Crazy Like R. Kelly Crazy . . . Like A Fox!

In admitting he erred by focusing on the pension issue, is MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow being sincerely reflective or deviously manipulative? You be the judge:

The chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said yesterday that he had erred in making pension changes a central demand in contract negotiations with the city’s transit workers, a miscalculation that helped lead to a 60-hour subway and bus strike the week before Christmas.

The chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, did not take responsibility for provoking the strike, the city’s first since 1980, but he acknowledged misjudging the union’s hostility to his demands that future workers accept a higher retirement age or contribute more to their pensions than current workers do.

“I put out a proposal that I thought would be most palatable to the union, and it turns out I was wrong,” he said in an interview. Before the strike, Roger Toussaint, the president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, had repeatedly said he would not accept a pension plan that did not treat future workers the same as current ones.

Mr. Kalikow, who was appointed by Gov. George E. Pataki in 2001, defended the settlement reached last week as fair. He said the union’s main concession — having workers for the first time pay part of their health-insurance premiums — was more valuable than the pension demands that were ultimately abandoned.

“It didn’t matter to me where I got the savings,” he said.

Is this Kalikow’s idea of “respect”? Is it meant to pull the wool over the eyes of the union? Is it more expensive for every union member to contribute towards their health insurance premiums than it would have been to have new employees contribute more towards their pensions? Could Kalikow be crazy in the way R. Kelly is crazy — like a fox? So many questions . . .