I am a raving centrist raised by good American stock that never stole or cheated or lied to anyone. The following is written without attachment to the political right or left. It is written without attachment to Democrat or Republican. It is written without attachment to Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard.
By John Bollinger
Published: March, 2002
Stick with me on this one.
I am a raving centrist raised by good American stock that never stole or cheated or lied to anyone. The following is written without attachment to the political right or left. It is written without attachment to Democrat or Republican. It is written without attachment to Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard.
What is so damn difficult about being reasonable?
Even before 9/11, regular commuters on the Wall Street ferry, people who are very well off on their own, had been discussing why, with all of the wealth that is presently available, do powerful, influential people, have to use their money only for their own benefit?
After you
have a four acre house and a weekend place, four cars, a Rolex, a fund that will cover all of your children and grandchildren¹s college educations and enough money to buy a McMansion every day for a year, why is it then necessary to continue to take more money for yourself and thereby make life more difficult for others?
They almost shut down the State of California (over 33 million people), bankrupted Pacific Gas and Electric and destroyed tens of thousands of people finances, Mr. Lay and his Enron cronies had more money at their disposal than many third world countries. No matter what your politics or religion, what they did is just damn unreasonable; your mom’s example of “just because everybody else is jumping off the bridge doesn¹t mean that you have to”.
Yes, the system is taking care of these and other corporate accounting scam artists, but at this point in human existence when there is so much richness in our lives, shouldn’t well-educated people be acting more reasonably?
We should
hope so, but as you read this issue of Crossings, just look to your right, left, front or behind and see yet another glaring example of the grand vacuum of reasonablity. Thousands of cars, lined up on federal, state and county roads wasting eveyone¹s time and resources commuting to work every day.
Yes, in the San Francisco area some millions of dollars have been allocated by the California government to improve and extend ferry travel. Yet, here in the more populated New York City area, virtually no money is being used to even study increasing ferry use.
Though in the past decade New Jersey has spent millions in purchasing land and turning it into bicycle paths, it has spent nothing on either subsidizing or researching more ferry use for the state’s citizens. With over two million cars and trucks using bridges and tunnels into New York everyday, this can only be viewed as unreasonable.
The fiscal 2002 operating bu
dget of the State of New Jersey is $23 BILLION. In it, there is not one allocated dollar to increasing or improving ferry travel. This is not reasonable.
New York State has been more responsive in examining and appropriating funds to elevate ferry travel, particularly in making the Staten Island Ferry a free service and arranging to start a ferry service during the reconstruction of the Tappan Zee Bridge.
Being reasonable, I have to admit having little or no knowledge of Connecticut’s funding and interest in ferry travel into Manhattan. However, there has only been one ferry service in the last five years to service Manhattan from Connecticut and that closed down almost as quickly as it started.
As the Enron debacle is not only the result of its executives being unreasonable, with ferry transportation in NYC, governments are not the only ones being unreasonable. Every day hundreds of employees of companies located near ferry terminals aquammute, at their own expense, because of its convenience. Yet, these companies do nothing positive for the services.
Plus, during 9/11 and the days following, the individual ferry services themselves were magnificent in how they co-operated in moving people, supplies and equipment. However during the more normal times, they are often unreasonable in how they deal with their passengers, the municipalities they serve and perhaps most importantly each other. From law suits to lobbying the government, the ferry services themselves have been unreasonable in their intra-industry dealings. Case in point, why is there no combined company marketing group to help bring ferry travel a higher profile through advertising, marketing and joint governmental lobbying?
Simply put, as just about everyone¹s great-grandfather and great-grandmother would have said, why it is so damn difficult to be reasonable?
