Popular Post editor Posted January 5 Popular Post Posted January 5 The Chronicle has a couple of articles today about Mayor Whitmire's first year in office. Considering how the newspaper has treated him since his election, I expected it to be rougher on him. The only negatives it noted were that he didn't deliver on half of his promises, has more than doubled the city's financial hole in one year, and doesn't play nice with others. So I guess he and I have those things in common. As someone whom hizzonor would likely describe as a "special interest" because my income doesn't come from an oil company, a concrete company, or an auto dealership, I have a few thoughts: The mayor doesn't understand transit. He has this vision of using micro-transit as some kind of municipal-Uber. That's how micro-transit works, and that's not what micro-transit is for. Micro-transit works in conjunction with regular transit. It's not a replacement. It's not meant to be. Nobody's going to commute from Gulfton to the Galleria in a stretch golf cart. The fact that he wants to reduce the city's bus service shows… The mayor really doesn't understand transit. How do you make poor people un-poor? You give them transit. So they can hold down a steady job, maybe eventually purchase a car for your cronies, and either way contribute tax money to the city of Houston, which is $240,000,000.00 short these days, thanks to the mayor, who… Really really doesn't understand transit. The guy can't escape his quote about people from Gulton don't want to go to the Galleria and people in the Galleria don't want them, when he decided to axe an established mass transit route. It shows how classist, insulated, and completely out of touch he is. Who does he think is cleaning all those Galleria-area hotel rooms? Who does he think is fixing all of his oil buddies' cars? Who does he think is cutting the hair and sharpening the nails of the Ladies who Lunch on Post Oak? Has he ever taken a bus along Memorial Drive in the Villages and noticed all the brown people getting on and off? Yeah, those are the people who muck out Houston's million-dollar toilets. Who cook the food for his campaign contributors. Who raise the children of the people we send to Washington. Guess where they live? Not in his neighborhood. Guess how they get to those menial jobs? Not in a city-owned black car. This is because… The mayor really really really doesn't understand transit. Perhaps it's because he doesn't ride the bus, or take the train. Maybe he's never been on the red line at 4pm when it's packed with doctors and nurses and medical students and pharmacy techs and a hundred other occupations coming and going around the city. Maybe he's never been on the West Alabama bus and seen how it serves well-off white dudes, poor recent African immigrants, and a cornucopia of students from elementary school all the way through college. Houston crows about "diversity," but there are few real places where so many of the city's cultures get together in one place than on a Metro bus. You know who understood transit? Michael Bloomberg. Even as a billionaire mayor of the largest city in America, he took the subway to work. John, if you need a Q-Card, let me know. I'll let you have mine. It even has $2.50 on it. Quick quiz: do you know how many bus rides that buys? Your trash bills are going up. Maybe not this year. But it's going to happen. The mayor is continuing the march toward privatizing Houston's trash service. It's a textbook example I've seen play out in a dozen other cities: Politician underfunds a public service. Public service is crippled and can't do its job. Public complains about public service. Politicians who underfunded public services declares that it will be privatized because government can't do the job right. Lather, rinse, repeat, wipe hands on pants. He wants to merge the city and county health departments. I'm OK with that. Some of the best health care in America comes from county health systems. Also, some of the worst. It's up to the mayor to decide which he wants to deliver. But in order to merge the city and county health departments, he has to go through… Lina Hidalgo. Mr. Mayor, it's time to put on your big boy pants and go down to her office and talk to her on her terms. You can't continue to be a whiny baby all butthurt because she called out your prima donna bullshit in front of everyone at a press conference. Sometimes you gotta do what's right. Man up, Nancy. He's moaning about his cronies in Austin not being receptive to Houston's needs. No shit, Sherlock. That's what every single mayor in the last half-century told you while you were sitting up there in Austin vilifying the evil big Democrat cities. And now that you're on the doorstep of octogenarianism so you have nothing to offer the suits up Travis County way, nobody gives a crap what you want. What did you think was going to happen? You made this bed, and now you get to lie in it. Karma is a bitch, isn't it? 8 4
mollusk Posted January 5 Posted January 5 Total puff pieces, starting with giving the impression that we got a lot more than a net of a dozen more cops. 1
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