Revenge Of The Ents

OK, I guess I really will do anything to get out of grading Comp Gov papers...

I drove down US 6 to get some food for the Hound of the Basketcase.  There's a feed store there that has great stuff at low prices.  US 6  runs from the tip of Cape Cod to the area around Yosemite.  It's a major blacktop, not some side street.

Anyway, there was a crew working near town chopping up downed trees.  But as I got to the area between towns - the area with a state park on it - there were trees everywhere leaning up against powerlines and hanging over the middle of the road.

At one point, I was able to park my car and drag a small down tree off to the side of the road.  As manly as I am, that does not speak well about the clean-up effort.  It's been 48 hours and they can't even clear a downed limb to the side of a US highway?  Forget the stuff tangled up in the wires, this is just laying on the ground.

CL&P got some heat for their response to Hurricane Irene.  There are going to be lynch mobs if their response times don't speed up.  And all we're hearing on NPR and from elected officials is that CL&P was told to get its act together and haven't.

Awesome.

And, yes, the top execs get paid millions while they lay off line workers and put off tree removal.  The Republican mayor of Danbury was sounding like an OWS drum circle leader on the radio.

The constant downsizing of actual work in order to improve stock prices - because that's what all the MBA programs say you should do - is gutting this country.  And since Winter Storm Albert (no, really) hit blue states, I guess we can all guess how much federal money we will be seeing to help clean this up.

UPDATE:  Awesome.  Checking CL&P's outage map.  The outage numbers in our town are going UP.

This deserves a picture: