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Jan. 9th, 2019 02:12 amHere in Portland, along with regular cops, Trimet (the mass transit corporation for Portland, Oregon) has "transit police." These are private security cops that enforce the fares, not real cops, but not quite as pathetic as rent-a-cops in places like malls. I call rent-a-cops "tofu bacon" because they're fake cops, and I call cops "bacon" sometimes. These transit cops I call "turkey bacon" because they're not completely fake like the rent-a-cops (and therefore are not tofu bacon), but they're not real cops either, thus "turkey bacon."
Which brings me to a related aggravation, the very reason the turkey bacon cops exist: bus fares. It's annoying because Trimet is getting millions of dollars of funding from the city of Portland even before the fares. The city gives them something like 33 million dollars, I think, straight from the city coffers. That's enough that Trimet could abolish fares altogether and still be turning a profit. And yet they waste time and money and effort on squeezing blood out of turnips and punishing the turnips that don't bleed enough by handing them over to real cops, because a company feeding from the teat of the Portland city government so much that they have no need for fares is, like all corporations, run by greedy assholes who steal from poor people and have the audacity to call fare evasion theft or whatever. When really it's just refusing to be taken advantage of by greedy assholes. I applaud, support, and admire people who evade paying bus fares. I think everyone should do it, teach those greedy fuckers a lesson.
Seriously, they probably spend more paying the turkey bacons' salaries and paying for their transit police cars and other equipment than they're losing from fare evaders. In fact, I'd be surprised if the transit cops weren't hemorrhaging money badly just by existing.
Which brings me to a related aggravation, the very reason the turkey bacon cops exist: bus fares. It's annoying because Trimet is getting millions of dollars of funding from the city of Portland even before the fares. The city gives them something like 33 million dollars, I think, straight from the city coffers. That's enough that Trimet could abolish fares altogether and still be turning a profit. And yet they waste time and money and effort on squeezing blood out of turnips and punishing the turnips that don't bleed enough by handing them over to real cops, because a company feeding from the teat of the Portland city government so much that they have no need for fares is, like all corporations, run by greedy assholes who steal from poor people and have the audacity to call fare evasion theft or whatever. When really it's just refusing to be taken advantage of by greedy assholes. I applaud, support, and admire people who evade paying bus fares. I think everyone should do it, teach those greedy fuckers a lesson.
Seriously, they probably spend more paying the turkey bacons' salaries and paying for their transit police cars and other equipment than they're losing from fare evaders. In fact, I'd be surprised if the transit cops weren't hemorrhaging money badly just by existing.