Congestion: cough up

"Civil Discourse": that's the forgotten password that's causing so many error messages. Can it temper the road rage in the debate over congestion pricing?

Anyone who recalls a city government that was less intrusive and confiscatory of our rights than our current leaders, is seriously dating themselves. If you wait for the "better angels" of politicians to get a grip on their moral faculties, you might as well hang around until the moon grows a beard.

No longer will New York City be a single city. It will be split into zones of exploitation. Suburbanites who want to visit the Planetarium will know what it feels like to be migrants.

It used to cost me a quarter to cross the bridge. No temptation then to deface one's license plate. The sky was always the limit for politicians to ravage our wallets, but at least they used to respect those limits. Or maybe the sky was lower.

Congestion pricing? No, it doesn't refer to price-gouging at Robitussin. It's a foul panacea to clear midtown's bronchial arteries of traffic and human commerce.

It is less than a year away. To gain public acceptance, its details must still be ironed out to make them receptive to whitewash. It's supposed to apply during peak hours into Manhattan's Central Business District. No doubt that will eventually be decreed to include every square inch from Battery Park to the Bronx. And "rush hour" will be all day except between 2:20 and 2:23 am on Wednesdays.

Naturally much research and many inquiries preceded last week's final approval from federal officials. They give rubber stamps a bad name. The public's feedback is always solicited and town halls are the new drive-in theaters. It satisfies the mandate that the general public be duped into believing they count in a democracy. Potential rate increases are invariably finalized before the speakers' list has been promulgated. The MTA and Con Edison are masters of the pantomime.

They can call it a piña colada or a pop-up book of nursery rhymes or whatever else they want, it's still  a charade wrapped in a farce.

And a regressive tax.

Attribute it to multiple default red-herrings: financial woes, saving the planet from the Carbon Nazi, facilitating commerce after first disincentivizing it, aping European cosmopolitanism, et al. After all, they do it in Stockholm and Singapore.

Are we also bound by Singapore's policy of dispatching tourists into the hereafter for possession of a speck of hashish? How about Stockholm's extravagantly merciful social welfare program?  Now that would be nice.

Proponents of congestion pricing see it as a necessary cure for the multi-generational subsidization of motorists' fetish. And I doubt that air contamination will be much reduced. To accomplish that, we should issue mouth guards to politicians.

Rationing some of the largess that we shower on migrants and ceasing to wink at fare-jumpers who are stealing hundreds of millions of dollars a year, could be interim cost-saving measures. At least until new sources of funding are conjured, as they always are, if the magicians see that act as a concomitant to the certification of their election.

Congestion pricing was former Mayor Mike Bloomberg's guilty pleasure, conceived while piloting his private jet over the FDR on route to Bermuda. His own version of "Let them eat cake.” It will join death and taxes among the certainties of life. In fact, it overlaps one of them.

It's estimated that the new pricing will annually cost commuters $5,000. Should it have been decided by statewide ballot? I think not. Should the federal government hold for ransom the funds earmarked for major projects in New Jersey unless Jerseyites are exempted, as proposed by some members of Congress? No. It would be like funds for school improvement being withheld from districts whose students need it the most, because board members won't heel to the government over some other matter.

The City Council assures there will be "additional credits, caps and exemptions for certain vehicles.” Dare we assume that ambulances racing against death and police in hot pursuit will get a dispensation? What about already beleaguered taxi drivers?

That's a rhetorical question. After all, they're immigrants.

It's estimated there will be an 80 percent drop in trucks (expect a spike in the cost of consumer goods) and car traffic will decline by around a fifth. 

But a mammoth engineering feat must be completed before the rollout of congestion pricing.  According to newsite The City, "The contractor is charged with minimizing horizontal surfaces in new tolling structures that might be susceptible to pigeons'."

Motorists will curse the new tolls, but they'll still have to pay. To curse and not have to pay for it is now a protected right of workers and unions in sticky situations like disciplinary hearings and labor negotiations.

The National Labor Relations Board has reinstated the "right to use heated language,” according to Labor Notes, which noted "the ruling takes into account that grievances and other workplace issues are by nature hot-button disputes where the normal job rules of civility and respect cannot be applied. How can stewards defend their members if they must politely defer to their bosses?"

Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act defines protected activities, such as when union representatives, acting as "equals" with management, may use language and make accusations that might be used as a pretext for disciplinary action against them.

It can have wider applications as well. An employer who hears a striking employee call a "replacement worker" a "scab" cannot fire the striker. However, what is the EEO to do when there are alleged abuses on social media or elsewhere? Are racist epithets not actionable?

Looking out the window of my Manhattan-bound express bus from its special lane, recently, I counted almost 100 passenger cars that we overtook before reaching the Midtown Tunnel. I'd rather have a urinary catheter rammed in and yanked out 20 times an hour than have to endure that stop-and-go traffic. The objective of congestive pricing is to force commuters to use mass transit, but sometimes it is not only not viable, but impossible for more distant suburbanites. There's no all-day parking near the closest link to mass transit from where they live.

The  song and dance about how subways are safe does not ring true or sit well with straphangers who recognize the graffiti on the gurneys that first responders seem to be bringing whenever the emergency cord is pulled on the scenic route.

With workers hyperventilating from fear of being slashed, pummeled or shoved in Manhattan, at least they'll be cheered by the lower air pollution.