Public transit fare nonpayment issue tied to social mores changing for the worse

 

As a follow-up to my post last week about the habit of nonpayment of transit fare and the possibility that the Washington State Supreme Court may follow that of the Maryland court and declare that demand for proof of fare payment to be unconstitutional “search and seizure,” I confess that after observing that the driver of the bus I take home at night was simply allowing most people to walk past him without paying fare, I emailed Metro customer service, telling them that "fare is fare," inquiring if I could receive “official” written permission not to have to pay fare, and inform the driver of such. Of course I didn’t actually believe that someone was going to permit this, but I was curious about what Metro’s policy was about nonpayment of fare, pointing out the unfairness of some people paying while many do not, particularly on evening trips. I had to demand a response from Metro twice, and eventually received this message:

I assure you that all Metro Transit drivers receive training in our fare policies and customer relations. Transit Operating Instructions direct drivers to avoid confrontations and never get into fare disputes with customers. When a customer fails to make a fare payment, operators are expected to request a fare payment one time, and then report the incident if the fare is not paid. They are also expected to use their best judgment, placing the highest priority on personal safety and safety of their customers. Our goal is assault prevention.

It's one hell of a statement about our society today when a driver takes his or her own life into their hands asking a "customer" for fare payment. The threat of “assault” didn’t really come into play in regard to my complaint, since the same people boarding the same bus without fare payment simply either gave the same made-up excuse (“forgot” or “couldn’t find” their bus pass or transfer) or simply walked past the  driver knowing he wouldn’t even ask them to pay the fare. The actual “policy,” according to Metro, is that if someone boards the bus the driver may tell them they have to have to pay fare, but if there is the threat of belligerence (mainly from vagrants, delinquent punk-types and even more “mature” types who think they are “owed” free rides by society), then to just let them on to avoid “confrontation.” And most drivers seem to wish to avoid even the possibility of that happening by ignoring nonpayments.

The “cost” of this is that, according to the Seattle Times and other local media reports, fare evasion is practiced by at least 30-40 percent of passengers, and other estimates put it as high as 70 percent; as a result of this, Sound Transit and regional transit in general is seeing budget shortfalls in the billions of dollars. During the pandemic, the “honor system” is being depended on by the Sound Transit train and the link light rail for fare payment—and if people think that no one is checking, then even the allegedly “civic-minded” people will eventually take to seeing what they can get away with. Of course there is no “honor” system in regard to Metro and Sound Transit bus service. You either pay, or if you appear you might pose a “physical” threat to the driver, then just let them on, according to “policy.”

That is what society has come to in a culture where even the music—which in the past was usually meant to promote “positive” messages of love and longing—now “justifies” self-obsession, crime and disrespect for civilized norms. I remember once I was at a job being forced to listen to tuneless auto-tuned non-music and suggested a change to an “oldies” station (which then meant the 1980s), but after ten minutes you heard complaints about too many “love” songs; in 1976, Paul McCartney asked what was “wrong” with “Silly Love Songs”; well, in this society obsessed with “wokeness,” “MeToo” and whose “life” matters more than someone else’s, plenty—and I’m not just talking there about BLM, but white women too. Every rule of the “bad old days” is meant to be broken, especially by narcissists and hypocrites.

And I suppose getting away with doing the wrong thing has something to do with the way you were “raised,” right? When I had a temp job at the Fred Meyers on Lake City Way, the “undercover” theft-prevention officer told me that “kids” just went in there to steal knickknacks just to brag to their friends that they could get away with, and they usually got away with it if they got as far as the door. Most were black, and there was always the self-conscious desire to avoid a “confrontation” if it meant being accused of “racism.”

But as I suggested before about “mature” people breaking rules, some of these “kids” learn from their “elders.” At the same store, a black woman (wearing glasses, so she must have been "smart") came in with one of those rolling suitcases and starting filling it up with household items, mostly toiletries and other hygiene items. Of course the loss-prevention officer didn’t want to make a “scene” inside the store; the district manager was one of those "the-customer-is-always-right-even-when-they-do-wrong" types, so unless someone is mass-shooting the place, employees have to be concerned for their jobs if they don't treat shoplifters like "human beings."  Of course that doesn't apply to Hispanics just for being there.

So the loss-prevention officer waited until the woman walked out of the store with the stolen goods in tow. This time the manager got involved, and what followed out in the parking lot was a seriocomic scene where the manager and the loss-prevention officer took turns trying to grab the suitcase handle and pulling it away from the woman, while she just as determinedly kept grabbing it back. This back-and-forth continued for ten minutes until the manager just said “screw it” and let the woman leave with the stolen goods; he “rationalized” that they were not for her anyways—she was going to “sell” the items. Huh?

Forgive those who "know not what they do?" I don't think so

 

Although I attended a Catholic school and spent lots of time in church when I was young, it was mainly just boring listening and doing the same thing all the time; as a kid, you were made to feel “guilty” if you didn’t have anything to “confess” each week, and if you had nothing else to confess you lied about lying. Anyways, there are some Bible sayings that seem to be asking too much of a concerned citizen. For example: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” This is what Jesus said while he was hanging on the cross, probably more a general reference than just about those directly responsible for his crucifixion, “They know not what they do”—so they must be “forgiven.”

Does Tucker Carlson know that he is telling lies to millions of people every day? If he doesn’t know that, does he deserve to be “forgiven”? He told Brit Hume the other day a lie he has been telling his viewers: That Joe Biden is sending 8,500 troops to the Ukraine. Hume “corrected” him that no such thing was being contemplated, but there was a “reason” to tell what he knew was a lie: Carlson—who has of late revealed himself to be a fan of Vladimir Putin and has been defending his threats against the Ukraine—wants to “juxtapose” this with the “crisis” on the southern border. Of course this “crisis” that hardly anyone is actually effected by has been one for decades with no actual change in the estimated number of illegal immigrants in this country (of course the media ignores the growing percentage of illegal immigrants who are from Asia and India). But it does excite Fox News’ racist base, who Carlson and Laura Ingraham constantly remind of the “danger” to the “culture” to this country—despite the fact that Hispanics are virtually invisible in popular culture and media.

Of course the lie that U.S. troops are going to the Ukraine (and billions of dollars of military aid, which Hume didn’t dispute) was too easy to “correct,” but Carlson is the type who can’t take the heat when he is “outed” as a lying hypocrite; a few years ago in an unaired interview, Dutch historian Rutger Bregman called out Carlson’s hypocrisy about his “empathy” with the (white) working class when he charged him with being just another millionaire funded by billionaires. Carlson tried to bring in AOC, which Bregman ignored him, stating “It’s true, right?” Carlson then proceeded to  embarrass himself by responding like a juvenile delinquent, calling Bergman a “moron” and he should just “go fuck yourself, you tiny brain—and I hope this gets picked up because you’re a moron, I tried to give you a hearing but you were fucking annoying.” Bregman replied “You can’t handle the criticism, can you,” and naturally Carlson was too cowardly to follow-up on his “threat” to air the segment.

Ingraham is another narcissistic Fox News personality who gets so wound-up in her lies that she becomes easily flummoxed by even the tiniest “hint” of contradiction. Before she was seen clapping giddily like one of those Clueless/Mean Girls upon the news that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, had revealed that he had tested positive for Covid-19, she was engaged in an Abbot and Costello “Who’s on First?” routine that brought up the Netflix series You during a segment with fellow far-right commentator Raymond Arroyo; there are those who claim that this was a "set up," but Arroyo's exasperation at Ingraham making him look like a fool is real, and this certainly wasn’t meant to be “funny”:

 

 

Arroyo:  “You know I was watching an episode of 'You' where measles came up.”

Ingraham: “Wait, wait, wait, when did I mention measles?”

Arroyo: "I don’t know. It was on 'You'."

Ingraham: “What was on me? What are you talking about? Is Raymond even hearing what I’m saying? I never had the measles. We never did a measles and vaccine episode, is this a joke?"

Arroyo: "It was on ‘You,’ it was on ‘You.’”

Ingraham: “I’ve never had measles. What are you talking about, this is stupid!"

Arroyo: “It was an episode of a show, Laura.”

Ingraham: “What’s it called?”

Arroyo: ‘You,’ ‘You,’ it’s called ‘You’."

Ingraham: “I completely give up.”

Arroyo: “It’s a show called ‘You’ on Netflix.”

Ingraham: “There’s a show called Laura Ingraham on Netflix?"

Yep, we see these extreme cases of stupidity and narcissism in Fox News hosts who are being paid millions of dollars, for anyone who thinks life in unfair. I mean, doesn’t it seem that you have to have some kind of mental illness to willingly spout the surreal nonsense that Fox News hosts are expected to expectorate out of their asses? That would suggest that we would have to “forgive” them because they “know not what they do.” But we really don’t want to do that for people whose principle purpose in life is to sow division and hate, do we?  Remember the “good old days” when William F. Buckley was the respected voice of conservatism? Those days are long gone.

Of course Carlson and Ingraham are not the only mental cases that Fox News employs. Isn’t it remarkable that you see these former award-winning female journalists like Maria Bartiromo and Lara Logan showing up on Fox News and reveal who they truly are: extreme-right conspiracy nutjobs? Or can it be that they “know” what they are doing?

Bartiromo, for example, allowed Newt Gingrich to spew his nonsense the other day. He claimed that the January 6 committee members should be “arrested” if the Republicans retake the House next year, for the “crime” of, well, being a nuisance to those who aided and abetted the insurrection. Gingrich, as we may recall, was the “guiding light” of hyper-partisanship back in the 1980s, and if anything else he has taken this to new lows ever since he felt constrained to resign from his House seat for revelations of an extra-marital affair while his wife was undergoing chemotherapy, the failure to have Bill Clinton removed from office, and the subsequent failure of Republicans to take advantage of Clinton’s impeachment in the 1998 midterms. Gingrich, of course, had—and has—no credibility on the moral and ethical front, but this hasn’t stopped folks like Bartiromo from giving his like airtime, since she obviously has no moral or ethical credibility either.

Logan has a show called “Lara Logan Has No Agenda,” which of course is not true because it clearly has the agenda of being contrary to accepted facts, and you have to have an “agenda” to deliberately lower the already low IQs of her viewers. Logan previously worked for CBS News, where she gained a reputation as a reporter so “embedded” in the U.S. Army command centers that she simply served as their propaganda organ, especially in regard to the war in Afghanistan, when the military was clearly lying about the situation on the ground. Logan eventually was pushed out at CBS because of her infamous report about Benghazi on 60 Minutes, when a security contractor told her what she wanted to hear rather than the truth: rather than being a Rambo, he had hid out in his villa, as he had previously admitted to his employer and CIA investigators.

Today, Logan is comparing Anthony Fauci to Josef Mengele, and claims that AIDS isn’t “real,” but an “elaborate conspiracy” to enrich drug makers—and of course she is making the same claims about the COVID-19 vaccinations. In 2020 Logan got Antifa and BLM mixed up, going on this racist rant: “The head of the police of Minneapolis is black. The attorney general there is black. The person in charge of state security is black. So saying that this is a race issue is allowing these groups to proliferate, infiltrate law enforcement, and attempt to burn this country to the ground, which is their ultimate goal. They want to kill everyone.”

You think that is evidence of someone who belongs in a mental ward? Logan had this to say recently on the Fox News show “Outnumbered”—where the only people who are “outnumbered” are those with any semblance of sanity:

In the time that we live in, for people to stand up and openly say something against the Democratic president or something in favor of the troops, I mean, in this country today that puts you at risk of being arrested and jailed by the FBI. Because anyone who believes in patriotism is being purged from the U.S. Military, they’re being purged from DHS and the other agencies. And people are being — they’re sitting in prison in solitary confinement in an offsite correctional facility in Washington, D.C., without trial. They have not been convicted of anything. So, and you know they have been there for a long time now, almost a year. And no one is saying a word. So we live, really, in a state of fear in America today. We don’t live as a free people, as a free nation.

It is fair to ask if Logan knows what country she is living in, particularly after the January 6 insurrection; perhaps we should ask if she is aware of what planet in the solar system she lives on. It certainly isn’t the country (or planet) that most of us (or at least those who live in reality) know about.

We could go on and on with this. Of course, the “They know not what they do” was the “defense” of Elizabeth Holmes, who had hoped that throwing stones at someone else would cloud jurors’ minds about whether or not she was actually “knew” she was lying to investors and committing deliberate fraud. But according to one juror, it was done deal that she would be convicted on four charges, and that on the rating for “credibility,” Holmes’s testimony was on the lower end of the scale. Holmes has one more card to play to avoid significant jail time: playing “mother,” at least until September when she is scheduled to be sentenced. But the fact that Holmes did not marry her child’s father indicates that this wasn’t about having a “family,” but a cynical ploy to use the child as a prop to escape just punishment.

Then there is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s devolution into madness which apparently began when he claimed he was approached by a woman who told him her son had developed autism from a vaccine. Before he began labeling medical experts as Nazis engaging in a vaccination Holocaust, 

 

 

in 2014 RFK Jr. was attempting to get U.S. Senators interested in his theory that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative for vaccines, was the cause of autism. Although he did receive a hearing, his arguments were rejected as having no basis in fact. The CDC has stated that in regard to the potential of autism from vaccines using thimerosal,

One vaccine ingredient that has been studied specifically is thimerosal. Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative used to prevent germs (like bacteria and fungi) from contaminating multidose vials of vaccines. Research shows that thimerosal does not cause ASD. In fact, a 2004 scientific review by the IOM concluded that “the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal–containing vaccines and autism.”

Of course science didn’t sit well with Kennedy then as it doesn’t now, because he is “smarter” than everyone else, just as he likes, according to a recent AP story, to “butter-up” his current audiences into believing that just being “contrary” to science and facts makes them “smarter” than everyone else too.

“They know not what they do”: Peter Navarro was supposed to be a “trade advisor” in the Trump administration, although like most of Trump’s loyal flunkies he just collected a paycheck despite being a total incompetent in his position. Like most administration hacks, Navarro seemed to spend most of his time on cable news shows expectorating on subjects outside his alleged area of “expertise.” It seems that Navarro—tag-teaming with fraudster Steve Bannon—had a game-winning play, which they called the “Green Bay Sweep”—to overturn Trump’s election defeat; frankly I think it is shameful that Packer fans haven’t denounced this analogy.

Navarro claimed that the January 6 insurrection “ruined” everything; had Trump supporters just stayed outside, everything would have gone the way he and Bannon “envisioned.” He gave Rolling Stone magazine his anti-matter version of the universe, where everything is done with “honorable and good intentions,” fighting against a “coup d’etat” that the “others” were “trying to steal the election.” Of course the “others” were not the Trump supporters we saw running wild in the Capitol building, but Democrats who were “bragging” about “stealing” the election.

Navarro and Bannon’s “plan” was to simply have enough lawmakers delay the Electoral count process for so long that “public pressure” would convince Mike Pence to simply call it off and send the decision back to the states, where “presumably” those states in question with Republican-dominated legislatures would approve sending Trump electors. In his recently published memoir, Navarro claimed “It was a perfect plan. And it all predicated on peace and calm on Capitol Hill. We didn’t even need any protestors, because we had over 100 congressmen committed to it.”

After months of court decisions and recounts that confirmed the election results, there are still people like Navarro who insanely “know not what they do.” Are we supposed to “forgive” them for “not knowing” what they were doing was engaging in the destruction of democracy? It they had been allowed to get away with this, does anyone really believe that any election result they don’t like is safe? How about your normal tin-pot dictatorship?

Meanwhile, Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy is threatening several Democratic lawmakers without cause if Republicans retake the House next year. McCarthy may be a coward and a liar, but he at least knows what he is doing. He knows that Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boerbert and Paul Gosar bring shame and embarrassment to his party, but in order to appease Trump and his fanatical following, he will simply do nothing to reign them in, waiting for Democrats to punish them for him, so that he can avoid taking responsibility for their behavior himself. Of course, actually knowing one is doing wrong and having others take the blame isn’t something that should be “forgiven.”

In Washington case involving paying public transport fares, it's always the people who obey the rules who have to "pay" for those who think they don't have to

 

To me, it is a matter of principle that people who ride the bus obey the posted rules: no loud music, no eating, wear a mask when so stated, no putting feet on the seat, turning off the cell phone speaker. Of course you always have the recalcitrant who thinks the rules don’t apply to them, or are simply too thoughtless or rude to even recognize that there are such rules, even when they are posted.

Take for example what happened other day on the Metro bus: I heard someone munching like a cow behind me, and when I turned around there was an Asian woman sitting in the seat behind me trying to conceal herself; she had no mask on and was eating sloppily out of a bowl of noodles. I informed her there was no eating on the bus and she was supposed to have a mask on. Instead of doing that she just took her business to another seat. Meanwhile, a black male who was also not wearing a mask  informed me that it wasn’t any of my business if she was wearing a mask or not, to which I pointed out it was everyone’s business if there were people whose actions might cause other’s harm. He started making loud threats, and the driver called for “everyone” to stop making an issue out of it, because, he said, everyone can ride the bus regardless if they are obeying the rules or not.

The problem with this attitude is that it is contrary to the stated rule; in fact, the neon sign in the front of the bus explicitly states that a mask must be worn upon entry. Instead of enforcing the mask policy as they are supposed to, the drivers tend to be more interested in “keeping the peace” and allow people to do whatever they want to do. I know people who have contracted the Omicron variant, and it is like a really bad cold that leaves people physically weak for a week or two at best, and what long-term damage to the heart or brain is isn’t yet determined, so this isn’t some kind of “joke” that can be ignored.

The other problem was that this other person refused to keep quiet, this time giving his attention to the driver, which I think surprised the driver. This guy even went to the front of the bus and started to harangue the driver about having the audacity to even speak to him. The driver “offered” to let him off at the next stop, but when this person apparently believed he had sufficiently intimidated the driver he went back to his seat. Again, the issue here is enforcing the mask requirement, and allowing people to do whatever they want to do and creating an unsafe environment is what is causing problems.

Another issue is the paying of bus fare. When drivers “buy” the excuses of people who say they “lost” their transfer or only have “large bills,” those people tend to believe that fare enforcement is nonexistent and simply ignore the driver. On the bus I take home at night, there is some “new” passenger, a white male, who has been claiming every time that he doesn’t have his “senior pass” with him; I suspect he doesn’t have one because he isn’t old enough to qualify for one. I’m sure the driver has figured this out because this guy can’t be that stupid “forgetting” his pass every goddam day; he certainly was sufficiently aware that I wasn’t buying his load of bullshit, since he started making juvenile comments about my manhood that were more fitting for someone with the maturity level of something less than a “senior.”

Then the driver let on about eight people in the 20-30 age range at one stop, overlooking the fact that not one of them paid fare. Now I ask you, why should I pay fare for?  I’m probably older than the guy who says he doesn’t have his “senior” pass. I suppose the driver just wants to be a “nice” guy.  But I ask you: why should I pay fare if I’m probably only one of two or three who actually feels it is a passenger’s responsibility to actually pay their bus fare on that particular route?

Which of course leads to a question that I never thought needed to be asked: Is it “legal” to demand payment of fare at all? This issue, believe it or not, is currently before the Washington State Supreme Court. According to the Associated Press,

The Washington state Supreme Court will consider whether fare enforcement on public transit represents an unconstitutional incursion into passengers’ right to privacy. Lower courts have rejected the case brought by a man who was asked in 2018 by Snohomish County sheriff's deputies to prove he'd paid for his ride on a bus in Everett. The Seattle Times reports Zachery Meredith's lawyer argues that act of fare enforcement violated his civil rights under the state constitution. If Meredith’s case is successful, transit agencies could be stripped of the authority, granted by the state, to ask riders for evidence they’d tapped their ORCA cards or bought a ticket.

This case isn’t new; the Maryland Supreme Court ruled that a train rider’s Fourth Amendment right against “suspicionless” searches and seizures was “violated” during a “fare sweep.” This ruling was certainly bizarre on its face; everyone on a train expects someone to stop by and inspect their tickets, right? If this was not the case, how many people would feel they didn’t need to obey the rules and do their civic responsibility? Probably a lot more than you think, from what I can tell.

The AP notes that “fare collection remains a large part of transit agencies’ budgets, and if there is a shortfall, then it has to come from somewhere”—and if not from higher taxes, out of the pockets of the people who obey the rules and pay the fare. Just as drivers often threaten passengers on buses who obey the rules when they complain about those who don’t, it is passengers who actually pay the fare who are going to pay the “price.” Back in the early 1980s you could take one public fare bus from Seattle to Tacoma for 50 cents (or at least that was what I paid when I was stationed at Fort Lewis). Today no such bus exists, and just going inside the Seattle city limits costs $2.75 one-way. With a budget shortfall, one should expect a fare increase; not only are the ones most hurt by people who think they can get away with (and do) not paying fare are those who actually pay the fare as required, the drivers are in collusion with rule-breaking and fare increases when they don’t enforce the payment of fare.

According to the state argument, “Meredith had no reasonable right to privacy as a passenger. Anyone could have observed him boarding and riding the bus and no personal information is divulged in providing proof of payment. Officers engaging with individuals in public and asking for identification does not qualify as a seizure.” But no, you have the ACLU and anti-government organizations who choose to narrowly view this case as one about “searches and seizures” when it clearly is not about that all. It’s about obeying the rules and paying your goddam fare to keep public transit going. If you don’t want to pay your fare, get yourself a goddam car and pay for gas and insurance. Transportation is no “free lunch”—especially when those who do pay fare end up paying for some lazy bastard’s lunch too.