Rantings Diversified

Ya’ gotta’ love this state!
Last Tuesday it started snowing. Now of course we had all the local TV and radio weather-people types going on and on for days beforehand telling us how we had to get to the grocery store and buy all the milk and bread. So it wasn’t like we didn’t know it was coming. The forecast was for 6 to 8 inches of snow then changing to sleet and freezing rain for awhile and back to snow for a grand total of 10 to 12 inches. Now I’m fairly certain that the folks at the PennDOT maintainance dept. watch TV also. I’m going to stretch and say that I personally think they knew, ahead of time, that it was going to be a bad storm. Do you think that the state, county and local gub’mints were prepared or ready for it? Hahahahaha!!! Not in PA!! Oh, hell no, they did not even start plowing major roads until the snow was already deep. The secondary roads! What are they? PennDOT spokespeople even went on the local TV news to say they were leaving snow on the roads so people driving could get traction while everything iced up!!!!!! I’m not joking, they really did that.
By Wednesday morning we had about 7 inches of snow around here and it was sleeting. The temp was around 17DEGF. By the time it stopped we had about 7 to 8 inches of snow that was frozen solid. Yes, frozen solid snow is what we had covering everything. I ended up hiring a couple of neighborhood kids to chop and dig out my sidewalk and driveway. You see, first you had to chop up the iced snow before you could throw a shovelful to the side. The kids took over two hours to do my sidewalk and driveway. The sidewalk and driveway are about 10 yards long each.
Most of the neighborhood streets around here are still like driving off road. There are ruts and small mountains of solid ice on them and driving is reduced to a crawl. The major roads are clear today but then it is Saturday.
The big story is that the state of PA closed 80 miles of Interstate highway 78 from just east of here all the way to New Jersey. Of course they didn’t put up any signs or anything like that ahead of where they closed the highway. Oh no, they just put a bunch of State Police troopers at the entrances to this highway to block access.
Check out these news stories.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/us/17stranded.html?ei=5065&en=f94d3fae44fa34b3&ex=1172293200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/16708995.htm

I love the fact that Commandant Rendell jumped in and is blaming everyone but himself. I wonder why he didn’t do anything before Friday! Wouldn’t it have worked better if he, the governor, maybe, just maybe had told his transportation department to get to work? Instead he has spent more of our tax dollars to hire some guy to explain to him why it happened and who to place the blame on.
What, is he related to Ray Nagin?
Well, apparently the way it works is to tax us to death then when the state, county and local gub’mints are suppose to do their job they don’t but then spend even more money to find a scapegoat to blame everything on.