracy, have not acted to curb the costs. The M.T.A. has not adopted best practices nor worked to increase competition in contracting, and it almost never punishes vendors for spending too much or taking too long, according to inspector general reports.
At the heart of the issue is the obscure way that construction costs are set in New York. Worker wages and labor conditions are determined through negotiations between the unions and the companies, none of whom have any incentive to control costs. The transit authority has made no attempt to intervene to contain the spending.
Of course, there are other problems as well, such as the fact that New York not only pays the average subway worker $150,000 a year, its subway system is the only one in the world that staffs each train with two operators rather than one. Naturally, all these employees will retire at an early age and collect generous benefits for the rest of their lives. Does that help answer the rest of your question, Josh?
