Secretary of State admits she's powerless

This is the response to the letter Shirley Block sent to Secretary of State

Dear Ms. Block,

Thank you for your recent e-mail, as well as your thirty-two years of service to TriMet and to Amalgamated Transit Union.  I appreciated hearing your concerns regarding management, safety, and working conditions at TriMet. 

"Legal" corruption continues

"Go by Cattle-car!"

There is nothing like government subsidized transportation right where you want it. Light rail is now and has always been about making money for people by shuttling the cattle to the various locations the oligarchs locate along the government subsidized lines.
Light rail has never been about transit, its strictly social engineering.
Stacy and Witbeck building Portland-to-Milwaukie MAX line, buying prime property along route for future office redevelopment | OregonLive.com

Todays 'meet your bus drivers'

A light hearted selection of various 700 MHz calls from various bus drivers

TRIMET IS RUN BY GANSTERS(repost)

The criminals in charge of Trimet agreed to pay back our money but where is it?

I don't see any money do you?

IF YOU WERE AN EMPLOYEE IN 2009 EXPECT A CHECK

From Trimet press release:

As part of the original arbitration award, Arbitrator Gaba ruled that TriMet must refund $3.6 million in premiums that employees paid prior to the arbitration award. (notice how Trimet ignored Gabba's order)

Trimet has refused over and over to refund the illegal charge that was imposed on union members because  Mcfarlane was angry with union leadership. And despite numerous court rulings Trimet has refused to return the illegally confiscated union members funds. One of  Trimet strategies is ignoring court orders. 
Let's see if they actually do what the court tells them to do, they usually dont


So how much is your refund, that depends on which coverage you selected. In my case I selected the most expensive option so expect a full refund. There are about 1500 union employees at Trimet.

If the refunds were split evenly that would be $2400 per employee!

UPDATE FROM ATU 757 BRUCE HANSEN:
∙ Finally, ERB’s agreement with the Union that health insurance costs could not be collected retroactively means that TriMet must now pay union members over $3.1 million because of TriMet’s prior wrong doing. (TriMet has appealed that decision so payments are still pending the outcome of that appeal) (so once again Trimet will not honor the court decision but drag it out using tax payer funds to appeal, they have no ethics at Trimet executive level, they cheat, they lie, and they distort)

UPDATE #2 FROM THE LAST BOARD MEETING
 Alex H @AJHTriMet 28m

#TriMet $3.6 million going to be refunded for union members

Calling all terrorists

Gate wide open at #TriMet secure parking. No surprise. If it doesn't effect management no one cares @TriMet pic.twitter.com/YRi0NaeayN

— Daily Cyclist (@DailyCyclist) March 4, 2014

Trimet puts up wall then tells homeowner its your responsibility

Gotta love the Trimet, stepping all over everybody in its way

Wanted for kicking out window on max

Portland transit police trying to ID man suspected of kicking out MAX train window: http://t.co/4U9MvLog0k pic.twitter.com/oJJrAQzixO

— The Oregonian (@Oregonian) March 4, 2014

Bye Bye vintage trolley

Neal Berlin, a long time TriMet employee and former trolley motorman, said both TriMet and Portland Streetcar would rather be rid of the little rolling landmarks.
"The vintage trolley has suffered from benign neglect and malicious indifference,” said Berlin. "The powers that be hate them. It's like trying to disown your past.”
“As soon as Bill Naito died, things went into the tank,” Berlin said. “"He's the man that saved and restored Old Town. That’s what this is about."“Once they’re gone, they won’t come back,” he said. ““People will not realize what they’ve lost, until it’s lost.”
 TriMet to ship off Portland's iconic trolleys | kgw.com Portland

Trimet is run by white collar criminals(repost)

We can't get the truth out because mainstream media refuses to cover the side of the story that makes the oligarchs look bad being owned by oligarchs themselves. The Trimet oligarchs literally got away with theft and are still running the transit agency when they all should have been fired after having been caught stealing money in secret

Five months before hiking fares by $8.7 million and cutting bus frequencies for the fifth time in four years, TriMet managers decided, last spring, to quietly end their own pay freeze.
The $900,000 decision was buried in a $20 million budget line labeled "contingency" and never discussed during TriMet’s extensive public hearings about its finances.
Nor did most of the raises show up as line items in TriMet’s official budget, which shows no change for positions that received merit raises.
The management raises were only made public Feb. 23 in a pair of anonymous Twitter posts listing recent pay raises at the agency. TriMet spokeswoman Mary Fetsch confirmed their accuracy in an email Monday.
TriMet managers quietly gave themselves raises just before fare hike, agency says | Portland Afoot

The story about Trimet union employees that is not getting told

Trimet retirees had the expectation of some excellent health care coverage when they retired.
 That was the one thing that Trimet offered its union employees, some of the best health care coverage available.

As we all know now, those promises were false and Trimet management right now is devising ways to end all of the post employment medical coverage thereby guaranteeing their work force will never be able to retire before medicare. Bascially Trimet union employees will become slaves to Trimet.

Trimet is holding Dan Martins private investment money hostage

Laurie Baker won't call him back?

Jim Fowler says Trimet cutting union pensions by 70%

And he's not kidding, Trimet union employees are being sentenced to a life of servitude to the company because there will be no retirement till you get medicare and retirees are being sentenced to a life of poverty

One day in the life of several Trimet bus drivers

A few dispatch calls for your entertainment

THIS BUS DRIVER HAD A BAD DAY

WTF IS GOING ON HERE SOUNDS LIKE BUS DRIVER WAS CHOCKING? 9am http://t.co/qLZjgrdaSS

— TriMet Scanner (@trimetscanner) March 3, 2014

MAX SERVICE GOES DOWN (again) -control

Picture stolen from MAX FAQs

Complete MAX control calls up to 11AM

When MAX fails all of TRIMET fails

But TRIMET never announced publicly that the bus service has been compromised in their typical fashion of withholding information to the public

Classic tweets

@pdxcommute @AlYourPalster The truly cold communist countries somehow manage to keep their light rail running in much worse conditions.

— Andrew Seger (@acseger) March 2, 2014

TRIMET FAIL ONCE AGAIN

Trimet, always a whore for federal money

So the  Fed's, famous for thowing away our tax money, hand over to Trimet 400k to test this idiotic
'bus is turning' absurdity. I suggest you watch JERI ELLSWORTH'S little movie about this when it was fist considered before reading the JOE ROSE ARTICLE

Bus driving is dangerous to your health

THE 3 HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE

There are three characters at Trimet who are responsible for engineering the massive destruction of their retirees and the slashing of current employees medical coverage even though its well known that being a front line transit worker is a very hazardous profession.
These are the people that would be responsible for crimes against humanity (their own employees who they have deceived) if we lived in a world of justice.
Alas we live in a world where justice is just an illusion and the criminal oligarchs get away with destroying peoples lives daily without reproach. 
There are numerous characters under these three that share guilt but they are not responsible for formulating policy so we won't be profiling them here.

Stop government funded propaganda-comments

You will continue your silly little blog here in the hopes of Trimet actually listening to what you have to say. They won't. They will sit back and find the humor in this "rant" as do I and most that read it. It's good fodder.... 

The above comment was in response to my calling someone a 'shameless careerist'.  
It needs to be said that I have no expectations of Trimet officials actually 'listening to me'. 
Hell, they don't listen to anybody so why would I expect them to listen to me.

Seen in Beaverton Breakroom

It says: "Let us F*K you in the ass and like it cause its a FAIR labor contract"

It's really disgraceful what this company is attempting to do to its current employees and borders on criminal what they are doing to their retirees

I have no idea who that employee is that is featured on this piece of shit but he's really a complete traitor to his fellow union members to allow his photo to be used like that

Blog breaks 1,000,000 views

It happened 120,000 views ago. There have actually been several versions of this blog going back to the very beginning. When I was still employed by Trimet there were occasional inquisitions that rolled through that required my blog be deleted. But it always came back. In any event 1 million views aint chump change. This blog has hovered around 1000 views per day for quite a while now.

Nice bus footage