From: atropos@mac.com   
      
   On Feb 22, 2026 at 1:30:26 PM PST, "danny burstein"  wrote:   
      
   > In <10nfoqo$2dsin$1@dont-email.me> BTR1701  writes:   
   >   
   > [snip]   
   >> He did so poorly clearing the snow from the last storm that he's now asking   
   >> people to sign up and volunteer do the shoveling after the upcoming storm   
   >> clears. Imagine that. Paying all those taxes for a city department   
   >> specifically to clear snow, only to have the government beg you to do it   
   >> yourself because they ran out of money.   
   >   
   > umm, you might try some magnesium.  It's often a good treatment   
   > for kneejerks.   
   >   
   > a: these are NOT "volunteers" [1] but are paid positions to   
   > help augment in areas such as sidewalk curb cuts and bus stops.   
   > Oh, and fire hydrants.   
   >   
   > b: this has been a standard NYC deal for years. More likely decades.   
      
   The fact that it's been going on a long time isn't the flex you think it is.   
   People in NYC pay some of the highest taxes in the nation and one of the   
   things they're supposed to get for all that state-sanctioned robbery is an   
   efficient snow-removal department. Asking the citizens who have already *paid*   
   for snow removal to do it themselves, either as volunteers or temporary   
   employees, would be fucked up even if this was the first time it happened. For   
   it to have been going on for years just makes it all the more appalling.   
      
   Here's an idea: instead of spending billions of tax dollars on illegal aliens   
   and vagrants, how about fully fund the sanitation department (or whatever   
   department snow removal falls under)?   
      
   This is also happening in L.A., except it's trash rather than snow. We have an   
   entire Bureau of Sanitation that has more than 3000 employees, yet the city   
   looks like a giant trash heap. Of course, the city is in a budget crisis,   
   having spent literally billions on the homeless (only for homelessness to   
   increase) and giving illegal aliens free hotel rooms, meals, health care, and   
   debit cards full of taxpayer money, so the city council has all but completely   
   defunded the Bureau of Sanitation (along with the fire department, police   
   department, and a bunch of other city departments) to pay for all that. As a   
   result, trash now blows through the streets like tumbleweeds in Tombstone. And   
   it doesn't help that we have 80,000 vagrants who are continually making more   
   of it and throwing it into the street.   
      
   So what does Mayor Karen Bass do (who I wouldn't trust to manage a Starbucks,   
   let alone the nation's second largest city)? She goes on TV and announces a   
   new citizen initiative where we're supposed to organize trash collecting   
   groups in our neighborhoods and go out and pick up the trash ourselves. Yes, a   
   service we've already paid for with the highest taxes in the nation, now we're   
   supposed to do it ourselves-- and *keep* paying those taxes at the same time.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)