Justin,
If you are so uninformed as to believe that a snow day represents a day off for public school employees you should not write about the subject at all. Check the contract, snow day = a make up day, usually added at end of school year.Or are you wilfully spewing misinformation to your more gullible readers? Write 100 times, "I don't know what the hell I'm talking about", and clean the blackboards after school.
OldTimeLefty

FYI...The cancellation of schools was recommended by the RI Emergency Management System.

I’m not in favor of public school union contracts or government over private operations but complaining how public school employees get a free day off? How much economic activity was lost? Come on. I thought you’d be more likely to comment about those who complain about their inconvenience as a cultural problem that more families don’t have a parent that stays at home. Playing by ear also has its downside for parents forced to make last-minute accommodations. And there are public employees who are required to work regardless of weather due to the nature of their work – such as postal workers. Whatever you were trying to point out, this is not a good example.

Hey Old Time A-Hole:
Write 100 times:
The state is broke because of union/welfare leeches like me.

Justin, if you memory goes back a year and six days, you'll realize the consequences of playing it by ear. I did the same 37-mile drive home from work at the same time of day today, and the traffic situation was much more tenable today compared to Dec. 13, 2007. Anti-union politics and public safety may each have their place, but they DO NOT MIX.
Now the road treatment in North Providence, that's another story. I don't care whether their fat tuckuses are unionized or not - their performance was abysmal.

Justin and Mike are the Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde of Anchor Rising.
OldTimeLefty.

Rhody-I used to work nights at Twin River between 2002 and 2005-I'd get off my shift at about 1:30 most nights.When it snowed,I noticed a startling difference between North Providence and Providence.The streets in NP were cleaned-the ones in Providence weren't.That simple.

My only question is why this state is so retarded that it needs EMA to handle less than an average daily snowfall in Rochester, NY.

I wonder how much economic activity was lost today...

I was in East Greenwich yesterday afternoon after quahogging in the morning (economic activity) and had to notice how many parents and children presumably out of school were on the streets and in retail stores (economic activity). On the way home west of E.G. I noticed scores of plow equipped trucks and the much larger snow clearing vehicles poised near the Rt. 95 ramps ( impending economic activity).
At my return home I discovered the purchases my partner had made in preparation of the now beginning snowstorm ...new shovel, the large bottle of Evan Williams, enough bread and rolls to start a bakery and other sundry articles. However rational these purchases were (take the booze leave the shovel) the point is that the storm had caused this economic activity.

msteven,

Actually, I'm more inclined to complain about our continuing loss of a cultural ruggedness. Days when we must overcome adversity are those that define our lives; days when an incompetent government calls for a halt to our daily lives are times of milquetoast and butter.

-----

Rhody,

I'm explicitly asking whether there we're so buffoonish and weak that we can't come up with a strategy for reactions somewhere between last year and yesterday.

-----

Phil,

With the (possible) exception of the shopping parents --- some of whom would surely have been shopping without their children --- all of the activity that you describe would have occurred whether or not FEMA and the school administrations panicked and canceled classes.

Justin,
You can say nothing further on this topic until you recant your erroneous statement re: public employees and days off which started this in the first place. You have no shame!
OTL

Wrong. I can say whatever I like on this topic and, indeed, I'd have offered a response to your point (not entirely without self-correction/clarification) if you didn't habitually present yourself so deliberately as a nuisance.

"Days when we must overcome adversity are those that define our lives"
---- Agreed.

"Days when an incompetent government calls for a halt to our daily lives are times of milquetoast and butter"
---- I don't think government, as an operation, is any more incompetent than any other entity. It's the greed for power and money combined with lack of accountability that creates the negative stereotype known as 'government'.

OTL, you calling for anyone to cease commenting until they recant an erroneous statement exceeds your own previous level of hypocrisy. Who has no shame?

I know the drill -- what you freely assert, I can also freely deny.

Forget it, OTL. When somebody wants badly enough to take a gratuitous nonsequitur cheap shot at unions, they're gonna do it whether it makes sense or not.
Joe, my wife would beg to differ with you after seeing big snow piles in the middle of Smith Street around 9 last night that prevented her from making a turn to go to work. On balance, I'd give the NPDPW a B-minus/C-plus, but I sure wish they had gotten some sand out quicker.

Rhody-if I'm not mistaken DOT does Smith Street because it's a state highway(Rt 44)-just like Rt7(Douglas Ave/Pike)

Justin has just been awarded a lifetime membership to Gooberville. Goobers always laugh at city people that have snow problems. Well heck, in Gooberville, we can plow our streets and take care of our selfs. Who cares? So what some potatoes dont go to market. Hell, them city folk kin just weight.

And there are public employees who are required to work regardless of weather due to the nature of their work – such as postal workers. Whatever you were trying to point out, this is not a good example.
msteven,

Speaking of bad examples. The USPS is often mistaken for a government-owned corporation (e.g., Amtrak), but is legally defined as an "independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States. Do the research.

msteven,
The word assertion is defined as "a positive statement or declaration, often without support or reason."

F.Y.I. that Justin misrepresented the facts and that he knows he did is evidenced by his statement, "I'd have offered a response to your point (not entirely without self-correction/clarification) if you didn't habitually present yourself so deliberately as a nuisance." I did not assert that he had his facts wrong, I pointed it out by referring him to the teacher contract and then asked him to correct it.

Justin,
You try to weasel out of your error by calling me a deliberate nuisance. Maybe I am, but that's an entirely different argument. Don't you owe it to your readers to make factual corrections when they are called for? Your failure to correct calls your integrity to question.
OldTimeLefty

I didn't say that you are a nuisance. I said that you present yourself as one. Your attitude is designed to be maximally aggressive. Why, therefore, should I care about your repeated challenges to my integrity? I'd have to check the record, but I'm pretty sure you've given me no credit for integrity from your very first comments, here. Oh well. You generally stop short of giving me an excuse to ban your comments, so I typically ignore you (deliberately).

To the point, I wouldn't say that there is a "factual correction" to be made. Teacher contracts call for a 180 days of work, whenever those days occur, but the fact remains that, to my knowledge, they had Friday off to do with freely as they liked. It wasn't a working day without students. It was another day added to their two-week holiday vacation. And many of them will make it up with a light-duty day at the end of the school year.

Justin you wrote:

I wonder how much economic activity was lost today as public school employees got a free day off and private-sector workers had to take personal days or scramble to accommodate their children's schedules.

A free day off ... OldTime Lefty has challenged you as to this point. Are you correct or is he? If you can't or won't answer then I think your integrity should be in question. Saying that teachers will make up snow days with what you call light-duty is a dodge. I don't care if you think that his comments are a nuisance. Facts can be inconvient and maybe a nuisance too.

I'd be willing to bet that on that "light duty" day, it'll be 90 degrees with 75 percent humidity and the air conditioning will be on the fritz.

Again you miss the point. Whether you say I'm a nuisance or present myself as one is still dodging the question. You are hiding behind a semantic sandbag. Step up and 'fess up. You botched this one and you aren't mensch enough to admit it.

Where you see me as aggressive I see you as haughty, disdainful and high handed. But none of this has anything to do with the argument. You fugged it up and you can't admit it. How weak is "and many will make it up with a light-duty day at the end of the school year". How can you possible know that?!
Rhody presents a more possible likely scenario, but the point is you still have not 'fessed up.
OldTimeLefty

No. That's where the difference between correction and clarification comes in. The teachers got the day off, and they were free to use it as they wished. My use of "free" wasn't an indication of cost to them, but of liberty, as in "I've got a free day today." (I guarantee you that many saw the day as an extension of their two-week vacation.)

You maliciously ran with the assumption that I was declaring that they'd added an uncontracted holiday to their deals. If I'd been suggesting anything like that, I wouldn't have complained about the lost economic activity of parents, but of the direct monetary loss to the public in teacher pay. (It would have been easy to calculate and would have been an eye-popping number --- something like $70,000 for the one day in a district with 200 teachers. Over $2 million if the state averages 150 teachers per district... which I would have to check.)

I didn't attempt a clarification at the outset because your presentation didn't indicate an openness to the distinction, and nobody else repeated your take. Y'all can swarm if it warms you on these cold days, but I can't see any profit in attempting to prove integrity to you specific commenters.

Justin

It's simple. When you are wrong admit it. You may not see the profit of proving your integrity but maybe there would be profit it improving it.

Hey Justin,
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.
OldTimeLefty

Justin,

As I said, I think you are incorrect and I didn’t agree with the point you were trying to make. Having said that, if being intellectually honest, coherent and reasonable were requirements for commenting on this or any other site, then we’d all have a lot more time on our hands. But following their lead, then OTL and Phil should also “fess up” when the hyperbole and drivel they routinely produce is proven as such. And if they do not, then they too should return their ‘integrity’ membership cards. I’m sure they would agree being the fair-minded and reasonable people their comments have suggested them to be.

Hey msteven -scoring a couple of brownie points.

David & Msteven

Msteven is less a brownie and more like Santa's helper bringing sarcasm instead of lumps of coal.
And since we are in that gift giving season then for Msteven my gift is more hyperbolic drivel.
Also I'm delighted to be thrown in with OldTimeLefty. I'm sure that in addition to the "integrity membership card" he has ,that he may be a card carrying member of many things.