Michael Bloomberg Killed a Baby in the Snow Because He Is a Pro-Union Thug (an update)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/scocca/archive/2010/12/31/michael-bloomberg-killed-a-baby-in-the-snow-because-he-is-a-pro-union-thug.aspx

Posted Friday, December 31, 2010 12:46 PM | By Tom Scocca

So now, on the secondhand say-so of unidentified New York employees, the story is that what really went wrong with New York's blizzard response was that disgruntled unionized sanitation workers staged a work slowdown. Jeff Jacoby, the Boston Globe's right-wing-affirmative-action pundit, is on Twitter exulting over the brain-death of a Queens infant as "Another victim of public-sector unionism."

"Can New York's Sanitation Dept. union bosses be prosecuted for manslaughter?" Jacoby asks.

Not unless Mayor Michael Bloomberg gets prosecuted first, they can't. New York was unprepared for the blizzard because the mayor and top administrators ignored blizzard warnings for an entire day. Whatever else turns out to have gone wrong, it was the mayor's refusal to call a snow emergency—and his seeming confusion about what it even would have meant to call one—that set the city up for failure from the very beginning.

According to the New York Times' account of the Bloomberg administration's bumbling storm management, sanitation department employees aren't even supposed to be the ones to make or break the plowing effort:

For years, an integral role in the city’s best blizzard response plans was filled not by municipal workers but by private contractors and construction crews, ready with front-end loaders, tow trucks, pickup trucks and Bobcat vehicles that can move snow from the tightest urban grids.

FULL story at link.

[chelsea0011]

1. Quoting Jeff Jacoby is dangerous to your health.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. There are DUers promoting this Steve

I posted a thread the other day. Still amazed by some of the responses.

[hedgehog]

6. I saw one of those threads and will repeat what I posted there -

in most places in Upstate New York, overnight street parking is illegal from November to April. In the event of a snow emergency, no parking is allowed on snow emergency routes. When I heard Bloomberg announcing that all parking fines would be suspended for the duration, I couldn't believe it. Now, if he'd seized all the parking garages to get the cars off the streets ahead of the blizzard, that would have made sense!

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. Is there enough off street parking in NY to get all the cars off the street?

[hedgehog]

8. My guess is that normally there isn't enough parking, but maybe

it's time for the city to stop providing free street parking. For that matter, I've never figured out why all streets are plowed but all sidewalks are the responsibility of the adjacent landowner.

On edit - that may sound strange, but free on street parking is a subsidy to those who wish to drive.

[Smarmie Doofus]

9. Lots of us in the boros need cars to get to work.

NYC is much, much, much, much, more more than Manhattan.

( That's 4 muches! I.e. Manhattan is about 1/4 the population of NYC.)

The boros are what didn't get plowed...... Manhattan was plowed aok, from all reports.

[hedgehog]

12. I'm not familiar with NYC. Money aside, how feasible would it

be to extend attractive mass transit to allow travel between and within the other boroughs? I understand no one wants to wait in the cold for a dirty, crowded bus, but if clean buses came along on a regular schedule, or if a subway or trolley were available....

[Smarmie Doofus]

13. Urban planners and economists would have to answer that for ya.

My commute from the NW Bronx to my job in the NE Bronx would take about 2 hours by bus+subway and about 1 and 1/2 by bus alone. (By car it's a bout 25 mins.)

I'd leave the city before I had to make that kind of commute. As it is i can barely stand up at the end of the day. Lot's of folks live in outer boros and work in other outer boros... requiring mass transit thru Manhattan, eg. Brooklyn to Bronx. These would be in the 1/1/2 hr vicinity.

Also.... lots of folks live here, NYC, and work in Weschsetster/NJ/LI. No urban mass transit's gonna work for them. They need a ride.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. I don't know that much about it

But i had a friend from high school who settled in NYC and he sent out a Christmas card one year where he mentioned he had finally been able to buy a car because he had found an affordable garage.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Actually, I think it's his wife's fault.

[Drale]

4. Michael Bilandic

The Mayor that succeeded the first Mayor Daley lost his election bid because of the 1977 Blizzard that shut down the city. Weather can do terrible things to a persons career.

[tularetom]

5. "Weather can do terrible things to a persons career."

Just ask "Helluva Job" Brownie.

Or Mayor Ray Nagin.

[Scruffy1]

11. Glad I live in Minneapolis

Here the snow plowing is done by the city workers, who are affiliated with the construction unions. They are pros who know what the hell they are doing. Even our last 20 inch dump was only an annoyance and things were pretty much normal for winter in a couple of days. And, oh yes, leave your car on a snow emergency route and it will be tagged and towed. Ditto for odd side parking bans during the winter. The plows need the cars out to plow.

[Omaha Steve]

14. Kick