Fare Gate Evasion: Law-Enforcement-Focused Policy Response Unhelpful, Dangerous

Transit services must support the citizenry as a public service for all

Photo by Matthew Bornhorst.

I read an article in the Washington Post with deep concern. With the cruelty that undergirds U.S. policy, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority´s harsh policy-driven response to fare gate evasion was concerning. I saw it in a Washington Post article (reporter Justin George). The WMATA policy response starts the domino effect of ever-greater potential for wicked outcomes. https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/01/dc-metro-fare-evasion/

I ride the train to work one day per week, with a transit subsidy. I see a few people evading the fare gate. 

I recall that Metro offered non fare rides during the height of the pandemic. It worked well. So, the issue of fare gate evasion leads me to reflect on what is the purpose of our Metro system.

A Reflection: My Experience with Poverty

But first, a personal reflection. I have been a faithful Metro rider (subway and bus) since high school. Moreover, I enjoy using the system. It gets me where I want to go, as I prefer to take the train and bus rather than use a car whenever feasible.

I also know the deep pain and shame of long-term unemployment/precarious work. I was stuck in this abyss from 2013 until 2018, despite a commitment to education and work. 

None of it mattered when Congress and President Barack Obama decided to gut the federal workforce with the cruel sequester.  I lost nearly all my savings. In 2018, I fell to my last $100, and I broke out into a cold sweat. Furthermore, I remember not having enough cash flow to take the bus or the subway or walk into the supermarket. 

If I did not have loving parents, I would have been forced out onto the street. It is an experience I will never forget. I will never be able to forgive the policymakers that caused my suffering (and provided very little assistance when I needed it).

For example, I received 52 weeks of unemployment. However, I was out of work with no help for 209 weeks! I applied for over 1,000 jobs and received only a handful of interviews.

The United States: A Potential to be Great, Hobbled by a Love of Cruelty and Violence

The United States has the potential to be great, but at its social core is a stubborn love of cruelty, shame, and exclusion. This cruelty is expressed in neutral sounding policy that ultimately leads to wicked outcomes. If you are poor, you can aspire to higher education. However, you have to use student loans, which leave the person with lifelong debt. 

Another example, the United States has chosen a policy path that has preferred limitless police violence to achieve “compliance”. After questionable police recruitment and abysmally short “training” that emphasizes patterns that justify an excusable escalation of violence–up to and including killing–police officers are placed into service with members of the public. 

These police officers with a badge and a plethora of weapons have a license to kill from the Supreme Court and Congress. If killing or maiming occurs because an “untrained” citizen makes a move that mimics a training pattern, for which the training response demands maiming or killing, police post-tragedy will “investigate” based on adherence to its inhuman training. When the police conduct aligns with the so-called training, the awful result is called “justifiable”.  The victim is loaded up with blame (while simultaneously deflecting blame from US policymakers’ preference/tolerance of cruelty/violence).

The Philando Castile situation was a tragedy, developed by reliance on tickets for revenue.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/15/485835272/the-driving-life-and-death-of-philando-castile

https://www.vox.com/2016/8/5/12364580/police-overcriminalization-net-widening

Policymakers choose to fund police budgets without limit (including pushing military equipment down) while reducing or eliminating all manner of policies that foster a better quality of life:

• Social services
• Broader transit subsidies 
• Job guarantees 
• Homeownership/rental subsidies 
• Funding for recreation 
• Better parks 
• Better social bonds with our fellow citizens.

Papers on fare gate evasion, rely heavily on a punitive response rather than addressing the broader question–should governments provide further, substantial financial support to the people who live in this country?

For example, a 445-page book, Measuring and Managing Fare Evasion, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Measuring and Managing Fare Evasion. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Systemic discrimination in law enforcement of transit fares is not addressed, and ultimately minimized, until page 187.

WMATA policymakers hastily decided on a regimen of fines. A person is financially stressed, so the current fare structure verges on unaffordable, but that person must get to work. What if you make $7.25 per hour with an on-call work schedule? Recall that the National Capital Area is among the areas with an extremely high cost of living. Or, if a person is stuck in long-term unemployment with little to no savings (like I was)? You are trapped in a terrible position. 

With the cruel reality that exists, however, we must ask the question–is an evaded fare gate worthy of

• a potential visit to the jail, 
• a ruined record, that encourages exclusion from employment 
• The intensive care unit (ICU), or 
• The cemetery/crematorium? 

I feel that WMATA officials responded too harshly to an issue that requires deeper thinking. Should Metro be a public service? Are the fares set too high? Can all users of the system be provided with a substantial transit subsidy?

To be fair, Metro Transit Police have avoided George Floyd, Philando Castile, level of controversy to date. But continued focus on police “enforcement” will bring a “critical incident event” to the WMATA system.

Reducing everything to profit and loss essentially erodes public service. Indeed, the extreme focus on “profit” has led corporations to raise prices for everything so that the Chief Executive Officer can meet his or her “performance goals”. 

The concerns of the people who live here are discarded as unimportant. And, we have an “inflation” result. 

The Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell, a multimillionaire, decided that there must be widespread unemployment among the poor and middle class. He, his family, and his friends will endure none of it.

The politicians in this area, the Mayor of the District of Columbia, the Governors of Maryland and Virginia, have been silent in explaining the terrible results that will come from Federal Reserve policy. Or, watch the CNBC television series, “American Greed” to see the wickedness that results from a sole focus on “profit”.

WMATA: A Public Good and Public Service

I urge WMATA policymakers and the governments of the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia to focus more on what is the purpose of our Metro system. I think a broad transit subsidy is preferential to a fine, which is the start of a pathway to violence and personal ruin, financially and literally.

Photo by Yuvraj Singh.

Federal Reserve Board: H.2 Release for Week Ending January 6, 2018; H.4.1 Release (Balance Sheet) for Week Ending January 11, 2018; Two Of Note Items

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Of Note–

(1) Inhuman, immoral patient dumping a policy result of the present health-care system. At a Maryland teaching hospital, University of Maryland Medical Center, in Baltimore City, the hospital placed a patient on the street with just a hospital gown (in cold weather).

Comment:  This is an inhuman, immoral result of health-care policy. The only cure to ensure that this abhorrent behavior never happens is single-payer health care so that people can concentrate on their health rather than the current system’s focus on “health insurance” company bloat and outlandish executive compensation packages as well as Big Pharma’s shameless profit extraction from people who are ill.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has published a report on this topic, “Patient Dumping.”

(2) The disgusting fig leaf of bias, “colorblindness,” has been removed by the 45th President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump.

[Author’s note: This blog does not use vulgar language in its content, but as the President of the United States of America has used vulgar language in the exercise of his duties, the blog relates the word the President stated.]

U.S. President Donald J. Trump made disparaging remarks, referring to Haiti, El Salvador, and countries in the African continent as “shithole” countries, during a White House meeting on immigration legislation.

[Trump stated in a later tweet that “The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used.” It is unclear what this statement means; however, it is not a condemnation of the reporting as incorrect—which confirms that the reporting is correct. Considering also Trump’s long history of biased comments, the reported comments also fit with his past behavior.]

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Comment:  In the United States, racial bias is couched in an underhanded way–hiding the biased intent (and representing that intent as “colorblind” that results in discrimination anyway. Trump’s comments just erase the disgusting, yet accepted, fig leaf. The removal of the fig leaf bothers people who barely concealed their bias with claims of “colorblindness.”

Now, as a result, his Administration’s policies (and any law he signs) should be reviewed to ensure that they are all fair and equitable.

Separately, as mentioned in a previous post, the culture of the United States includes the bias that Trump expressed. Rev. Thomas Merton wrote about it in his book “Seeds of Destruction” in 1964.

Moreover, the blog has followed the racial discrimination case at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (otherwise known as the Federal Reserve Board)–Artis v. Greenspan Bernanke Yellen.

(For more information on other books on bias in the United States of America, see the recommended reading list on the blog’s sidebar.)

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The Federal Reserve Board (Board) publishes a weekly digest of its activities on its website. The digest is called the H.2 Release and is published every Thursday. The release for the week ending January 6, 2018, is below.

H.2 Release–Actions of the Board, Its Staff, and the Federal Reserve Banks; Applications and Reports Received

 

Category	Action Taken
Board Operations	Office of Inspector General — 2018 operating and capital budgets. -Approved, December 15, 2017 (A/C)   [Note: This is the reason why the Board’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) is not independent. The Board appoints the IG, and the Board approves, as noted, the OIG’s independently prepared budget.
Regulations and Policies	Rules of Practice for Hearings — final rule to adjust the Board’s maximum civil money penalties for 2018 to account for inflation. -Approved, December 26, 2017 (A/C)   Supervisory Guidance for Large Financial Institutions — publication for comment of proposed guidance describing core principles of effective senior management, the management of business lines, and independent risk management and controls for large financial institutions. -Approved, January 1, 2018
Enforcement	AmBank Holdings, Inc., Davenport, Iowa — written agreement dated February 2, 2012, terminated December 27, 2017. -Announced, January 4, 2018 J.P. Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Limited, Hong Kong, China — determination denying the request by Timothy Fletcher, a former institution-affiliated party, for immediate review of two interlocutory orders issued by the administrative law judge in connection with an enforcement matter. -Approved, December 26, 2017 (A/C)

Federal Reserve Board: Balance Sheet (H.4.1 Release)

The Board publishes data of factors affecting reserve balances. The digest is called the H.4.1 Release, and they are published every Thursday (or the next business day if the publication date falls on a federal holiday). The release for January 11, 2018, is below.

[Note: The blog will cover the line titled “Total Factors Supplying Reserve Funds.”]

H.4.1 Release–Factors Affecting Reserve Balances

Total factors supplying reserve funds (as of January 10, 2018):  $4,493,186 (in millions of dollars). (On September 26, 2007, this amount was $900,473 (in millions of dollars)).

(See the release for further information.)

Federal Reserve Board: H.2 Release for Week Ending September 23, 2017; H.4.1 Release (Balance Sheet) for Week Ending September 28, 2017; Three Of Note Items

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Of Note—

(1) The 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances was released. According to a FEDS Notes article, the net worth for nonwhites, despite a showing of growth, did not begin to approach or match the significantly higher net worth of whites. At similar educational levels, white net worth surpassed, by far, the net worth of blacks and of latinos.

Comment:  This result, while stunning, is unsurprising, given the history and policies of the United States of America.

 

(2) Fed Governor Lael Brainard gave two speeches on the effect of persistent employment disparities (for black and latino peoples) on the wider economy. (Both speeches reflected her own views, not those of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) or the Board.)

Why Persistent Employment Disparities Matter for the Economy’s Health

Labor Market Disparities and Economic Performance

Comment:  For the Board, I do not have confidence, given the closed-door FOMC views and overall derision toward people not socio-economically fortunate. (See blog posts on an article in the Intercept and on the Board’s own nearly 19-year obstinance with its black employees in Artis v. Greenspan Bernanke Yellen)

Such observations would have to become policy positions. With this context, mere reporting on known facts (without remedial policy ideas/proposals) is not sufficient.

 

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(3) Interesting New York Times op-ed by Rana Foroohar, “How Big Banks Became Our Masters.”

Observation:  Representative Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) directed a question to Chair Janet Yellen at the July 2017 Monetary Policy Report hearing. He referred to Foroohar’s book, “Makers and Takers: How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street.”

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The Federal Reserve Board (Board) publishes a weekly digest of its activities on its website. The digest is called the H.2 Release and is published every Thursday. The release for the week ending September 23, 2017, is below.

H.2 Release–Actions of the Board, Its Staff, and the Federal Reserve Banks; Applications and Reports Received

Category	Action Taken
Bank Holding Companies	PacWest Bancorp, Beverly Hills, California — to acquire CU Bancorp, Los Angeles, and thereby indirectly acquire California United Bank. -Approved, September 20, 2017
Forms	Forms — initial Board review to extend without revision the Recordkeeping Requirements Associated with the Real Estate Lending Standards Regulation for State Member Banks (Reg H-5). -Proposed, September 21, 2017
Personnel	Division of Monetary Affairs — appointment of Brian Madigan and Stephen Meyer as senior advisers and Matthew Luecke as associate director. -Announced, September 22, 2017 Management Division — appointment of Curtis Eldridge as associate director and Katherine Perez-Grines and Daniela Wegmann as assistant directors. -Announced, September 21, 2017
Regulations and Policies	Presidential $1 Coin Program — annual report to Congress on the Presidential $1 Coin Program. -Approved, September 8, 2017 (A/C)
Enforcement	AB&T Financial Corporation, Gastonia, North Carolina — written agreement issued May 7, 2012, terminated September 13, 2017. -Announced, September 19, 2017 The First Bank of Baldwin, Baldwin, Wisconsin — written agreement issued July 26, 2011, terminated September 19, 2017. -Announced, September 21, 2017

Federal Reserve Board: Balance Sheet (H.4.1 Release)

The Board publishes data of factors affecting reserve balances. The digest is called the H.4.1 Release, and they are published every Thursday (or the next business day if the publication date falls on a federal holiday). The release for September 28, 2017, is below.

[Note: The blog will cover the line titled “Total Factors Supplying Reserve Funds.”]

H.4.1 Release–Factors Affecting Reserve Balances

Total factors supplying reserve funds (as of September 27, 2017):  $4,502,238 (in millions of dollars). (On September 26, 2007, this amount was $900,473 (in millions of dollars)).

(See the release for further information.)

Federal Reserve Board: H.2 Release for Week Ending August 5, 2017; H.4.1 Release (Balance Sheet) for Week Ending August 10, 2017; Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier Quits Presidential Council, “Colorblindness” Must End

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Of Note items—

(1) Cannot find a job? Move! Billionaire Donald Trump (the 45th president who often travels to his properties) and economist Tyler Cowen (professor of economics at George Mason University) advise you to move, forgetting at-will employment, lack of relocation-cost reimbursement, effect of child custody agreements, underwater mortgages, or other real-life (not academic economist’s) considerations (for example, unemployed people do not have money).

(2) Detestable overt and implicit “colorblind” racial violence. It is commendable that Kenneth Frazier, CEO, Merck & Co., stated that he quit from Trump’s President’s Manufacturing Council as a result of Trump’s lack of response to the tragedy in Charlottesville, Va. (Image is from Frazier’s tweet (link above).)

However, while the racial violence was overt in Charlottesville, the everyday implicit racial bias is equally corrosive to a fair society. The everyday silent, hidden “colorblind” violence continues. It would be far more helpful for Frazier to start a CEO-led committee to expose and eradicate all discrimination in the workplace.

The Supreme Court, through Antonin Scalia and John Marshall Harlan, demonstrated its institutional loyalty to the racial status quo–white-race societal dominance. The Federal Reserve, in its completed , almost 20-year employment discrimination case, Artis v. Greenspan Bernanke Yellen, also demonstrated its institutional fidelity to “colorblind” racial discrimination.

(See Auerbach, Robert (2008). “Deception and Abuse at the Fed,” chapter 8, and Merton, Rev. Thomas (1964). “Seeds of Destruction” (Letters to a White Liberal).)

Sheila Clark’s letter to the EEOC (printed in the Auerbach book, page 123).

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The Federal Reserve Board (Board) publishes a weekly digest of its activities on its website. The digest is called the H.2 Release and is published every Thursday. The release for the week ending August 5, 2017, is below.

H.2 Release–Actions of the Board, Its Staff, and the Federal Reserve Banks; Applications and Reports Received

Category	Action Taken
Forms	Forms — initial Board review to extend with revision the Application for Employment with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FR 28, FR 28s, and FR 28i). -Proposed, July 24, 2017Forms — initial Board review to extend without revision the Reporting, Recordkeeping, and Disclosure Requirements Associated with Proprietary Trading and Certain Interests in and Relationships with Covered Funds (Regulation VV) (FR VV). -Proposed, July 27, 2017
Enforcement	Barclays Bank PLC, New York Branch, New York, New York — issuance of a consent order of prohibition against Michael Weston, a former institution-affiliated party. -Announced, July 24, 2017M&T Bank Corporation, Buffalo, New York, and Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company — written agreement dated June 17, 2013, terminated July 25, 2017. -Announced, July 27, 2017

Federal Reserve Board: Balance Sheet (H.4.1 Release)

The Board publishes data of factors affecting reserve balances. The digest is called the H.4.1 Release, and they are published every Thursday (or the next business day if the publication date falls on a federal holiday). The release for August 10, 2017, is below.

[Note: The blog will cover the line titled “Total Factors Supplying Reserve Funds.”]

H.4.1 Release–Factors Affecting Reserve Balances

Total factors supplying reserve funds (as of August 9, 2017):  $4,515,817 (in millions of dollars). (On September 26, 2007, this amount was $900,473 (in millions of dollars)).

(See the release for further information.)

U.S. Civil Service: Citizens Take a Well-Functioning Civil Service for Granted; GOP’s Plans of Attacking the Civil Service Will Lead to Patronage, Graft–Systematic Corruption

According to the Washington Post, the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has plans to attack the severely damaged civil service (damaged by constant Congressional criticisms and blame). The people of the United States take a well-functioning civil service for granted. Failed civil service organizations exist in other countries; ironically, it is the United States (through the World Bank) that has been leading a movement against such corruption. Now, with the next president, calls of hypocrisy will come and will be deserved.

When we go to the motor vehicles department for a drivers license, we have to wait, but we expect a drivers license at the end of the process without having to pay a bribe. The same is true to have a judge hear our case in court, for applying for and receiving Social Security benefits, for applying to work for the civil service. All of these examples and more operate well with just our tax money.

Now that the GOP, the Republican party will control all three branches of the federal government (in early 2017), their ideas of “reform” now could be set forth on the remainder of the integrity-filled civil service:

• Making civil service jobs at will.
• Replacing the Federal Employees Retirement System with a 401(k)-based system (a failure).
• End of cost-of living increases.
• Further restrictions on federal employee unions (already weak because they cannot require membership and cannot strike).

All of these ideas are an abomination and an insult to citizens who enter public service to serve their fellow citizens and residents of the United States; such is never contemplated for those in military service. Further, a billionaire, with autocratic tendencies and a person who–

• does not pay federal taxes,
• lives off the largess of the majority of people in the United States,
• does not have to work to have an income stream,
• combines his business ventures with the Trump Organization with his responsibilities and power of being the U.S. head of state,

will be the person leading the charge against our civil service.

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In this dangerous time, civil service reform, which will require acceptance from all citizens, cannot be forced through by the GOP alone. Especially, at a time where it is apparent that an autocrat has become president. Energy should be spent on the prevention of systematic corruption.

Civil service protection is needed more than ever, with the next president potentially using his government position as a conduit for his business interests (express or implied). Vigilance is required more than ever.

Firing fellow citizens, civil servants (who also suffer from stagnant wages and sky-high cost-of-living expenses in Washington, D.C.), to satisfy rich people, like the 45th president (who doesn’t pay any federal tax on his $billion) is offensive. Huge changes will have to wait; our very democracy is at severe risk of falling apart.

Government pay is low; most civil servants are thankfully people of integrity and do their jobs for their fellow Americans well. [Conduct issues–refusal to work, etc.–are already handled by regulations.]

These constant attacks on the civil service have done severe damage. Perhaps, if the GOP fulfills its wish and is allowed to break the civil service, and we discover that corrupt people take positions with the purpose of self interest alone (you will have to pay bribes to get a passport (or a tax return processed) on time, for example), we will miss our civil service.

The only thing is, by then, it will be too late. The civil service as we know it would be gone forever.

As citizens, it is our duty to protect our form of government. Research the term “systematic corruption” and “civil service bribery“.

Federal Reserve Board: Needs to Improve Communication with Congress; Former Fed Vice Chair Donald Kohn Offers Suggestions in Op-Ed

Bloomberg published an article about a simmering disagreements between the Federal Reserve Board (Board) and Congress (members of the House Financial Services Committee)

Issues in brief–

• Federal Open Market Committee leak, involving Medley Global Advisors. The Board has not responded to Congressional requests for information, citing a Department of Justice investigation. However, the Board conducted a previous investigation (in 2012), which was closed without finding any wrongdoing.
• Reform of the Federal Reserve Act. Chair Janet Yellen feels the current structure of the Board is acceptable, according to the Bloomberg article.

In a Bloomberg View opinion piece, former Board Vice Chair Donald Kohn (with his book’s co-author David Wessel) offered suggestions for better Board communication with Congress. One of the suggestions is for the Board to provide Congress with copies of the Monetary Policy Report several days in advance of the hearings (the document is typically sent to Congress less than 24 hours before the first hearing).

The eight suggestions from Kohn and Wessel follow.

1. The Fed should volunteer — and Congress should agree — to have monetary policy hearings quarterly, rather than twice a year. If the Fed believes that the economy evolves quickly enough to warrant issuing new projections and taking questions from the media every quarter, then the same reasoning should apply to informing the people’s representatives.
2. In connection with the hearings, the now semi-annual Monetary Policy Report — or a streamlined version of it — should become quarterly. Among other things, the Fed should share the monetary policy rules that it already consults in its deliberations.
3. The Fed should publicly release the Monetary Policy Report three days before the relevant hearing, so members of Congress and staff have adequate time to digest it.
4. The Monetary Policy Report should continue to include the Fed’s assessment of financial stability risks. The intersection of these risks and monetary policy should be one focus of the quarterly hearings.
5. Fed staff should continue to brief and field questions from the congressional staff who prepare members for the hearings. The chair should meet with the leaders of the relevant committees in the week before the hearing.
6. Congress should establish a process for obtaining and publishing the views of outside experts about key policy issues before each set of hearings.
7. To make them more informative and allow for more give-and-take, each quarterly hearing in the House should allow only half the committee members to question the chair, and each member should be allotted 10 minutes (instead of the current five).
8. The Fed should hire outside experts to periodically evaluate the procedures used to generate the economic projections that the Federal Open Market Committee receives from its staff and how the committee presents its own projections to the public. These projections — both the staff inputs and the committee outputs — play a critical role in policy making and should be as sound and well-understood as possible. Other central banks have successfully employed such external peer review, which would help Congress and the public better evaluate the quality of monetary policy.

Labor Market Fluidity: Many Proposals to Try to Explain it; None are Conclusive. Rank and Yank, However, Focuses on Persistent Workforce Displacement and Has Destructive Effects

Malloy, Raven; Smith, Christopher L.; Trezzi, Riccardo; Wozniak, Abigail (2016). “Understanding Declining Fluidity in the U.S. Labor Market.” Working Paper. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. BPEA Conference Draft. March 10-11.

The paper presented ideas to achieve two goals–(1) determine whether various measures of labor market fluidity are related and (2) determine more completely when declines in fluidity began. The authors discussed a number of possibilities, but suggested more work to be done for most of them as the current work did not present clear answers. The authors stated that they found some relationship between a decline in social capital (trust of strangers) and a larger decline of labor market fluidity. The authors acknowledged more work is needed to explore even this relationship.

Neoliberal economic policy in action

“Free-market” result

In reading the paper, I was struck by the attempt to explain human behavior in economic terms only. The paper would be stronger still if other social science disciplines were invited to explore these issues. All of the questions seems to have been proposed by economists, but the questions themselves involve sociology, political science, psychology, and maybe social work. Proper analysis would require involvement of these disciplines in order to make a proper contribution to policy.

Artist: michael sloan

Moreover, expectation of labor market fluidity can lead to bad policy, such as “rank and yank” programs, promoted by Dick Grote. Rank and yank forces a certain amount of turnover every year. In every case, such a broad brush approach has produced destruction. This result shows the danger of thoughtless consideration of policy implementation. This result could be reduced with thoughtful and full evaluation of social policy.

[Note: This paper was also summarized at Bloomberg Business.]