Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Taxi industry must and will fight back against #Uber in court - and so will their bankers.

I'm not in love with New York City's taxi bosses. I don't like a lot about how they operate. They've exploited and mistreated taxi drivers like me forever. They broke the taxi drivers union Local 3036, took away medical benefits, vacation pay, the minute pensions taxi drivers once got. They turned a nine hour workday into eleven, twelve, even twenty-four hours.

The onset of Uber liberated some yellow taxi drivers like me from some of the worse aspects of our exploitation. I as a public spirited citizen have been yelling high and low about the safety menace of the e hail driver apps, but frankly the powers that be have clearly decided that they don't give a rat's tail about that. So, frankly if I could freeze frame the Uber situation I would. As it is Uber helps me, and no one will look out for number one (me) but me. The problem is I can't freeze frame the Uber situation. It either takes over completely or gets squashed, so I want it squashed. I don't want to be an Untermensch in an Ubermenschen paradise. So I welcome the inevitable lawsuits that are being filed against #Uber. I imagine there are not only taxi bosses afraid of losing their shirts, there are bankers watching the collapse of the taxi medallion with trepidation. Politicians in this town best think about that, because down the road these bankers are going to conclude that New York City's government under both Bloomberg and deBlasio unlawfully assisted Uber's rise in this town. They will not be ready to take a haircut, they will sue, lobby, campaign in a thousand ways to get their medallion investments back because they are not rich by letting bygones be bygones when it comes to their money. Taxpayers will pick up the tab.

They allowed Uber to illegally operate livery cars with electronic meters. That's against the law. So essentially Uber is running illegal taxis on the nod and wink of people like David Yassky and Ashwami Chabbri who as TLC tops did everything they could to help Uber and deprecate the medallion and who got rewarded with jobs at Uber and Lyft.

They exempted Uber from collecting the fifty cent per trip Transit tax, not the thirty cent wheelchair accessibility fee. #Uber won't have to put wheelchair accessible taxis on the road.

Uber can raise, lower, raise again their fares. Lawful taxi fares are strictly regulated by the TLC by law.

No way is a banker going to know these facts and shrug it off as he eats millions of dollars in losses on what were "zero default" loans supposedly protected by a legal monopoly.

Let the court cases roll!

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