>whats going on with the taxi drivers and Giuliani down there?
>
>'war gas been declared on the taxi-driver' Lesly Princival (New York
>Times, today)
The NYT actually did a half-decent piece on the cabbies today. The prevailing system now is that drivers lease their vehicles for a high fixed rate, so they have to work their asses off - a 12-hour shift might yield them $100-120. Ok, some of them don't drive very well, don't know where every street is, and don't speak fluent English. The better sorts despise them for their foreignness, and there's been a rash of pedestrians hit by cabs. (Actually we have lots of pedestrians killed and maimed by *cars*, not just cabs, but the only thing the Mayor and the higher orders get exercised about are the cabs. Pakis no, suburbanites yes!) So Rudy, in his usual fashion, has decided to crack down on them. The cabbies, thinking this the last straw in a long history of exploitation and contempt, have rebelled. Rudy's response is his classic "make my day" act - he'll let vans and so-called gypsy cabs pick up passengers from Manhattan streets, which they're not allowed to do now. (Yellow cabs in NYC earn their colors by buying a $250,000 medallion, whose numbers are strictly limited. In return for that capital outlay, they're the only ones allowed to pick up passengers who hail them on Manhattan streets; you're supposed to phone for the other kinds of taxis. Free marketeers have long complained about what an outrage this is, and would throw open the market to everyone, further depressing drivers' incomes.) The cabbies are threatening another strike next week, and Rudy promises to retailiate with the deregulation move. He will, of course, and the better sorts will applaud him, and quite a few of the less-than-better sorts too. The public taste for authoritarianism, at least in Rudy's New York, is a scary thing.
Doug