LelandYee.com Today Is Like Reading the NJC Over A Month Ago! (UPDATED 6/22/10)

During today’s monumental Irwin Allen style Muni disaster, a Loyal Reader let me know that apparently State Senator Leland Yee (who is running for Mayor) apparently decided to jump on the Muni Bandwagon and his campaign website is hosting a petition to protest Soon to Be Ex-Muni CEO Nathaniel Ford’s big payout to leave his job.
Oh, really?
This sounded strange, since I had posted a similar petition back on May 9th. Even stranger, I didn’t see Sen. Yee sign the petition, nor promote it to his followers on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
While I have not decided which candidate (if any) I might support just yet, I do get tired of politicians who discover the “Muni issue” at election time, only to toss it aside once elected. It does not help that during his million dollar campaign last year (with no opponent) I didn’t see Sen. Yee tout his accomplishments on behalf of transit riders in San Francisco. Nor did I ever hear him explain why he voted for the Schwarzenegger/Democrat budgets that literally stole money from all transit agencies across the state.
Hmm.
Message to all mayoral candidates: Muni is not an “issue,” it is a system of transportation that desperately needs a reboot. I do not need to hear more platitudes from any more candidates that fit on your junk mail. I want to see an action plan that you will institute to overhaul an agency that for the last six years has been dominated by politics, non-existent leadership, and a (thank GOD) Ex-Mayor that took pleasure in wrecking the system for Muni’s owner/riders for political reasons.
I realize some of you perhaps weren’t concerned with this before, but that’s no excuse. We can’t afford to continue to screw this up and expect that we can also pontificate to others about how to be “green.”
That is all.
PS: I realize it sometimes sounds like I give ol’ Leland and his campaign a hard time on Twitter, but it’s not like I have an axe to grind against him personally. I’ve actually attended his events in the past, and at my old job, I even worked on an independent expenditure campaign on his behalf in the early 2000s, so haters, tone down the hate tweets. I’m just calling it as I see it.
UPDATE: Not only did Sen. Yee not show up at the meeting until late (whatever), Yee actually defended his votes to cut State Transit Assistance funding at the bidding of Gov. Doofinator and the Democrat leadership with bullsh*t that broke my BS detector. He actually said “no one told me not to do it.” (WRONG). News flash “Senator”: no one told me not to steal from my neighbor, but I still didn’t do it.
My GOD, I really wasn’t going to have a go at anyone this early in the campaign, but this kind of politician doublespeak is something we really don’t need anymore.