Defending “The Bailey’s” Right to Kung Pao Chicken and an SUV
DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall and her husband Senator Charles Schumer enjoy a meal with The Bailey's.
This week's New Yorker has a Jeffrey Goldberg Talk of the Town piece about Senator Charles Schumer's new book, Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time. Schumer's protagonist is an imaginary, average middle-class American family called "The Baileys" who accompany the Senator wherever he goes and advise him "on all manner of middle-class concerns."
Schumer tells Goldberg that his imaginary constituents live in Massapequa, Long Island and are both forty-five years old. Joe works for an insurance company, Eileen is a part-time employee at a doctor's office. The Bailey's wouldn't be the types to order chicken and steamed vegetables at Hunan Delight, Schumer says. They'd get the kung pao chicken.
And how would the Bailey's get to Hunan Delight? Not in a Toyota Prius, that's for sure...
Liberal élitism, [Schumer] said, as he stirred Sweet 'N Low into his tea with a chopstick, alienates middle-income families from the Party. "Middle-class people don't think everybody should have to drive a tiny little car to achieve improvement in global warming," he said. Invoking opponents of expanding the tuition tax credit to the middle class, he went on, "If we listened to the New York Times editorial board, we'd have twenty-one votes in the Senate."
Photo: New York Social Diary
Stay in touch
Sign up for our free newsletter
More from Streetsblog USA
Friday’s Headlines Got Served
Another day, another GOP lawsuit trying to overturn a Biden administration climate change rule.
Disabled People Are Dying in America’s Crosswalks — But We’re Not Counting Them
The data on traffic fatalities and injuries doesn’t account for their needs or even count them. Better data would enable better solutions.
LA: Automated Enforcement Coming Soon to a Bus Lane Near You
Metro is already installing on-bus cameras. Soon comes testing, outreach, then warning tickets. Wilshire/5th/6th and La Brea will be the first bus routes in the bus lane enforcement program.
Talking Headways Podcast: Charging Up Transportation
This week, we talk to the great Gabe Klein, executive director of President Biden's Joint Office of Energy and Transportation (and a former Streetsblog board member), about curbside electrification.
Why Does the Vision Zero Movement Stop At the Edge of the Road?
U.S. car crash deaths are nearly 10 percent higher if you count collisions that happen just outside the right of way. So why don't off-road deaths get more air time among advocates?
