Posted on 12/28/2010 6:36:17 AM PST by drpix
Funny but I did go to a show on Christmas night - Colin Quinn's Long Story Short (hilarious and un-PC). Of course I could walk there and back or take a subway that was underground the whole way and unaffected. I think the Mayor's comment reflected his Manhattan-centric view of the world.
I was around the NYC area during that blizzard. My wife and I were expecting our first child. We weren’t wringing our hands about the government, weren’t planning our legal options should an ambulance be needed and fail to access our home due to the weather. We waited for the snow to stop, I shoveled out our car, and the next day (it was a Monday) we went for a walk (to try to get things “moving along”). Life went on. I don’t remember any public outcry over the inablity of gov’t officials to navigate us all through the “crisis.” I don’t even remember it being viewed as a crisis. It was...weather—which happens every now and then, I’m told.
I have to agree with Rendell...what a bunch of wussies we’ve become!
Oh, yeah...the following Sunday (Jan. 14) our first was born at 8:37 pm in Hackensack Hospital (and thanks again, to our nurse—whom I’ve come to refer to as Saint Elizabeth!)
What good would have it been to shovel your car out if the city roads were not cleared, and even if you had a 4-wheel & high-clearance vehicle that could drive through 20"+ of snow, the roads were blocked by abandoned cars, buses, trucks & ambulances....?
People may be wussies, but government has always had certain fundamental responsibilities - like police, military and roads.
Whether for state, county or municipal roads, whether in NYC or other parts of the country, whether today, a decade ago or a century ago, government's primary responsibilty was maintaining those roads - including snow removal. It was and is not - as Bloomberg specializes in - telling you what to eat, what to drive, where to smoke, who you had to rent to or sell to, where you can display Christian symbols...
My point was to say that I did my part, waited for government to do its part. Period. I did not expect government to rescue me. I did not sit around wondering what the president, the governor, the mayor was going to do about the snows left in the blizzard’s wake. I shoveled out my car in anticipation of being ready to go once the streets were cleared. Up until that point in my lifetime, my expectation was that the work of clearing roads was going to be handled and when it finally was handled (which, by the way, was usually done in a fairly timely manner, THEN I would go about my business utilizing the road system.
I did not (nor do not now) expect immediate/seemless/perfect response from the government—except when it comes to confiscation of property, levying taxes, mandating regulations, intruding into my private affairs. But street clearing after a storm? Well, I know just how difficult a job that can be! My shoveling-out experience was not unlike the city’s snow removal. I was living in an apartment complex with outdoor parking. All the spaces were taken up by cars and the lot was filled with 26 inches of snow! There was precious little space to put shovelfuls of snow, so the job took upwards of 4 hours.
We’re here on the Jersey Shore. We got it pretty bad - about two feet with drifts up to about 6. We didn’t lose any power - amazing.
Lucky you....I wanted 2 feet...and you got to see some thundersnow I gather....we only had one strike....
Philadelphia had about a foot of snow. Boston reported about 16 inches. Snowfall amounts in the NYC area ranged from 20-30 inches.
New Jersey is having many similar problems as NYC, but they seem to be more of a hassle on highways than on local streets. The biggest problem in both NJ and NYC is the large number of cars that have been abandoned on roads all over the place -- hampering snow plowing efforts and effectively narrowing even major interstate highways down by one or more lanes in some places.
This is a perfectly legitimate criticism, by the way. But I do wonder what the city's "public advocate" was doing himself on Saturday evening. Was he on the phone suggesting that the mayor's office should declare a snow emergency, or is just an effective Monday-morning wquarterback?
I didn’t hear any thunder! I wonder if it came in the middle of the night. I thought the fog that accompanied the storm was amazing - very eerie.
The article and my comments made an issue out of the Bloomberg government's untimely and preferential handling of the city''s long established and core responsibility to clear the city streets for through traffic & emergency vehicles -- not clear parking spots or parked cars. In the comment you 1st replied to, I unfavorably compared his handling of this responsibility to Giuliani's* handling of the larger 1996 blizzard. Did you have a point on either of these issue? If you did, I didn't get it.
*But, Giuliani didn't spend his time and the time of public employees helping the Ground Zero Mosque Islamists, persecuting smokers, hounding the food industry & the public over what he think people should eat... and all those he seems to think are more important governmental responsibilities.
those he seems to think are more important = those other things he seems to think are more important
Well you can all ease up since both Bloomberg & his adoring Liberal press have given up on that party line. (My earlier post #39 and "New York Struggles as Blizzard’s Impact Chastens Bloomberg" ) And just now: Bloomberg Takes Blame for Response to Snowstorm - NYT
In any case, attempts to cover Bloomberg's backside will not work. He's following the rest of his phony non-partisan Obamanistas down in flames. In his case, it is ironically a very snowy flameout!
Here are some videos for all who despise (or should despise) these elitist "non-partisan" frauds and their "non-partisan" media enablers. Enjoy as each of their deceptions, intended to corral and control the anger and energy of an awakened non-elite America, collapses.
"Independent & Obamanista Mike Bloomberg, the big label frontman for the "No Label" Party, speaks at a party function to portray it and himself as non-partisan:
LINK
"No Label" Party founder,"Republican" strategist and Obamanista Mark McKinnon, speaks at "Coffee Party" convention:
LINK
"Coffee Party" founder & Obamanista Annabelle Park's past as 2008 Obama volunteer is concealed from public, as CNN presents "Coffee Party" as a non-partisan answer to the Tea Party.
LINK
Why do I keep bringing up shoveling out my car? Hey, I was proud of the job I did of shoveling out my car! The drifts around my car were up around the windows...
Seriously, I was interjecting about the tenor of the times, moreso than the tenor of your ideas or the ideas of the article and Bloomberg’s mishandling of things. And I was speaking to the blizzard of ’96 which I experienced while living in Bergen County, NJ. I remember streets being plowed, waiting to be plowed, piles of snow 20 feet high shoved up into the 4 corners of major intersections, people unable to get their cars out from being “plowed in” or covered over by the snow from the plows, people walking up and down in the snow-covered streets (snow-covered even after the plows had cleared them already)to get to the grocery store for a gallon of milk. I remember these being the conditions for the next 2-3 days. I don’t remember anyone complaining about the slow response by the plows, the inconvenience brought about by our elected officials who had let everybody down by their handling of storm’s aftermath. I remember people enjoying the snow, the magnificence of this rare event—a blizzard in northern NJ.
We live in times where people expect the government to bail them out of everything. My personal view of the whole handling/mishandling of the blizzard is that this is a non-issue brought up by whininess. Nature’s storms can be quite overwhelming. The best we can do is to be prepared, ride them out, and get on with our lives. Expecting government to handle the occasional dramatic storm (this blizzard, Katrina, etc.) with flawless execution is unrealistic. Will there be inconvenience? Yes. Will plows bang up cars? Probably, though maybe not quite like in the way it occurred in the YouTube video. Will some streets go unplowed longer than others? Yes. But, for anyone to expect perfection out of our service workers is, in my view, unrealistic and unfair.
One more thing about my shoveling experience: I don’t remember exactly, but I’m sure I went inside (at least once) to take a break/warm up/eat lunch. I do remember using one of those store-bought brushes (with the scraper on the opposite side) to finish clearing off my car (my worst decision that day). It wasn’t until springtime when I noticed just how badly that brush put hundreds of tiny scratches in the paint of my car.
Man, that was some storm.
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