DeBlasio's 'Snowgate'
New New York Mayor Bill de Blasio sent a message to the city's wealthy yesterday; things are going to be different.
It really is a tale of two cities - this time with the tony Upper East Side getting the shaft!
Huge swaths of the city's wealthiest neighborhood had been not been plowed by early Tuesday evening, leaving 1-percenters out in the cold, according to the city's own map of snow-plower activity.
"He is trying to get us back. He is very divisive and political," said writer and Life-long Upper East Sider and mom Molly Jong Fast of Mayor de Blasio.
"By not plowing the Upper East Side, he is saying, 'I'm not one of them.' But we have everyone in this area on the Upper East Side. We have rich people, middle class people, and housing projects. We have it all."
There appeared to be no snow plowing between East 59th and 79th Streets and between Second and Fifth Avenues.
"I can't believe de Blasio could do this. He is putting everyone in danger," said Barbara Tamerin, who was using ski poles to get around 81st Street and Lexington Avenue.
"What is he thinking? We're supposed to get up to a foot of snow and nobody on the Upper East Side is supposed to blink an eye? I can barely get around and I'm on snow shoes! All of the buses are stuck and can't go anywhere. He's crazy. We need Mayor Bloomberg back!"
Martin Cisse, 45, who works at a flower shop near 85th and Lex, said he can't understand why the city would fail to plow the UES.
"De Blasio is trying to hurt the more wealthy people by ignoring us but there's no logic to that," Cisse said.
"There are a lot of blue collar working people out here driving trucks and trying to get around too."
Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty, at an evening press briefing, defended the handling of the Upper East Side - claiming that one spreader had a busted GPS and was not reporting progress to the PlowNYC Web site.
"The GPS was not working," he said. "Also, traffic created a lot of problems for us in that area."
So that's it. The dog ate the GPS.
It's one thing to treat everyone equally and not plow rich people's streets before anyone else's. In a snow emergency, class shouldn't matter.
But de Blasio's vindictiveness should open some eyes in the Big Apple. His defenders will say we're imagining this snub and the idiotiic explanation given should satisfy everyone. But like Governor Christie's "bullying" by closing two lanes of bridge traffic, de Blasio's hatred of the rich and making them suffer during a snow storm plays into a particular narrative that has now solidified.
In a sense. this is de Blasio's shot across the bow toward the wealthy. His plans to raise taxes on the "rich" to fund his grandiose social spending schemes is just one aspect of his war on wealth. They obviously must not only pay more, but also humbled before the proletariat.
It should be an interesting 4 years in New York City.