Perspective and Priorities

Incompetence and Dereliction of Duty on a Grand Scale

New York City mayor, Bloomberg will probably be marked down historically for a boondoggle occurring on his watch.  Mayor Bloomberg's commitment to the cause of global warming is well known.  Possibly this may explain how, during the recent blizzard in New York City, basic city services failed.  Folk have been complaining that the city has been unable to clear streets of snow and ice. 

Now this may at first appear to be a minor inconvenience.  But people have died as a result.  Emergency services have been unable to attend calls because streets have been blocked with snow and closed off.  Ambulances have not been able to get through.  Fatalities have occurred.  This from Patterico:

A blizzard baby delivered inside the lobby of a snowbound Brooklyn building died after an emergency call of a woman in labor brought no help for nine excruciating hours.

The baby’s mother, a 22-year-old college senior, was recovering Tuesday night at Interfaith Medical Center, where her newborn was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m. on Monday. That was 10 hours after the first 911 call from the bloody vestibule on Brooklyn Ave. in Crown Heights.

“No one could get to her. Crown Heights was not plowed, and no medical aid came for hours,” said the student’s mother.

By the time a horde of firefighters and cops finally trooped to her aid through snow-covered blocks, the baby was unconscious and unresponsive, sources said.

So, minor inconvenience is an inappropriate perspective.  Maybe, instead, it would be reasonable to plead overwhelming forces of nature.  Some calamities are just so big, that despite careful preparation and considerable resources, New York city services may have just got literally snowed under.  But that won't wash either.  Apparently, the sanitation department (responsible to clean snow off streets) was working to a "go slow" order.  The inability to clean snow off the streets was wilful. 

Sanitation Department’s slow snow clean-up was a budget protest…

Selfish Sanitation Department bosses from the snow-slammed outer boroughs ordered their drivers to snarl the blizzard cleanup to protest budget cuts — a disastrous move that turned streets into a minefield for emergency-services vehicles, The Post has learned.

Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts.

 New York City has a budget problem--which, of course, means that the city has spent way more than it have taken in taxes.  For this boondoggle, responsibility lies fairly and squarely with an incompetent mayor--Mr Bloomberg.  Now, however, faced with budget calamity, he has started to cut city services, including in the Sanitation Department.  The sanitation workers  responded by calling a go-slow.  People died. 

Blame must sheet home to the union functionaries.  Hopefully they will be charged with criminal negligence.  But Mayor Bloomberg must also face up to his failings.  He has failed to fulfil basic duties and responsibilities as the civic leader of New York. 

We note that Mayor Bloomberg has been very, very active--and has spent a lot of the city's tax revenue--trying to make the population "be good".  He has recruited over 17,000 food policemen--and let us assure you, they don't come cheap.  As Michelle Malkin put it:

– New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Two feet of snow paralyzed trains, buses, plows and emergency vehicles in the Big Apple this week. Perhaps if Bloomberg — the nation’s top self-appointed municipal food cop — spent more of his time on core government duties instead of waging incessant war on taxpayers’ salt, soda, trans-fat and sugar intakes, his battered bailiwick would have been better equipped to weather the storm.

Whenever we have been coached in any endeavour, we have always been told, "Get the basics right."  If Bloomberg had focused upon tight fiscal discipline, and upon essential services as fundamental priorities, he would not have had the money from taxpayers to indulge in his nannying and do-gooding.  But because he has proved derelict in his duty, when a real crisis hit, he proved inept.   No doubt he feels hard done by.  The Great Global Warming Narrative said this could not happen, and how can it be Mayor Bloomberg's fault when the "science is settled". Clearly in Bloomberg's twisted moral lexicon, obesity was a bigger threat to the planet than snowstorms. 

What we see played out here, though, is both typical and salutary.  The people have cheered Bloomberg's farsighted initiative to combat smoking and trans-fats.  They lauded the vision of the man.  But nannying governments and their constituencies eventually run out of other people's money.  Visions do not come cheap--particularly visions about something as pervasive and personal as eating preferences and  recreation. When the cupboard becomes bare, the collapse of basic civic services is nigh.  Maybe, just maybe folk will learn a lesson from such a cautionary tale.  But unlikely. 

They will just more likely get mad that their god has failed them and go out and riot to relieve a bit of tension.