There's always something to complain about

And those on the far-right always seem to find a way to blame their favorite bogeyman, "liberal lefty environmentalists" in this case, for a problem that, in reality, can only be attributed to Mother Nature.

Check out this gem from the conservative Daily Takes blog:

Six inches of snow 48 hours ago should not leave the roads of Madison in such terrible shape.

Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz (former co-founder of the lefty environmental group 1,000 Friends of Wisconsin) is hell-bent on making it tough to drive cars in his city.

How else can you explain the dismal condition of East Washington Avenue this morning? It’s bad enough the reconstruction work has taken longer than the entire Marquette Interchange project. But now that the construction is nearly complete, more than 1/3 of the road is unusable due to the lack of adequate plowing and salting.

Madison streets superintendent Al Schumacher is quoted in today’s Wisconsin State Journal as saying most of the main roads should be “really good” today.

He’s right. They should be.

But they aren’t.

For some reason the plow drivers in Wisconsin’s second largest city are not capable of clearing out the left traffic and left turn lanes. As if that weren’t dangerous enough, there are places on East Wash where an entire lane is coated with three inches of ice.

Salt may not be environmentally friendly. But how friendly is a street strewn with disabled cars and injured citizens, Mayor Dave?

Since when does the City of Madison not use any salt on the roads? As far as I was aware, they do indeed salt major thoroughfares, only leaving the side streets sans salt in an effort to minimize the amount of bad run-off into the lakes (those big, watery things we're surrounded by here in Madison).

Turns out I was right. This press release comes courtesy of the City:

Cleanup efforts related to the weekend snow and ice storm continue in the City of Madison. Top city staff from a number of agencies met today with the mayor's office to review current issues and coordinate cleanup work. The City of Madison includes some 750 miles of streets and 1700 total lane miles.

The Streets Division's cleanup efforts are focused on a number of priorities. Additional salting and plowing is being performed on the salt routes (these are the city's heavily-trafficked streets) that have ice buildup. The City of Madison does not generally salt residential side streets in an effort to minimize harmful salt runoff into Madison-area lakes.

Streets is also continuing to plow the areas where cars have moved, and sanding hills and intersections on the residential streets. Heavy equipment such as end loaders and graders are being used to scrape the residential streets where ice has bonded, creating rutting. Work is also continuing on crosswalk snow removal.

The Streets Division delayed plowing most residential streets until early Sunday morning due to the freezing rain that occurred overnight Saturday night into Sunday morning. Plowing those streets prior to the freezing rain would have resulted in extremely dangerous and icy conditions on paved streets.

Look, I'm as annoyed at the big chunks of ice stuck to the streets as anyone, but I also understand what happened this weekend. Plowing streets that have lots of cars parked on them, streets that are older and more narrow than those in, say, Fitchburg (where the downtown is really just a "state of mind"), is difficult enough in normal snow conditions. Add to that a thick layer of ice and things get nasty.

It's understandable to be miffed at the driving conditions. Linking that to "liberal lefty environmentalists" is one hell of a big stretch, though, and just makes you look ridiculous.

Maybe our local right-wing blogosphere is just cranky about that recently released NIE report. Y'know, that one that says Iran gave up its nuclear weapons program 4 years ago.