NYC's Leviathan: Bloomberg Shrugged

One of our major criticisms of the Mike Bloomberg mayoralty is the fact that he never had any real feel for the dangers of of an ever expanding government bureaucracy-and came into office with a governing philosophy-more of a liberal mindset-that made him ill equipped to tackle this threat. As a result, NYC government has continues to expand under his watch, with ominous consequences for both city tax payers as well as local business.

The shame of this situation is that Bloomberg in 2002, unencumbered by political debts, was perfectly situated to begin a re-inventing government project-if he had just any idea of what that concept meant. Now, late in the day, he has brought Steve Goldsmith into his administration, someone who really gets the need to reform the size and scope of the city bureaucracy. We are left to wonder what Goldsmith might have accomplished, even as we cheer on his current efforts, if he had been an earlier hire of the mayor's.

The sense that we have, not only more government than we need, but more than we can afford, is underscored this morning by a trenchant column of Andrea Peyser in the NY Post: "Did you know that you, the taxpayer, are feeding and paying the bloated pensions for workers employed in a veritable alphabet soup of agencies? The list is so long, it fills 11 full pages on the city's Web site! And no one can say exactly what many of them do."

And she goes on to catalogue this useless compendium of bureaucratic unnecessaries: "The Department of Design sketches things like police station houses and manages their construction, said spokesman Matthew Monahan. The Design Commission? No one really knows. "It exists on the third floor of City Hall with a handful of employees," said an amused city source. Its job, evidently, is to make sure the new station houses are pretty. The Department of Environmental Protection is a mammoth agency (5,800 employees) that makes sure your drinking water is clean and poison-free, said spokesman Farrell Sklerov. But a mention of the similarly named Office of Environmental Coordination drew an involuntary giggle from a source. Evidently, the fine folks, who wouldn't speak to me, "coordinate" -- whatever that means -- the "greening" of buildings and planting of trees, among other tricks."

The idiocy doesn't stop there: "Why not combine the Commission on Women's Issues -- which improves gals' "personal and professional lives" -- and the new office of the Daddy Czar, whose $90,000-a-year commissioner aims to cajole deadbeats into paying child support? Build a ring. Let each side duke it out. There's a Latin Media and Entertainment Commission, which lures supposedly lucrative Hispanic media outlets, but no agency to promote media and entertainment created by blacks, Asians, Inuits or whites. And, if the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement is to "address quality-of-life issues" like strip bars, then why is there also a Community Assistance Unit, which works with neighborhood groups "to improve the quality of life?"

What the mayor never apparently grasped-or if he did, he simply had other issues that were more important to him, like insuring people ate right-was that these overwhelming governmental edifice is what is making the city too costly a place to live and to do business. When Mike said that NYC city was a, "luxury item," he was being dismissive of the high cost of living and doing business here.

But that dismissive attitude has been costly-as Steve Malanga points out in the Post today-opining on the High Rent Party antics of Jimmy McMillan: "This lack of opportunity is one reason why New York is losing so many people to other states. From 2000 to 2008, for instance, New York led the country in migration to other places -- a net outflow of 1.5 million residents, according to a study by the Manhattan Institute's Empire Center for New York State Policy. And, lest you think these folks are fleeing high rents in places like Manhattan, the net outflow took place in virtually every upstate county, including many where rents are quite affordable by national standards. People are following jobs. A new study by the Empire Center found that New York is among the states that lose the most jobs to other states. New York also ranks among the worst in job creation. This isn't surprising, considering that business executives consistently rank the state as one of the least desirable places in the country to operate."

So, when the mayor inveighs against a paid sick leave bill as a, "job-killer," he does so without clean hands. Put simply, his lack of concern with the growth of city government-and the taxes, fess and fines needed to fund it-has done more to create an inhospitable business climate than scores of such sick leave bills.

Peyser's cataloguing should make us all weep: "And my favorite, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. Workers for that agency don't hire or promote anyone, don't build anything, or as much as hand a sheet of loose-leaf paper to kids seeking homework help. These folks "coordinate" -- again, whatever that means. "They provide a lot of the human resources," said a city source. Like people? I asked. Well, no. The agency "works to ensure that city agencies have the critical resources and support needed to provide the best possible services to the public." Mmm-kay."

What we have built in this city is an unsupportable Leviathan that is way more government that any of us needs-arguing that all of these agencies are providing essential services is a riff best suited for Comedy Central. But, as Malanga highlights, the results of all of this expensive folly is the unrelenting referendum of the feet-as tens of thousands of productive New Yorkers throw in the towel and leave in search for an easier place to live and start a business.

Wal-Mart as Urban Cowboy

If you had any doubt about the Wal-Mart urban invasion, read the following account from the Miami Herald: "Wal-Mart, known for its giant stores and global omnipresence, is shifting gears to think small: focusing on smaller formats that fit in urban markets like South Florida...Wal-Mart Stores, despite reporting $405 billion in annual sales, is struggling to hold on to market share as stubbornly high unemployment and tight credit continue to squeeze most Americans."

Chicago, New York City, and now Miami-the Walmonster is definitely on the move and is hungry; and the focus will be on the low income shopper: "To refocus on those middle- and lower-income consumers -- households with annual incomes less than $70,000, who make up 68 percent of Wal-Mart shoppers -- U.S. CEO Bill Simon said the chain will feature more discounted items in its main aisles rather than throughout the store. It is restocking some items it dropped, focusing on classic clothing styles, offering more plus sizes and more basics like socks and underwear. ``In this environment we should be thriving and we're gearing up to do that,'' Simon said."

And Wal-Mart is going from one big size fits all, to an innovative and experimental approach that will be used to determine the company's best strategy to expand: "Wal-Mart is also shifting money it had been spending on remodeling existing stores toward opening smaller new stores. It plans to open 185 to 205 new stores in the next fiscal year, compared with 153 stores in the current year. But the costs will be about the same: $7.5 billion to $8 billion. The average size of its larger stores have shrunk about 15,000 square feet to 180,000 square feet. Simon said the company is accelerating the rollout of Neighborhood Market stores, which are 30,000 to 60,000 square feet, designed to compete with traditional grocery stores. And Wal-Mart will test 30 to 40 even smaller stores over the next two fiscal years, mostly in urban areas. Wal-Mart currently operates 2,843 large-format stores in the U.S. and 181 smaller neighborhood stores."

It is the neighborhood store concept, employing between 65 and 75 people, that will pose the biggest threat to existing NYC retailers-particularly if the Pathmark units are sliced and diced and auctioned off to the highest bidders. So, the game is definitely on-and opponents better bring their A-Game to this match-it's certainly no time to be bringing knives to a gun fight.

The Arrogance of Judge Garaufis

The arrogant stupidity of Judge Nicholas Garaufis is transcendent-and more and more he is coming to resemble the bumbling ineptitude of Jim Carrey's Fire Marshal Bill of  In Living Color Fame. Carrey's character was constantly interceding inappropriately in any number of situations, and Garaufis' ham handed interference with the FDNY is looking very much the same. The NY Times has the ongoing story: "In blunt, scolding language, a federal judge on Tuesday criticized the city’s conduct during legal negotiations aimed at diversifying the Fire Department, accusing the Bloomberg administration of shirking its responsibility for redressing discrimination and of exaggerating claims about threats to public safety during the dispute."

Let's back up a second, and recall we we said awhile back about Garaufis' peculiar conception of what constitutes discrimination: "But it is we, the citizens of NYC, who are unfortunately bequeathed Judge Garaufis; a man who sees the city's upholding of nondiscriminatory standards as an act of blatant racism simply because not enough minority applicants are scoring high enough. Well, judge, too bad. These tests are well known, in both style and content, and all that any applicant needs to do is study harder. As Coach Lombardi once said, "The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary."

This point deserves even more emphasis. What Garufis is doing is basing his concept of discrimination on the notion of, "disparate impact"-which basically means that, while the tests may be race neutral, the results aren't; and therefore, there is a need to change the test: "An important thing to note is that adverse impact is not illegal. Adverse impact only becomes illegal if the employer cannot justify the employment practice causing the adverse impact as a "job related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity" (1964/1991 Civil Rights Act, Section 2000e-2[k] [1] [A])."

Which leads us to a chorus of, "Here comes the judge." You see, the rub here is the tricky issue of justification-and in regard to fire fighter hiring, the justification is in the eye of Judge The Beholder. Put simply, Garaufis doesn't buy the city's justification, and is going on the sheer fact of adverse impact-as the NY Daily News reports: "In response to a lawsuit filed by the feds, Garaufis ruled last year that there were "overwhelming disparities" in the pass-fail rates between whites and minorities for exams given in 1999 and 2002 which violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

Well, while he's at it, why doesn't he go after the city's school tests which exhibit the same kind of overwhelming disparities? And in the process, he can force Yale and Harvard to submit to the same edict and admit under qualified minority applicants. Oh wait, they're already doing that-but the college affirmative action model doesn't have any disparate impact on the safety of the NYC public.

Firefighting is an elite activity-thankfully so. The high bar that applicants must get over to be admitted into the FDNY is a safeguard for all New Yorkers-but especially those who live in the most vulnerable neighborhoods of the city (where the composition of the population is decidedly non-white). Garaufis' intrusion into the hiring process-with little understanding about what it takes to be a life risking fire fighter-underscores the kind of judicial arrogance that drives many folks nuts.

The fact that the judge wants the city to buy into his quota system is an outrage-and his stance makes the idea of electing federal judge's a truly fascinating concept.

Charter Flight of Fancy

 Diane Ravitch has a devastating critique of the new David Guggenheim "Superman" movie, and its uncritical endorsement of the wonders of charter schools: "The message of these films has become alarmingly familiar: American public education is a failed enterprise. The problem is not money. Public schools already spend too much. Test scores are low because there are so many bad teachers, whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. Students drop out because the schools fail them, but they could accomplish practically anything if they were saved from bad teachers. They would get higher test scores if schools could fire more bad teachers and pay more to good ones. The only hope for the future of our society, especially for poor black and Hispanic children, is escape from public schools, especially to charter schools, which are mostly funded by the government but controlled by private organizations, many of them operating to make a profit."

How much of this is sheer fantasy? Ravitch thinks that most of the hoo ha ignores the mixed results from the plethora of charter schools all over the country-and also elides what has been the experience of most Americans with public education: "For many people, these arguments require a willing suspension of disbelief. Most Americans graduated from public schools, and most went from school to college or the workplace without thinking that their school had limited their life chances. There was a time—which now seems distant—when most people assumed that students’ performance in school was largely determined by their own efforts and by the circumstances and support of their family, not by their teachers. There were good teachers and mediocre teachers, even bad teachers, but in the end, most public schools offered ample opportunity for education to those willing to pursue it. The annual Gallup poll about education shows that Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the quality of the nation’s schools, but 77 percent of public school parents award their own child’s public school a grade of A or B, the highest level of approval since the question was first asked in 1985."

But the picture that Superman paints comports badly with reality: "The situation is dire, the film warns us. We must act. But what must we do? The message of the film is clear. Public schools are bad, privately managed charter schools are good. Parents clamor to get their children out of the public schools in New York City (despite the claims by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that the city’s schools are better than ever) and into the charters (the mayor also plans to double the number of charters, to help more families escape from the public schools that he controls). If we could fire the bottom 5 to 10 percent of the lowest-performing teachers every year, says Hoover Institution economist Eric Hanushek in the film, our national test scores would soon approach the top of international rankings in mathematics and science."

Any one who has ever taught in the public schools -as we have-knows instinctively to smell a rat here; and Ravitch not only smells it, she beats it with a broom: "Some fact-checking is in order, and the place to start is with the film’s quiet acknowledgment that only one in five charter schools is able to get the “amazing results” that it celebrates. Nothing more is said about this astonishing statistic. It is drawn from a national study of charter schools by Stanford economist Margaret Raymond (the wife of Hanushek). Known as the CREDO study, it evaluated student progress on math tests in half the nation’s five thousand charter schools and concluded that 17 percent were superior to a matched traditional public school; 37 percent were worse than the public school; and the remaining 46 percent had academic gains no different from that of a similar public school."

Yikes! So, what's all of the hoopla really about? Waiting for Superman is clearly a fable: "Why propound to an unknowing public the myth that charter schools are the answer to our educational woes, when the filmmaker knows that there are twice as many failing charters as there are successful ones? Why not give an honest accounting."

An honest accounting would look like this: "Why did he not also inquire into the charter chains that are mired in unsavory real estate deals, or take his camera to the charters where most students are getting lower scores than those in the neighborhood public schools? Why did he not report on the charter principals who have been indicted for embezzlement, or the charters that blur the line between church and state? Why did he not look into the charter schools whose leaders are paid $300,000–$400,000 a year to oversee small numbers of schools and students?"

The underlying issue here is the film's complete lack of understanding about why American schools are floundering-and not much has changed in this regard since we left teaching almost four decades ago. The belief that good teachers are a panacea lies at the heart of the misconception: "Guggenheim seems to believe that teachers alone can overcome the effects of student poverty, even though there are countless studies that demonstrate the link between income and test scores. He shows us footage of the pilot Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier, to the amazement of people who said it couldn’t be done. Since Yeager broke the sound barrier, we should be prepared to believe that able teachers are all it takes to overcome the disadvantages of poverty, homelessness, joblessness, poor nutrition, absent parents, etc."

When we taught fifth graders we were equally amazed at how we went from mediocrity to outstanding in one year-as our pedagogical skills shot through the roof when we were given a class of Dominican immigrants who blasted the reading test scores right out of the park in just six months in our class. Ravitch provides the data: "The movie asserts a central thesis in today’s school reform discussion: the idea that teachers are the most important factor determining student achievement. But this proposition is false. Hanushek has released studies showing that teacher quality accounts for about 7.5–10 percent of student test score gains. Several other high-quality analyses echo this finding, and while estimates vary a bit, there is a relative consensus: teachers statistically account for around 10–20 percent of achievement outcomes."

Teachers are, of course, crucial-but there are more important variables at work; as we found out in our own classroom laboratory: "But the same body of research shows that nonschool factors matter even more than teachers. According to University of Washington economist Dan Goldhaber, about 60 percent of achievement is explained by nonschool factors, such as family income. So while teachers are the most important factor within schools, their effects pale in comparison with those of students’ backgrounds, families, and other factors beyond the control of schools and teachers. Teachers can have a profound effect on students, but it would be foolish to believe that teachers alone can undo the damage caused by poverty and its associated burdens."

And the dishonesty is a gift that keeps on giving-showing only kids from intact families, and keeping quiet about the huge resources available to some privileged charters-like Mike Bloomberg's pet Geoffrey Canada: "Guggenheim didn’t bother to take a close look at the heroes of his documentary. Geoffrey Canada is justly celebrated for the creation of the Harlem Children’s Zone, which not only runs two charter schools but surrounds children and their families with a broad array of social and medical services. Canada has a board of wealthy philanthropists and a very successful fund-raising apparatus. With assets of more than $200 million, his organization has no shortage of funds. Canada himself is currently paid $400,000 annually. For Guggenheim to praise Canada while also claiming that public schools don’t need any more money is bizarre. Canada’s charter schools get better results than nearby public schools serving impoverished students. If all inner-city schools had the same resources as his, they might get the same good results."

But Canada himself is far from any messiah-and his kids also yield uneven results: "But contrary to the myth that Guggenheim propounds about “amazing results,” even Geoffrey Canada’s schools have many students who are not proficient. On the 2010 state tests, 60 percent of the fourth-grade students in one of his charter schools were not proficient in reading, nor were 50 percent in the other...Contrary to Guggenheim’s mythology, even the best-funded charters, with the finest services, can’t completely negate the effects of poverty."

And then there is the dishonest attempt to correlate good teaching with high test scores-which would have us great one year, and lousy another: "Guggenheim seems to demand that public schools start firing “bad” teachers so they can get the great results that one of every five charter schools gets. But he never explains how difficult it is to identify “bad” teachers. If one looks only at test scores, teachers in affluent suburbs get higher ones. If one uses student gains or losses as a general measure, then those who teach the neediest children—English-language learners, troubled students, autistic students—will see the smallest gains, and teachers will have an incentive to avoid districts and classes with large numbers of the neediest students."

The failures of our educational system-Bloomberg propaganda notwithstanding-are a result of a complex interaction of a number of socio-cultural variables, The failure to acknowledge this truth, however, leads to mysticism and folly of all kinds-fraudulent tests scores, witch hunts against teachers, and demands to privatize a system in order to replace it a questionable business model.

Waiting for Superman is a classic example of agitprop-and kudos to Ravitch for the unmasking. And since its progenitor is David Guggenheim, who produced An Inconvenient Truth, we can anticipate that the academy awards will soon have an entirely new category in this genre-named after "Leni" Riefenstahl. But there needs to be a disclaimer with the category: Any Resemblance to Actual Events or Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental.

Monserrate Indicted: Double Standard?

The big news for us in the federal indictment against former state senator Monserrate, was the fact that the US attorney-along with the city's Department of Investigation-believes that politically diverting public money earmarked for not for profits is a criminal offense. As the NY Times reports: "Former State Senator Hiram Monserrate, who was expelled from office earlier this year and whose conduct was held up as an example of Albany’s dysfunction, was indicted on Tuesday on federal charges that accuse him of using workers at a Queens nonprofit group he financed to aid in his Senate campaign."

Ok, but what happens when the entire purpose of funding for a certain not for profit is for an illegal political use? This is the case of the allegations against Claire Shulman's Willets Point/Corona...LDC. In that situation the city ponied up over $500,000 for Claire to lobby and generate grass roots support for the mayor's Willets Point Development plan. It is an absolute illegality to lobby as a registered not for profit in NY State-not to mention a violation of federal IRS statutes as well.

But, we guess that Monserrate's sin was that he was doing this on his own behalf-and didn't raise quite as much money as Claire did: "In 2006 and 2007 when he was a city councilman, Mr. Monserrate, a Democrat, allocated approximately $300,000 in discretionary city funds to the group, the Latino Initiative for Better Resources and Empowerment Inc., or Libre, according to the indictment. Roughly a third of that money was used to pay employees of Libre, a tax-exempt social service agency, for time they spent on voter registration, petitioning and other campaign work."

So, tell us, is it worse for Monseratte to be self serving than it is for Claire-and the mayor as well-to divert public funds into promoting a development that will force scores of property owners and thousands of workers out of business? In our view, the law needs to be enforced fairly-and without fear or favor. The Monseratte situation appears to be the classic case of the beating of a dead horse. It takes a bit more moxie to go after Bloomberg and his toadies, now doesn't it?

And we love the comments from the US Attorney on all of this: "At the news conference, Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, noted that Mr. Monserrate was one of several elected officials charged with corruption over the past two years, and the third city councilman to be accused of misappropriating money intended for groups whose mission was to help the very communities they served. “No campaign should ever be funded by fraud,” Mr. Bharara said. “Worthy nonprofits have access to public money because they’re meant to be a resource to the community, not a piggy bank to politicians,” Mr. Bharara said."

But that is exactly what the WP LDC was for the mayor-a fraudulent piggy bank. And listen to the following remarks from the US Attorney: "Mr. Monserrate, he said, outsourced much of his 2006 campaign to a nonprofit group that he essentially controlled, using it as an “alter ego to his political operations.”

Piggy bank, alter ego-precisely what the mayor set up with his Shulman front group. Now let's see if justice is going to be even handed-and if the NYS AG's office is going to pursue the investigation even after the mayor's endorsement of his candidacy. If not, we have an active federal prosecutor who should be eager to jump in to break the piggy bank.

A Fat Stamp of Rejection

The ill-conceived effort of Mother Mike to micro-manage what food stamp recipients eat is called out this morning by Dr. Michael Kaplan, a medical professional who knows, unlike the flailing busybody mayor, that the so-called experiment has absolutely no scientific rationale: "The Unites States is suffering from an obesity epidemic: Obesity rates have more than doubled over the past 30 years. Mayor Bloomberg hopes to blunt this epidemic by proposing that the 1.7 million recipients of food stamps in New York City be banned from using them to buy soda and other sugared drinks. Without question, an intervention to curb obesity is desperately needed, but will this proposal really be effective? According to the best scientific evidence available, it will have no impact on the obesity rate."

This won't stop the Bloomberg health intrusion express, however-because the mayor's obesity prevention adventures have never been really about health at all; and have little to do with science. After all, the entire calorie posting experiment-an effort that has proven to be a total failure yet continues nonetheless-was based on the ideological enmity of Center for Science in the Public Interest toward the entire fast food industry. CSPI's calorie posting mania had no basis in public health research, as the failure of the NYC initiative confirms.

So, don't expect Bloomberg to be deterred by the lack of scientific data-after all, this is really all about controlling people's lives. Still, it is up to the opponents of the proposed food stamp dictate to make Dr. Kaplan's case to the policy makers-and, at the same time, debunk the unscientific conflation of correlation with causation: "Many well-meaning but misguided health officials sincerely believe that sugared drinks are contributing to the obesity epidemic. Certainly, numerous observational studies have shown that obese people are more likely to drink sugared beverages, and sugared beverage consumption has increased in recent decades. For many, this correlation is proof that sugared beverages are a cause of obesity, but every good scientist knows that correlation does not equal causation."

This isn't some simple prejudice on the part of Dr. Kaplan-and we can't wait for the Bloombergistas to attack the man for being a tool of Big Soda (animadversion being the last refuge of scoundrels who have lost the debate). The research has been done, and the results don't point fingers at soda: "In medicine, the universally accepted gold standard used to determine if an intervention works is the randomized controlled trial. To date, there have been four long-term randomized controlled trials done to determine if specifically discouraging the consumption of sugared drinks will reduce obesity. Each of these studies was done on schoolchildren over the course of a year. Each study ended in failure."

The reason why there was a failure to demonstrate causality lies with the complexity of the disease itself: "We need to understand the real cause of obesity. Far too often, the misleading conventional wisdom is that people eat too much. Every one's body weight has a setpoint that can be altered within only a very narrow range. Lose too much weight, and your body - concerned that starvation is approaching - frantically fights back by burning fewer calories and increasing hunger. If we're honest, we'll admit that some unknown factors are affecting people's metabolism in a way that makes their bodies maintain a higher average weight. In other words, people are getting more obese, and we are not sure exactly why."

But Dr. Kaplan points to a real danger here-the misuse of science to advance public policy goals: "There is no direct harm in Bloomberg's proposal to place restrictions on food stamp use, but there is indirect harm in government trying to enact scientifically unfounded health policies. I laud the mayor for his heroic policies to reduce smoking, and I even respect his well-intentioned though futile efforts against obesity. I reserve my criticism for the public health authorities who are, apparently, giving him poor information."

But we really shouldn't blame the advisers-they are simply telling the mayor what he wants to hear; and the danger is greater than Dr. Kaplan realizes, because health policy goals can easily camouflage a more sinister attempt to restrict individual liberty and freedom of choice. It can will lead to the kind of, "soft tyranny," that Tocqueville warned us about.

The Bloomberg attempt to experiment on the NYC public, however, is a fallacious use of scientific method-and nothing he could possibly find in a two year time frame, with no controls, could offer anything in the way of scientific validity. As Kaplan says: "If Bloomberg insists on going forward with this plan, then let me suggest a modification: Take 2,000 people and randomly assign half of them to receive food stamps that cannot be used to buy sugared beverages, while the other half receives conventional food stamps. After one year, see if the obesity rate is different between the two."

Kaplan goes on to say that he doubts that any good data will come from this controlled experiment, given the studies already done in the past. Still, we would add one important caveat. Should the mayor take Dr. Kaplan's advice, the study should be farmed out to an independent team of scientists-and not be done under the auspices of the NYC DOH.

All of this is, however, useless speculation since Mike Bloomberg isn't about science and the search for real solutions. The food stamp proposal is all about posturing, and the mayor's search for national issues to advance his own personal agenda. The entire idea should be given a vigorous stamp of rejection.

Educational Malpractice

When the Bloombergistas took over the city's educational governance system and brought in the MBAs to create a more business like approach to the structure, we at least expected a certain degree of competency. As it turns out, however, things aren't running as smoothly as they should down at Tweed-as the NY Daily News story that ran over the weekend points out: "Despite this year's decline on state test scores, it may be harder than ever to get extra help at some city schools. Under the federal rules for No Child Left Behind, poor kids can sign up for free tutoring if they attend failing schools. This year, the city set an early deadline for students to sign up, which some school and tutoring company officials say creates an unnecessary obstacle for families who are already struggling."

And if you miss the early deadline, you're plumb out of luck: "This doesn't make any sense," said one Brooklyn parent coordinator. "It's a chance for kids to get free tutoring. We're stressing higher education and opportunities for kids to improve, so let's get it." Forms have to be in by Friday - or kids won't get tutoring until after Christmas."

Kinda reminds us of that bad old Board of Ed. Back in the day when teaching allowed young men a chance to be deferred from fighting in Vietnam, the BOE failed one year to process the deferments on time and thousands of reluctant educators were called down to Whitehall Street for their pre-induction physicals. It was a scene right out of Alice's Restaurants, and we were really tempted to answer in the affirmative the question concerning membership in a subversive organization. Our hopes did get a momentary boost when they took our pulse and found that it barely registered at 43.

We watched hopefully as our doctor brought a few of his colleagues over to inform them of the aberration. "What does this mean?" we asked. To which the doctor replied with a smile, "It means on those forty mile hikes with a pack, you'll be right out in front." Deflated, we found a new sense of religion, and prayed for divine intervention-which came a few days later when the tardy BOE finally did process all of our deferments.

But we do digress. It does seem that the new DOE is remarkably similar in its centralized inefficiency to the old BOE. As the News reminds us: "Critics suggested the city should postpone the deadline until at least after the first report cards come out. "You're rushing kids to make a decision," said a high school parent coordinator. She noted the first parent-teacher conferences for high schools - when parents might first discover a problem - are scheduled for Oct. 28. Officials with tutoring companies suggested the deadline is part of an effort to save money. The tutoring is funded with federal money that could be directed to schools if it's not used on the program."

Where's Bill Thompson when you need him? And this year we can expect an avalanche of interest in tutoring since we have been disabused by testing realities about the false nature of school achievement. We'll give the News the last word: "The plummeting test scores are also expected to inspire parents' interest in tutoring, the official said."

Back to the Muddle

Further indication that Mayor Mike is just a mite bit confused about all that is roiling national politics these days is the following from Liz at YNN: "“It is my privilege to endorse Chip Flowers as Delaware’s next state treasurer,” Bloomberg said in a statement released by the candidate’s campaign."

What's this all about? Well, according to Liz it's about trying to pull Americans back to the moderate middle: "Bloomberg, a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent, has been endorsing moderate candidates on both sides of the aisle this fall in hopes of pulling the country’s increasingly polarized political spectrum back to the middle. The mayor has a mixed track record of success when it comes to past endorsements. It will be interesting to see how his fares this time around."

Pull America back from the brink, we guess-but from the brink of what? That's not too clear, and it indicates that Bloomberg-or whoever may be advising him (Wolfson?)-sees the current political turmoil as an aberration that is causing wide swaths of the electorate to long for the days of moderation. But all of this middling through is in the absence of any philosophical or ideological coherence, and assumes that the Tea Party is part of an aberrational temper tantrum that will soon have people calling for a leader-like Bloomberg-who will tuck them sweetly into bed and put them safely to sleep.

Memo to Mike: The folks are upset about the Obama over reach and lurch to the left. What is it exactly that you have to offer to counter act this great wave of attempted government expansion? We thought as much. So it seems that Bloomberg will continue to plod in his current direction, hoping for an eventual ideological schism that will open up an opportunity for him-in good fullback draw tradition-to speed right up the middle to score.

Maybe so. But, as Daddy told us, the race doesn't always go to the swift, but that's the way to bet.

A Stamp of Disdain

The unusual coalition of opposition to Mike Bloomberg's human food stamp experiment is explored in Sunday's NY Times-with Ellen Vollinger's Food Research and Action Center right in the middle of the fight: "Seventeen years ago, Ann Landers got a letter from “Upset in Texas,” a checker at a grocery store, complaining about customers on food stamps. One woman bought a “fancy birthday cake” for $17. Another bought a “luxury” bag of shrimp for $32.12, and so forth. “Can’t something be done about the freeloaders who are costing us taxpayers millions?” Upset complained. Ellen Vollinger, legal director for the nonprofit Food Research and Action Center, thought of that letter with a pang a few days ago, when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg asked the federal government for permission to bar New York City’s food stamp users from buying sodas and other sugary drinks with their benefits."

For Vollinger it is all about elites dictating to the poor and controlling their lives: "Mr. Bloomberg cast his proposal as a kind of social and scientific experiment in fighting the national epidemic of obesity and diabetes. He promised that over the two-year life of the project, New York would collect data on whether food stamp users spent their taxpayer-funded benefits on more healthful choices, like fruits and vegetables. Ms. Vollinger’s group, which is dedicated to fighting hunger, promptly came out against the idea, suggesting that, among other things, it would “perpetuate the myth” encompassed in that letter to Ann Landers, that people who need government assistance make bad choices at the supermarket."

In our view, however, it's more than just about the poor-and in some senses, the poor are simply the canary in the mine shaft when it comes to the issue of control over the lives of ordinary Americans. That is because, as we have pointed out, the food stamp effort can be seen as an opening salvo of a more generalized war for control over the behavior and lifestyles of all Americans. With the looming likelihood that  more and more health care expenditures will be subject to federal mandates, we are rapidly approaching the point where the old maxim, "He who pays the piper calls the tune," will become fully operational.

So the poor are on the front lines in the war for the bodies and souls of the American people-and the ability to dictate to them what they should eat is simply a harbinger of what the Bloomberg cohort has on its health agenda for us all. Which it what brings Ms. Vollinger together  with some unusual allies in the current fight: "She found allies in what some might consider unlikely quarters, at least when it comes to bleeding hearts: Big Food and Big Beverage. Traditional, old-line liberals in the shaggy, idealistic, antihunger, antipoverty sector are joining with the nation’s food industry, which represents some of the most sophisticated, powerful corporate interests in the world, to fight the mayor’s plan. Together, they are taking on the nation’s health czars, including groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest and New York City’s influential health commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley."

It should also be pointed out that historically food stamps were designed to enlarge the choices poor folks had-and the mayor wants to reverse the trend: "Food stamps were designed to enlarge the choices of poor and hungry people, rather than to limit them to the most nutritious items. Alcoholic beverages and tobacco were banned. But otherwise, the stamps were to be used to buy “almost any ordinary food,” according to news accounts at the time. Now Mayor Bloomberg and the health lobby are arguing that the diets afforded by food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, have become rather too appetizing."

Whenever an issue devolves to a question of control-particularly when it involves the poor-Bloomberg can be counted on to appear righteously on the side of the French radical philosopher Rousseau who once famously argued that, "sometimes you have to force people to be free." In Rousseau's world view, this made sense because you are only truly free when you are toeing the proper line of the General Will (freedom is doing the right thing as construed by the philosopher king; which is why Bloomberg is so comfortable in this construction of freedom).

But the most disengenuous partisan in this debate is Bloomberg's health commissioner, Tom Farley. Parse the following misdirection: "Dr. Farley, the city’s health commissioner, argues that the city’s proposal, which would have to be approved by the federal Department of Agriculture, would save lives. Health advocates make it clear that they would like to improve everybody’s diet, not just that of food stamp recipients, through measures like a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. “I don’t think it’s an example of government controlling people’s diets,” Dr. Farley said. “This is an example of the government removing an incentive for people to do something which is unhealthy for them.” People on food stamps can still buy soft drinks with their own cash, he adds."

All of these kinds of efforts-from soda taxes and menu labeling, to the current so-called food stamp experiment-are about control (as if the power to dictate and tax wasn't coercive). It is the classic strategy of gradually weakening defenses through a policy of attrition-and no one believes that the Bloombergistas' search for health lebensraum will stop here.

And kudos to the Times for pointing out the difference between causality and correlation: "Turning to the science hardly solves the dispute. Much of the research on the link between obesity and soda, and food stamps and food choices, is like a Rorschach test, interpreted completely differently by each side. As Mr. Bloomberg said in announcing his proposal, there is a strong correlation between rising soft-drink consumption and rising obesity over the last 30 years. Research indicates that women and boys on food stamps are more likely to be overweight than their higher-income peers. But in science, a correlation does not prove causality."

Bloomberg's current health nosiness is just another indication that those who think he is well positioned for any kind of national campaign may be addled. In an era of concern about government over reach, Mike Bloomberg is the poster boy for exactly the kind of government that people are rejecting in this election cycle. Clearly, it is no time for Mother Knows Best.

Bloomberg's National Delusion

Once again, this time in an Adam Lisberg column, the NY press corps is focusing on the giddy possibility of a Bloomberg third party run for president in 2010: "Mayor Bloomberg is ready to lead a national march to the middle. He's just waiting to see if anyone will follow.
Our mayor is steadily building his nationwide profile by presenting himself as socially liberal and fiscally conservative - the same formula that got him elected nine years ago."

This fantasy reminds us of Karl Marx's snarky put down of fellow socialist Proudhon; "He seeks synthesis, but all he achieves is composite error."  The idea that Mike Bloomberg could craft an independent presidential run based on the synthesis of social liberalism and economic conservatism founders on the facts of his governing style and substance-something that Lisberg should have made the effort to document with at least one gainsayer of this mayoral fantasy.

As we have said-in reaction to a NY Times speculative story in the same vein-the mayor is ill fit for the current national move back to right/center politics: "Could anyone be more detached from the national mood-or more clueless about what it means? Certainly, the Bloomberg effort underscores the mayor's isolation from the country's concerns and passions-not surprising for someone who spends most of his weekends at a Bermuda estate: "Mr. Bloomberg described the Tea Party movement as a fad, comparing it to the short-lived burst of support for Ross Perot in 1992. The mayor suggested that the fury it had unleashed was not a foundation for leadership. “Look, people are angry,” he said. “Their anger is understandable. Washington isn’t working. Government seems to be paralyzed and unable to solve all of our problems. Anger, however, is not a government strategy,” he said. “It’s not a way to govern.”

Bloomberg, in endorsing candidates from both parties, is trying to create a moderate centrist brand. But, in doing so, he mischaracterizes the source of the public's anger. It's not about paralysis and inefficiency; it's directed at governmental over reach-something that Mike Bloomberg is ill positioned to run against, given his continual need to intrude on the everyday lives of New Yorkers with one Nanny experiment after another.

The anger in the electorate isn't, in Ed Koch-like fashion, isn't about corruption and the failure to compromise-it is about ideological over reach and the growth of a national government that is unsupportable without massive increases in taxes and levies. How does Mike Bloomberg's record jibe with this critique? In his almost nine years the mayor has raised taxes and fess, increased the size of the public payroll-while all the time turning government into Big Brother.

And can we think of any elected official in the country who is more detached from the popular mood than Bloomberg/? Which is why, in the same elitist vein as as  many of our more liberal columnists, he sees the popular anger as an ephemeral temper tantrum-missing the incisive, targeted nature of the Tea Part assault. As we said earlier, "A corollary to the big government alarm that has been raised, is a growing fear of the regulatory reach of the public sector-to wit the virulent antagonism to national health care. This isn't an inchoate public anger, but Bloomberg isn't an isolated figure, and he comfortably fits into the liberal Eugene Robinson, "temper tantrum," critique of the voters' anger. (or, alternately, the voters are, "clueless." or "bewildered") Bloomberg, of course, would miss this side of the Tea Party critique because he is the ubber-regulator and Nanny in chief; and is now going forward to restrict outdoor smoking. Talk about tacking against the political winds-this guy is, to mix a metaphor, pure salmon.

But there is another glaring impediment to the Bloomberg pipe dream-who he is, and where he comes from. Part of the current populist anger-and it connects the Left as well as the Right-is directed at our financial elites; and the way, in the popular mind, in which the government and Wall Street have colluded. Bloomberg, as the staunchest defender of Big Capitol would, charitably, not be cast as a sympathetic national player in the current environment.

Lisberg also goes to a pollster who may not be best situated to accurately gauge the national angst: "His national voice dovetails nicely, though, with what pollsters say is a growing disgust in America with the two-party system - and a hunger for solutions instead of gridlock. "There's a marketplace for new movements, and not just movements of the right and left but for the center," said Democratic pollster Mark Penn, whose partner Douglas Schoen has worked with Bloomberg for years. One of their polls last week found 54% of likely voters in battleground districts believe a third party would be good for America."

This is what's known as an audition statement-what pollster, or political consultant, wouldn't salivate at participating in a billion dollar Bloomberg magical mystery tour? As if on cue: "The Tea Party is just the tip of the iceberg," countered Mark McKinnon, a Republican strategist who believes a legitimate third-party candidate will run for President in 2012."There is a silent majority of Americans starving for another alternative," McKinnon said. "Mike Bloomberg is the prototype of the kind of leader that could represent a third-party movement."

And, as far as solutions go, what about the Bloomberg educational miracle-built on a Potemkin Village of fraud and deception? Imagine the blow back from the voters when the opposition tells them how Bloomberg paid out millions of dollars to teachers and administrators based on fraudulent test scores-and then proceeded to successfully run for re-election based upon these fraudulent barometers of educational success?

Speaking of Bloomberg's educational record, isn't it also problematic on a center/right national stage, where folks are questioning the need for a federal department of education, to have a record of doubling the size of the education budget, and adding thousands of fully pensioned teachers, to get meager results at best?

But the Bloomberg effort to garner mayoral control, and to fully centralize the approach to school reform, is contrapuntal to another key feature of the national mood-concern with the size and scope of government: "Today's Rasmussen Reports illuminates some basic American attitudes that are antithetical to the Democrats: only 16 percent of Americans think the government spends our money wisely and fairly; 70 percent think it does not. (And these are all Americans, not likely voters.) Only 14 percent say the government has too little power and money, while 61 percent think the government already has too much power and money."

Mayor Mike, however, simply loves big government-and we have likened his governing philosophy to that of another NY mayor, one John V. Lindsay: "But beneath all of the phony mayoral posturing about how well the city balances its budget-eliding the high taxes and confiscatory regulations-is the stark reality that this Mini Me John Lindsay has exacerbated the city's fiscal problems by a reckless ballooning of the size of the municipal payroll-a situation that the ever vigilant Gelinas pointed out over a year and a half ago: "It's almost jaw-dropping that the mayor, faced with these projections and with no hope of a return to a bubble-era "normal" on Wall Street, has made things worse. City workers' salary growth, for example, is set to rise 13 percent between now and our drop-dead year - largely because the mayor late last year voluntarily entered into labor contracts granting hefty raises to both civilian and uniformed workers. The cost of higher pay adds nearly $1.7 billion to the drop-dead-year deficit."

And this is the guy that some people speculate is the one man to offer a unique middle way between ideological extremes? Please! Penn and McKinnon should stop pontificating with dark glasses and a tin cup.

One thing that Lisberg does not mention-and he does remark that the mayor's mosque position would jar mainstream American voters-is the issue of immigration. Here Bloomberg is way to the left of most of the electorate-as he is on so many of the so-called social issues. Given these extreme views, he won't ever be able to create a sense that he is really one of us.

So what really will hold him back, aside from all of the ideological incompatibility-is his haughty elite style; someone whose actions and words drip with the condescension of believing that he knows what's good for everyone. It is exactly what the voters are not looking for-especially when they want to get government off of their backs and out of their lives.

But we want to encourage Mike to go for it-but with one proviso. He needs to resign as mayor in order to make the run-and thus give us the two-fer we long for; a fantasy run for president, along with his swift exit from the city that he has bamboozled for all these years.

We'll give ourselves the last word. As we wrote last month: "But in spite of our biting critique of all of this quixotic self absorption, we encourage Mike to keep it up: Run Mike Run. Even a billionaire like Bloomberg can't buy his way into national prominence and acceptance. We look forward to his comeuppance-and the awakening will be a rude one if he continues along this path with any real delusions of grandeur. But, after buying New Yorkers at a premium rate, who can blame the mayor for believing the H.L. Mencken observation that, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

Judge Not...!

Judge Richard Arcara has to be the biggest judicial goofball in NY State-his latest ruling extending the retraining order on the Indian tax collection has to be read to be believed: "U.S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara on Thursday extended indefinitely his ban on state taxation of cigarette sales by the Seneca Nation and other Indian tribes...In one of two rulings, Arcara extended a temporary restraining order that prevents the state from collecting taxes on cigarette sales by Indian-owned businesses to non-Indians. The temporary order, which the judge initially issued during the summer, had been scheduled to end today. Arcara said Indian tribes throughout the state would "suffer irreparable injury" if he did not extend the temporary order. He said thousands of smoke shop workers would be likely to lose jobs if the state taxation begins now.

Unbelievable! Not a scintilla of evidence that this judge understands just how much the Indian tax avoidance scheme-the one that has allowed their smokeasies to flourish-has caused irreparable harm to the state's legitimate retailers and tobacco wholesalers. Not to mention the $150 million budget hole that has been created because of the judge's asinine ruling.

But Arcara wasn't finished conclusively demonstrating that the only bench he belongs on is a park bench. He goes on to say that his ruling was motivated in part because of his fear of Indian violence: "The judge also voiced concerns about public safety if he does not extend the order. He said he is concerned about the threat of violence by Indian protesters if the taxation begins."

And he goes on to reiterate these fears: "Shortly before the [tax collections] were to be implemented, parties on both sides publicly spoke about the potential for violence," Arcara wrote. "Given the passionate sentiments involved, the court finds that granting a stay pending appeal is in the public interest because it will simply preserve the status quo while a higher court considers the merits of the [Indian tribes'] claims."

Adding insult to injury is that fact that the judge has little regard for the merits of the Indian legal claims: "While his extension of the temporary restraining order is good news for Indian tribes, Arcara also filed a second order in which he turned down some of the arguments that Indian tribes have presented to fight off taxation. He said lawyers for the Seneca Nation and the Cayuga Indians have "failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success" on their claims that the state taxation plan is unconstitutional."

No legal grounds, but Arcara's first ruling allows the patently illegal activities to not only continue, but to flourish as a result of the extra differential that the newly imposed cigarette tax gives them: "In its legal arguments, the Seneca Nation "expressly acknowledges that, as a general principle, New York State has the authority to require reservation retailers to collect excise taxes on sales to non-Indians," Arcara wrote. "This point is significant. New York estimates that of the 10 million cartons [of cigarettes] sold last year by [Seneca] retailers, less than 70,000 were purchased by Seneca Nation members for their own personal consumption. Under [previous federal court rulings], the vast majority of sales made by reservation retailers are taxable," the judge wrote."

So, we have a judge who unmindful of anyone's pain but that of the Indian plaintiffs-and allows them to continue inflicting more harm on the state's tax payers as well-allowing the lawful collection of the tax to be postponed for perhaps years: "The bottom line, according to many court observers, is that the state could eventually succeed in its efforts to tax Indian cigarette sales, but the multiple legal challenges could block taxation for months or even years."

In our view, this should be a compelling issue that all candidates for elective office in the state should be forced to address in the next two weeks. The exit question is: Are we going to allow one special interest to remain above the law, while legitimate tax paying retailers and wholesalers continue to be squeezed right out of business?

Fouling the Air

Once again we are having a debate about the dangers of second hand smoke-this time it is related to NYC's new initiative to demonstrate that not even God can filter out the deleterious effects of supposedly deadly cigarette smoke in NY's parks. City Room reports: "A New York City Council public hearing on a proposed smoking ban in city parks evolved into an hours-long, occasionally raucous showdown Thursday afternoon, touching on issues such as civil liberties, public health, big government and litter. The hearing focused largely on a bill, introduced by Councilwoman Gale Brewer, a Manhattan Democrat, with the support of the Bloomberg administration, that would ban smoking in the public parks, playgrounds, beaches and pedestrian plazas, but also included testimony on a compromise bill, which would lead to designated smoking sections in many parks."

In the past we have defended a number of small business interests on issues related to smoking-advertising restrictions and indoor bans being the two most heated. What really intrigues us is how the issue of second hand smoke has transcended science-and entered into the realm of mystical belief. This was most keenly seen when former health commissioner Tom Frieden postulated that we were losing over 1,000 New Yorkers from deaths that he attributed to the fall out from exposure to second hand smoke.

Well, it's been over eight years since the city's ban went into effect, and has anyone done the follow up research to find those New Yorkers who have escaped the deadly second hand menace? Of course not-but the canards were flying at the City Council yesterday, fouling the air more severely than any cigarette could: "It’s simply not true” that smoke dissipates in the air, Dr. Farley said, underscoring the harmful chemicals in cigarette smoke but also noting that litter eradication would be a “side benefit” of the ban."

Really? So smoke doesn't dissipate in the air? What a crock. The fact is that it has yet to be determined with any scientific validity that long term-intimate-exposure to second hand smoke harms the people exposed. The longitudinal study done by the WHO demonstrated that there were little or no causal links (a study that has been relegated to the dustbin of history because it dramatized the unscientific nature of the second hand smoke chorus).

But, as Aldous Huxley once said, "Facts don't cease to exist because they are ignored." Here's what the WHO study found: "The World Health Organization's first study on SHS is a textbook example of the right way to conduct an epidemiological study. Unfortunately for them, it yielded unexpected results. They responded by doing a second one, a meta-analysis, that allowed them to extract the results they wanted."

The results: "The study found no statistically significant risk existed for non-smokers who either lived or worked with smokers. The only statistically significant number was a decrease in the risk of lung cancer among the children of smokers."

As libertarian critic Jacob Sallum has pointed out: "The science probably will never be "in," if that means conclusive proof that long-term exposure to secondhand smoke causes lung cancer and heart disease, because low-level risks are very hard to confirm in epidemiological studies...Since it is difficult even to measure the health consequences of long-term, relatively intense exposure to secondhand smoke among people living with smokers for decades, how could one possibly demonstrate an effect from, say, a few molecules? It's clear that the vast majority of people exposed to secondhand smoke suffer no noticeable injury, so in what sense is their exposure unsafe? "No safe level" is an article of faith, not a scientific statement."

With the science being questionable, the policy issue comes down to values-and with the Bloombergistas that means, not do no harm, but butt into all of our lives for our own good, of course. Sallum elsewhere makes the point: "The issue of what the government should do about secondhand smoke is independent from the issue of exactly how risky it is. Whether smoking bans are a good idea is a question not of science but of values, of whether we want to live in a country where a majority forcibly imposes its preferences on everyone else or one where there is room for choice and diversity."

Council members Robert Jackson and Dan Halloran have the right idea about where all of this is headed-and we'll give them the last word: "Opponents had a champion in City Councilmember Robert Jackson, a ­­­Manhattan Democrat who, in a series of heated exchanges, accused the city of being “too restrictive.” Similarly, Councilmember Daniel Halloran, a Queens Republican, voiced his concerns that any outdoor smoking ban would lead down a “slippery slope” toward an overbearing government. “Are we going to be back here in five years talking about a ban on smoking in households that have children in them?” he asked. “What’s the line in the sand?”

Bloomberg Crying Wolf

Our friend Andy Wolf has a devastating take down of the Kleinberg effort to lead any kind of national  educational reform campaign-not, he says, when you've failed in NYC: "It's time for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Chancellor, Joel Klein to stop their pious lecturing to the rest of the nation promoting their vision of how to fix America's schools. Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post, perhaps America's most perceptive observer of the education scene, puts it this way: "After 8 years as the czar of New York City's public schools, Klein might want to stop blaming other people for his failures."

Wolf goes on to award the undynamic duo what is essentially the Pulitzer Prize for fiction: "On Monday, the New York Times devoted considerable space -- beginning on the front page -- to a discussion of New York State's unprecedented re-calculation of their standardized test scores. The state's admission that test scores were wildly inflated over the past few years has definitively proven that the "miracle" that Klein and Bloomberg are disgracefully still taking credit for, is fiction. In reality it may be even worse, a deliberate fraud perpetrated on voters."

Fraud it is, and we are transported into an exquisite time warp where, once again, "what did you know, and when did you know it," becomes a relevant catch phrase: "While the responsibility for the tests lie squarely with the State Education Department, city "educrats" were well aware that there was a problem. But that didn't temper their zeal to use the tainted statistics to aggrandize their boss before the election last year. Just last month, Shael Polakow-Suransky, the deputy chancellor for performance and accountability for the city's Department of Education conceded at a meeting with Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. and Dr. Betty Rosa, who represents the borough on the state Board of Regents, that the city was aware of the problems with the test results even prior to last year's mayoral election."

And, as Wolf reminds us, many people pulled the Bloomberg lever in 2009 assuming-based on tens of millions of dollars of disinformation-that Mike Bloomberg had elevated city schools right out of the dung heap: "The Times noted that 57 percent of voters who made education their top priority last year voted to re-elect the mayor, who won by just 5 points. Had just 2.5 percent known the truth and switched sides, the outcome of the election might have been very different. We can't re-run the election, but the least we should expect from the Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein is to have the decency to stop spreading the fiction of a "New York Miracle" that simply never happened."

One thing's for sure. If Frank Sinatra was still around, he'd have to rework his time honored, "New York, New York," lyrics along the lines of, "if you can't make it there, you can't make it anywhere." Not even spending $109 million on defrauding the voters can sanitize the stench of the NYC educational scam.

Invasion Handwriting is on the Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is getting as serious as a heart attack about wanting to penetrate the urban market. The WSJ reports: "Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is planning to open dozens of small stores in the nation's cities, in an effort to push back against the dollar chains and other competitors nibbling at its customers. The prospect of Wal-Mart stores dotting America's biggest cities would change the urban landscape and the profile of the world's largest retailer, known for its blocky suburban edifices stocked with low-cost goods. The new stores, roughly a quarter to a third the size of a supercenter, largely will sell groceries."

And right on cue, the Chicago Sun Times tells us: "Wal-Mart’s U.S. CEO Bill Simon confirmed Wednesday that his company sees Chicago as a prime market to grow and plans to open 24 new stores of three different sizes...Wal-Mart also wants to open so-called Neighborhood Markets, which measure between 30,000 and 60,000 square feet. Finally, Simon wants to open smaller stores, which Simon didn’t describe, but analysts have said will likely measure 10,000 square feet."

Be very scared if you are a small store operator in NYC-whether food or general merchandise; because, as the Chicago Wal-Mart impact study showed: "What does the study tell us about the mega store's impact? Here it is: "The opening of a Wal-Mart on the West Side of Chicago in 2006 led to the closure of about one-quarter of the businesses within a four-mile radius, according to this study by researchers at Loyola University. They tracked 306 businesses, checking their status before Wal-Mart opened and one and two years after it opened. More than half were also surveyed by phone about employees, work hours, and wages. By the second year, 82 of the businesses had closed. Businesses within close proximity of Wal-Mart had a 40 percent chance of closing."

So the jobs argument is a canard-as the Wal-Mart economies of scale actually reduce employment rather than add to the job roles. And what about minority entrepreneurship? So many of the NYC food store and small general merchandise stores are minority owned-and the Walmonster will blow these operators right off of their fragile perch.

And an invasion it will be-as the WSJ points out: "Mr. Simon said he believes there is room for "hundreds" of small Wal-Mart stores in the U.S., offering food and consumer staples. The retailer first will test their urban appeal with 30 to 40 stores over the next few years before a full-scale launch."

The reasoning? Falling sales-with cities like Chicago and NY being the retailer's final frontier: "Sales have fallen for five consecutive quarters at Wal-Mart U.S. stores open at least a year, a key benchmark for retail businesses. The company's U.S. store growth has also stalled as it has begun running out of rural and suburban markets for its warehouse-sized supercenter stores, leaving large cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles as the company's last frontiers for domestic expansion."

Wal-mart has also gotten a lot smarter-and is crafting health care and environmental policies to appeal to those progressives that have seen the company as an evil giant: "Wal-Mart has made a push to show it is a socially responsible giant; it now, for instance, offers better health benefits than most of its retail rivals, and is requiring suppliers to limit their carbon emissions. Yet Wal-Mart has struggled at cracking the big cities amid stiff opposition from organized labor—even as its archrival, Target Corp., and other big-box chains such as Best Buy Co. make a steady march into urban areas with similar products, stores and nonunion workers."

The NY Times underscores this calculated leftward lurch-chronicling the local produce push of the company: "Wal-Mart Stores announced a program on Thursday that would focus on sustainable agriculture among its suppliers, as the retail giant tries to expand its efforts to improve environmental efficiency among its suppliers. The program is intended to put more locally grown food in Wal-Mart stores in the United States, invest in training and infrastructure for small and medium-sized farmers particularly in emerging markets and begin to measure the efficiency of large suppliers in growing and getting their produce to market."

Can we get a Kumbaya? And the response on the left side of the plate is a good one: "“This is huge,” said Michelle Mauthe Harvey, project manager for the corporate partnerships program at Environmental Defense Fund. “Once people are asked those questions, if they haven’t been measuring, they measure more. Knowing what’s embedded in the food before it ever leaves the farm is really significant, because then you can begin to embrace better practices, you can begin to identify opportunities for improvement.”

So the new Wal-Mart is both armed and dangerous in its expansionism-and it will take a united effort on the part of all of the stakeholders-both business and labor-to hold back the mongol horde. But make no mistake about it NYC, as the WSJ reports, is the juicy target of the Wal-Mart expansion: "Mr. Simon would not specify which cities Wal-Mart wants to enter, replying, "Yes. All of that," when asked whether coastal cities such as California's were a possibility. But he joked that he had liked the musical selections during a dinner the prior evening, which included "New York, New York" being sung by a choir of Wal-Mart workers. Wal-Mart currently has no stores in the Big Apple."

Dinner for Schmucks

We have already commented on the city's new asinine restaurant grading system, and how it enhances Mike Bloomberg's regulatory regime's cash nexus. In this morning's NY Times, we get a real close look at how the new system has created a bureaucratic growth industry-down at the courts that the city has set up to adjudicate the fines levied on the hapless restaurant owners: "New York’s restaurants sprawl across a vast territory, from the pristine precincts of the multicourse tasting menu to the gritty backwaters of the takeout joint. But there is one grim corner where they all come together: the health department tribunal, a little-publicized court system that metes out penalties for violations of the city sanitary code."

And court business is booming: "The traffic at the tribunal has intensified so much that the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has been looking for ways to speed the process." Sure, because time is money, lots of it. And the NY Post also chimes in on this further burdening of one of NYC's most enterprising and innovative small business sector: "The toughest reservation in town these days is at the Health Department's restaurant court, where desperate eatery owners are pounding on the doors in a last chance to improve their cleanliness grades. The agency's administrative tribunal in lower Manhattan is being swamped by restaurateurs and their representatives, some of whom wait all day for a hearing in hopes of reducing their violation points -- often the difference between landing an A, B or the dreaded C."

And who knows what's happening down at street level where the inspector and the owner first meet up-when you turn restaurants into a cash cow, small business is the one who's ox gets gored. So, when you have a visible Scarlet Letter system, the pressure is on to not become stigmatized-and a climate of bribery and coercion is created.

But in restaurant court, it is the kangaroo that is served. As the Times points out: "It is too early to measure how the new grading system, which took effect in July, will change how the court functions. But many of those who have spent time there over the years, battling the bureaucracy or quietly fuming in the waiting room, say the traffic and emotions have never been higher. “You’ve got to get here really early — this place has turned into a circus, a moneymaking circus,” Nicky Perry, who owns the West Village restaurants Tea and Sympathy and A Salt and Battery, said around 8:30 one morning in the office at 66 John Street, just after it opened. The 124 seats around her filled quickly. “They should have a picture of Bloomberg on the walls going like that,” Ms. Perry added, rubbing her hands together in mock glee."

It is here that we see just how the mayor eats out of both sides of his mouth-castigating paid sick leave as ant-business on the one hand; while crippling one of the city's most vulnerable business sector on the other. He is more than willing to get on his bully pulpit to tell folks that the government doesn't belong in the bedroom-or at marriage ceremonies-but pontificates while dramatizing just how badly his government actually intrudes on the ability of small businesses to survive in this town.

But in one sense, Bloomberg has become a job generator-for adimnistrative law judges, that is-as the Post relates: "In some cases, restaurant owners are told they'll have to come back another day because the judges just can't get to them. Officials say they're aware of the crush and are taking steps to deal with it. "It certainly is our goal that anyone who shows up will have their case heard that day," declared Tom Merrill, the department general counsel. He said the agency has 16 courtrooms to handle up to 350 cases a day and additional space might be added."

And as the Times points out, it's only going to get better-as it gets even worse for the schmucks who own restaurants in New York: "The snarl at the tribunal has intensified so much that the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has been casting about for ways to speed the process, including adding hearing rooms and encouraging restaurants to accept settlements in place of hearings. But with the new rating system, said Dan Lehman, the department’s deputy commissioner of finance and planning, fewer restaurants are choosing that option because there is “more at stake than just a fine now — there’s a letter grade.”

As we have pointed out on so many occasions, the city codes defy understanding-a situation that is exacerbated by the arbitrary nature of the inspection and the adjudication: "The throng in the waiting room kills time by trading war stories about the tribunal’s inconsistencies — Ms. Perry said that one year she was fined for having an ice-cream scoop in water and another year for not having it in water — and seemingly clueless judges. “She asked the stupidest questions,” one man said. “ ‘What does the super do?’ ‘He’s the super,’ ” he said, shrugging. “I was like: ‘O.K., Judge, I’ll pay the fine just to get out of here.’ ”

This is what the Bloomberg health mania has wrought-a costly, stupid and byzantine bureaucracy that adds a further burden to an already bad local and national business climate. And don't think for a moment that your restaurant experience has gotten any healthier, it hasn't. There is no correlation between the fines and violations and a healthier dining experience. On the other hand, restaurant owners have gotten sicker.

Meanwhile, the core mission of the DOH-ridding the city of unhealthy rodents and bugs-flags; while the agency looks to make the NYC business climate the unhealthiest one in the country.

No Barriers to Condemnation in NY State

The city's effort to take small business property in East Harlem was ratified by the NY State Appellate Court yesterday-another example of both the city's disdain for small neighborhood retailers, as well as its contempt for property rights. In bringing the suit, The East Harlem Alliance of Responsible Merchants had challenged the city's eminent domain process, "Specifically, EHARM says it was unconstitutional for their properties to be included "solely for the purposes of enabling condemnation." State statute was broken when officials failed to restrict the occupancy of the proposed housing primarily to low-income households, the suit alleges. Additionally, the suit argues that approving the project before a developer was announced was unlawful. "It has to be for a true public benefit," Damon Bae of Fancy Cleaners said in reference to eminent domain. "This is not for a true public benefit."

While the court's ruling in NY State is unsurprising-considering the Court of Appeals decision to overturn an Appellate Court decision against Columbia and ESDC-Judge Catterson's concurring opinion underscores just how non-existent property rights are in this state: "In my view, the record amply demonstrates that the neighborhood in question is not blighted, that whatever blight exists is due to the actions of the City and/or is located far outside the project area, and that the justification of under-utilization is nothing but a canard to aid in the transfer of private property to a developer. Unfortunately for the rights of the citizens affected by the proposed condemnation, the recent rulings of the Court of Appeals in Matter of Goldstein v. New York State Urban Dev. Corp., 13 NY3d 511, 893 N.Y.S.2d 472, 921 N.E.2d 164 (2009) and Matter of Kaur v. New York State Urban Dev. Corp., 15 NY3d 235, —- N.E.2d —— (2010), have made plain that there is no longer any judicial oversight of eminent domain proceedings. Thus, I am compelled to concur with the majority." (emphasis added)

"No blight", "a canard;" but no matter! Demonstrating that there is no barrier in NY against any taking of property whatsoever-and the city and state can make up any old reason they want and have it ratified by the courts-which makes the appeal by West Harlem's Nick Sprayregen to the USSC all that more important. If the high court intervenes in the Sprayregen case-and does so in his favor, it would be a first step toward the restoration of due process, and the protection of property rights here. As of now, barriers to taking are nonexistent.

Wal-Mart's Dach Attack

Wal-Mart's Leslie Dach, probably overcompensating for being given a less than masculine moniker, is now doing a little premature chest thumping about Wal-Mart coming to NYC: "Wal-Mart Stores Inc. won the right to open two more stores in Chicago this year, but does that mean the world’s largest retailer can eventually take Manhattan? In remarks at the start of a two-day analyst meeting, Leslie Dach, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president for government affairs and corporate relations, said the retailer’s reputation has shown improvement with both consumers and elected officials. The improvement for Wal-Mart, which has long been a target for critics that complained about the level of pay and benefits it offered employees, its impact on competitors and other issues, has made it easier for the company to win approval for new stores, Dach said."

Coming off a penetration of the Chicago market, Dachs is feeling ebullient about the Walmonster's NY prospects: "Wal-Mart won Chicago City Council approval this summer to open two new stores in the city after satisfying a key union group’s concerns over wages. Dach was introduced by the Wal-Mart Associates Choir singing “My Kind of Town,” the tribute to Chicago made popular by Frank Sinatra. His presentation ended with the choir singing another Sinatra staple, “New York, New York,” an apparent tongue-in-cheek nod to speculation of where Wal-Mart might want to eventually expand as it looks to bring more stores to densely populated urban areas in search of sales growth."

How about a chorus of, "Take This Job and shove It?" But clearly Dach is alluding to the sub rosa deal that the company apparently has with the Related Company to tenant the expanded Gateway Estates Mall in East New York-although he attempts to downplay the significance of his serenade: "Wal-Mart has no stores in New York City, while rival discounter Target Corp. penetrated the Manhattan market with a store in Harlem earlier this year after 13 years of trying to open the site. Dach followed up the singing of New York, New York with a disclaimer. “Any relationship between our choice of songs and any actual political strategy is purely fictional,” he said."

Still, even a smug and cocky dude like Dach knows that NY ain't Chicago: "But Dach did list bringing more stores to urban markets as one of the immediate issues for the company. Dach said the company learned a lot in Chicago, but conceded that different markets had different political dynamics. “We know all politics is local in this country and we will have to fight that fight wherever we go,” Dach said."

And Wal-Mart, flush with its Second City success, is apparently geared up for a NY street fight-which is a good thing because they really are going to need all of the company's resources to navigate this town. But it isn't only the Walmonster that needs to gear up-and our friends at Related better be prepared as well for the fight of their lives-after all, this won't be like the gift of patricianage that Deputy Dan gave his buddy Steve Ross over at the Bronx Terminal Market,

Our advise to cocky Leslie is to remember what St. John's coach Lou Carneseca use to advise his b-ball players: "Remember fellas, peacock today, feather duster tomorrow."

Testing, Testing...

Jenny Medina follows up on her front page expose of the fallacious state school tests with a story that examines the validity of tests, qua tests: "These days, most topics in education seem to provoke an intense argument, with nuance often lost in the din of rhetoric. And perhaps nowhere is this more true and useless than in the debate around standardized tests. Such tests have been around for generations — in the form of SATs, Regents and a whole myriad of local tests around the country. But only in recent years have they gained such importance, as politicians and education leaders eagerly looked for an objective way to judge students, teachers and schools."

Now there are those who simply reject standardized tests in any manner, shape or form-but that to us elides the central theme in Monday's long evaluative piece-the state tests were useless in accurately measuring achievement, and Commissioner Mills knew that they were, but continued to ignore the blatant uselessness. If this were a car wreck, Mills would be charged with criminal negligence.

But Medina, in examining how the state could have been so blind, seems to back away from her stronger earlier conclusions: "After New York state officials came to the conclusion late this summer that tests here had indeed become too easy to pass, we set out to answer a seemingly simple question: How could this happen? The answers, which we laid out in a front-page article on Monday, were complicated. There was no one smoking gun, one key decision or mistake that led to everything else. Instead, there were policy decisions made over the course of a decade that eventually created a testing system that could easily be gamed."

Now hold on a minute! How about the fact that folks like Ravitch, Stern and Wolf were repeatedly blowing the whistle on the farce-and using the federal NAEP tests as a proper benchmark? Stern lays some of this out in the City Journal: "The best evidence of test-score inflation is the growing gap between the number of students that states deem proficient on their own tests—those they administer under the terms of NCLB—and the number deemed proficient by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often referred to as the “nation’s report card.” One reason the federal NAEP tests are the gold standard in student assessment is that they can’t be gamed by teachers or administrators. Every two years, NAEP math and reading tests are given to a statistically valid sample of all fourth- and eighth-grade students in each state; teachers aren’t able to teach to the test, and school districts can’t offer students practice tests because no one knows ahead of time which students will be tested. And in nearly every state in the union, the NAEP exams deem far fewer students proficient than the state’s own exams do."

So, what's confusing about this? Mills simply knew and didn''t give a rat's ass-and someone should venture to determine why that was so. This was lying to parents and children in a fraudulent attempt to put lipstick on the NY school pig. Medina goes on to quote Deputy Commissioner King who seems to be someone you'd like to find so you can sell him a bridge:

"One of the most striking ideas I heard in the course of reporting the article came from John King, the state’s deputy education commissioner, who has created several charter schools and embraced accountability systems that rely on tests.

“If people had known what an effective lever the tests would be of driving behavior, I think they would have designed the tests differently,” he told me. Mr. King was not involved in creating the tests, and in fact, he looked at them frequently in his previous job as a charter school administrator. “I don’t think that anyone understood that the tests would then drive the whole system toward a focus on whatever was the content of the test.”

Ah, c'mon. We've had nine years with the master of the universe in charge of the city schools. Surely he knew. The NY Post was right about holding folks to account for the fraud-although it permitted the mayor his own droit de seigneur; allowing Bloomberg and Klein to perform their embarrassing pas de deux in full view of the entire city; as well as before an ingenuous press corps.

Reducing what has happened in the state and city over the past decade to a disagreement over the value of testing per se, is to obfuscate that egregious nature of the behavior of educational bureaucrats and the mayor of the City of NY-someone who took the fraudulent scores all the way to the political bank.

Gillerbrand Demurs on Soda Food Stamp Ban

Departing from the wellness chorus-you know, those concerned with improving the health of those unable to manage their lives without assistance from their betters-Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has come out publicly questioning the Bloomberg effort to ban the use of food stamps for the purchase of soda: "Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a longtime advocate for policies that encourage better eating habits, is not jumping on board the effort by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. David Paterson to bar low-income people in New York City from using food stamps to purchase soda and other sugary drinks. Asked in an interview whether she thought the proposal was a good one, the senator said: "I think giving parents and families the tools they need to make the right choices is a better approach."

What a radical concept-empowering people to make better choices; rather than coercing them and treating them like children: "Ms. Gillibrand's efforts to date have largely centered around encouraging good eating and exercise habits, particularly among children. The food-stamps proposal would be a more direct approach, and one aimed more at adult behavior than that of children."
 
Her opposition is significant because of her committee membership in the senate: "Also, she sits on the Agriculture Committee, which has jurisdiction over the agency that will decide whether to grant the sugary drinks request." So the mayor's ask of the FDA, as we have pointed out, may be subject to congressional approval.
 
But opposition to the latest Bloomberg effort to tell people how they should live is being enlivened by an unusual suspect-Joel Berg of the NYC Coalition Against Hunger. City Hall Newspaper has the story: "He expressed the irony he sees in a mayor who fought to bring Snapple into the schools now leading the charge against sugary drinks. The persistent subtext, he said, is a callousness to the poor. “The left and the right are uniting around the one thing that they always unite around as elites, which is telling poor people what to do,” Berg said."
 
Another voice added against Mother Bloomberg Knows Best-and the coalition may soon be growing larger: "For the Beverage Association and its lobbyists, beating back the proposal that Bloomberg and Gov. David Paterson have submitted to the USDA is for the moment not so much about behind-the-scenes conversations with the small group of decision makers in Washington as trying to construct a public relations nightmare for the Bloomberg administration."
 
This nascent coalition needs to include small business and labor-because the assault on soda sales will have repercussions at the cash registers of strapped local supermarkets, green grocers and bodegas. Hurting neighborhood business is not good for public health-especially when so many stores have been forced out of business by the mayor's tax and regulatory policies. Let's not forget that high taxes and bottle deposits send many New Yorkers out of state to purchase their goods-and the food stamp ban is another added obstacle to small neighborhood food stores.
 
Let's hope that Senator Gillibrand sticks to her current position on this issue; her initial skepticism is not only warranted, but politically savvy-as the WSJ notes: "Both senators are Democrats running for election this year amid complaints from Republicans that the Democratic-controlled Congress is too intrusive in the life of everyday Americans, from taxes to health care to business regulation. A crackdown on soda consumption could further fuel that criticism. Ms. Gillibrand was appointed to the Senate last year by Mr. Paterson to the seat vacated when Hillary Clinton became secretary of state."
 
Bloomberg argues that this is a two year pilot program-but what exactly could be gleaned from this human experiment? "The proposed change would be a two-year trial, during which the city would study the impact and whether it was improving the eating habits of food-stamp recipients."

And, like what was found with menu labeling, the end results were much different from what the Bloombergistas had initially argued-but there has been no thought from these health mavens to repeal their futile reg that is costing fast food franchises thousands of dollars in compliance costs. Once instituted, the regulation, or the ban, or the tax, or, whatever, is immutable-and more fodder for the city's legion of inspectors to swoop down on store owners, ticket book in hand.

Mike Bloomberg has already established himself as one of the most hostile chief executives for small business in the city's history; and his intrusions into the day-to-day lives of New Yorkers threatens both their liberty and the stores that they need for the viability of the neighborhoods that they live in. It's time for people to tell him to just butt out.