June 28 2024- Putting The Brakes On Transit Freeloaders

The Great Canadian Talk Show

Heading into the Canada Day weekend, we get caught up on a couple of in-person appearances for Marty, and on some of the most popular episodes so far in 2024.

Added to the reach of our investigations, interviews, and commentary is the Winnipeg Sun, where Marty will be getting right down to business every Sunday with his new column. This week it will be revealing public displays of antisemitism earlier in June and the shameful response to it.

8.20 Part 1- The inaugural Sun column – Winnipeg Transit like riding a bus in Gotham – was an opportunity to hear what the public has to say about the safety of Winnipeg Transit.

There wasn’t much difference between the pools of online readers sampled– whether on the Sun site, on Facebook or on Twitter, they all consider taking a bus a notable risk.

A few felt Marty had gone too far – “Gotham is safer”, while another replied “At least Gotham had Batman, while here we only have the various villains.”

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You’ll hear what they’ve seen and heard, from the misdemeanours to the violent assaults, as they question whether it’s more like Chicago or Detroit- and whether the new safety officers or the new NDP government has made things better. One replied,

“I like the column. I'd be fearful if anyone in my family had to ride transit in Winnipeg.”

The transit users group on Facebook generally had a dim view of the City safety efforts.

“Close down transit and tell the riders to use a bike like they tell everyone who drives a car”, suggested a reader. “Transit is not practical in this city, and is a perpetual sinkhole of virtue signaling.”

22.15 Part 2 - One paragraph from the column provoked a virtue-signaling defence for those riders who don’t pay.

Marty’s experience was that “Fare-skippers seem to be more likely to start a fight, punch a woman in the head and swipe her phone, or grab a purse and bolt out the door, than someone who follows the rules and drops $3.25 into the fare box.”

“If they enforced people to pay fares it would probably solve most the incidents and issues But they won't want progressive, political BS reasons” suggested a reader.

But a self-declared anarchist dove in, tossing around rhetoric to try to squelch defending the victims of crimw and public disorder:

“Hey, can you stop fear mongering about poor people ... Fearmongering about crime leads to putting money into the police and not into social services that can help poor people before they become criminals ...”

Listen to the way Marty disassembles the hug-a-thug far-left argument that transit fares should be abolished because that “the most likely to become criminals (are) Poor people” who ride the bus.

Is that the bigotry of low expectations? You betcha!

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