Don't eat the blue snow...

James Tarantino at Opinionjournal is making fun of Baltimore residents (last item - scroll down) for their new "blue snow".

From his article:
In an effort to counter this stereotype, we're looking for examples of blue-state stupidity, and our first one comes from an Associated Press weather story: "Baltimore transportation crews are set to lay down blue salt--letting residents know their streets have been plowed."

John Kerry outpolled Bush 82.7% to 17.1%--a margin of 65.6%--in Baltimore, a city whose residents need saline assistance to figure out their streets have been plowed.

As one of those 17.1% of Baltimore Bush residents, I was curious about the blue snow thing. So I googled around and found this article from the Baltimore Sun (registration required):

In Baltimore, the snowfall also gave blue salt a chance to make its long-awaited debut. The city had stockpiled the colored salt to see whether it would convince angry residents that plows had been down their streets.

To me, it doesn't sound like the problem is that Baltimore residents are too dumb to know if their streets have been plowed, but rather that Baltimore City public works employees do such a bad job plowing the streets that residents can't tell if they have been plowed or not.

(for the record, I could tell my street had been plowed, and didn't notice any blue salt on it. I live on a very heavily traveled street, however, which is also an emergency route for fire trucks, ect, so it's usually kept pretty clean).