Twenty one days into his administration New York City Mayor, Bill De Blasio, is already making Mike Bloomberg look good. And, let’s face it, when someone makes Bloomy look like a model of fairness and honesty, things are clearly pretty bad. In fact, this occurred so quickly after De Blasio’s inauguration, I’m beginning to think Bloomberg might have mastered a win for De Blasio in a last-ditch effort to procure a positive legacy for himself after he left office.
While Chris Christie faces criticism for his office closing a few lanes on the George Washington Bridge, the New York City Mayor might be embarking on his own politically motivated scandal. According to the New York Post, the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods are being deliberately left out in the cold during the current snowstorm that is sweeping the North East.
Apparently whole sections of the wealthy Upper East Side are being snubbed by the city’s snow plows, leaving the 1-percenters to contend with Mother Nature on their own. According to the NY Post:
“He is trying to get us back. He is very divisive and political,” said writer and life-long Upper East Side mom Molly Jong Fast of Mayor de Blasio. “By not plowing the Upper East Side, he is saying, ‘I’m not one of them.’”
Of course, something tells me Gracie Mansion is getting brushed off in the current storm.
There appears to be little (or zero) plows running between 59th and 79th Streets, and between Second and Fifth Avenues. Much to the horror of New Yorkers unlucky enough to have earned the scorn of America’s most progressive Mayor, they may now have to contend with nearly a foot of global warming snow without any aid from city workers. (Take that you capitalist pigs!)
The horror stories are already piling in:
“I can’t believe de Blasio could do this. He is putting everyone in danger,” said Barbara Tamerin, who was using ski poles to get around 81st Street and Lexington Avenue. “What is he thinking? We’re supposed to get up to a foot of snow and nobody on the Upper East Side is supposed to blink an eye? I can barely get around and I’m on snow shoes!”
Well, Barbara, in all fairness snow shoes are kinda difficult to walk in under the best of conditions. I imagine traversing 10-12 inches of snow on a busy New York City street with ski poles, snow shoes, and what I can only assume is an over-developed irrational fear of snow, is pretty tough work. (If you are reading this from Fargo, Denver, Salt Lake City, or really anywhere else where snow is a common winter weather pattern, feel free to leave sarcastic remarks in the comment section below.)
Martin Cisse, 45, who works at a flower shop near 85th and Lex, said he can’t understand why the city would fail to plow the UES. “De Blasio is trying to hurt the more wealthy people by ignoring us but there’s no logic to that,” Cisse said.
And while New Yorkers have a tendency to over-react to moments of nature, Cisse has a point. There is no real logic to De Blasio’s war against the New York wealthy. (As a side note, there also seems to be little logic in Cisse’s grammatical structure.)
Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty defended the unusually class-oriented plowing practices by saying that traffic had “created a lot of problems” in the area. Yeah… That tends to happen when you don’t plow it.
The most telling sentence of the NY Post’s report, however, came from Barbara Tamerin (ya know, the lady that equipped herself with snow shoes and ski polls to help her conquer that white fluffy stuff from the sky) when she exclaimed that New York needs Mayor Bloomberg back!
Well… Let’s not be hasty (or stupid). I don’t think anything could make me pine for the days of Bloomy. But, it is nice to see that I can occasionally predict political events correctly. While General De Blasio leads his liberal troops (and the city’s sanitation department) in a war against the wealthy, more New Yorkers will soon be looking back on the days of Bloomberg as the dwindling years of New York exceptionalism. De Blasio’s political agenda, more than his apparent arctic-warfare on the rich, is the perfect vehicle to make Bloomberg look efficient.
Now just wait until De Blasio starts taxing, regulating, banning, and nannying the way he has promised he will… For the New York wealthy, a foot of winter weather will be the least of their problems.
PS: Want more info on De Blasio? Here's an article about him wanting to steal from a private Central Park philanthropy fund. And here's a story about him consulting with ex-cons on NYPD policing policies.
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