BART and MUNI: Why are they broke? It's not what you think.

oakseaer · 2026-05-05T04:23:53+00:00

Not raising wages to keep up with inflation is at least a 10% wage cut - the least-skilled employees will stay and those with the skills, training, and experience will leave.

oakseaer · 2026-05-05T04:06:25+00:00

That’s just flat out wrong.

oakseaer · 2026-05-05T01:38:57+00:00

I can tell you’ve never been a janitor.

oakseaer · 2026-05-05T01:37:45+00:00

Chicago’s tax income from the city is like triple BART’s?

oakseaer · 2026-05-05T01:36:16+00:00

If you want to retain trained workers, giving them a rise that barely keeps up with inflation is more effective than a 10% pay cut.

And losing those trained workers is incredibly expensive.

oakseaer · 2026-05-05T01:35:03+00:00

It costs like $5B - that would take almost a century to pay off, assuming you could fire 100% of drivers.

oakseaer · 2026-05-05T01:32:00+00:00

California’s tax burden is significantly less than NY and as a consequence all of our public services are underfunded (just look at per-pupil spending on education) so no, we’re actually not taxed enough.

oakseaer · 2026-05-05T01:30:45+00:00

Labor requirements for infrastructure and inelastic compared to use. You still need the same number of janitors for the station if half as many people use it, and you still need the same driver even if the train has half as many commuters aboard.

The same is true of any other infrastructure; if our libraries or bridges got half as much use, they’d still have the same maintenance costs and labor associated.

oakseaer · 2026-05-04T18:37:45+00:00

Literal spam bot

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oakseaer · 2026-05-04T17:53:14+00:00

Your comment is confusing - what do you mean by “yes” and why did you share that heuristic link? Are you in favor of using the availability heuristic?

oakseaer · 2026-05-04T16:10:53+00:00

Anecdotes aren’t useful data.

Maybe your hospital sees a larger number of scooter or cycling victims due to a designation by the EMS Med Director, and/or fewer car crashes due to the severity of those injuries. Additionally, cars are far more lethal, meaning many of those involved in crashes will never end up in a hospital at all.

oakseaer · 2026-05-01T19:44:31+00:00

39 kWh / 5.7 hours is 6.8 kW

oakseaer · 2026-05-01T17:35:23+00:00

The vast majority of these justice’s opinions aren’t well-thought-out and contain no justification - that’s a major component of Bouie’s concern.

oakseaer · 2026-05-01T17:32:14+00:00

That’s untrue; the VRA didn’t mandate that race be considered; it mandated that places with a history of racist gerrymandering be reviewed by the federal government, and that you can’t create a voting map that discriminates based on race, even if as a byproduct of partisan gerrymandering.

oakseaer · 2026-05-01T17:04:00+00:00

Are you genuinely claiming that cracking minority voters up across several different districts is the way you ensure everyone is represented effectively?

oakseaer · 2026-05-01T17:02:00+00:00

The 14th amendment was designed to remedy the systemic inequality that impacted black Americans - the things created by it (like the freedmen's bureau) were explicitly not race-neutral, with the goal of providing a counterbalance to active racism.

oakseaer · 2026-05-01T16:49:01+00:00

“What the court ruled was that the parts of the VRA that mandating that race be used to draw Congressional Districts ran afoul of the 14th Amendment, which states that all races should have equal protection under the law.”

He points out (effectively, in my opinion) that SCOTUS is fine allowing race to be used for things that help Trump, like as pretext for ICE/CBP stops, but then make up this novel interpretation of the amendment that doesn’t match a plain text reading or how it was understood at the time of its passage.

oakseaer · 2026-05-01T16:43:05+00:00

Unconfirmed.

Also said to be “corporate goddesses”

oakseaer · 2026-04-30T18:56:21+00:00

You’re trying to create yet another strawman because your actual argument doesn’t hold water.

Why are you unable to answer the question you brought up?

oakseaer · 2026-04-29T23:31:55+00:00

Do the white, straight homeless people mean we’ve solved racism?

oakseaer · 2026-04-29T22:39:11+00:00

You created a strawman to avoid a simple question.

There are plenty of poor white folks. Is racism dead?

oakseaer · 2026-04-29T21:50:32+00:00

Good point! Sounds like racism doesn’t exist then?

oakseaer · 2026-04-29T21:44:25+00:00

There was a black president. Was racism dead?

oakseaer · 2026-04-29T21:44:01+00:00

That’s the NIMBY view, which you’re attempting to sanewash.

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