The MTA document on service reductions includes the ridership and average cost per ride for every NYC bus route. Even when I was inside NYC Transit, I never saw a tabulation of costs, although ridership was tabulated.

Cost data is provided for LI Bus and MTA Bus Company lines as well, in other reports. And as for rail, it isn’t provided but could be if the MTA would use Metrocard data how much times trains spend on each part of the line to do an estimate as well. Perhaps the cost of maintaining the express tracks could be assigned to outer lines. And for real sophistication, distinguish marginal from average costs, with the marginal cost of additional rush hour riders on the Lexington Avenue line equal to — the cost of the Second Avenue Subway. Finally, look at the dedicated MTA taxes paid by those in different areas, relative to the level of subsidy, not including the portion that is sucked away by the past (debts, unfunded past pensions, etc). The more the better.

And as one who cares about Jack’s future, I’m sick of it.

Like Albany, our health care financing system is not “dysfunctional,” but rather functions very well for those with power and privilege.

Today’s senior citizens get government-funded health care without limit, funded in part by a tax that workers pay and the retired do not, and in part by borrowing on such a scale that there is no chance that (absent some restraint) Medicare will be there for younger generations when they need it.

Public employees also get the same deal – virtually unlimited health care paid for by less well off taxpayers who increasingly do not have health insurance themselves, particularly if they are in younger generations.

In today’s Politicker, we read the following –

Jackie Salit, head of the Independence Party in New York City, said Obama has lost touch with the independent voter and has been too focused on tending to the Democratic base. Salit, in an email to supporters this morning, said that Obama could lose the White House if he keeps this up.

Fun fact that Ms. Salit does not want us to remember –

The day after the Massachusetts Special Election, pundits did what they usually do after major(?) events.

Most declared that it proves what they have been writing and saying was right all along!

But only David Brooks of the New York Times would say this in such an intellectually dishonest way that it makes me wonder if Brooks thinks his readers are fools.

On the Times blog, fellow columnist Gail Collins and Brooks discussed the Massachusetts results. The issue was whether Obama and the Democrats should still try to pass health care reform. This is what Brooks, who opposed both the House and Senate bills said:

It is quite clear that the New York Post’s Charles Hurt thinks his readers are stupid.

Certainly, he has good reason to believe this–after all, they do read the New York Post.

On Sunday Morning he published the following:

“Call it smear by association.

It appears to be — literally — the only hope Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has to pull off a slender victory here, in one of the most Democratic states in the country, for a seat so long owned by one of the most beloved liberal lions America has ever known.

Yes, people really are still saying stuff like that. The nonsense about reconciliation proceeds from a total misunderstanding of the Senate rules. Reconciliation can only be used for budgetary adjustments in existing programs, not to create new ones. While reconciliation does create some opportunity for bootstrapping, using reconciliation still only makes sense if one is advocating passage of the Senate bill as is, and then fixing it through this process. But since Reconciliation cannot be used to create new programs, I'm not even sure that using it to add a public option to the Senate bill would be permissible after it passes.

If it passes.

Sadly, I have major doubts that after last night, the Senate Bill can win a majority in the House. First, with or without last night, doing such a deal would require a level of trust that may be lacking under the best of circumstances. Secondly, a lot of balls got shrunk last night. Finally, there are still the Kucinich types who will vote to kill Health Care Reform in order to save it, even though starting all over again will not result in a more liberal bill, and probably won’t result in any bill at all.

The sad effort of the Democratic Party establishment to lay the blame for tonight’s devastating defeat, reflected in the efforts of bloggers including myself, to lay the blame for the disaster on Martha Coakley is aided and abetted by the fact that she was her campaign proceeded without an effort or a clue.

How did this woman ever win a statewide election?