Tag: Michael Bloomberg

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption

What Does Bloomberg Stand . . . Fore!

Hey! I’ve got something good to say about the anti-democratic mayor of New York City.

It seems that Michael Bloomberg — who lately has become notorious for flouting the rules in the service of his personal power — plays by them religiously when the arena involves . . . uh . . . playing.

Turns out Bloomberg is a conscientious stickler when it comes to the sort of activity that doesn’t much matter. He’s not concerned about duly enacted electoral decisions to restrict the political power of city officials, mind you. But on the golf course — fore! He is the prince of fair play.

The mayor throws hissy fits when anybody dares question him about how he colluded with the city council to unilaterally undermine the city’s term limits law. At one impudent reporter, he barked, “You’re a disgrace!” But now data is emerging about how the mayor “is a stickler for obeying the golfer’s code of ethics.”

According to his golf mates, he is scrupulous to a fault.

Daniel Menaker, a freelance writer, has a sassy piece online at the Huffington Post about Bloomberg’s chameleon sense of virtue. Menaker speculates that the golf course gives the mayor a way to “think that he is an ethical stickler. He may play hob with term limits, but he plays golf by the book.”

Great for the golf game, I guess. Not so great for governance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
nannyism

Rubbing Salt Into the Wound

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg finagled a way around the city’s two-term limit on mayoral service, and is now running for a third term.

As if to rub it in, he’s attacking our use of salt.

Bloomberg has simply declared that the city is starting a “nationwide” effort to pressure the food industry to decrease salt use.

Which is more audacious, making New Yorkers’ salt shakers the city’s business, or foisting this intrusion onto the rest of the country?

This would have been a strawman example — a reductio ad absurdum — a generation ago. Back then, when some of us objected to, say, regulation of cigarettes, arguing that next government would be regulating the salt on our French Fries, earnest nanny-state proponents would sniff. No. They wouldn’t do anything that absurd.

Today, Thomas R. Friedman, Bloomberg’s man at the city health department, claims that if restaurants followed the New York City government prescription, they would in effect “lower health care costs and prevent 150,000 premature deaths every year.”

Is he right? John Tierney, writing in The New York Times, asserts that this “prediction is based on an estimate based on extrapolations based on assumptions that have yet to be demonstrated despite a half-century of efforts.”

Healthy or not, my salt intake is my business. And maybe my wife’s. Not New York City supreme ruler Michael Bloomberg’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption term limits

That Bloomin’ Blatherer Bloomberg

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, once a man of the people, claimed his billions immunized him from the pitfalls of politics-as-usual. Who could bribe him, right?

But it seems power seduces even without payola.

New Yorkers passed a two-term limit on city officials. But Bloomberg wants another term, and couldn’t be bothered taking the question to voters yet again. So he convinced the city council to water down the law so both he and they could run for a third term.

So, why did Bloomberg overthrow the voters’ decision? Not because he’s seduced by power. No. Because he’s so darned indispensable. In an economic downturn, the city needs a financial wizard like him to steer things.

Except this is the same maestro who dug New York’s current financial hole. The city is looking at a $7 billion budget deficit in a couple years if nothing changes. And according to a new report by the Citizens Budget Commission, the average cost of city employees has increased 63 percent since 2000. Average pay has jumped from $52,000 a year to $69,000. Then you have benefits, which ballooned from $13,000 a year to a whopping $38,000 a year.

Bloomberg can’t say no to unions, so taxpayers suffer. He can’t say no to a power grab, so democracy suffers.

Gee whiz, who but Bloomberg could give us all this suffering?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits

Wow, This Job Is Tough

It’s a dirty job, kicking voters in the teeth. But somebody’s gotta do it.

I speak of the craven marionettes of the New York City Council, complaining how tough it is to abet Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s assault on democracy. Bloomberg demanded a third term in office. He pulled strings.

Polls show that voters like the two-term limit that they twice endorsed at the ballot box. So instead of asking voters to change their minds, city politicians connived to ignore them.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn explained that ignoring voters is demanded by these hard times. Weakening term limits is a “vote and a choice” that is “a difficult one,” but you know, the city is now, she says, “facing the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression.” Ergo voters must be treated like chopped liver. Sequitur, meet non. Non sequitur.

Councilman Simcha Felder concurs.

“Before us today is a very difficult decision, and one which we have been elected to make,” Felder told his colleagues.

You see, voters elected Felder to ignore the voters and keep himself in power longer against their wishes. So what else could he do? Why oh why can’t the stupid voters protesting this unilateral overthrow of term limits understand this?

The poor politicians. Nobody understands how tough they have it, serving their narrow political self-interest and sticking it to the citizenry. It is the weight of the world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.