Hackneyed hackney hacks

It's bad policy to select the technology to meet mileage goals in a cab fleet. The result is what matters, not how it's achieved.

At the same time, the negotiated bargain between cabbies and the city of Boston to allow a fare increase in exchange for agreement to accept hybrids as mandated should now be repealed. They sued to get out of their side of the bargain? Fine. They shouldn't get the extra money.

The past that won't die

If you imagined that racism was limited to the benighted South, try again.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm joyful that my state has an African-American governor and that the President-elect is African American, a fact that still stuns me with its pure, unexpected surprise.

My mother prays for Barack Obama.  I say my small heathen prayers for him, too.  That's what you do when you have no control over his fate.  All I can say is that the Secret Service had better be on their toes.

I really hope that these alleged arsonists don't have any children - or at least don't participate in their raising.

Running government like a business

Building relationships, getting paid, screwing the shareholders - what could be more like modern American business? Now, like Ted Stevens before her, Dianne Wilkerson has been caught taking bribes, Wilkerson for liquor license shenanigans (disclaimer: allegedly caught). She was very effective evading the law and engaging in back-room manipulation. She should have been in the private sector!

At least the voters in the September primary were finally tired enough of Wilkerson, who apparently believes that no rules apply to her, to deny her the Democratic nomination for re-election. Alaska Republicans? Nope, not that smart.

(For those of you who aren't tuned in enough to notice snark when it's slapping you across the face, no, I don't think these practices are universal in the private sector either, and I don't think they're good anywhere.)

Corporate chiselers

American Airlines thinks it has found a way to screw its skycaps out of short money it couldn't win in court. It's despicable. Here's the money quote:

[Tim Smith] also said the skycaps' new hourly wage is "very much in line with the type of job that [the skycaps] are performing, their educational level, experience level."

For those of you following along to Obama's travails at home, this is what it is to be an out-of-touch elitist.

Image from Wikimedia Commons used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Update: American's CEO made "only" $6.6 million last year.