The Forgotten Political Art of Mea Culpa

So the press release said it was Mother Nature, but Ed Rendell admitted that all of the people that did or did not respond as well as they should have were probably state employees. We're talking about the Valentine's Day snow storm that shut down large sections of Interstate 78 and other state highways. Rendell's spin meister, the fashion-challenged Kate Phillips, did invoke the Hollywood 'literary allusion" of Perfect Storm...Pennsylvania style, snow, coated with an inch or more of ice and cold rain, packed down with more snow to form a PennDOT-stymying inches thick ice sheet. This perfect storm caused trucks to jack-knife, cars to get stuck behind them, and motorists stupid enough to believe that their tax dollars could actually be used wisely by their government to be stuck in traffic for several meals and overnight. Perhaps we should have, as one TV news channel suggested, had PennDOT plowed the snow before it fell. Rendell did a mea culpa from Philadelphia after one of his state police handlers in the 'governor's residence' in Harrisburg told him hundreds were stranded, a fact that failed to come up during a conference call that occurred on Wednesday...none of his high level political contributors/nepotistic/cronyistic appointments, I mean cabinet members seemed to have known this. Looks like farmer Allen Biehler, transportation chief, may have to fall on his sword as he looked pretty unprofessional in a Channel 69 interview where he did not answer any of the questions, which were, why was this emergency response a Katrina-esque cluster fuck? It's not like the forecasters got it wrong. They told us ahead of time exactly what was going to happen. We seemed to have no plan as to how to deal with the perfect storm that the forecasters actually got right in their warnings. So, naturally the blame game and hearings will start. Rendell however, did do the right thing in accepting blame and apologizing. It was what President Bush should have done about two years ago regarding Iraq...and we might be billions of dollars richer and many people may not be dead as a result of an expensive war. So, motorists were stranded by weather, but no one died, snow mobilers skiied in snacks and National Guard eventually got supplies, gas, sandwhiches and water to generally understanding motorists. Let's hope no lawsuits get filed for loss of consort on Valentine's Day. Class actions suit to follow the James Leee Witt full employment act and the Fajt Commission reports, which will follow the studies of the various policy committees holding hearings, all toward what end, distracting us from the fact that the governor just asked for an extra $3 billion in taxes and borrowing? Maybe the funds for the Lehigh Valley transportation cleanup were diverted to Philly or mass transit from general fund transit money, or maybe Georgie Boy and his new federalism spent federal funds fighting wars and made the states find money to pay for welfare and No Child Left Behind, but the fact that the storm wasn't responded to in a fascist way, i.e. the trains did NOT keep running on time like Il Duce could do, means that yes, government did fail its taxpayers. The very least taxpaying Pennsylvanians should expect is that their investment will provide them services. Which leads me to my next rant...