by Jim Quinn, The Burning Platform:
Avalon was able to track down another 30 Blocks of Squalor rant from 2015, posted by David Stockman on his website. This one centers on the incompetence of Philly government drones and corrupt politicians.
There were two accidents on the Schuylkill Expressway last Monday morning. You know what this meant. I had the pleasure of traveling to work on the scenic 30 Blocks of Squalor. The 30 blocks from 69th Street in Upper Darby to 39th Street in West Philly is a tribute to government incompetence, failed government policies, shoddy union labor practices and fiscal mismanagement.
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This entire thirty block trek could be completed in 5 to 10 minutes if the hundreds of union government drones in the Philadelphia Streets Department would get off their fat asses and time the lights. The blocks are identical in distance. They don’t need advanced degrees in physics or calculus to set the lights to go green every ten seconds in order. They were timed in the 1970s and 1980s. Would smoothly flowing traffic be such a bad thing? Do they not care or are they really this incompetent? The first light at 61st Street was red when I arrived. It turned green and before you could touch the gas, it immediately turned yellow and red again. I wondered how long they’d allow this to go on. My guess would be days.
I’ve noted in previous 30 Blocks screeds that Philadelphia put a thin veneer of blacktop on the entirety of Chestnut Street about two years ago. I’ve also detailed the dozens of water main breaks that occur on a regular basis under the streets of Philadelphia, causing tens of millions in property damage. This is how corrupt incompetent government drones run the show. They gloss over the long-term real structural problems with a thin veneer of cheap half assed faux solutions that provide the false appearance of fixing something.
Ignoring the deeply rooted fundamental issues like crumbling hundred year old pipes and dangerous disintegrating Amtrak train tracks, while throwing down some blacktop, painting white bike lanes on streets where no one in their right mind would ride a bike, and installing wheel chair ramps on every corner even though a wheel chair could never navigate the crumbling trash strewn sidewalks, is the height of willful dishonesty and incompetence. Two years after smoothing over the bumps and potholes on Chestnut Street with tons of blacktop, driving the 30 Blocks of Squalor is now like driving in downtown Baghdad after a Sunni/Shia family reunion.
There are gaping craters dotting the landscape along the entire putrid route of boarded up hovels, dying businesses with bars on every window, collapsing porches, sidewalks strewn with trash & debris, and murals of black people doing great things. The streets are literally collapsing into the rat infested sewers below. There is an occasional orange cone in front of the gaping holes, but most are unidentified until your car blows a tire or ruins their alignment. Cars come to sudden stops if they recognize the danger ahead. If the lights were timed this would be a real bummer. Luckily the average speed is 10 miles per hour, so you can usually survive the trek.
What is the point in spending millions of taxpayer dollars blacktopping streets which are crumbling from below? Why not fix the problems below before applying the blacktop above? Because the city is bankrupt. The infrastructure isn’t crumbling because they don’t have enough money. It’s crumbling because they have chosen to spend taxpayer money on gold plated pensions and health benefits for union government workers and teachers.
They’ve wasted hundreds of millions on public schools that only graduate 50% of those entering and most of those graduates are functionally illiterate. They spend millions painting murals, giving tax breaks to mega-corporations like Comcast, and building sports stadiums for billionaires. The corruption, mismanagement, incompetence and stupidity of politicians, government bureaucrats, and union officials is breathtaking to behold.
Building 101 luxury low income townhouses in the midst of squalor, depravity, drugs, crime, and welfare mentality, with $27 million of taxpayer funds is the kind of waste created by liberal do-gooder politicians like Michael Nutter and Barack Obama. The $27 million should have been spent replacing ancient water mains before they burst and destroyed businesses and homes, costing the city and its citizens millions in lost business and property damage.
The Mantua Square debacle gets better by the day. It was built using Obama’s $900 billion porkulus funds. It sits within one of Obama’s Promise Zones in the Mantua section of West Philly. Last month they found a dead body on the same block as Mantua Square. Ten people were shot a few blocks away on the same night. Does it sound like this low income housing estate has upgraded the neighborhood?
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