It takes an extremely selective mindset to look at this thread full of such mature and humble comments from the likes of mac_truck...
"Only to a pinhead" - post 63
"You're pathetic... Did you flunk math in high school as well as civics?" - post 121
"Just becaude your alter ego" - post 164, implying without evidence that freeper YCTHouston is a pseudonym
"some sh**kicker" - post 179
" -btw feel free to respond in whichever persona you prefer" - post 205, again making attacks upon YCTHouston's existence
" -btw I think its great that your alter ego sticks up for you." - post 239, again attacking YCTHouston's existence
...and Willie Green...
"your biased sensationalism on this issue is as whacky is that practiced by morons like Sarah Brady and PETA" - Post 228
"obstructionists, such as yourself" - Post 229
"disenchanted, sensationlist, crybaby whiner" - Post 232
"ven the chemtrail and black helicopter crowd had more credible evidence" - Post 232
"just another SoreLoserman. How sad." - Post 234
...and then accuse the guy they're directing all that sort of name calling at of the very same thing.
What has offended me the most are your egotistical opinions that you raise to a percieved level of fact and when challenged on them you adopt an almost girly-boy feigned attitude of "how dare they challenge me."
My only "crime" here is to note a clear conflict of interest on Metro's part and defend that point with those who are willing to discuss it. In this case that has meant debating two individuals who are neither genuine about their motives here nor honest enough to examine the evidence of Metrorail when presented with it - the same two individuals you pinged in your post.
Mac_truck is a ne'er-do-well who has been following me around obscure Texas politics threads via the "find in forum" button so that he may pick fights over issues that are unfamiliar to him and in which he has no intention of honestly considering any issue (case in point: a couple weeks ago he tried to start a "debate" me over what level of health insurance I should personally purchase for myself after he observed me discussing insurance politics with another freeper while he was doing his weekly cyberstalk of my posts).
Willie Green has never met a railroad that he doesn't have a love affair with and would intentionally ignore empirical evidence of flaws and wrongdoing on a transit system and would probably defend the devil himself so long as he was advocating mass transit.
How dare anyone challenge the great GOPcapitalist's "facts" and reasonings
How dare what? I don't recall ever telling anybody that they can't challenge me. I only expect that they be able to back it up when they do so. If you're gonna respond to an argument put forth by one of my friends and fellow freepers by telling him he doesn't exist and spreading the lie that he is my "alter ego," you better be able to back it up. Mac_truck has not and cannot. If you're gonna accuse somebody of plagiarizing a newspaper article when he in fact provided the material for that article to the same newspaper, you better be able to back it up. Again, mac_truck has not and cannot. If you're gonna claim that by simply appearing on a campaign finance disclosure automatically makes any contribution both legal and ethical, you better be able to back up your reasoning for doing so. And if you're gonna pull a Willie Green and insist that an unethical conflict of interest that sticks out as a conflict of interest by any sane and reasonable definition of the term is not so simply because it involves mass transit and therefore gets a free pass, you better be able to back that reasoning up with some logically sound demonstration of why mass transit should get a free pass.
Here's the bottom line, for at least me: If you are so sure and smug that what you are saying is true and beyond a reasonable doubt, when are the guilty STV personnel going to be doing the "perp walk"?
In a just world they'd have been in jail the moment they colluded with Art Schechter and Ed Wulfe to finance the Metrorail PAC last summer. But our criminal justice system is not perfect and often times thieves and much worse walk free for political reasons even when the evidence is damning beyond a reasonable doubt: Clinton, OJ, Janet Reno, just to name a few. In other words, simply saying "well, they didn't go to jail for it" or some equivalent of the same doesn't cut it. The fact that they didn't go to jail for it indicates one of only two things: (1) that they didn't do it, which we know to be false since they did indeed collude on a political campaign in which they had a clear conflict of interest, or (2) that they got away with it.
If not (and I do not believe they ever will), then I suggest you tone your accusations down because you are insulting many fine Americans who work at companies that you accuse of wrong-doing
Throughout history there have been many "fine" individuals who work for firms that whore themselves to governments, that contract for blood money, that aide and abet in the robbing of entire populations, that cause the disruption and destruction of property and careers and even lives of innocent people, and that generally perform the work of scoundrels and thieves under the guise of simply "doing business." There were many "fine" Europeans who worked for major European companies that colluded with Hitler and built his concentration camps (come to think of it, Siemens was one of em). Does that make what those companies did any less horrible, immoral, objectionable, or wrong? Does that make those companies any less guilty? Absolutely not, and I won't downplay or soften valid attacks upon a corrupt company simply because some of its employees might be "good people" or could possibly become offended.
Granted, unethical political collusion does not make every single employee who works for a corrupt company equally guilty, equally wrong, and equally contemptible as the company itself becomes through its behavior (and neither does the excuse of "but I was just doing my job" make those employees completely free of guilt). But did I post any lists of STV employees and say "they're all guilty" in reference to each? No. Did I say "everybody who works for STV is scum" just like I have essentially said of STV itself? No, though I have implied and do maintain that participants in an unethical organization do at the very minimum and in some small part share in some of its guilt (as the old saying goes, when you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas). That said, I have asserted and will continue to assert that STV's contract came about by way of a BLATANT conflict of interest. And I will also say that their behavior as a company constitutes nothing less than the knowing and willful exploitation of the taxpaying citizens of Houston by ethically suspect and legally questionable electoral collusion for the purpose of making a few bucks off the public treasury.
as well as many well intentioned and mature posters at FR who enjoy a good and honest discussion.
If you want an honest discussion, discuss. I only ask that you support your arguments with sound reasoning or data as applies. If, on the other hand, you think that Willie Green or mac_truck are either honest or well intentioned or mature then I may only conclude that your judgment over that matter has become clouded by naivety or a preexisting subjectivity that biases you away from their deficiency in all of those items.
If you check you'll see that I first posted up to this thread about thirty minutes after the post preceding mine Post 42 . That's how long it took me to read the article, the forty odd coments that followed, and formulate my own response, after seeing this thread while scrolling the Latest Posts (a feature commonly used by freepers to find discussions).
Of course I duly noted the numerous anti-New York, yankee-hater comments made by yourself and some of the other hayseeds that preceded, and factored those into my response.
Now if you want to pretend I'm following you around FR and picking on you thats your business. It fits nicely with some of your other bizarre behaviors.