With Thanksgiving this week we hear lots about Black Friday sales.  This used to be a big event, the one time of the year when merchandise was sold at serious discounts.  Like everything else, however, the sellers have ruined the Black Friday experience.  First, they diluted the Friday sale day by opening the stores on the night of Thanksgiving.  Never mind giving thanks and setting aside time for family and friends.  Not good enough.  Now some choke down their turkey so they can jump in the car and stand in line at crowded stores.  At least when the women leave to go shopping, the NFL gave us a third football game on Thanksgiving night.  The value of Black Friday discounts has further been diluted by the prevalence of mail orders through Amazon and Ebay, and other catalog companies, who deliver the goods right to your door, permitting you to avoid the the lines.  Personally, I’d rather pay 20% more not to sit in bumper to bumper traffic, hunt for parking, and brave the mall.  Black Friday also has been downgraded because it’s not just once a year anymore.  Now there’s Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, and Black Friday in July.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  If everything’s always on sale, then nothing’s ever on sale.  The Black Friday rant aside, let me remind the gentle reader that the title of this work is Black Thursday.  That’s because I’m not talking about sales on November 23rd.  Black Thursday was last week, Thursday November 15th.  We here in the New York Metropolitan area were paralyzed by – what?  A natural disaster, like a hurricane?  No.  A tornado?  No.  How about an earthquake?  No, not an earthquake.  It was … It was … six stinkin’ inches of snow.  That’s right, six inches of wet snow ground everything to a halt in northern New Jersey, New York City and environs.  For those of you who, blessedly, don’t have to contend with snow, understand that, while it’s true that November 15th is a bit early for us to see any significant snowfall, we’ve had heavier snow totals without the mayhem that reigned last week.  This time was different.  There were lots of excuses like, “The weather people got it wrong.”  Sure, the expected temperatures were teetering right at or near the freezing mark, and there were some reports that we’d get a dusting, or an inch, and then it would turn to rain.  On the other hand, The Weather Channel forecast pretty steadily warned of 5 to 8 inches of snow before the changeover to rain.  In any event, snow, rain, freezing rain, or whatever was likely to fall could have been minimized had the various governments in our area simply put some salt down on the roads.  They did not.  Where I live, the snow began falling just after 1 p.m., and yet no salt spreader or plow ever made an appearance, until it was too late.  My office is but 0.3 of a mile from my house, and I had a tough time getting home before 4 p.m.  I stopped to pick up some food for dinner.  I knew we were in trouble when the restaurant had closed 4 hours early.  Two school buses stuck in the snow near my street slowed me down at 4 p.m.  An hour later, it took my wife 40 minutes to navigate the 2 blocks home because the same two buses were still stuck.  The bus problem could have been avoided if someone had looked out the window and sent the kids home early, or if some salt was put down on the roads.  They didn’t, and it wasn’t.  My daughter teaches in Newark, some 12 miles from my house.  It took her 4 1/2 hours to cover those 12 miles, and she was lucky.  A friend of hers spent 11 hours in the car, going nowhere.  At one nearby school district, the buses never came.  The teachers and students spent the night at school, the teachers breaking open the cafeteria to cook dinner for the kids.  For six stinkin’ inches of snow.  Thousands were stranded on the roads.  Highways were closed.  Cars were abandoned.  The Port Authority Bus Station in New York became overcrowded.  Their solution?  They threw everybody out in the street and suggested that they “find an alternate way to get home.”  So much for the value of mass transit.  For some 3 years, they have been rebuilding the Bayonne Bridge, which has been closed every night and weekend for the construction.  It recently reopened, but whoops, it was made steeper than the old bridge, and no cars could get up the incline on the snow, so the bridge was shut down.  So much for modern engineering.  So where were the spreaders and plows?  New York can’t use this excuse, but then again, there is no excuse for New York, but in New Jersey, on November 15th, all the crooked, thieving politicians were out of town.  That’s right.  They spend the week after election day carousing in Atlantic City at the N.J. League of Municipalities Convention.  There, they celebrate their reelections, put their feet up, and are wined and dined by hundreds of potential vendors, who line up for a chance to peddle their services to the government.  Wednesday night, November 14th, featured the annual drunken bacchanal when the politicians let down (or take off) their hair.  They doubtless were not up early on Black Thursday, and in Atlantic City, it was just raining.  With their fearless leaders away, the salters and plowers failed to play.  While the politicians ate free food, the people really got screwed.  Government on all levels failed miserably, done in by six inches of snow.  If any of the elected crumbs felt guilty, they didn’t mention it.  And, luckily for them, they have till next August before they raise taxes again.  People won’t be thinking of snow then.  So let’s hear it for the politicians – HIP HIP HOORAY!  YOU STINK!  YOU STINK! On six inches of hot ice!