Perspective on the NYC strike

David Sirota on the absurdity that was last month's NYC transit strike, including the media's hostile reaction to it:

...the workers in New York were asking for $20 million more over three years than New York city/state government wanted to give them. And you might also recall that the media never bothered to once ask why the city/state politicians were refusing to provide this money just a month after handing over $1.5 billion in taxpayer-issued bonds for Goldman Sachs' new headquarters.

Now, today, Reuters reports "Wall Street bonuses are expected to have hit a record $21.5 billion in 2005 from $18.6 billion in 2004 as investment banks reaped record earnings...Goldman Sachs Chairman and Chief Executive Henry Paulson received a compensation package worth about $38 million." In other words, Goldman Sachs' CEO alone made more last year than the combined total that thousands of transit workers were requesting over three years in order to avoid cuts to their pension. He made this at the very same time politicians held photo-ops to laugh it up with him at a groundbreaking ceremony to hand over the taxpayer-funded bonds to him. And yet, many of those same politicians who hammed it up with Paulson while giving him taxpayer money were attacking transit workers as "thugs", and the media never reported the context of the situation.

This is what substitutes for political debate in our country. It's perfectly fine for a CEO who makes $38 million a year to ask politicians to give him and his company $1.5 billion worth of taxpayer-issued bonds to build his palatial new office. And yet, if thousands of blue collar workers ask for a paltry sum over three years to prevent cuts to retirement pensions, that's unacceptable and they are labeled thugs. Incredible.

This is what you get in these neoliberal times, particularly when media is primarily seen as a revenue generator, rather than a public good. Capital reigns supreme; labor is treated like shit.