Roughing it

Some sort of weather irregularity had us holed up in the house with... well.. with pretty much all the regular conveniences, actually. Throughout the duration of the emergency, we still had power (unlike many) we still had heat (again,unlike many of those without power or shelter) we still had water, (unlike many others)  What we didn't have for most of the time, though, was internet which sure as hell made it feel like nothing else was working.

In any event it meant we weren't working.  With roads shut down everywhere and "New Orleans cut off from all sides," nobody was going anywhere.  Menckles had planned to work from home but frozen internet tubes took care of that.  Instead we just, you know, went outside.. for very brief bits at a time.. and goofed around.





Winter weather and whether or not it is bad turned out to be one of Alli's topics on the latest (appropriately named as ever) Hunkerdowncast which finally got uploaded once the internet pipes thawed a bit.

Snowball

Huey Long's Share Our Wealth radio address 1934: 

But the Scripture says, ladies and gentlemen, that no country can survive, or for a country to survive it is necessary that we keep the wealth scattered among the people, that nothing should keep the wealth scattered among the people, that nothing should be held permanently by any one person, and that 50 years seems to be the year of jubilee in which all property would be scattered about and returned to the sources from which it originally came, and every seventh year debt should be remitted.

Those two things the Almighty said to be necessary—I should say He knew to be necessary, or else He would not have so prescribed that the property would be kept among the general run of the people, and that everyone would continue to share in it; so that no one man would get half of it and hand it down to a son, who takes half of what was left, and that son hand it down to another one, who would take half of what was left, until, like a snowball going downhill, all of the snow was off of the ground except what the snowball had.

The disastrous Republican tax plan being hammered out in Congress now will either repeal or greatly reduce the estate tax.  Here is how that would affect the snowball.

Mother Jones spoke with Americans for Tax Fairness, an advocacy group focused on progressive tax reform, about how these changes to the estate tax will benefit the ultra-wealthy, specifically the top 15 richest Americans, as ranked and reported by Forbes. If the exemptions are doubled, each estate would save $4.4 million for a couple, or $2.2 million for a single person. And if the tax is repealed, that’s where things get interesting: According to numbers crunched by Americans for Tax Fairness, in that scenario, the people who inherit money from this tiny group of people could potentially save more than a whopping $300 billion combined. And the families of GOP-megadonors Charles and David Koch could collectively save nearly $39 billion, while the heirs of Republican kingmaker and moneyman Sheldon Adelson could be looking at $14 billion.

Aaanyway. Here are some photos of a big kitty in the snow today to cheer everyone up. 

So send everyone home and hunker down

It's no one's fault, they're not equipped to handle an event like this.

How much money do you set aside for snowstorms when they're as infrequent as they are? Who will run the show—the city, the county, or the state? How will preparedness work? You could train everyone today, and then if the next storm hits in 2020, everyone you've trained might have moved on to different jobs, with Atlanta having a new mayor and Georgia having a new governor.

So the question is, shouldn't the city and state persons (There are a lot of them. Atlanta's regional government is unwieldy to say the least.) known enough about this situation to say, "Hey, everybody maybe let's take a couple days off from work and school"?

If Ever I Cease to beat this dead horse...

I know, I know. Make with the football, asshole, we've lost three in a row without so much as a peep from you. One of the things that happens with the Saints bloviatings at the Yellow Blog is that they become so top-heavy with tangential bullshit that the crucial weekly observations (Malcolm Jenkins is garbage! Morstead is teh awesome!) get buried under the bar fight or the soup recipe or whatever idiot business we lead off with. Worse than that, the development of the idiot business often delays the publishing of a week's football observations by one or sometimes two weeks. Take, for example, the post below which has been holding back this and last week's Saints stuff until, in the interest of seasonal timeliness, I decided to just go ahead and detach it altogether. So there's all this disorganized football stuff still waiting to get put back together. Hang in there. We've got a bye week, after all. Meanwhile, I told Leo McGovern a fairly relevant football-related story some of which he published in the January ANTIGRAVITY. Pick one up if you get a chance... or just download it here.


So I spent my Christmas holiday checking out the karaoke bars in what I came to call the Fat City of suburban Baltimore, failing to keep our nation safe from terror, kicking vending machines, goofing off... oh and playing in the snow.



There was a lot of it. And I wanted to photograph it all.



Dude what are you doing?

I'm going outside to look at the snow some more.

It will still be there tomorrow.

No way. Really?



And it was. Every day I was out there in the wasteland, there was a foot of snow on the ground.



And while this may seem like a lot of fun to you and me, the people up there view it as more or less an annoyance. Personally I think it's because they've got the wrong attitude. For starters, they operate under the bizarre misapprehension that people can and should get out in this stuff and drive their cars.... to work of all places. I mean, I can see why a body might consider traversing the arctic wilderness in search of household supplies (read: beer) but clearing all that shit off of one's car and then risking life and limb to ice-surf into the office just strikes me as a case of severely misplaced priorities.

But that's not even the worst bit. Take a close look at that last photo. Note the curbside lawn furniture. The idea there is that the people who have (unwisely, IMO) risen early to shovel the snow and sludge from around their vehicles are saving the cleared portion of street as their personal parking spaces for when they return. And there's a certain logic to this (provided we accept the silly idea that anyone would want to operate a motor vehicle in this stuff in the first place). If you've shoveled out a spot once in the morning, you probably wouldn't want to have to do it again when you get home.

But what happens say three or four days after the snow event when every space on the block has already been cleared? Shouldn't the standard rules of on street parking go back into operation? One would think so. But that's not always what happens in practice. It turns out that many residents who happen to have dug out a spot convenient to their front door continue to claim that spot long after the entire street is once again clear leaving lawn chairs or orange cones in place every time they move their vehicles. Unfortunately, when too many people do this, they end up locking up all of the public parking on a block for extended periods while neighbors or their visitors could be using it.

When challenged on this point, the lawn furniture people still aggressively claim ownership of "my spot" by virtue of having "spent two hours" shoveling out from a now irrelevant snowfall. But by restricting "my spot" in this way, the furniture people have appropriated public property that other people have as much right to as do they even while they aren't using it. This entitled hoarding of public space is as selfish as it is inefficient. And when we witnessed it, it immediately reminded us of something.



We've gone on at great length in the past about the Carnival ladder/structure problem and how this entitled and illegal hogging of the public space is anathema to the public spirit of Carnival festivities and just all around rude in general. Since we're coming up on January 6, it's likely time to start beating that drum again. Here is what the New Orleans city ordinances have to say about these practices.

Sec. 34-32. Fencing of public property prohibited.
It shall be unlawful for any individual, organization, or corporation to fence, rope off, or stake out any area of public property along a parade route except when necessary to protect plants, shrubbery, trees and other landscaping materials with the approval of the department of parkways and parks. Each private property owner shall notify the parkway and park commission at least 30 days prior to the date of a parade in writing and shall submit a detailed drawing of the planned protective enclosure device. If the private property owner is not notified in writing by the parkway and park commission within ten days of the parade date, it shall be assumed that the proposed protective enclosure device is approved. Any changes to the proposed protective enclosure device mandated by the parkway and park commission shall be complied with.
(M.C.S., Ord. No. 19,314, § 1, 7-15-99)

Sec. 34-33. Ladders.
All ladders used by parade spectators shall be structurally sound. No ladder, chairs, ice chests, chaise lounges and other similar personal effects shall be placed in intersections or between curbs of public streets during the pendency of a parade. Ladders shall be placed as many feet back from the street curb as the ladder is high. Additionally, the practice of fastening two or more ladders together shall be prohibited.
(M.C.S., Ord. No. 19,314, § 1, 7-15-99)

The ladders in the photo above clearly violate both of the cited sections of the ordinance. Additional ladders uptown routinely block intersections on the neutral ground of St. Charles Avenue as do these below.



Worse than the ladders, at times, are these folding lawn chairs which are frequently arranged in a theater seating style so as to severely restrict crowd movement and thereby limit the number of people who can enjoy the parade in one place.



Remember, I'm not saying that chairs and ladders shouldn't be on site at a parade. I'm only saying that they are used in ways that inhibit everyone's enjoyment and in clear violation of the law. It's fine if you want a place to sit down, or if you want a way for your child to enjoy the parade. But it's not okay to use your chairs and ladders as territorial boundaries. In most cases, keeping ladders and chairs back away from the curb will do. It's an easy solution and one that can be readily facilitated by NOPD officers on the route politely reminding people of the rules and seeing that they are followed. Now is the time for us to ask for this to happen. If we get too close to parade time, it will be too late to do anything about it.

Case in point: On Christmas Eve, some friends of Menckles' gave us a ride over to their house for dinner. When we arrived to find the block unnecessarily jammed up with orange cones and plastic chairs, we decided it was time somebody finally took action. We moved a neighbor's cones and parked in "their spot". About 45 minutes later, the angry cone-owners knocked on the door and confronted our hosts with the usual illogical protestations about how they earned their spot by digging through the by this point irrelevant snow. The protestations were accompanied by physical threats to our hosts and their vehicle. So we called the police. On Christmas Eve. To settle a parking dispute.

Needless to say they were not much help. The officer told our hosts that they were "legally in the right" but also that they should just move their car out of "courtesy to their neighbors." I'm sure the next time it snows, everyone will go right back to being assholes and no one will do anything about it. So the car got moved but nothing really was solved. If you wait to call the police in to deal with a situation after the fact, all they're going to want to do is make sure everybody calms the fuck down so that they can go back to whatever it was they were doing in the first place.

And that's why, if we want the parade route ordinances enforced, we've got to start talking about this now. Someone has to convince the police department that it's worth their time to do a little preventive education about and enforcement of the rules governing good neighborliness at Carnival before it's too late and some idiot ends up starting an argument on a neutral ground somewhere in the middle of the parade. And some of us are fed up enough to do just that.

I believe a HOLY CRAP is in order

Snowing in New Orleans this morning






Update: More pics







NOLA snowfalls in my lifetime: 1989, 2004, 2008. And that's it. Three in my lifetime and I am an old person.