I live in Vermont, near the New Hampshire border. I work in both Vermont and New Hampshire, but most of my work is in New Hampshire.
Though there are Democrats in the office of Governor in both states, the legislature is a highly different situation. Republicans are a small minority in Vermont. Between Democrats and Progressives, we have a veto proof majority here, something largely irrelevant when there’s a Democratic governor in place, but very important when there’s a Republican in power, such as when we overrode a veto to enact same sex marriage.
The situation is flipped in New Hampshire. Republicans hold an overwhelming majority, enough to override vetoes in some cases, and they have been slashing budgets everywhere.
I shall provide a simple example.
The above image is a Photoshop merge of the two state maps from the 511 road information service. Specific sites are available for New Hampshire and Vermont.
Notice the difference?
Vermont’s map is loaded with road closings and updated information.
New Hampshire got hit, too. Not as badly as Vermont, but I know from various news sources and Facebook updates that there are roads in NH which are closed due to flooding.
I just have no way of getting detailed information.
The road around the corner from my house was closed yesterday afternoon. It was indicated on the web site shortly after closing and it’s no longer listed there.
I’ve been checking the NH site from time to time hoping that someone would bother providing useful and adequate notifications.
Not so much so.
My office is open today.
I’m not complaining. I love my job.
The thing is… there are about five different ways I can get there and I have no clue whatsoever as to which of them are best. I can make guesses, and I’m pretty good at that, but yesterday was amazing in terms of devastation and even though today looks to be okay, things are still in flux and I’m not liking the idea of driving into situations I do not know without clear understanding of where they stand.
Shouldn’t we be… you know… funding this sort of thing?
faux news will pick this up and show how the free state project and strong conservative government has battled back the storm and kept NHs roads open and devastation free…
live free or drive!
Gawd decided to enact much more of His vengeance on the gawdless libruls of Vermont.
I recently drove across NH from Maine to VT on the back roads, and was pretty amazed to see the number of bridges and side roads that were flagged as “Closed”. Not just temporarily, but simply “Closed.” And not all of them were the kind of Class 4 roads where it could perhaps be justified, a bunch of them looked like fairly well traveled roads that simply weren’t being maintained any more.
The NH approach would appear to be letting it all fall apart — the rich can always take their tax cuts and buy hovercrafts or helicopters to get to and from their broker’s office, and the idle poor don’t really need to go anywhere anyway, do they, now?
It’s a great tactic, and it makes the difference between everyday life and post-disaster emergency almost negligible. We should probably all get used to that state of affairs as federal funding for bridge repairs etc. dry up for good.