A Really Stupid Idea

Tonight's rant is actually something that I read early this morning.  After reading it there was no doubt in my mind what I was going to talk about.  This is probably the stupidest idea ever.  But what made this story even better is that it gives me two different things to complain about!



The basics of the story leads us to the first rant.  A few years ago Mayor Bloomberg, of New York City, proudly passed a law making it illegal to leave a vehicle running for more than 3 minutes.  The exception to this law are emergency vehicles, which makes sense.  The part that bothers me is that his vehicles are marked as emergency vehicles.  I don't know if they were labeled as such before or after the law but somehow we are seeing yet another example of a politician putting themselves about everyone else.  I thought Animal Farm was a pretty standard read in school.  This is one of the things that they talked about, where it is stated that everyone is equal but some are more equal than others.  Stop the crap!  If you make a law, and especially if you boast about it, follow it.


So what was the main story?  Someone complained about the fact that the Mayor's vehicles (his and those for his security staff) would sit running for hours while he was in a meeting.  Not only were they complaining about the cost of the gas to do that but they were also complaining about the fact that he was violating his own law.  Not willing to give up his comfort, he directed his staff to come up with an idea for keeping the vehicles cool while meeting the requirements of the law.  Their idea you may ask?  Putting a household air conditioner in the window of the vehicles.  Your next question is how are they going to power that?  Pretty simple, extension cords.  Holy crap what a really stupid thing to do!  I mean, why not park in the shade and leave the windows open like the rest of the world does?  And you have a driver, why can't he be notified when your meeting is over so he can start the vehicle and run the air conditioner?  Oh, I think I just answered my own question.  He can't do something like either of those ideas.  The problem with the first is that it would mean he would be like everyone else and he can't do that!  The problem with the second is that it is logical.  Heaven forbid anyone in government be logical!


To me this is just another example of a government official being arrogant.  In case you would like to read the actual story, here is a link to the article.  This is a complete waste of resources (financial and natural) that is going to be the end of the great country that we live in.