Well-deserved

Roger Toussaint's 10 days in jail and the $2.5 million in direct fines and losing the automatic benefits from the rank and file were deserved results from the TWU's three day strike just before Christmas.

Toussaint and the usual race demagogues are making it out to be a civil rights issue which it surely is not. Even the NY Times acknowledges the hijinks:

One goal is to cast the predominantly nonwhite union as the vanguard of a civil rights struggle, not merely another self-interested group. Mr. Toussaint has surrounded himself with figures like the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton. "Roger Toussaint," Mr. Sharpton said at the rally yesterday, "comes from the lineage of Martin Luther King and A. Philip Randolph and Nelson Mandela."

HEADY company, indeed. During the strike, Mr. Toussaint also invoked the memory of Rosa Parks. In recent days, he let it be known that he was boning up for the Tombs by reading Dr. King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail."

In reality the the Transport Workers Union thought they could blackmail the city during the Christmas season and very clearly broke the law in doing so. Two million riders a day use the public transport system and their strike hurt a lot of lower to middle income folks. The judge who sentenced Toussaint and penalized the union was exactly right when he said, "New Yorkers took it in the neck."