Murdoch Post Shills Rumors

Not a surprise that the Murdoch Post has backed off its criticism of Bloomberg for the Bloomberg Blizzard Disaster of 2010 and begun criticizing the people who are REALLY at fault - unionized government workers.

Of course, these are just rumors about the alleged slowdown by workers angry over budget cuts at the sanitation agency.

But rumors are good enough for the Murdoch Post, which ran the story on the front page of its website.

This will be the strategy of the Bloomberg administration going forward - blame the mess not on the lack of planning foresight of the administration, not on cost-cutting, not on the refusal of Bloomberg to declare a snow emergency.

Nope - blame it on the unions.

And of course the usual media shills will be there to hawk this - starting with the Murdoch Post and the Murdoch Street Journal.

So far, Bloomberg is himself denying that a work slowdown was behind the slow snow removal, and relying on allies like Dan Halloran and the Murdoch media empire to spread the rumors.

And the sanitation workers themselves say the rumors are NOT true:

Sanitation workers - usually hailed as the heroes of snow removal - found themselves the subject of some ugly rumors about work slowdowns and job actions.

That infuriated Harry Nespoli, head of the Uniformed Sanitationmen's Association, which represents rank and file workers.

"Our people are out there on 14-hour shifts," said Nespoli, who went to City Hall yesterday to clear the air with Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith. "You don't do a job action and put your workforce to work. We're going to get through this thing."

...

On its website, the Sanitation Officers Association has this to say about Goldsmith:

"Although it may be hard to comprehend, this one individual in a futile attempt to save money will be spending more this winter and risking lives unnecessarily."

One sanitation supervisor said any blame for the cleanup rests on the shoulders of the city and not workers.

"They were so unprepared for this storm," said the supervisor. "They were scrambling like crazy on Christmas Day calling people and trying to get them to come in."

But Nespoli said that was not the problem."The manpower was in place," he said. "At 7 a.m. Sunday morning, we had half the force in."

But Nespoli admitted morale was low among workers and supervisors alike.

"When you start doing things like demoting people, it's not the right thing to do," he said

Whether or not the work slowdown is true (and remember that as of now, these are UNSUBSTANTIATED rumors DENIED by the sanitation workers and hawked by a Republican ally of Bloomberg), the real blame for this mess lies with Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, who had it within their power to declare a snow emergency, get all vehicles off the main roads, get buses off the roads and make sure the city was clear for emergency vehicles and snow plows.