You Want a Libertarian for 2016? So How About MTA Honcho Joe Lhota
“@morelikethemoon: G TRAIN IS BACK! @joelhota for President!”. HEY CALM DOWN
— Joe Lhota (@JoeLhota) November 7, 2012
On Thursday morning, inside his office, Mr. Lhota checked his BlackBerry often, hoping for an update on the L train. Moments later, he placed a call to Howard B. Glaser, Mr. Cuomo’s director of state operations, whom he wanted to brief on the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.
The tunnel could open Friday, he told Mr. Glaser, remarking that Mr. Bloomberg, “like an idiot,” had predicted publicly that the tunnel might open over the weekend. “He’s making it up,” he said, after a brief hail of profanity in which Mr. Lhota wondered aloud who, exactly, Mr. Bloomberg had been talking to.
“It’s wrong,” he told Mr. Glaser. “It’s just wrong.”
Mr. Lhota also spoke of the L line’s importance, as if his audience needed convincing.
“You know who knows where the L train goes?” he barked into the phone. “All the hipsters in Williamsburg.”
Sure, that is pretty much the greatest thing ever. That a Giuliani-era figure could arrive as a hero of New York City in 2012 is also pretty remarkable. Now, we know most of you Libertarians hate us big city folks. But surely you can get over it for a nice narrative. Because meanwhile, just outside New York City…
The Long Island Power Authority “neglected basic maintenance to prevent outages, such as replacing rotting poles and trimming trees around power lines, according to a state report released by the Public Service Commission’s Public Service Department in June. The $3.7 billion-a-year government-owned corporation spent $37.5 million less than committed over five years on hardening the grid to protect against major storm damage.” And so thousands and thousands of people are sitting around in the cold and dark.
Anyone who’s been a LIPA customer knows that they’re always about ten years behind the times, which is a laughing matter until you’re going on two weeks without power. Compared to other agencies like the MTA and Connecticut Light & Power, they look wildly incompetent.