The always entertaining/illuminating Bobby Derailed blog has a compelling yarn about Conductor Bobby throwing himself in the middle of a bloody, drunk fray on the New Haven Line. (Fourth item, down past Bobby’s chance meeting with JFK’s nephew.)

Writes Bobby:

It seems that the white guy, who was very intoxicated, got on the train and started making rude remarks to two girls who were seated across from him. These girls were from Spain, and were vacationing in the New York area. They had never seen this guy before, and they were understandably upset and frightened. The girls had a male friend with them, a fellow Spaniard who was in his 20’s. He politely asked the white guy to stop saying such horrible things to his friends. The white guy took exception to this, and allegedly punched the Spanish guy in the face. The Spanish man was meek and frightened and didn’t retaliate.

A large black man, who was standing nearby, came to the defense of the Spanish trio, and it was about this time that I came upon the scene.

“You want to punch somebody?” asked the black man. “Try punching me.

Things got ugly, says Bobby, then calmed down, then got ugly again.

We pulled into Fordham Station, and the MTA police were waiting outside on the platform. I had to let them aboard, meaning that I had to put my arms down and key the door open. This, in effect, set the white guy free from the cage that I’d formed. He took advantage of his new found freedom and immediately ran back to the rear of the car, charging the black guy. The black guy made short work of him, swinging with three successive blows to his face. Blood squirt from his nose and mouth and splattered everywhere. He really folded like a cheap suit, and crumpled to the ground.

Against all logic and better judgment, Bobby again throws himself into the fray.

When I pulled away from the white guy, my shirt and arms were splattered with his blood (slightly visible in photo).

Seeing the blood on my shirt and arms, an MTA police sergeant recommended that I go to the hospital for an “exposure test.”

A quick check-up over at North Central Bronx hospital showed Bobby to be in fine fettle.

A savvy Long Island Railroad conductor might’ve parlayed that into full disability!

A Google display booth was present, if not open for business, when I passed through Grand Central yesterday morning–located between, I think, Track 23 and the Hudson News just off the center of the concourse.

Later, chief Googlers Sergey Brin and Larry Page conducted a press conference from GCT explaining how Google Transit would “transform the experience of navigating New York City’s transit system,” says the New York Times.

Gov. Paterson, taking a break from lambasting the LIRR over their disability follies, was on hand.

It appears Metro-North and the LIRR are not part of the Google program, at least for now. Writes Sewell Chan of the Times:

The tool — which encompasses the transportation authority’s subways, buses and two commuter railroads, along with the PATH and New Jersey Transit commuter lines — appears far more sophisticated than existing online trip planners like Trips123, a site that was built with public financing.

It also seems to offer a key distinction from previous services: Users do not need to search specifically for transit information. Instead, they are shown transit routes, stations and stops even if they are merely searching for, say, a bagel store.

Interestingly, I noticed a Google Transit ad atop this very blog earlier today, the first time it has run. The ad program is Google Ad Sense, so perhaps it’s not that surprising.  

It’s Google’s world. We just ride subways in it.

As Iran leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wows ‘em over at the United Nations General Assembly, we dust off a classic Word of the Week for the occasion.

TRAUMADINEJAD \TRAW ma DINN eh JAHD\ noun: The extra traffic stress felt by car commuters when a controversial world leader is in Manhattan.

USAGE: I caught all sorts of Traumadinejad on the FDR Drive because that Iranian president dude is at the U.N.

On Day Three of the Long Island Railroad/Employee Disability Scam Scandal (LIRREDSS), federal agents raided the Westbury offices of the Railroad Retirement Board, the shady federal organization that signs off on railroad employees’ dodgy disability claims.

What a scene it must’ve been–career LIRR workers standing on line with their claims, perhaps rubbing “sore” knees and backs for effect, just as investigators burst through the doors. The NY Times reports that they left with nine file boxes and five personal computers.

The feds were good enough to alert the media, it seems. Times lensman Uli Seit has a great shot of a stone-faced fed pushing a huge dolly full of files like a freshman footballer hitting the blocking sled. Seit’s photo reveals another photographer shooting the scene from behind the agent.

[Nice to see Mitt Romney keeping busy after his failed presidential bid…click on to enlarge]

The Times says Gov. Paterson is pushing attorney general Cuomo to blow this thing wide open, and has tapped Congress in the fight as well.

The raid came two days after The New York Times reported that nearly all career employees of the railroad — from 93 percent to 97 percent of retirees every year since 2000 — retire early and soon after begin getting disability payments from the federal agency. The retirement board almost never turns down a claim, and since 2000 has paid more than a quarter of a billion dollars in disability checks to former Long Island Rail Road workers, The Times found.

Responding to the findings, Gov. David A. Paterson immediately directed the state attorney general to begin a wide-ranging inquiry into disability claims at the railroad. On Tuesday, he called on Congress to aid in that investigation.

I think the true victim in all of this, besides taxpayers like you and me and poor bastards on fixed incomes and menial wages footing the bill, are the LIRR workers with legitimate claims, and LIRR workers in general–all of whom are being besmirched by this ugly scandal. Surely plenty of them aren’t claiming fake injuries for pay, and are simply going about their jobs each day like good Americans do.

I can’t imagine LIRR president Helena Williams, who in the most recent Times article asserts that the LIRR should divorce the Railroad Retirement Board and throw its retirement business to the Social Security system, keeping her job amidst all of thus. Despite her claims that she was powerless to fight the rampant fraud going on, it happened on her watch, and it’s not hard to imagine that a phone call to the governor, attorney general or local Congressperson would’ve gotten the ball rolling on changes to an egregiously faulty system.

[image: NY Times]

My morning’s train from New Jersey rolled along pretty smoothly–luckily no random searches or unspecified security measures, as so many riders throughout the Northeast experienced yesterday. [Check out the comments, they’re a trip!] 

Morning trains have been more crowded since last week’s financial roller coaster ride, and the evening commute has been empty and scattered, as many of the usual banking and investment executives are probably working late past rush hour, inventing slick new fund names for old money,  or spending some extra time at the office–tweaking their resumes, and then wandering around the office cubicles, wondering where that darn printer is actually located.

A very special dedication to every not-that-disabled former LIRR employee who’s enjoying a nice round of golf on a pleasant fall day as the rest of us working stiffs work.

I’ve Been Shirking on the Railroad

I’ve been shirking on the railroad

All the live-long day.

I’ve been shirking on the railroad

Sometimes grabbin’ four days’ pay

Don’t you feel your back a-achin’

Pullin’ at those heavy-ass doors

Don’t you feel your knees a-smartin’

Punchin’ tickets for commuter bores

Retirement Board won’t you sign

Retirement Board won’t you sign

Retirement Board won’t you sign

My for-or-orm?

Retirement Board won’t you sign

Retirement Board won’t you sign

Retirement Board won’t you sign my form

Someone’s on the golf course with Edward

Someone’s on the golf course I know

Someone’s on the golf course with Edward

Sure beats makin’ trains go

Singin’ fee, fi, fiddly-i-o

Fee, fi, fiddly-i-o-o-o-o

Fee, fi, fiddly-i-o

Livin’ large on taxpayers’ dough

 [Edward Koerber image NY Times] 

I chatted up the friendly conductor on the ride out of Hummerville today, asked him if he’d been following the LIRR-disability scandal. He had.

He said his LIRR cousins had a pretty plum deal.

“Looks like I picked the wrong railroad,” he said with a warm laugh. “And you picked the wrong profession.”

The Long Island Railroad was quick to issue its rebuttal to the NY Times’ brutal investigative story on rampant employee misuse of disability pay.

LIRR pins the blame on the mysterious Railroad Retirement Board, the federal outfit located in Chicago, which the railroad said it wants no further dealings with.

Says LIRR in a statement:

No one from the Long Island Rail Road or from the MTA was involved in the granting of these disability pensions by the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board. The LIRR has no direct representation on the federal board that grants these disability pensions for the railroad industry nationwide. In fact, the MTA has asserted that its commuter rails should no longer be part of the Railroad Retirement Board pension system, and instead be part of the Social Security system, a move that would save the MTA millions each year if approved.

LIRR also said its retired staffers’ disability rates, which run around 95% of all retired career employees and cost taxpayers billions, was “out of sync” with actual employee disability:

The high rate of disability pensions awarded to former LIRR employees by this governmental body is alarming and out of sync with our workplace safety record at the Long Island Rail Road and is inconsistent with social security disability rates. The LIRR’s on-the-job injury rate has been in steady decline due to a sustained effort to make our workplace a safe environment. In fact, less than 1% of LIRR employees during the past three years obtained a disability pension from the MTA pension plan compared to the Railroad Retirement Board’s approval rate.

Gov. Paterson has vowed to look into the issue in today’s NY Times, and is giving attorney general Andrew Cuomo full power to poke around the LIRR and find out what the fuck went wrong.

LIRR says it’s happy to play ball with Cuomo and the governor:

If you ride the Long Island Railroad or Metro-North, or in any way pay taxes in America, spend the next 20 minutes reading this because some fat Long Island golf guys are stealing your money.

The NY Times has flat-out blasted the L.I.R.R. in a front-cover, 5,000-word story on the scam railroad workers are pulling to command massive paychecks after they’ve retired.

In short, just about every career LIRR worker claims medical disability when he or she retires, and unless they completely botch the paperwork, they get it. Last year, 94% of career LIRR employees who retired after age 50 got disability benefits; fully 97% qualified in 2004. That’s on top of a retirement package that would be the envy of just about anyone I know.

The Times sicced a crew of eight reporters on this one, and they delivered the goods. It appears arthritis and rheumatism is the malady of choice for retiring LIRR guys. From 2001 to 2007, LIRR had 753 claims for both. By comparison, Metro-North–a railroad of a similar size, with similar staff duties–had 32. 32!

If you don’t ride one of those two railroads, you’re probably wondering what all this has to do with you. Well, those claims are paid out in part by Social Security. In fact, Social Security–your retirement home in Boca, your Schlitz money for the final decade of your life–coughed up $3.6 billion on the railroad’s disability claims that were signed off on by the Railroad Retirement Board.

The Times bloodhounds trace the Railroad Retirement Board, a federal organization created in the ’30s, to a crummy insurance office in Chicago. It’s manned by three presidentially appointed employees.

Aptly named Retirement Board inspector general Martin Dickman offered a classic case of passing the buck in his defense of the Board’s nearly 100% approval rate of disability claims (they are only turned down when an applicant fails to complete the paperwork.)

Dickman…acknowledged in an interview that the retirement board’s rejection rate was “almost nonexistent,” but he added: “If Congress wants to change the statute and raise the threshold, that’s up to Congress. That’s not up to us to do.”

The story also unearths some extremely dubious overtime loopholes that are built into the LIRR contracts. It sets the microscope on one Edward J. Koerber, an engineer who routinely got paid for four days while working one–all legal, thanks to arcane LIRR contracts.

Koerber worked his scam–actually, not even a scam, all legal–to boost his annual nut to $276,456–mighty close to LIRR president Helena Williams’ salary of $287,658. Koerber, a heavy-set fellow with a walrus moustache, would quadruple his pay by operating a train with an electric engine (not part of his job duty, extra day’s pay), moving said train to the service yard (not part of his job duty, another extra day’s pay), and accumulating “penalty payments” for things like skipping lunch. (Judging by the Times photo of Koerber, I don’t think he actually skipped too many lunches.)

Edward Koerber, Quarter-Million Dollar Man

Insiders commenting on behalf of LIRR say the railroad is essentially powerless to fight this costly waste, due to the threat of a strike. If the fat-ass engineers and conductors choose to strike, the Metro area is crippled, and the public doesn’t care who’s right or wrong–they just want their 7:07 from Huntington back.

And what do all those able-bodied-yet-disabled retirees do with all their free time? They play golf…for free, no less, thanks to an “Access Pass” for all disabled persons that allows them free activities at state parks.  

Scuzzbags.

Metro-North actually comes across as a band of gentlemen, compared to those Long Island scalawags.

“We don’t have full-day penalty payments here,” says Jane Murawski, assistant director of labor relations at Metro-North. “It would never be that the person works their eight-hour shift and then they get another eight hours and another eight hours for other things. That doesn’t happen here.”

Metro-North, formed in 1983 from the old Conrail commuter lines, largely inherited the work rules of its parent, which was mostly a freight railroad. But because the L.I.R.R. has always been primarily a commuter railroad, many existing labor agreements remained after the authority took it over in 1966.

The disparity in pay between the two railroads is considerable. At the L.I.R.R, 107 nonmanagement workers earned more than $150,000 in 2006, compared with only a handful at Metro-North.

“We have the best work rules in the industry nationwide — I would say worldwide,” said Mr. Quinn, the official with the Long Island chapter of the engineers union. “They’ve never been able to negotiate them away from us.”

It is features such as this that make me uneasy to think about the massive layoffs hitting the newspaper industry. Who besides the NY Times has the resources to put into such a story, and who’s even going to think about doing such enterprise reporting five or ten years down the road?

[top image: NY Times. Disabled LIRR guy Joseph Rutigliano playing golf on your dime.]

I got out of the train at Valhalla station, looking for the Ryder Cup.

Couldn’t find it anywhere.

[image: Yanks Ben Curtis and Steve Stricker at Valhalla Golf Club, compliments of NY Times]