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promoted by Rosi
I got a little too worked up in the excitement of Haiku Day, which inspired this tribute to Frank Lautenberg:
Lautenberg Station
looms over the meadowlands.
The man knows transit.
(and how.)
I wrote that before even seeing the news about Lautenberg's brokering to keep the ARC on track (as highlighted in Blue Jersey's morning roundup).
I sometimes forget that even elected officials who serve as my personal stand-ins for Mr. Smith still have to meet the baseline requirement of anyone who hopes to succeed in politics: a sense of cunning when the situation calls for it. It's rare, though, to see flexing of a god-given gift for calculation in pursuit of something meaningful. Usually it's to win one battle in a long, bitter war.
I'm glad Lautenberg essentially said, "We're getting this done one way or another, it's a mistake to throw away billions of dollars for a once-in-a-generation opportunity for something so urgently needed, and if the public funds are obstructed, we'll see what the private sector can do."
find out more below the fold! |
| Our state lies in the infrastructural ecosystem of the largest city of the richest country in the history of the world, and we have third-world public transit. Lautenberg has the backbone to ask private industry whether it can contribute, and through means extolled in the speeches of people who believe in the supremacy of the corporation. Governor who ran on budget issues won't spend tax money on badly needed rail project? Let's ask private industry if they'll volunteer to help in a time of economic struggle (a struggle they created, by the way, but that's impolitic to bring up), especially when it helps their employees commute to their offices, improves hundreds of thousands of lives, strengthens the economy (in the same ways that got us out of the Great Depression), and eases an unsustainable burden on the roads of the country's most densely populated state.
(I want to say, though, that I don't think counting on the generosity of corporations is a good habit to get into. It's dangerous for a modern democracy to depend on the kindness of strangers. It did not turn out well for Blanche Dubois. And it's dangerous to accept vast inequalities on the condition that robber barons give a pittance of their holdings every once in a while, especially when they amassed that wealth by essentially perfecting the economic version of the atomic bomb.)
Anyway, the Lautenberg situation demonstrates the absurdity of painting one party as "pro-business" or "pro-government." It's as useful as asking, "Are you 'pro-work' or 'pro-weekend?' And you're my enemy if you make the wrong choice." Business and government do different things and serve different needs, and they're both enormously powerful and need regulation. (I can't believe that concept can be explained in one sentence and yet escape so many people. Powerful forces play powerful games.)
Lautenberg knows that ARC is too important not to fight for. (Rage, rage against the dying of the light...at the end of the tunnel?) But he's not out posturing. He's hunting down a solution.
I need an occasional reminder that politics is more than a fatalistic, futile soap opera. I find inspiration in this story. There is hope, and it's capable of restoring itself, even after something like being stripped of its meaning and warped into a political brand. Hope saved Pandora (by a thread) from hurling the world into chaos. |
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