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talkpoliticsIn a previous post, I commented on some of the problems facing public employee unions. It seems that some of the forces that normally shield public workers like teachers from public outrage may be fading in the face of deep state budget shortfalls and the perception of unionized state workers enjoying "cushy" benefits and work security lacked by other workers.
And now, some bloggers and media outlets are accusing the New York Sanitation Workers Union with negligent homicide.
You may have heard by now that substantial blizzard hit the New York Metropolitan area on Christmas weekend. The city normally has a good response to major snowfalls, but this time the clean up dragged on for days and by midweek after the storm, many streets in the outer borroughs were still unplowed. The accusation from the the NY Post and now by conservative bloggers is that unionized sanitation workers were ordered by their bosses to glitch up the cleaning efforts, leading to delays in emergency responses and at least two deaths, including a newborn baby who was pronounced dead after emergency workers could not arrive for nine hours.
...But is it true? The source for the accusation is a single city council member who claims that several santiation employees have anonymously confessed the plot to him. Now as time has progressed, there are now witnesses accusing some sanitation workers of being negligent on the job during the storm cleanup -- most notably a group of supervisors are under investigation for allegedly buying booze and partying in their car instead of working the plows.
Now is it plausible that sanitation workers wanted to stick it to Mayor Bloomberg? It certainly is -- the mayor has a rocky relationship with the unions for two reasons, one his fault and one a problem with public unions. First, the city has made serious cuts do to budget shortfalls and while cuts are necesary, the Bloomberg administration has steadfastly refused to consider raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers, even while the rest of the city has had to endure an ongoing series of fee hikes for services like mass transit. Second, and more complex: the mayor is a multi-billionaire who has self-financed all three of his election campaigns. That means that unlike most politicians he doesn't owe anyone anything -- no union contributed to his campaigns, so unlike other politicians who have to "manage" workforces that helped get them elected, the mayor has no political favors owed to much of anyone.
Unsurprisingly, he is not beloved by union leaders or many rank and file. So -- in the wake of recent lay offs, it is entirely plausible to me that a number of workers did a poor job on purpose or even that some of them may have organized to do so.
The accusation, of course, is much bigger than that -- indicating something akin to a job action, and, of course, the bloggers are, deliberately it seems, ignoring a large number of complications --
First off -- witnesses in the areas worse hit. If a big job action WAS organized, it would stand to reason that people would have noted plows not at work or running with blades up (and yes, people were watching their streets like hawks...even those of us in neighborhoods that were ploughed in semi-reasonable order.)
Second, and more importantly -- There are a lot of complicating factors that piled up to make the city's response fall apart. The storm, while not at all historic, was ferocious with fast accumulations and huge wind driven drifting. The administration was, as the article shows, oddly slow to respond to the storm. It was 4p.m. on Sunday, 5 hours into the storm before the Mayor got on television and called for private equipment operators to report in and help. The MTA did not cut back on street and surface service, leaving buses stranded in streets making them unplowable. Car traffic was not warned off before the storm hit either. The city had the option to declare a snow emergency and did not do so.
Anecdotally, I, and most people I know, can confirm that the city seemed oddly unprepared on the day of the storm. Knowing we'd be snowed in the rest of the day, I took my daughter to the American Museum of Natural History an hour before snow started to fall -- not one of the streets, major or minor, had been sanded or salted, unlike last winter's storms. We came home when snow had been falling for two hours and there was still no sign of sanding trucks. At 6pm, I left our apartment to dig snow away from our car on the street -- the snow had been falling for 7 hours, and I could see little sign of anything being plowed yet except for Broadway. And I live in a neighborhood that got a "good" response.
The consensus among many of my family's friends? The city was betting on the low end of the forecast and waited too long to mobilize -- add in heavy drfiting snow, stranded traffic and mass transit, private contractors not on the job in time to do their normal load, pockets of sanitation workers goofing on the job, and you have the situation that killed that young woman's baby.
But that's not really what I want to talk about. Two days into the storm response, the complex story outlined in the NY Times article was available and apparent. Regardless of that, a sizeable force of conservative bloggers have concluded and run with the vague and anonymous accusations of infacticide leveled directly and the unionized sanitation workers and their bosses. Hopefully, the scheduled city council hearings next week will get to a real set of answers and, if there is strong evidence of deliberate negligence, criminal prosecutions. But the story of the story is that a large number of people, especially those who get their information primarily via blogging, have already become convinced that the union workers are at fault.
Forget the consumers of highly partisan information for the moment -- at some point, bloggers like Malkin or Breitbart have to KNOW that they are jumping the gun on a complicated story and they have to KNOW that they are not reporting a story so much as CREATING one for entirely partisan purposes -- for the partisan blogger news is not a service, but a means for influencing political outcomes.
How, precisely, do people like that, right wing or left wing, sleep at night?
And now, some bloggers and media outlets are accusing the New York Sanitation Workers Union with negligent homicide.
You may have heard by now that substantial blizzard hit the New York Metropolitan area on Christmas weekend. The city normally has a good response to major snowfalls, but this time the clean up dragged on for days and by midweek after the storm, many streets in the outer borroughs were still unplowed. The accusation from the the NY Post and now by conservative bloggers is that unionized sanitation workers were ordered by their bosses to glitch up the cleaning efforts, leading to delays in emergency responses and at least two deaths, including a newborn baby who was pronounced dead after emergency workers could not arrive for nine hours.
...But is it true? The source for the accusation is a single city council member who claims that several santiation employees have anonymously confessed the plot to him. Now as time has progressed, there are now witnesses accusing some sanitation workers of being negligent on the job during the storm cleanup -- most notably a group of supervisors are under investigation for allegedly buying booze and partying in their car instead of working the plows.
Now is it plausible that sanitation workers wanted to stick it to Mayor Bloomberg? It certainly is -- the mayor has a rocky relationship with the unions for two reasons, one his fault and one a problem with public unions. First, the city has made serious cuts do to budget shortfalls and while cuts are necesary, the Bloomberg administration has steadfastly refused to consider raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers, even while the rest of the city has had to endure an ongoing series of fee hikes for services like mass transit. Second, and more complex: the mayor is a multi-billionaire who has self-financed all three of his election campaigns. That means that unlike most politicians he doesn't owe anyone anything -- no union contributed to his campaigns, so unlike other politicians who have to "manage" workforces that helped get them elected, the mayor has no political favors owed to much of anyone.
Unsurprisingly, he is not beloved by union leaders or many rank and file. So -- in the wake of recent lay offs, it is entirely plausible to me that a number of workers did a poor job on purpose or even that some of them may have organized to do so.
The accusation, of course, is much bigger than that -- indicating something akin to a job action, and, of course, the bloggers are, deliberately it seems, ignoring a large number of complications --
First off -- witnesses in the areas worse hit. If a big job action WAS organized, it would stand to reason that people would have noted plows not at work or running with blades up (and yes, people were watching their streets like hawks...even those of us in neighborhoods that were ploughed in semi-reasonable order.)
Second, and more importantly -- There are a lot of complicating factors that piled up to make the city's response fall apart. The storm, while not at all historic, was ferocious with fast accumulations and huge wind driven drifting. The administration was, as the article shows, oddly slow to respond to the storm. It was 4p.m. on Sunday, 5 hours into the storm before the Mayor got on television and called for private equipment operators to report in and help. The MTA did not cut back on street and surface service, leaving buses stranded in streets making them unplowable. Car traffic was not warned off before the storm hit either. The city had the option to declare a snow emergency and did not do so.
Anecdotally, I, and most people I know, can confirm that the city seemed oddly unprepared on the day of the storm. Knowing we'd be snowed in the rest of the day, I took my daughter to the American Museum of Natural History an hour before snow started to fall -- not one of the streets, major or minor, had been sanded or salted, unlike last winter's storms. We came home when snow had been falling for two hours and there was still no sign of sanding trucks. At 6pm, I left our apartment to dig snow away from our car on the street -- the snow had been falling for 7 hours, and I could see little sign of anything being plowed yet except for Broadway. And I live in a neighborhood that got a "good" response.
The consensus among many of my family's friends? The city was betting on the low end of the forecast and waited too long to mobilize -- add in heavy drfiting snow, stranded traffic and mass transit, private contractors not on the job in time to do their normal load, pockets of sanitation workers goofing on the job, and you have the situation that killed that young woman's baby.
But that's not really what I want to talk about. Two days into the storm response, the complex story outlined in the NY Times article was available and apparent. Regardless of that, a sizeable force of conservative bloggers have concluded and run with the vague and anonymous accusations of infacticide leveled directly and the unionized sanitation workers and their bosses. Hopefully, the scheduled city council hearings next week will get to a real set of answers and, if there is strong evidence of deliberate negligence, criminal prosecutions. But the story of the story is that a large number of people, especially those who get their information primarily via blogging, have already become convinced that the union workers are at fault.
Forget the consumers of highly partisan information for the moment -- at some point, bloggers like Malkin or Breitbart have to KNOW that they are jumping the gun on a complicated story and they have to KNOW that they are not reporting a story so much as CREATING one for entirely partisan purposes -- for the partisan blogger news is not a service, but a means for influencing political outcomes.
How, precisely, do people like that, right wing or left wing, sleep at night?
(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 04:04 (UTC)How, precisely, do people like that, right wing or left wing, sleep at night?
Wasn't it the New York Post that broke the story? I've been very hesitant to go into this story much without seeing more information on it, but I think that Breitbart in particular trusts his sources.
For what it's worth the New York government (http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/02/new.york.snow/index.html?hpt=Sbin) finds it credible enough to at least look into, so...
(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 04:56 (UTC)Yep. But other orgs also ran with it.
I think that Breitbart in particular trusts his sources
I think it's less a matter of if he trusts them, or if they're reliably sane (http://mediamatters.org/blog/201008050030). I also don't exactly know if he cares if they're telling the truth or not, or giving an accurate portrayal of reality, anyway, see Pimp-Suit-O'Keefe and the whole ACORN idiocy.
For what it's worth the New York government finds it credible enough to at least look into, so...
they pretty much have to look into it, because if they don't they're accused of trying to bury the truth. at the same time, they're looking into the failures on the mayor's end, as well.
(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 12:34 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 20:08 (UTC)So feel free to not believe media matters' take on it, but it would still help to look at what the guy actually wrote.
(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 05:00 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 08:57 (UTC)its cause they turn S -> $
(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 12:36 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 15:23 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 21:29 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 14:14 (UTC)It is an enormous leap from that to where Breitbart and Malkin have already gone, leading a pack of bloggers along with them. And that's kind of my point -- partisan bloggers don't look to report the news or break stories. They look to create stories out of tidbits of information within the whole picture in order to shape political opinion in their favored manner...in this case, building up public resentment of unions.
For a look at what journalists do, look to the NY Times piece I referenced that explained, among other factors, how long it took the city to call upon private contractors to come in and help. The city always uses those contractors to supplement their efforts and it was 5 hours into the storm and 24 hours after being warned a major storm was coming before they were called in -- after many routes were already impassable.
Your link, by the way, is to something I already linked to and not part of the original accusation of an organized work stoppage. That's several witnesses calling in and accusing a small group (one car's worth) of supervisors goofing off when they were on duty. It should be looked into and the men should be fired if it is true -- but that isn't the claim that the union either in whole or in part organized an informal job action that led to deaths.
(no subject)
Date: 5/1/11 18:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 04:21 (UTC)It is painfully clear that too many people on both sides jump too quickly on the slightest rumor to mount their soap boxes. Sadly there rarely seems to be wide spread apologies after the fact.
As to your last question, I'm sure it must be rhetorical, as it is something I have often wondered, but given my own conscience (for want of a better term) it is something I have no answer for.
(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 14:24 (UTC)No, there isn't...and given that these kinds of bloggers are far more political operatives than journalists, there is no real incentive for them to correct mistakes. Their readers are more interested in information conforming to their worldview that being actually informed.
It's a nasty little corner of the Marketplace of Ideas.
Just an addendum
Date: 4/1/11 04:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 04:53 (UTC)Anyway, unless someone wants to muzzle free speech, there will always be yahoos spouting off their theories, however unfounded or annoying they are. I don't think too many people take these accusations at face value.
(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 04:57 (UTC)Factually not true.
(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 05:39 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 19:49 (UTC)At the time, Kanata was a suburb of Ottawa, and its electrical utility (Kanata Hydro) was separate from those of the other municipalities in the Ottawa area and was non unionized.
"Kanata Mayor Merle Nicholds said she's been told the Power Workers' Union is refusing to work with the non-unionized Kanata Hydro workers.
While technicians from as far away as Windsor and New York State have been brought in to help Ontario Hydro, offers to throw Kanata Hydro's small, non-unionized force of 12 into the fray have been repeatedly turned aside by the provincial utility."
http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/features/icestorm/story.html?id=3b12c7ff-8ecd-4ac0-b7cc-aaf740271209
Regarding the army, it was called in for disaster relief. I was one of the soldiers on the ground in the area. While the army cleared roads, evacuated people and provided assistance in a variety of ways, the power workers refused to allow army electricians, surveyors and other specialists to help them repair the electrical grid. I heard this at the time on television during an interview with the army commander of the operation. I haven't been able to find a source.
The union eventually caved and allowed the Kanata Hydro workers to assist. This was after five days. I don't know if they ever allowed the army to help out with the electrical work.
(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 19:51 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 20:02 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 20:07 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 04:57 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 19:56 (UTC)http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/features/icestorm/story.html?id=3b12c7ff-8ecd-4ac0-b7cc-aaf740271209
Here is a follow up article, after the restrictions on the non-union workers were lifted.
http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/features/icestorm/story.html?id=531ef703-bd07-4cc6-98d3-0e7e44d4d9dc
(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 20:14 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 23:54 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 23:58 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 5/1/11 00:55 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 06:01 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 04:56 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 05:54 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 06:05 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 06:34 (UTC)Alcohol? Valium?
Date: 4/1/11 09:00 (UTC)Re: Alcohol? Valium?
Date: 4/1/11 09:04 (UTC)/Puts on 1950s hat:
Date: 4/1/11 14:15 (UTC)/Takes off 1950s hat.
You do realize you're referring to Malkin, who's a dishonest person at best and Breitbart, who's a ticking time bomb waiting to blow up in the faces of conservative media? People like that sleep like babies at night.
Re: /Puts on 1950s hat:
Date: 4/1/11 14:18 (UTC)If making money's involved:
Date: 4/1/11 14:31 (UTC)Re: If making money's involved:
Date: 4/1/11 14:38 (UTC)If they know they are dishonestly spinning for political advantage, they are poor excuses for human beings seeking advantage and profit at the expense of an informed citizenry.
If they do not know they are doing so, there is a fascinating delusional architecture worthy of at least a couple of dissertations.
I'm a confirmed cynic so my view is that they are doing it
Date: 4/1/11 15:31 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 16:06 (UTC)Ooh, awkward.
(no subject)
(no subject)
Date: 4/1/11 22:06 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 5/1/11 00:00 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 5/1/11 18:37 (UTC)