Michael Bloomberg is a more sophisticated version of Barack Obama. Both Obama and Bloomberg are the very essence of what modern day progressivism is all about. Yes Bloomberg is a fantastically successful businessman and Obama is a mere community organizer who has conned his way into the highest office in the land, yet they have a lot in common. Both of them are puppets of the unions, both think that they know what is best for you (Bloomberg feels the need to manage your diet), both display an arrogant, imperious attitude towards others, and both have mortgaged the nations and New York City’s futures for short term fixes. When there was a failed bomb attack in Times Square last year, Bloomberg inexplicably claimed that it probably was someone disgruntled over ObamaCare and then when a Pakistani was arrested he had to jump in with an “I will not stand for any persecution of Pakistanis” unnecessary comment. He also said that those of us who are opposed to the Ground Zero mosque “ought to be ashamed of ourselves”. Boomberg’s mishandling of and his “let them eat cake” response to the December snowstorm “people should go shopping and to a Broadway show (most of whose tickets start around $100)” showed him to be a man with little tact and empathy. Bloomberg and Obama – two empty suits!
by Fred Siegel and Sol Stern
In the narrative crafted by Michael Bloomberg’s public-relations team throughout the first nine years of his mayoralty, he was the fabulously successful businessman who saved New York’s economy after the 9/11 attacks and then went on to master urban governance without breaking a sweat. Along the way, we have been told relentlessly, Bloomberg became the nation’s leading education reformer, responsible for reducing by half the black-white achievement gap, while also launching lifesaving public-health and environmental initiatives.
And through it all, so the narrative went, he remained above the ugly partisan fray. A lifelong Democrat who turned Republican to run for mayor on the cusp of his 60s, he quickly transcended both parties and established himself as a true independent. And so, his consultants hinted, the nation’s emblematic “no labels” politician might be available for the highest office in the land so that he could help repair the politically fractured nation as he has repaired New York City.
But all that was before the Christmas 2010 snowstorm, when this protean genius of 21st-century politics somehow forgot the first rule of New York City governance: The mayor must make sure the streets are cleared before he sets upon saving the world. As a powerful blizzard bore down on the city, Bloomberg, as was his weekend custom, was relaxing at his sunny Bermuda hideaway. Stephen Goldsmith, a new recruit as deputy mayor for operations owing to his efforts at “reinventing government” during his own innovative mayoralty in Indianapolis in the early 1990s, was in DC for the weekend and declined to return. Howard Wolfson, another deputy mayor, was vacationing in London. Bloomberg’s principal deputy, Patricia Harris, was also out of town at an undisclosed location.
The handful of agency heads left in charge of the city’s storm response neglected to declare a snow emergency, which would have allowed them to use measures like towing cars off busy streets to prepare for the disruptions. By the time Bloomberg flew back to the city on his private plane the next day, a disaster was unfolding on the streets. He then added insult to injury by urging New Yorkers — millions of whom could not get off their own blocks in the outer boroughs — to shrug it off and take in a Broadway show. When reporters asked Bloomberg to account for his whereabouts as the storm began, he replied that this was his “private time” and thus no one’s business.
The outrage surging up in the city’s neighborhoods was so palpable that even Bloomberg’s most reliable boosters began making fun of the great manager’s performance. The mayor’s approval rating plummeted to 34%, according to a Marist poll. The rumors planted in the media about his running for president finally, and mercifully, ceased.
It is tempting to depict Michael Bloomberg’s reversal of fortune in his third term in office — a term he secured by muscling through a change in the city’s term-limits law before spending $150 million to win only 50.7% of the vote — with hubris metaphors drawn from classical tragedy. But this assumes there was glory before the fall. In reality, there never was greatness. There have been no lasting fiscal or education reforms.
The story of Bloomberg’s mayoralty is this: There is no there there.
[…]
Bloomberg maintained the policing achievements that had changed the city so dramatically for the better during the tenure of his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani. And he had some modest successes of his own in the early years. He imported from Chicago a 311 system for quicker access to city services and handled a brief blackout in 2003 well. New York recovered from 9/11 more quickly than expected. By the second quarter of 2003, Wall Street profits were beginning to rebound, and the city was emerging from the worst of its economic woes.
[…]
Reality does not seem to matter to a mayor who enjoys imposing change on the city whether it is warranted or not. He has banned the use of trans fats in food sold in the city, expanded smoking bans as far as he possibly could, sliced into streets for bike lanes and crusaded against the use of salt. It was only public outrage that prevented him from placing tolls on the East River bridges, which have been free to motorists for a century or more.
The connecting tissue of Bloomberg’s policies is Bloomberg’s own whims and ambitions. After the snow-removal failure, Bloomberg insisted that John Doherty was “the best sanitation commissioner the city has ever had.” Post columnist Michael Goodwin wrote: “In his bubble, that’s self-evident. If the sanitation man wasn’t the best, the self-declared best mayor would not have appointed him.”
When Michael Bloomberg leaves office in 2014 — assuming he leaves office in 2014 — the city will be saddled long into the future with the massive borrowing and school spending he required to maintain his political reputation. Citizen Bloomberg will have a significant role in how Mayor Bloomberg is judged. Already the master of an expanding media empire, he is now setting up his personal charitable foundation, which may rival the Gates Foundation in financial assets. That foundation will no doubt have the resources to place the Bloomberg legacy of debt, boondoggles and bicycle lanes in the best possible light.
Read the rest: Bloomy’s Bubble Bursts
