How Do We Get The Children To School?

by Dick Mac

The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) continues to hold public hearings on their plan to eliminate free transit cards for students to and from school. These are not college students, these are children: high school and junior high school students.

When I was in high school, I got a transit pass that allowed me to take a subway train to a bus miles and miles to my school. This made good sense. The number of school buses on the streets was kept to a minimum, the public infrastructure was being used, and tax dollars were being spent to advance society and civilization. Which old-fashioned me thinks is one of the points of taxation.

The decade following my graduation from high school, it was decided that government should not run like a government, it should run like a business. I'd like you to show me one single solitary business in the United States that operates effectively to benefit shareholders and civilization and the tax-payers who constantly cut it breaks. There isn't one. There is not a single American company that I think the government should emulate. The government should function as a government and it should provide transportation to minor students (children) getting to and from school. The education of these students is the future of our civilization. Not, as I like to say, that civilization means anything to most Americans.

If the City of New York is required to put more school buses on the streets to move students to and from school, the streets will be a disaster. Add to the additional school buses the number of families who will begin driving their children to school because it is cheaper than buying a subway card. Nobody will get anywhere and commerce will be brought to a stand-still.

We should use the public transit system to move urban students to and from school, and the government should find a way to make it happen.

New York City can't rely on Albany to do anything. New York has not had an effective governor since Mario Cuomo, and the buffoons currently in the Executive and Legislative branches have no interest in civilization, they are only interested in themselves and keeping their prisons full of men of color from the city who are busted on drug charges.

So what's a municipality to do? Demand that the program be retained, take it off the negotiating table, and get back to addressing other problems.

Mike Bloomberg, you have been a terrible mayor. Do this one thing for your citizens. Do this. Make the MTA stop this foolishness.