Do You Care About Tax Dollars When You're a City Employee Scraping Up Concrete?

NYC has the highest taxes anywhere in the nation. Ok, I'm not backing that up with real information or anything, because I don't really roll that way (I'm more intuitive), but I can tell you that my paycheck suffers bigtime. New York State takes a long savory taste, and then NYC takes a bite, and just like your boyfriend who says he doesn't like what you're eating and takes another bite just to make sure: "Yes, wow, gross, I knew I didn't like this." It's terrible, alright.

Sure, our tax dollars pay for important things like public school education, and for those dudes to go around with those guns and powerspray all those bubble gum wads off of the sidewalk, but is it necessary to pay the Snow Brigade to shovel up concrete? In a NYC "blizzard," the Mayor tells us that it costs a million dollars a day to salt and plow the streets of this fair city. But we didn't have a blizzard recently. At the very most, we got two inches of slush.

"NO MATTER!" cries the salt and plow brigade, following orders from the Mayor's office, which must simply fear law suits which may cost the city more? What else could justify the sound of bulldozer hitting pavement at 1 a.m.? Is it the mob? Someone's greasing the hands of city employees so they can pay for their houses in the Hamptons, because how else can I explain what I saw up close, live and in person (admittedly a little to late with the camera was I, perhaps too frozen with shock to whip it out in time) which is a snowplowing of the pavement on 35th Street last night. Here's what I have for you:

A picture of the "snow" just "plowed" by the bulldozer...ohhhhh, BLIZZARD!

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And what do we have here?

The snowplow that just "plowed the snow" is on the right, having just passed me, and what is that on the left? But another snowplow? Jockeying for position? TWO SNOWPLOWS! Fighting for snow territory! "Hey, I was gonna plow that snowball. Get off of my turf, man!" DOES ANYONE SEE ANY SNOW IN THIS PICTURE? Granted, it's a crappy picture, but come on, unless you're blind and someone is reading you my blog, there ain't no snow to be seen here.

Perhaps it's my cold-blooded roots, having been raised in New England and endured the blizzard of '78, gone to college in the snowbelt of New York State, and loving a winter wonderland, but this stuff really pisses me off. How lame is it to send out the plows and spend money like this for no reason unless you're a plow driver making double time after 35 hours? And when it comes down to it, what really makes me angry is the lack of snow. The fact that they're wasting my tax dollars carving the curbs all in the "name of snow" just adds insult to injury. How about come up to my apartment with that bulldozer snowplow and get rid of some of that dust on my T.V.? Plow that crap I've been saving for no reason out to the curb. Do something productive for cryin' out loud.

Sigh.