Shut up and plow the damn snow

FFS

Welcome to the long weekend! Sickness has infiltrated our house, as it does every January. The most difficult thing for me about parenting has been all the viruses that come home from school and daycare, never worse than the first month of the year.

1. Plowmageddon

This is what my neighborhood looked like last night as I took my son to basketball practice. The streets have been filled with snow, ice and slush (likely returning to ice when temperatures drop back below freezing) since Jan. 5.

I’m not trying to be dramatic here. I grew up in snowy northern Michigan and have a lot of experience in winter weather. It has been genuinely unsafe to drive on Indianapolis streets for way too long. Yet, for some reason, city officials are indignant over criticism of their recent snowplowing efforts.

The city isn’t thrilled with my column arguing snowplowing is a basic service that Indianapolis should offer if it wants people to live here. Officials contend I’m in league with some misinformation agenda, sowing confusion over their snowplowing strategy. They took particular issue with my characterization of past and current snowplowing protocols.

They’re missing the point. No one cares about the technicalities of their policy. People are mad because unplowed streets — you know, the ones the city chose not to plow — are turning our cars into 4,000-pound hunks of metal on ice skates.

Snowplowing is very simple. You either move snow out of the way, or you don’t. Indianapolis this month left snow on neighborhood streets as a matter of policy. As I wrote in my column: “Indianapolis' solar removal program — aka waiting for snow to melt on its own — worked for years without notice thanks to easy winters. Until now.”

This time, Indianapolis’ snow removal policy objectively, unequivocally failed residents who depend on safe passage through streets they live on. There is no disputing this. It is observable fact.

Indianapolis officials would do well to stop yammering about snowplowing strategies from previous years, DPW overtime hours, private contractors, inch counts and a bunch of other peripheral matters. Instead, they should acknowledge they failed and start thinking about how to plow the damn streets next time we get a big snowstorm.

FFS.

The city is acting like people are being unreasonable for pointing out that icy streets are making it hard to commute to work or school, causing crashes and who-knows-what other problems. Sorry, but these are perfectly reasonable things to get worked up over. It’s bad enough that these conditions exist. It’s worse that the city is trying to talk us out of believing what we see with our eyes and feel under our feet and tires.

Most of us who live in Indianapolis accept that botched services are part of the deal from time to time. We’re willing to forgive, if the city will let us. Just apologize and move on.

2. An essential MLK text

Photo by Suzy Brooks on Unsplash

This weekend is a great time to read with fresh eyes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. It’s one of the most powerful American texts, period.

3. What I wrote

Photo by Lauren Mancke on Unsplash

I published three columns this week for IndyStar:

• How Mike Braun can be a good governor (in spite of Micah Beckwith)

• 35 predictions for 2025

• Indianapolis' snowy, icy streets are why people move to suburbs (referenced above)

4. What I read

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

Noah Smith on why TikTok is a nefarious tool used by China to weaken America:

First and foremost, the TikTok fight will tell us a lot about whether modern liberal democracies have enough cohesiveness, determination, and state capacity to protect their citizens from foreign governments’ efforts at thought suppression. The America of the World War 2 era and the Cold War era would have certainly been up to the task. And today, India was perfectly willing to ban TikTok. But it’s possible that the U.S. has grown so divided and partisan, and its political class so spineless and passive, that it will be unable to follow through even on this one weak, belated defensive effort.

If TikTok does shut down, we’ll be able to see whether that has any beneficial effect in terms of combatting the misinformation that seems to have pervaded every facet of American thought. I’ve spent much of my adult life wading through misinformation and bullshit on Twitter, blogs, and other text-based media. But I’ve never seen anything like the pure, concentrated, weapons-grade bullshit that regularly goes viral on TikTok.

This isn’t just my casual impression, either; a bunch of studies have found that TikTok is rife with false information. How much of this is due to the design of the app itself, and how much is due to China and other players intentionally injecting misinformation into the platform, isn’t clear. But if TikTok shuts down, we should be able to observe whether Gen Z becomes better-informed about health, economics, and so on.

Michelle Goldberg on why Democrats will regret helping Republicans pass the Laken Riley Act:

This sweeping bill would upend our immigration system in ways that would outlast Donald Trump’s presidency, ruining lives and handcuffing future Democratic administrations. Democrats who vote for it may dodge right-wing attacks in the next election, but once its true scope becomes clear, they’ll be answering for it for years to come.

The bill is named after a Georgia nursing student who was murdered last year by Jose Ibarra, an undocumented migrant from Venezuela who had previously been apprehended for crimes including shoplifting and child endangerment. Due in part to Ibarra’s arrest history, the case became a cause célèbre on the right. “The more they get away with and the more we let these criminals go, it just emboldens them, and they step it up,” said Mike Collins, the Georgia Republican who introduced the measure in the House.

If all the bill did was mandate the deportation of migrants convicted of petty theft, it would make sense for many Democrats to back it, if only because there’s so little political upside in defending the rights of undocumented shoplifters. But the bill goes much further than that. It mandates federal detention without bail for migrants who are merely arrested for any theft-related crimes, with no provision to free them if the charges are later dropped.

5. Fox!

We’re seeing a ton of fox activity outside our house. Here’s a bad, blurry photo!

As you can also see in this photo, the city did plow snow. Thankfully, we live on a “connector” street, which means the pavement directly in front of our house is clear. The problem is, we have to turn onto streets (see above) still filled with snow and ice.

That’s it for this week! Please share this with a friend if you know someone who might like it.