Nothing like the prospect of a transit strike to bring out the inner John Bircher in me. I really dislike how a bunch of misinformed people unhappy with their employer can hold an entire city of 8 million hostage. Transit workers are squealing about losing pension benefits and health care benefits when those issues are not even on the table. What they're angry about having to contribute part of their salary toward their own health care benefits, like everyone else who works in America does these days. They're also unhappy about the idea of raising the retirement age from 55 to 62. I have a really hard time feeling sorry for the transit workers.

When cops are unhappy with their contract terms, they don't walk out. Neither do the firefighters. Whatever it is that makes the transit workers think they can defy the law, and walk out, I find it reprehensible.

Gothamist notes that Mayor Bloomberg is heading to the Emergency Command center. Gabe Pressman remembers the 1966 transit strike.

Under the law the strike that now seems about 30 minutes away is, patently illegal. This time I hope the state and the city crack down on the union. Let them walk out. Every day they stay off the job, they sacrifice two days of pay. By my count, five days off will cost them a full pay period's salary, and ten days will cost them a full month. Why not double the fines each day? The strikes third day would cost them eight days pay. The fourth, 16 days, or a full month in total.

It seems to me that it is an accident of history and geography that makes New York more reliant than any other in America on its intricate public transportation system, and therefore, transit workers have the power to walk of the job and bring the commerce and activity of this city to the kind of screeching halt that only Karl Marx and a chorus of marchers chanting "The Internationale" could consider a good thing.