on NYC's failure to meet its promises for plowing

[acroyear]

I Thought Technocratic 'Centrists' Were Supposed to Be Competent: The Mayor Bloomberg Edition : Mike the Mad Biologist:

It helps, when providing services, to think that government's primary role is to provide services, as opposed to being an opportunity to make 'good government' claims. No one cares about 'good government', unless said good government isn't plowing the streets.

And the result of this emphasis on "good government" over actually providing services?

DownWithTyranny!: DWT Team Snowstorm Coverage continues: How Cutbacks Work:

I’ve lived in New York for over 30 years, and I’ve always marveled at how quickly the city government can make huge amounts of snow, as much or more than we just got, disappear from the streets; not this time.

Looking back 20 years, the city once had 15,000 sanitation workers. It now has 5000. For a city as big as New York, that 5000 is nowhere near what is required. There are, no doubt, fewer salt trucks and plows to keep the streets safely cleared. Buses and fire trucks became stuck in snow. Even the vaunted subway system suffered service interruptions and shutdowns to its above-ground lines, despite ever-rising fares. The result of all of this was a fortune in lost work hours and wages. Small businesses especially suffered.

In an era when businesses and employees have little or no margin to absorb a loss of income, the storm is not the disaster. The city’s ability to respond to the snow is the disaster, and people have died because of it.

I'll leave the tragic details out, but suffice to say, EMT teams simply couldn't get anywhere.

Krugman originally apologized for calling the performance of Bloomberg and Goldsmith a "Brownie-you're-doing-a-heck-of-a-job" moment, given that people died in New Orleans but not NYC. Well, he can unapologize for it.

I Thought Technocratic 'Centrists' Were Supposed to Be Competent: The Mayor Bloomberg Edition : Mike the Mad Biologist:

At least Bloomberg can kiss his presidential aspirations good-bye ("Bloomberg: he couldn't even plow the streets...").

Comments

[uncle-possum.livejournal.com]

Not sure how much of this sort of thing is politics in any way, and how much is the unthinking acceptance of what became popular in the late sixties, in Japanese "kaizen"--usually, and badly translated as "continuous improvement". The original, and real, basis of the theory was to set up any production so that everyone was working at 100% of normal capacity. The possibility of any abnormal needs was more or less ignored, with the assumption that if it might happen, workers could just give 110%.

Not unrelated to the idea of "just in time" inventory, which also assumes everything will work well all the time.

So, when the crisis comes, there's no real way to handle it. Of course, this is most popular with the business community who treat people as mere "human resources".

Too bad nature doesn't read the business literature.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Well, there is the other classic budgetary irony: always spend every dollar you're allocated, because if you don't, you won't get that dollar next year.

THAT is the real flaw in the whole system, the idea that rather than allocating budgets on statistical needs (and we've a pretty dang good idea how often BIG snowstorms hit) and taking any surplus as a good thing, we didn't need it, lets do something with THAT money, they look at only the previous year's needs. if the previous year didn't need that money, well, then you won't this year, either, so we'll take that money back AND we'll not give you that excess now, 'cause obviously you didn't need it.

absolutely short-sighted in every way.

to paraphrase the paraphrase, "people are a problem."

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

the comment and tag about it being "politics" is that it was a political decision to run on a platform of doing those kinds of cuts - they sold crappy business ideas as something to vote for, making EVERYBODY responsible for these failures and not the people who actually sold it to them.

"i'm just doing the job you elected me for" took on a new meaning, as the job they were elected for stopped being "to provide services" and turned into "to find ways to stop making me pay for services..." with the only way that is possible being to simply stop the services. NOW they discover what they voted for. and THAT is why Bloomberg's higher aspirations in politics are done.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

It is very much politics. One party says that all government is bad and incompetent, and the other does not. That's a fundamental political issue these days, and not removing snow is an example of the result of one partys position.