Ryan Weld is one of my state senators, and although he is a Republican with whom I disagree on many issues, he’d doing a great job keeping on top of the roads around these here parts. I’ve contacted him and others about the numerous dangerous slips, and sent a number of pictures, and they have started fixing them (not a moment too soon because the spring flash floods are right around the corner). Today he messaged me an update:
I really, really wish we could get to a time when your local and state reps didn’t wade into issues like abortion or national issues and just dealt with the nuts and bolts of making your communities work for everyone. We just settled all the bullshit and agreed everyone of every race is equal and minded our own business on who believed what or who had sex with who or who did what with their doctors and focused on making sure our roads were safe and our water was clean and the schools were good.
piratedan
and here we see evidence of the power invested in running one of the top 10,000 lefty blogs in the blogosphere can have in your local area…..
glad that you have a rep (regardless of political affiliation) who actually listens to your concerns…. I had one of those once, but some dickhead tried to assassinate her in a local shopping mall.
piratedan
and here we see evidence of the power invested in running one of the top 10,000 lefty blogs in the blogosphere can have in your local area…..
glad that you have a rep (regardless of political affiliation) who actually listens to your concerns…. I had one of those once, but some dickhead tried to assassinate her in a local shopping mall.
TomatoQueen
This is good nuts and bolts constituent service. Might want to keep it under wraps, cos if word gets out everybody’ll want one.
MobiusKlein
Have you tried expressing this concern directly to your representative?
Perhaps something like “I really like it when you focus on local issues like this, as opposed to the same old culture wars.”
JCJ
Just saw Representative Ilhan Omar on Colbert’s show. She is awesome.
Duane
A time long ago and far away. You do not live there.
James E Powell
Why do you hate America?
OGLiberal
If those roads were used primarily by WV’s small brown population he wouldn’t give a single shit about them. If they help the brown folks, great…but he’s responding to mostly white dudes who voted for Trump…not exactly a profile in courage.
And those white dudes love big guvmint, when it benefits them. (And, in many cases, only them)
Mary G
I get the weirdest banner ads on this site. For a few weeks it was Trump’20 campaign, then sign our petition to impeach Trump, then a company selling ballons, and now a Tim Ryan for president ad.
NotMax
Okay, I’ll bite. What the heck is a road slip? The entrance to Petticoat Junction?
Familiar with slides, with erosion, with buckling, with rockfalls, with craters, with oiling, but not slips.
Jay
@NotMax:
A road slip is when the underlying geology of the roadway, or a builtup roadway, shifts and moves. It’s like a landslide, but under the road, not above.
psycholinguist
my local republican rep is like this. He always gets primaried by some right wing loon, and our county has enough democrats that we coalition with sane republicans to keep him in office. Here’s an example of local politicians doing local things. Some of our custodians in the school system were developing allergies to the cleaning products. Word go to teachers, who passed it on to parent group who passed it on to this rep. He gets funding for a pilot program to replace cleaning supplies with nontoxic products. The clean better, smell better, better for the kids and workers, and they are cheaper, and they get adopted permanently, Guy has a long history of this kind of stuff that nobody really hears about.
So, because the loons hate him and they can’t vote him out, they have Trump appoint him US attorney to the Eastern District of TN, and now we have a fucking loony toons rep who, I shit you not, sent the neighborhood a letter last year (I live in it) explaining that he was drilling a well in his backyard beside the bunker to be prepared for the lawlessness of the end times, and he could get us a discount if we wanted to put ours in too.
prob50
@psycholinguist: Well Hallelujah! He probably gets a kick-back from the bunker-digger. Or maybe it’s his brother-in-law or something.
JustRuss
Just wanna say I’m so jealous you live near a place called Ghost Hollow.
trnc
So, JC, what you’re telling us is it’s Infrastructure Week.
Obviously, your rep listening to you is great, especially one who is ideologically opposed. Better would be money going into road repairs, etc instead of to multimillionaires so that an intersection wouldn’t need temporary traffic signals for a year.
Origuy
@JustRuss: It sounds like a place that the Scooby-Doo gang’s van would break down. Ruh-row!
Jay
@Origuy:
Quit dissing Thelma.
The Mystery Machine is perfectly maintained.
Fred just can’t drive,
And Shaggy keeps hiding his stash inside the air cleaner.
J.
Amen.
Jado
@James E Powell:
Really. If elected officials concentrated on their local communities, people might pay attention when the grifters and thieves started bleeding the government treasury dry. By banging the drum on culture wars, elected officials provide distractions for their campaign contributors to loot the bank accounts and make sure none of the laws will hold them accountable in the off chance that they ever get caught.
If goobers aren’t concerned with Teh Gheys, they might wonder what happened to the middle class their parents had. And nobody wants to have to answer that question…
Skepticat
What JC said.
low-tech cyclist
@Jay:
Thanks for clearing that up! Around here, by the shores of the Chesapeake, a slip is a place to park one’s boat. I was mucho confused.
Kdaug
@low-tech cyclist: Basically it means a sizable chunk of asphalt has broken off and slid down, usually at an angle.
Not nice for your tires or suspension if you hit one at 35-40mph
Alex
Any time you have a problem with a government agency that you can’t resolve, call your local, state, or federal elected officials. Lots of people don’t realize this, but solving individual constituent problems is a big part of what those offices do. If you’ve got a halfway decent representative, you don’t have to be anyone important or a supporter or anything. Every day, they fix problems with people’s Medicaid coverage, Social Security, drivers licenses, taxes, unemployment insurance, etc. But so many people feel helpless and disillusioned with government, it never occurs to them to call.
WaterGirl
@piratedan: That was my first thought, too. They must know John has this blog and a very wide audience.
J R in WV
@Kdaug:
If you hit a slip around here, you will be launched into space above a couple of hundred feet of down, the suspension and tires will be the last thing you worry about as you plummet downward at 16 feet per second squared.