1% holds mobility hostage to break unions

Port Authority Transit union OKs concessions - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "Port Authority union employees on Sunday ratified a contract calling for $60 million in givebacks over four years, clearing the way for a vote to reverse the historic transit service cuts and layoffs that were scheduled to take effect Sept. 2."

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Pittsburghers for Public Transit: Transportation is Our Need – and Our Right

Pittsburghers for Public Transit: Transportation is Our Need – and Our Right: "Government environmental agencies warn of dramatically increased air pollution with 10,000 more cars stuck in traffic on the parkways and streets, with their engines idling, but say there’s nothing they can do about it.
Clearly, we are heading for disaster unless we start to realize that mass public transit meets vital needs in our society, and that it must be supported and subsidized at a level that will increase its availability and make it cheaper, not more expensive, for people to use."

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What Fracking has done to people in Butler

Keep jobs downtown. Its more efficient. Sprawl is wasteful.

Anything but the car: My comments on the P-G article on the June 8 transit protest: If you live in a house built since 1950 or so, on a street that was built since 1950 or so, YOU are the problem. Since you moved 15 to 30 miles out, instead of staying in the city where your (great-)grandparents lived, you are expecting the taxpayer to fund the cost of both transit *and* all those wide, suburban thoroughfares for your cars to travel on. The state cannot afford to fix roads and bridges OR fund transit. Something has to give, and really both are (raising taxes to fix roads is a different argument, though intimately related), but transit is getting the headlines.

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1% uses fake fiscal "crisis" to steal workers' pensions

Port Authority votes to cut jobs, routes in fall | TribLIVE: "Bland said state officials have indicated they won’t move to increase funding to the cash-strapped agency until it obtains major concessions from the union — including savings on future retirees’ health-care and pension costs, which make up about one-fifth of the budget. The state provides about 45 percent of the agency’s operating money."

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Is there no end to their greed? Banksters' puppets now want to cut bus drivers' benefits, while billions are given out in corporate welfare.

State Lawmaker Says Port Authority will get No State Help Until Legacy Costs are Addressed | Essential Public Radio: "“I suspect a lot of it has to do with legacy costs, benefit costs that are paid to their drivers. Quite honestly, when I rode the buses into Pittsburgh, interviewing the passengers, they didn’t care if it was a Port Authority bus, they just wanted a bus,” he said."

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Banksters steal in broad daylight, so police arrest public transit advocates

Julia Rendleman/Post-Gazette

Protesters arrested at transit cut rally - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: ""They can't get to schools, they can't get to jobs, they can't get to grocery stores, they can't get to rallies like this one," Ms. Nichols said as supporters gathered at the corner of Fort Pitt Boulevard and Stanwix Street before the march. "This is unacceptable -- a city cannot operate legitimately without public transportation.""