You want small government? New York City this week is what it looks like

Susie Madrak has a must-read post at Crooks and Liars about how cuts in sanitation personnel left New York City as the poster child for small-government oligarchy. The streets where the wealthy live were plowed; those in the outer boroughs weren't. That's just a small taste, as Susie explains:

One of my New York-native friends said her relatives were calling the post-blizzard city a "zombie apocalypse."

It's bad enough that NYC has laid off 500 sanitation workers in the last two years (you know, instead of taxing Wall Street) or that there were plows sitting idle because they didn't have enough people to drive them, or that people died because the EMTs couldn't get down their streets.

But that the mayor didn't even bother to call a snow emergency? That's plain crazy.

Make fun of Philly all you want, but by canceling Sunday night's Eagles game, we kept 60,000 cars off the streets at the height of the blizzard that didn't need to be there. Looking at the pictures of New York with abandoned cars and buses everywhere is just surreal. (Of course, Mayor Mike Bloomberg's street was nicely plowed.)

Not to mention, NYC residents couldn't go back to work. Manhattan was cleared, but people couldn't get in to work from the outer boroughs. Wonder how much taxable revenue was lost this week?

This is why it's such a bad idea to run government like a business. This isn't a business, it's a government. It has to provide basic services, no matter what.

It's probably no secret that Wall Street has the same attitude toward New York City that they have toward the rest of the country: "You're lucky to have us." That's why, instead of taxing them, Bloomberg bends over backwards to make them happy. After all, they might move to New Jersey!

So Bloomberg keeps cutting. He laid off 500 sanitation workers and privatized much of the snow plow operations. Guess what? Plows sat idle because employees of the private contractors were on vacation during the holiday.

This is what small government looks like.