NYC Blizzard Cleanup Intentionally Hampered by NY Sanitation Worker's Union?

While I was waiting out the Dec 26th blizzard in a far more sedate corner of the Empire State, the Big Apple ground to a standstill- although it's looking as though mother nature alone wasn't to blame for the paralysis in the days following the storm.

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.

"They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important," said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), who was visited yesterday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the shameless plot. [snip]

New York's Strongest used a variety of tactics to drag out the plowing process -- and pad overtime checks -- which included keeping plows slightly higher than the roadways and skipping over streets along their routes, the sources said.

The snow-removal snitches said they were told to keep their plows off most streets and to wait for orders before attacking the accumulating piles of snow.

They said crews normally would have been more aggressive in combating a fierce, fast-moving blizzard like the one that barreled in on Sunday and blew out the next morning.

The slowdown left an estimated 16-20 inches of snow piled up on many NYC arteries and surface streets, making it treacherous sledding for emergency vehicles from the FDNY or NYPD. A 75 year old woman in Queens who was having difficulty breathing and a newborn baby delivered in the lobby of a Brooklyn apartment building died while waiting for EMS personnel to make their way through the accumulated snow.

There have also been reports of Sanitation employees and their supervisors in Brooklyn buying beer and waiting out the blizzard in their warm vehicles while passengers in a stranded bus had to ride out the storm a block away.

On Tuesday, the US Attorney's office in Brooklyn announced that they would be opening up a criminal investigation into the NYC Department of Sanitation's response in the wake of the blizzard. The DA's in Brooklyn and Queens are also launching their own criminal probe.

[hat tip: Yid With the Lid; Jammie Wearing Fool]

Democrats Starting to Remind NYC's Russian Immigrants of Bad Old Days Back in Old Country

Fresh off of electoral wins in which the borough will be represented in Albany and Washington D.C. by the GOP, Republicans in Staten Island are finding themselves embraced by a growing number of the city's Russian community.

Some of the Russian immigrants are expressing concerns that the increasingly burdensome regulation and micro-management faced by businesses from the city and federal officials is becoming reminiscent of the Soviet era in which they fled.

"We decided we had to support this club," said Fridman, a former Soviet Army officer who came to the United States in 1992. "They are very close to our political and business vision."

In the wake of the national GOP's big wins this year, when the party took back control of the House, Republicans everywhere are more confident that their bedrock message of smaller government and lower taxes will resonate with American voters.

Fridman said that the Democrats "are going in an absolutely different direction," focusing on "income redistribution" and rich-versus-poor "class war."

"It's too socialistic," said Fridman, head of the non-profit Staten Island Community Center and president of Citizens Magazine, a public affairs publication. "It's very painful for us to see."

The Democratic state senator from across the way in Brooklyn is trying to convince them it's all in their heads, however.

State Sen. Diane Savino (D-North Shore/Brooklyn) said she understands the Russian aversion to anything that looks like big government, but thinks the criticism of the Democratic Party is off-base.

"You can't ignore the fact that the Russian population here came of age during the Soviet era," said Ms. Savino, who counts many Russians among her Brooklyn constituents.

"They have different thoughts on what communism and socialism mean. They are a little more sensitive to it.

"But, that being said," she added, "you can't compare the policies of the Democratic Party with communism. It's absurd."

Of course! State Senator Savino's absolutely right! I mean, under communism you had the government trying to control every aspect of your day-to-day life such as whether or not you could travel or worship freely and ration provisions such as meat, diary products or vegetables. Democrats simply want to warm up by dictating to us what kind of light bulbs we must use, what kind of car we must drive, whether or not McDonalds can sell Happy Meals and mandate that every American purchase health insurance. Once Americans cede control of those seemingly mundane things to an ever-expanding government, then they can step up to the old Soviet style controls on the economy or freedom of expression.

Kind of interesting that another ethnic group in another American metropolitan area tends to be solidly conservative- the Cubans down in Miami. Between the Russians and the Cubans, it's almost like they know firsthand something about the dire consequences of big government that the rest of us don't.

[Hat Tip: Pundit Press; Lonely Conservative]