Bloomberg: What the hell is his problem?

mostly just surprised that morbs is willing to let his pure hatred for bloomberg overwhelm the fact that this was a ny post-esque 'controversy' - gee, a giant blizzard slightly inconveniences the privileged minority of new yorkers who think that getting their driveway plowed should be the one and only city priority. and many of whom, by choosing to drive during the storm, helped make things worse. this is not quite hurricane katrina.

iatee i feel like as a total n00b you should know the thing that pisses people off so bad abt the snowocalypse is its indicative of bloombergs distain for all people who are not bloomberg - and you know it is the citys job to remove the snow - pretending that its no big deal that it didnt get moved for three days isnt gonna change the fact that it was a major dereliction of duty

yeah except I see little evidence that it happened because he had disdain for people (which is why I would have done it fwiw) and significant evidence that it happened because there was a much bigger than anticipated blizzard that surprised everybody including weather forecasters

and icy maybe it's easier to take when you're not a n00b but people in this city have such an epic sense of self-entitlement...only place in america where 'my driveway didn't get plowed!' has merit as a national news story. average new yorker is incredibly shitty at taking the smallest inconvenience and I find this more disgusting on a day-to-day basis than I find the bumbling wannabe technocrat mayor.

how fucking long have you lived here?

(my God, the length of my ILX shitlist these days)

a much bigger than anticipated blizzard

last February's was bigger btw

haha the ultimate ny dick measuring contest xp

I need to get the hell out of here and leave the place to the likes of you and the revered tourists who are going to Spiderman

otm

i was in New York just before Christmas for the first time in many months and i was impressed by how shitty everything still is - the appearance of the subway stations, the broken moving sidewalks in JFK, just everything. people like to talk about how different NYC is from the bad old days of the 70s and early 80s, but that old broken badness never really went away, it just got a few coats of expensive veneer painted over it, so the upper crust never had to really notice

also, is NYC really the greenest city in America???? that is a sad comment if so! tell it to bed-stuy!

greenest in that it produces by far the least emissions per capita, not cause it's clean or particularly healthy to live in

ahhhhh i see

the number of parks within walking distance of any random spot you might choose, for instance, is like :(

really iatee, I'm relieved to know that the old rapid snow-cleanup schedule was a gratuitous indulgence on behalf of the arrogant.

yeahhhh queens is esp grim on that measure xp

yeah except I see little evidence that it happened because he had disdain for people (which is why I would have done it fwiw) and significant evidence that it happened because there was a much bigger than anticipated blizzard that surprised everybody including weather forecasters

― iatee, Tuesday, January 11, 2011 5:02 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is absolutely wrong btw

the forecasts were for like a foot + of snow - every other time that amount has been predicted a snow emergency it declared before hand and the streets are cleared - this time bloomberg who will literally not say where he was because he was in bermuda did not do that and the result was a a shut down city for three days and trash piled up for a week - yr idea that demanding the city do its job is some sort of entitlement is plainly inane

and just review the timeline of the media trying to pry an apology out of this fucker if you dont think hes disdainful of the v people he governs

basically iatee's POV is that for paying taxes we are entitled to a good screwing.

stop complaining and put on yr boots its not the billionaires fault ok

http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/a_surprisingly_severe_storm.html

So I went through the archived "Forecast Discussion" from the NWS, and found the following. As late as Christmas Eve, the storm was expected to basically miss most of the NY metro, excluding eastern Long Island and Connecticut. On Christmas morning, the possibility of a 6 to 9 inch snowstorm was forecast, and a “Winter Storm Watch” was issued. Someone should have been watching, because Christmas afternoon it was suddenly upgraded to a “Blizzard Warning.” It was still expected to be a powerful but not devastating storm in NYC until just after noon on Sunday, the day the storm hit, when the snow accumulation totals were updated. Bottom line: this storm put out more fakes than Michael Vick, so it is no surprise that a stunned city and MTA shanked a punt to Desean Jackson. The four “Forecast Discussions” follow in full: bold and italics were added by me. If you bore easily, just read those parts.

so it wasnt clear it was going to be a big storm until a little before it hit, and no one noticed because it was christmas, OK YOURE ALL OFF THE HOOK ITS CHRISTMAS

NBD CHRISTMAS

I lolled at the press conference that Monday morning where we was all proud that there was hot chocolate at the parks for the kids

its a christmas miracle

folks in cardiac arrest who can't be reached by EMS: NOT ENOUGH PREP TIME

http://gawker.com/5720157/can-you-guess-which-street-is-mayor-bloombergs

in review: for my next trick i will suggest that you are being unreasonable and believe the city is destroyed forever

or rather ambulances (and plows) blocked by people who decided to abandon their cars in the middle of the street, but yeah, believe whatever story works for you xp

I GUESS THAT NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE!

I have to go - but like it or not manhattan sidestreets deserve higher priority than sheepshead bay sidestreets, more people/buses/bikes/cars/delivery vans/etc. are gonna rely on bloomberg's street at any given moment. not true across the board, but in general, yeah, most of manhattan deserves priority.

also really love having "snow emergency" rules that officials don't think make sense, so they don't declare one. Maybe rule changes in July?

or rather ambulances (and plows) blocked by people who decided to abandon their cars in the middle of the street, but yeah, believe whatever story works for you xp

― iatee, Tuesday, January 11, 2011 11:03 AM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol iatee r u just trolling at this point

guys MSP had a huge blizzard, everyone knew it was going to be big, but it was bigger than expected. this is supposed to be the first-class american city for snow removal this side of buffalo and those other lake-effect shitholes. but it still was enough to swamp the place. buses and even the plows themselves were getting stuck. the dome broke, as you may have seen. a college kid died in a house fire because fire crews couldn't get their trucks into those streets. both mpls and st paul declared back-to-back snow emergencies -- that's four days straight of restricted, move-your-car-every-eight-hours bullshit, and it still wasn't enough to clear all streets. there are crews chopping out intersections and bus stops even now.

i have my suspicions why it was so bad this time -- without looking at the books, my guess is the public sector is a little bit less lavish than in previous years about equipment. the cities had to borrow freeway-clearing equipment from the state DOT. so yeah, there's somewhat of a political angle in that political angle in that we ought to have more trucks, meaning $$, meaning taxes.

but you know who i blame really? the snow.

nope, unions

NYC is not comparable to MSP, the venom and hatred help melt the snow here.

lol

like, given the budgets they had, and the systems they had, i dunno what rybak (mpls) or coleman (stp) would or could have done differently. get out in a truck themselves? likewise i dunno what bloomberg could have done except not be a dick in a press conference.

there is a vid of a tow truck pulling a skid loader out of a drift and smashing like three cars tho, so maybe it's a problem of not much institutional or staff preparation for events like this -- the upper midwest deals with this shit so the public knows not to get too frustrated and the plow drivers know wtf they're doing.

xps well glad to know you're doing your part then morbs!

that vid is from NYC i mean

goole, we had essentially the same storm 10 months earlier, and the cleanup speed was night & day-different

well ok then, a hugely lowballed forecast and a holiday seem like the culprits?

in MA (specifically Boston/Cambridge/Somerville) they drastically lowball the budget for snow removal every year and hope they get lucky; odds are something similar happened here

Most sentient adults know advance forecasts can't be trusted (also everyone I knew heard 'blizzard' 24 hrs beforehand), and re holidays this is the City That Never Sleeps.

all the people freaking out sunday morning at the stores buying all the milk and bread knew the deal

oh my god i'll never understand that. fuck!! buy the two most perishable goods there are!! we might be stuck!!

loading up on dairy products in a lactose-intolerant society when you think you're going to be shut in for several days just seems like poor planning no matter what angle you approach it from

maybe they were going to freeze it

lol iatee r u just trolling at this point

reached the point where I don't even know when I'm trolling anymore

Finally - Morbs and Giuliani on the same page -

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/former_mayor_snafu_giuliani_blasts_CSLws3DEAOFv8SVEjJAs7L

there are prob two separate arguments - one based on the mindset where the centrality of travel by car in the culture is completely out of whack, and the other taking that as a given and so based on the status quo and bloomsberg's performance in the face of it