WATCH: Boston Administrator Pushes 'Gender Equity' Snow-Plowing

P. Gardner Goldsmith | January 31, 2022
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Many observers of the slow, python-like murder of individual liberty in America likely saw the news that new Boston Mayor Michelle Wu recently imposed her immoral vaccine passport mandate in the Hub, a mandate her Ministry of Truth calls, “The B Together System,” when it actually forces people APART, unless they comply with her strictures about how folks can associate with one another.

But, given the blinding arrogance and craziness of the mandate, some people might not have noticed that her new Chief of Staff’s is pushing something almost as asinine and foolish…

She wants “Gender Equity” in snow-plowing.

No, this is not a joke, and yes, it is indicative of how Marxism-collectivism is so powerful a brain-bath for many possibly kind-hearted people, it gets them thinking that any small natural difference in living standard or tiny factor of reality must be caused by a “power imbalance” -- said imbalance brought about, of course, by freedom, and fixable through, yeah, you got it… the coercive power of the state.

 

 

The Chief of Staff is named Tiffany Chu. She’s been doing a great job in ultra-clean San Francisco as the “Environmental” Commish under Mayor London Breed (she who had to break her own COVID lockdown edicts to see Tony, Toni, Tone – or was it Tony the Tiger, because he’s GRRREEAT?) and Chu has embraced Marxist “equity” rationales so fully, even snow-plowing can, to her, be seen as a slight and not a problem ALREADY caused by collectivism.

I first heard about the heroic Ms. Chu’s keen snow-plowing insight thanks to Boston radio fixture and author, Howie Carr, who, about twenty minutes into his 4pm hour on January 26, told the audience about her statements, and actually played audio from her October, 2021 video conference call, “Morning Welcome…” to back up his claim (watch it soon, before she likely takes it down).

Describing herself as having a “deep fear of climate change” and bringing her “whole self to work,” and thus making one wonder why she worries about snow and wonder how someone can be at work but leave a part of himself or herself at home, she used her “whole self” and referred to a Swedish “study” to make her position on “snow-plow equity” perfectly clear.

In 2012 a number of cities in Sweden adopted a gender-equal plowing strategy where, um, actually, first pedestrian cycle lanes were cleared, especially near schools and day-care centers and then later on major streets.

Because, we all know, on the collectivist-run streets, snowstorms see the vast bulk of traffic filling BIKE lanes to get to the schools that, likely, aren’t open…

And what, exactly, is “Gender-equal plowing…?”

As Carr wrote Jan 28 for the Boston Herald:

Being an MIT grad, maybe she can someday explain how the plows are supposed to get to the bicycle lanes and the shuttered schools if the plows don’t clear the major thoroughfares first.

Not to mention the school buses, if there IS school.

Ahh, but we who aren’t part of the collectivist cult, our minds just aren’t sufficiently trained to understand “equity” and how it’s a term that can be utilized by any power-hungry pol who wants to increase power and demonize folks who just want to be left the heck alone.

In her grand video appearance, Chu (who is the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, and might want to see where collectivism took mainland China) offered:

What they discovered was that this existing societal practice actually disadvantaged women because they were the ones who were more likely to walk and travel with children while men who are predominantly working and commuting benefited from those major corridors being plowed first.

And here is where her collectivist mindset reveals even more – where it lets us glimpse the roots of her misunderstanding.

City streets and sidewalks, and the “inequity” she perceives in how they are managed, have nothing to do with “society”… they are products of collectivist organization, precisely the kind of organization which she wants to force into more areas of other people’s lives.

Society is the natural set of ethics, morays, and private institutions human beings create voluntarily. By definition, society stands in contradistinction from the state, or polis, which is the artificial body claiming a power to take money from the people who form society, and then boss them around. To its deepest philosophical roots, the state only exists at the expense of people in society, and it throws those people into what economists call “the Tragedy of the Commons.”

If Chu studied basic economics, she might recall that in the Tragedy of the Commons, everyone who is pushed together into the common, government-run pay-pool, or who lives in a government-managed area, believes he or she has a claim to how that system should be run.

Thus, myriad interests argue. They cry that “plowing-precedence” should be given to sidewalks, or bike paths, or streets, or fire lanes – and, “Here are the X, Y, Z reasons your position is sexist, ageist, racist, or whatever pejorative grenade we can lob your way.”

Sometimes, the system will cater to the majority. Sometimes it will cater to the most vocal minority or minorities, and sometimes, it will cater to special interests, who feed the politicians a little “something extra” to get the proverbial government grease.

However it’s directed, it won’t be directed that way due to market forces and what people truly want, because only in SOCIETY can that happen – through voluntary choices and real, honest liability, as revealed in the free market.

That’s why private shopping center and parking lots are cleared of snow sooner and better than government-run streets; they have financial incentives to help their customers get in and out safely, and they can’t simply TAKE PEOPLE’S MONEY and call it “equity.”

But the government-run, collectivist system can take it, and has gotten so bad, people like Chu actually argue for silliness like this.

As Howie Carr notes:

You know who else benefits from having the major streets plowed first? People who call 911, whose houses are on fire, who need an ambulance. Have you ever tried to maneuver a hook-and-ladder truck down a bicycle lane?

Ahh, Boston, a center of collectivist ideology.

And one that, thanks to Howie Carr, provides us a life-lesson, in both wokeness gone wild, and the deeper, longer-lasting lesson of communism, itself.

 

Related:RINO MA Gov Charlie Baker Flips on Travel Bans, Digital Jab Passports | MRCTV

 

 

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