Newsday is reporting that Islanders owner Charles Wang may have some interest in relocating his ice hockey team to-Willets Point: "Less than two days after Charles Wang said he is ready to explore all his options, the executive vice president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce said Wang's search should begin in his borough."
So, let's get this straight. Someone from the Queens Chamber is looking to auction off property that neither he nor the city has title to, so that a moribund hockey franchise can come to the city? Here's what one Jack Friedman has to say: "Option number 1 should be Queens," Jack Friedman said. "We are ready for him." Friedman believes a potential new home for the Islanders would fit perfectly as a centerpiece in the city's plans for the Willets Point area. The project is still in the early stages; Friedman said ground-breaking probably won't take place for another four or five years."
But, as Tonto once is reported to have said to the Lone Ranger: What do you mean, "we," paleface." Maybe Friedman is ready to shove legal land owners off their land before all of the outstanding issues facing this development are addressed, but Charles Wang would be wise to proceed with extreme caution.
So should EDC, whose salivating needs to be tempered. As the NY Daily News has reported: "Sources said the city Economic Development Corp. - now preparing a request for proposals to transform the 62-acre tract near Citi Field - is intrigued by rumors the Isles may relocate amid stalled plans to revamp Nassau Coliseum."
Where would we be without EDC intrigue? But has anyone examined the economic benefits of throwing out productive businesses from Willets Point in exchange for a hockey team? Sports teams are generally poor generators of economic development, and in Brooklyn-where nothing quite like the economic activity characteristic of WP exists-a stand alone basketball team couldn't get support for a substantial commitment of public dollars.
Can you imagine spending around $700 million for the right to host the Islanders? Maybe Jack Friedman should start passing the plate so that the city can justify this bit of economic insanity.
In our view, however, all of this is premature extrapolation-and presupposes that the hurdles still remaining are insignificant barriers. Mr. Wang has plenty of time to decide where to place his hockey team-should he decide to leave the lovely Nassau Coliseum. Planning for Willets Point as a new home is fraught with uncertainty-and the time line isn't the only unknown factor that could come back to haunt this courtship; a clear example of looking for love in all the wrong places.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Calorie Cartoon
I n today's NY Daily News, Bramhall has a satiric look at the city's silly calorie posting regulation-with a great tag line from a fast food employee to a Health Department rep: "Any more genius ideas?" You know that an idea has lost its appeal when the satirists take it on-but the folks down at the DOH are too earnest to see the humour in all of their regulatory hectoring.
In another story in today's Daily News, the inanity is brought home: "Even when confronted with the sky-high calorie counts of fast food, many poor New Yorkers still go with their gut. A new study found that even after the city ordered chain restaurants to post calories on their menus, some diners in low-income areas apparently made worse food choices than before."
Amazing! Things actually got worse: "Researchers collected about 1,200 receipts from customers at McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken and found they purchased an average of 846 calories - compared to 825 before the menus were labeled. Surprisingly, the customers bought the fat-laden food even though 28% believed the calorie counts had influenced their orders."
Which underscores what we had said before this all was foisted on New Yorkers-people simply don't understand the calorie concept and, in some cases, actually believe that more calories means healthier-or better-eating. Leave it to the DOH, however, to see the silver lining in all of this: "Cathy Nonas, director of the city Health Department's nutrition programs, pointed out that the study was done mere weeks after the menu labeling began, suggesting eating habits may have changed more since then. Also, Nonas was heartened that so many people said they look at the data and pointed out that fast food chains are adding healthy items all the time. The city is now completing a 12,000-receipt study of the program. "We know that not everybody is going to care about calories, but it's the government's job to make sure people are informed," she said."
In other words, the operation was a success, but the patient died. How sad.
In another story in today's Daily News, the inanity is brought home: "Even when confronted with the sky-high calorie counts of fast food, many poor New Yorkers still go with their gut. A new study found that even after the city ordered chain restaurants to post calories on their menus, some diners in low-income areas apparently made worse food choices than before."
Amazing! Things actually got worse: "Researchers collected about 1,200 receipts from customers at McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken and found they purchased an average of 846 calories - compared to 825 before the menus were labeled. Surprisingly, the customers bought the fat-laden food even though 28% believed the calorie counts had influenced their orders."
Which underscores what we had said before this all was foisted on New Yorkers-people simply don't understand the calorie concept and, in some cases, actually believe that more calories means healthier-or better-eating. Leave it to the DOH, however, to see the silver lining in all of this: "Cathy Nonas, director of the city Health Department's nutrition programs, pointed out that the study was done mere weeks after the menu labeling began, suggesting eating habits may have changed more since then. Also, Nonas was heartened that so many people said they look at the data and pointed out that fast food chains are adding healthy items all the time. The city is now completing a 12,000-receipt study of the program. "We know that not everybody is going to care about calories, but it's the government's job to make sure people are informed," she said."
In other words, the operation was a success, but the patient died. How sad.
Failing Grade
The NY Daily News reports on one Queens school's effort to apparently change failing grades in order to pass students so the school wouldn't have to pay for summer school out of its own budget: "A Queens school is under investigation for inflating the grades of several failing students - promoting them although they flunked math and couldn't do the work. Teachers say administrators at Public School 147 in Cambria Heights doctored failing grades into passing ones and bumped seventh-graders up to eighth grade. "I was told that no students were going to summer school this year, so everyone had to pass," math teacher Darren Johnson said."
Now obviously there's no general policy to do any such thing-but this one example of cheating points to a larger problem: "Johnson, who resigned last month, says an assistant principal told him PS 147 could not pay for summer school. The Education Department pays for summer school only for children who get the lowest possible score on state exams. Schools must dip into their budgets to pay for extra help for other kids, including those who failed a class. All schools took a 5% hit to their budgets this year."
So why then didn't these failing children score at the lowest rung of the recent state exams? Here's the essence of the problem: "Only one seventh-grader at PS 147 got the lowest score on the state math exam this year, and only one from the school attended summer school. It is not known whether they were the same person."
So this school found itself in a Catch-22 situation-a significant numbers of clearly failing students who had been able to score false positives on watered down state tests. Unable to pay for the summer school needed for these kids, cheating was used to deal with a budget shortfall: "Some of the students who flunked rarely turned in homework assignments, teachers said, and could not perform basic algebra problems. Most did not pass the state math exams. One student was late 52 days. "It didn't make sense to me to pass kids who failed almost every single test," Johnson, 29, said."
So here it looks as if we have another example of the questionable success of the Bloomberg educational miracle-built on a testing regime where the exams themselves need a saliva test. All of this on top of the billions of dollars of additional funds-and scores of more flacks down at the DOE-needed to convince New Yorkers that the city schools have been re-invented.
This expensive house of cards should be ground zero in the mayoral debate on education-and not what role Bill Thompson played in a previously dysfunctional governance system. Any effort to do otherwise is simple misdirection; and does no service to the educational future of our children
Now obviously there's no general policy to do any such thing-but this one example of cheating points to a larger problem: "Johnson, who resigned last month, says an assistant principal told him PS 147 could not pay for summer school. The Education Department pays for summer school only for children who get the lowest possible score on state exams. Schools must dip into their budgets to pay for extra help for other kids, including those who failed a class. All schools took a 5% hit to their budgets this year."
So why then didn't these failing children score at the lowest rung of the recent state exams? Here's the essence of the problem: "Only one seventh-grader at PS 147 got the lowest score on the state math exam this year, and only one from the school attended summer school. It is not known whether they were the same person."
So this school found itself in a Catch-22 situation-a significant numbers of clearly failing students who had been able to score false positives on watered down state tests. Unable to pay for the summer school needed for these kids, cheating was used to deal with a budget shortfall: "Some of the students who flunked rarely turned in homework assignments, teachers said, and could not perform basic algebra problems. Most did not pass the state math exams. One student was late 52 days. "It didn't make sense to me to pass kids who failed almost every single test," Johnson, 29, said."
So here it looks as if we have another example of the questionable success of the Bloomberg educational miracle-built on a testing regime where the exams themselves need a saliva test. All of this on top of the billions of dollars of additional funds-and scores of more flacks down at the DOE-needed to convince New Yorkers that the city schools have been re-invented.
This expensive house of cards should be ground zero in the mayoral debate on education-and not what role Bill Thompson played in a previously dysfunctional governance system. Any effort to do otherwise is simple misdirection; and does no service to the educational future of our children
Après Moi le Déluge? Obama, Bloomberg and Thompson
As the NY Times is reporting, Bill Thompson has been waiting patiently for Barack Obama to show him some love: "To bolster Democratic prospects, President Obama has tried to elbow New York’s governor, David A. Paterson, out of next year’s race, and has thrown his weight behind New Jersey’s governor, Jon S. Corzine, in next month’s election.Then there is the mayoral race in New York City. Here, the president has all but ignored the Democrat running on a message of change and embraced the incumbent running on the Republican ballot on Nov. 3."
The other races that BHO has injected himself into all involved the fortunes of, well, BHO-an indication that it is Obama all the time when it comes to the president's political predilections. Is it any wonder that when the Olympic bid for Chicago-one that was heavily fronted by both of the Obamas-went down in flames the Drudge headline, "The Ego Has Landed," captured the essence of the failure?
But the subtext here, is the residual power of the Bloomberg fortune: "Since Mr. Obama’s election, Mr. Thompson, the city’s comptroller, has found his attempts to piggyback on Mr. Obama’s popularity drowned out by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has tethered himself to the president...On Tuesday, he accepted the endorsement of a close Obama ally, John D. Podesta, who ran Mr. Obama’s transition team last fall."
All but forgotten is the millions lavished on state senate Republicans-and the fact that MB never even endorsed Obama last fall; not to mention all of the wooing of local Republican county leaders-along with the cash bounties that go with it. And does the endorsement by John Podesta have nothing to do with the cash nexus?
But the Obama recusal here is telling-not about Thompson, but about the president's narcissistic self involvement: "There may be little upside for Mr. Obama to weigh in to a local race whose outcome would have little bearing on his agenda in Washington, and choosing the losing candidate would diminish his standing a year before crucial midterm elections. But the White House has left the door open, saying that the president would not rule out an endorsement in the New York mayor’s race."
To us, this is an Obama litmus test-and any attempt to snub Thompson and embrace Bloomberg would tarnish the president's hope and change mantra. Message to Obama: Overturning the popular will and using of tens of millions of dollars to tarnish the African-American challenger, is not the harbinger of a new politics.
As the Times points out: "At first blush, Mr. Thompson seems like the obvious choice. The president and the comptroller share party affiliation, race and a political pedigree. (Mr. Obama rose through Chicago’s Democratic machine; Mr. Thompson marched through New York’s.)...Even when it became clear Mr. Obama would prevail, Mr. Bloomberg refused to endorse him, and he repeatedly praised his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, a personal friend. Mr. Thompson, by contrast, the city’s first black comptroller, eagerly endorsed Mr. Obama and briefly volunteered for him in Pennsylvania. “Billy has a natural lineage to an Obama-like candidacy,” said Al Sharpton, who is close to both Mr. Obama and Mr. Thompson."
With the race tightening, and Obama's popularity still very high in NYC, his hearting Thompson would go a long way-especially since Bloomberg has been slobbering all over the president and using his millions to broadcast this insincere political (not progress) ploy: "But here’s what 300,000 people did hear: that Mr. Bloomberg had endorsed Mr. Obama’s health care plan. Only a handful of people attended the press conference in Washington where Mr. Bloomberg announced it. But the mayor’s campaign paid for automated telephone calls to 300,000 numbers to spread the word. “Like President Obama, Mayor Bloomberg says it’s time to put politics aside,” said the voice of a campaign worker on the recording."
The Times story isn't without its humorous moments-like when Bloomberg's aides-and Obama's-try to assert that he and the president are kindred spirits: "Aides to both men said they are, in many ways, kindred spirits, focused on postpartisan politics (in theory, if not always in practice), public health and environmental sustainability." Neither is, of course, with Bloomberg being the first politically transgendered mayor.
But Obama's unlikely rise from political oblivion is the most relevant way in which he and Thompson are similar-and his support would clearly demonstrate that he rejects the monetary subornation of the political process; a theme that he has hit upon on the campaign trail. The folks in Brooklyn understand this: "“In this race, Bill is the antiestablishment candidate who represents change,” said David Pollak, who ran Mr. Obama’s campaign in New York. “Mr. Bloomberg is the status quo candidate.” Inside the union hall where Mr. Thompson spoke, Marissa Green, a city employee, said she saw parallels between Mr. Thompson and Mr. Obama. “They are both about change,” she said. And, she added, “Nobody thought Barack Obama would ever be president, did they?”
The other races that BHO has injected himself into all involved the fortunes of, well, BHO-an indication that it is Obama all the time when it comes to the president's political predilections. Is it any wonder that when the Olympic bid for Chicago-one that was heavily fronted by both of the Obamas-went down in flames the Drudge headline, "The Ego Has Landed," captured the essence of the failure?
But the subtext here, is the residual power of the Bloomberg fortune: "Since Mr. Obama’s election, Mr. Thompson, the city’s comptroller, has found his attempts to piggyback on Mr. Obama’s popularity drowned out by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has tethered himself to the president...On Tuesday, he accepted the endorsement of a close Obama ally, John D. Podesta, who ran Mr. Obama’s transition team last fall."
All but forgotten is the millions lavished on state senate Republicans-and the fact that MB never even endorsed Obama last fall; not to mention all of the wooing of local Republican county leaders-along with the cash bounties that go with it. And does the endorsement by John Podesta have nothing to do with the cash nexus?
But the Obama recusal here is telling-not about Thompson, but about the president's narcissistic self involvement: "There may be little upside for Mr. Obama to weigh in to a local race whose outcome would have little bearing on his agenda in Washington, and choosing the losing candidate would diminish his standing a year before crucial midterm elections. But the White House has left the door open, saying that the president would not rule out an endorsement in the New York mayor’s race."
To us, this is an Obama litmus test-and any attempt to snub Thompson and embrace Bloomberg would tarnish the president's hope and change mantra. Message to Obama: Overturning the popular will and using of tens of millions of dollars to tarnish the African-American challenger, is not the harbinger of a new politics.
As the Times points out: "At first blush, Mr. Thompson seems like the obvious choice. The president and the comptroller share party affiliation, race and a political pedigree. (Mr. Obama rose through Chicago’s Democratic machine; Mr. Thompson marched through New York’s.)...Even when it became clear Mr. Obama would prevail, Mr. Bloomberg refused to endorse him, and he repeatedly praised his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, a personal friend. Mr. Thompson, by contrast, the city’s first black comptroller, eagerly endorsed Mr. Obama and briefly volunteered for him in Pennsylvania. “Billy has a natural lineage to an Obama-like candidacy,” said Al Sharpton, who is close to both Mr. Obama and Mr. Thompson."
With the race tightening, and Obama's popularity still very high in NYC, his hearting Thompson would go a long way-especially since Bloomberg has been slobbering all over the president and using his millions to broadcast this insincere political (not progress) ploy: "But here’s what 300,000 people did hear: that Mr. Bloomberg had endorsed Mr. Obama’s health care plan. Only a handful of people attended the press conference in Washington where Mr. Bloomberg announced it. But the mayor’s campaign paid for automated telephone calls to 300,000 numbers to spread the word. “Like President Obama, Mayor Bloomberg says it’s time to put politics aside,” said the voice of a campaign worker on the recording."
The Times story isn't without its humorous moments-like when Bloomberg's aides-and Obama's-try to assert that he and the president are kindred spirits: "Aides to both men said they are, in many ways, kindred spirits, focused on postpartisan politics (in theory, if not always in practice), public health and environmental sustainability." Neither is, of course, with Bloomberg being the first politically transgendered mayor.
But Obama's unlikely rise from political oblivion is the most relevant way in which he and Thompson are similar-and his support would clearly demonstrate that he rejects the monetary subornation of the political process; a theme that he has hit upon on the campaign trail. The folks in Brooklyn understand this: "“In this race, Bill is the antiestablishment candidate who represents change,” said David Pollak, who ran Mr. Obama’s campaign in New York. “Mr. Bloomberg is the status quo candidate.” Inside the union hall where Mr. Thompson spoke, Marissa Green, a city employee, said she saw parallels between Mr. Thompson and Mr. Obama. “They are both about change,” she said. And, she added, “Nobody thought Barack Obama would ever be president, did they?”
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
None of the Above
As Azi has posted, the new Survey USA poll shows the race between Mike Bloomberg and Bill Thompson tightening: "Bill Thompson trails Michael Bloomberg by only 8 percentage points, despite being outspent 16 to 1, according to a new WABC-TV , which will be posted shortly on the web site Survey USA...Bloomberg leads Thompson 51 to 43 percent according to the poll, which has a margin of error of 4.2 percent, and was conducted from October 3 to 5."
If valid, this poll is nothing short of remarkable-and Bloomberg's Wolfer does his best to downgrade the results: "Bloomberg campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said Survey USA has not been as accurate as other polls in this year's elections, and said, these latest numbers are "out of whack with other public polls and the reality."
Yet when Marist showed Bloomberg garnering 35% of the black vote a few weeks ago-a not happening kind of thing, Wolfson didn't call around to set the record straight. So, maybe he's right about the latest poll-or not.
But what's truly remarkable, is the fact that the Thompson campaign has been almost invisible-particularly in comparison to the Bloomberg spending orgy-a 16 to 1 disparity. So, it seems to us, that if the evanescent Thompson is breathing down Bloomberg's neck that the mayor is really in danger of losing to-none of the above.
If valid, this poll is nothing short of remarkable-and Bloomberg's Wolfer does his best to downgrade the results: "Bloomberg campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said Survey USA has not been as accurate as other polls in this year's elections, and said, these latest numbers are "out of whack with other public polls and the reality."
Yet when Marist showed Bloomberg garnering 35% of the black vote a few weeks ago-a not happening kind of thing, Wolfson didn't call around to set the record straight. So, maybe he's right about the latest poll-or not.
But what's truly remarkable, is the fact that the Thompson campaign has been almost invisible-particularly in comparison to the Bloomberg spending orgy-a 16 to 1 disparity. So, it seems to us, that if the evanescent Thompson is breathing down Bloomberg's neck that the mayor is really in danger of losing to-none of the above.
Stubborn Facts
We just received some interesting additional information from an industry source on the impact of calorie posting. It seems as if some fast fooders were concerned enough with what the DOH study might purport to show, that they conducted their own as a check.
What was found by this one study is extremely instructive-as well as persuasive: 20% of the chain's customers did notice the calorie posting and changed their ordering pattern in certain ways. In fact, many did indeed switch from beef to a healthier chicken sandwich; but then proceeded to order the desert pie! And the orders for pie even doubled-a classic example of; "I ordered a healthier chicken sandwich rather than a burger this time so I deserve to treat myself with a pie."
But there was, it seems to us, ample evidence prior to embarking on Thomas Frieden's great adventure, that calorie posting was not going to have the kind of impact that the health advocates wanted. That all of this was done without the slightest hedging-you know, perhaps a smaller pilot program before reconfiguring all of the fast food menu boards-was really shameful, and indicates the kind of blind faith that so much of this advocacy is governed by (along with a real animus against the entire fast food industry).
The adventurism in this case was aided and abetted by the editorial boards-that also seemed impervious to fact-based arguments. As we said at the time about the NY Daily News: "The News goes on to say that, "...people make healthier choices if they know how many calories they are consuming." Of course, what the News doesn't tell you is that: (1) most consumers don't know how many calories they should be eating, or (2) even what a calorie is- making this costly experimental "education" of fast food customers a charade. The paper also fails to point out that nutritionists are moving away from simplistic calorie information and the ill-informed consumer who needs around 2,000 calories a day might be tempted to consume 5 or 6 Hostess Snowballs a day, confident that he is meeting his daily allotment."
And the paper shares the health advocates' elitism as well: "Behind all of this sarcastic derision ("dependent on peddling cheap calories to repeat patrons..."), is the fact that our editorial elites maintain a core animus toward fast foods. After all, "peddling" is the common adjective used in conjunction with drug dealers. So the 2300 outlets that employ around 100,000 New Yorkers and generate millions of tax dollars to the city treasury are ridiculed by folks that, we dare to say, never started a business and never contributed, as hundreds of fast food franchisees have, to the economic renaissance of many of the most blighted of the city's urban neighborhoods."
And the NY Times is right there with the News-cheering the court's support of DOH as, "...a victory for New York City’s campaign against obesity..." And, of course, no one will chide the good doctor Frieden for his fatuousness: "This is good news for everyone,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner. “Nearly all chain restaurants are now complying with the law. Consumers are learning more about the food before they order, and the market for healthier alternatives is growing...."
Except, not so much, if we look at the results of the study that DOH commissioned. But there's one thing that you can depend on when it comes to this kind of faith-based policy making; no amount of evidence will quell the quixotic quest to enforce proper behavioral standards on the unenlightened. In this world beyond reality, nothing succeeds like failure.
What was found by this one study is extremely instructive-as well as persuasive: 20% of the chain's customers did notice the calorie posting and changed their ordering pattern in certain ways. In fact, many did indeed switch from beef to a healthier chicken sandwich; but then proceeded to order the desert pie! And the orders for pie even doubled-a classic example of; "I ordered a healthier chicken sandwich rather than a burger this time so I deserve to treat myself with a pie."
But there was, it seems to us, ample evidence prior to embarking on Thomas Frieden's great adventure, that calorie posting was not going to have the kind of impact that the health advocates wanted. That all of this was done without the slightest hedging-you know, perhaps a smaller pilot program before reconfiguring all of the fast food menu boards-was really shameful, and indicates the kind of blind faith that so much of this advocacy is governed by (along with a real animus against the entire fast food industry).
The adventurism in this case was aided and abetted by the editorial boards-that also seemed impervious to fact-based arguments. As we said at the time about the NY Daily News: "The News goes on to say that, "...people make healthier choices if they know how many calories they are consuming." Of course, what the News doesn't tell you is that: (1) most consumers don't know how many calories they should be eating, or (2) even what a calorie is- making this costly experimental "education" of fast food customers a charade. The paper also fails to point out that nutritionists are moving away from simplistic calorie information and the ill-informed consumer who needs around 2,000 calories a day might be tempted to consume 5 or 6 Hostess Snowballs a day, confident that he is meeting his daily allotment."
And the paper shares the health advocates' elitism as well: "Behind all of this sarcastic derision ("dependent on peddling cheap calories to repeat patrons..."), is the fact that our editorial elites maintain a core animus toward fast foods. After all, "peddling" is the common adjective used in conjunction with drug dealers. So the 2300 outlets that employ around 100,000 New Yorkers and generate millions of tax dollars to the city treasury are ridiculed by folks that, we dare to say, never started a business and never contributed, as hundreds of fast food franchisees have, to the economic renaissance of many of the most blighted of the city's urban neighborhoods."
And the NY Times is right there with the News-cheering the court's support of DOH as, "...a victory for New York City’s campaign against obesity..." And, of course, no one will chide the good doctor Frieden for his fatuousness: "This is good news for everyone,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner. “Nearly all chain restaurants are now complying with the law. Consumers are learning more about the food before they order, and the market for healthier alternatives is growing...."
Except, not so much, if we look at the results of the study that DOH commissioned. But there's one thing that you can depend on when it comes to this kind of faith-based policy making; no amount of evidence will quell the quixotic quest to enforce proper behavioral standards on the unenlightened. In this world beyond reality, nothing succeeds like failure.
Fat Chance!
So, as we warned New Yorkers when the silly idea of calorie posting was first proposed, there was no evidence that the concept would have the slightest effect on the behavior of fast food customers-and we have been proven correct. As the NY Times reports today, the whole experiment has been a colossal waste of time and money: "A study of New York City’s pioneering law on posting calories in restaurant chains suggests that when it comes to deciding what to order, people’s stomachs are more powerful than their brains...It found that about half the customers noticed the calorie counts, which were prominently posted on menu boards. About 28 percent of those who noticed them said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier choices as a result. But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008."
As we pointed out over two years ago, there was no scientific research indicating that calorie posting would have any impact on food choices-and that kind of data is generally used before any government actions are taken that would place unfair burdens on businesses-at least when the FDA is involved, The NYC DOH, however, didn't feel that it needed to be guided by anything evidence-based-and went ahead, prompted by the ideological zeal of Mother Tom Frieden and the advocates at Center for Science in the Public Interest.
And they found out that it is always good to examine an issue before you place mandates on local businesses that are already struggling-along with their customers. we might add-in the down economy: "I think it does show us that labels are not enough,” Brian Elbel, an assistant professor at the New York University School of Medicine and the lead author of the study, said in an interview."
But, you have to give the NYC Department of Health some credit for honesty. When we first commented on the fact that the agency would do its own study of the cockamamie calorie posting rule, we worried that it was a mistake to let the health bureaucrats mark their own exam-but we worried for nothing-and the Times found anecdotally what the study demonstrated: "On Monday, customers at the McDonald’s on 125th Street near St. Nicholas Avenue provided anecdotal support for the findings. William Mitchell, from Rosedale, Queens, who was in Harlem for a job interview, ordered two cheeseburgers, about 600 calories total, for $2. When asked if he had checked the calories, he said: “It’s just cheap, so I buy it. I’m looking for the cheapest meal I can.”
All of this underscores just how dangerous ideologically driven health advocacy can be if it is allowed to proceed without any real legislative review-something that the city council enabled by letting DOH put the calorie posting into effect through regulation rather than with the implementation of a local law. The DOH hearings were a joke-and now that joke is on the department, and all of us who have been subjected to an experiment that wasn't evidence based,
This should be, but won't if Mike Bloomberg is re-elected-a cautionary tale. Trying to control the behavior of the folks through complicated and often expensive regulations is not the way to go. And if you're trying to help poorer New Yorkers, the most important thing that you can do is to help make their economic environment more productive so that their daily struggles aren't so difficult. People often eat to feel better-and do so in a less healthy manner when their circumstances are more challenging-something that the elitists and the billionaires can never quite grasp.
So the fast food restaurants have been put through hoops because of all this and, as we said at the time, it may be legal, but it still doesn't make any sense. The reactions of the customers should be educational for the so-called experts: "Tameika Coates, 28, who works in the gift shop at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, ordered a Big Mac, 540 calories, with a large fries, 500 calories, and a large Sprite, 310 calories. “I don’t really care too much,” Ms. Coates said. “I know I shouldn’t, ’cause I’m too big already,” she added with a laugh. April Matos, a 24-year-old family specialist, bought her 3-year-old son, Amari, a Happy Meal with chicken McNuggets, along with a Snack Wrap for herself. She said with a shrug that she had no interest in counting calories. “Life is short,” she said, adding that she used to be a light eater. “I started eating everything now I’m pregnant.”
But we appear to be wrong-and the experts remain impervious to the evidence: "Nutrition and public health experts said the findings showed how hard it was to change behavior, but they said it was not a reason to abandon calorie posting." Failure, it seems, is no reason to stop the meddling-not when you're doing such good work.
As we pointed out over two years ago, there was no scientific research indicating that calorie posting would have any impact on food choices-and that kind of data is generally used before any government actions are taken that would place unfair burdens on businesses-at least when the FDA is involved, The NYC DOH, however, didn't feel that it needed to be guided by anything evidence-based-and went ahead, prompted by the ideological zeal of Mother Tom Frieden and the advocates at Center for Science in the Public Interest.
And they found out that it is always good to examine an issue before you place mandates on local businesses that are already struggling-along with their customers. we might add-in the down economy: "I think it does show us that labels are not enough,” Brian Elbel, an assistant professor at the New York University School of Medicine and the lead author of the study, said in an interview."
But, you have to give the NYC Department of Health some credit for honesty. When we first commented on the fact that the agency would do its own study of the cockamamie calorie posting rule, we worried that it was a mistake to let the health bureaucrats mark their own exam-but we worried for nothing-and the Times found anecdotally what the study demonstrated: "On Monday, customers at the McDonald’s on 125th Street near St. Nicholas Avenue provided anecdotal support for the findings. William Mitchell, from Rosedale, Queens, who was in Harlem for a job interview, ordered two cheeseburgers, about 600 calories total, for $2. When asked if he had checked the calories, he said: “It’s just cheap, so I buy it. I’m looking for the cheapest meal I can.”
All of this underscores just how dangerous ideologically driven health advocacy can be if it is allowed to proceed without any real legislative review-something that the city council enabled by letting DOH put the calorie posting into effect through regulation rather than with the implementation of a local law. The DOH hearings were a joke-and now that joke is on the department, and all of us who have been subjected to an experiment that wasn't evidence based,
This should be, but won't if Mike Bloomberg is re-elected-a cautionary tale. Trying to control the behavior of the folks through complicated and often expensive regulations is not the way to go. And if you're trying to help poorer New Yorkers, the most important thing that you can do is to help make their economic environment more productive so that their daily struggles aren't so difficult. People often eat to feel better-and do so in a less healthy manner when their circumstances are more challenging-something that the elitists and the billionaires can never quite grasp.
So the fast food restaurants have been put through hoops because of all this and, as we said at the time, it may be legal, but it still doesn't make any sense. The reactions of the customers should be educational for the so-called experts: "Tameika Coates, 28, who works in the gift shop at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, ordered a Big Mac, 540 calories, with a large fries, 500 calories, and a large Sprite, 310 calories. “I don’t really care too much,” Ms. Coates said. “I know I shouldn’t, ’cause I’m too big already,” she added with a laugh. April Matos, a 24-year-old family specialist, bought her 3-year-old son, Amari, a Happy Meal with chicken McNuggets, along with a Snack Wrap for herself. She said with a shrug that she had no interest in counting calories. “Life is short,” she said, adding that she used to be a light eater. “I started eating everything now I’m pregnant.”
But we appear to be wrong-and the experts remain impervious to the evidence: "Nutrition and public health experts said the findings showed how hard it was to change behavior, but they said it was not a reason to abandon calorie posting." Failure, it seems, is no reason to stop the meddling-not when you're doing such good work.
Line Dance: Or Doing the Macarena?
In yesterday's Daily Politics Liz Benjamin uncovers more Bloomberg generosity-and further examples of how, at least for the mayor, progress only refers to his own outsized political ambition: "Running on the GOP ballot line turns out to be more expensive than has been previously reported - at least for Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent Mayor Bloomberg."
The initial $50,000 per county organization now turns out to be only ante: "But, a sharp-eyed reader recently brought to my attention the fact that the New York County GOP, which at one point seemed poised to cast the deciding vote for Bloomberg but ended up being the last to vote, had received another $50,000 contribution from the mayor on Sept. 22." With all likelihood that all the other good government organizations run by the GOP will be equally blessed.
Wither the Independence Party run by that philanthropist Fulani? "So, the next question is: Will there be more cash showing up somewhere down the road for the Independence Party? Bloomberg gave the Indys $250,000 when he ran on their line in 2005. The party's Jackie Salit told me in advance of this year's vote that she expected the mayor to be at least as generous this time around - if not more so."
So when we continue to hear that great Bloomberg rallying cry: "Progress, Not Politics," we should never forget the political orphans that Mike has brought in from the cold-clothing and feeding them in their hour of desperation. An act of sheer charity that has, in our view, no political implications whatsoever.
The initial $50,000 per county organization now turns out to be only ante: "But, a sharp-eyed reader recently brought to my attention the fact that the New York County GOP, which at one point seemed poised to cast the deciding vote for Bloomberg but ended up being the last to vote, had received another $50,000 contribution from the mayor on Sept. 22." With all likelihood that all the other good government organizations run by the GOP will be equally blessed.
Wither the Independence Party run by that philanthropist Fulani? "So, the next question is: Will there be more cash showing up somewhere down the road for the Independence Party? Bloomberg gave the Indys $250,000 when he ran on their line in 2005. The party's Jackie Salit told me in advance of this year's vote that she expected the mayor to be at least as generous this time around - if not more so."
So when we continue to hear that great Bloomberg rallying cry: "Progress, Not Politics," we should never forget the political orphans that Mike has brought in from the cold-clothing and feeding them in their hour of desperation. An act of sheer charity that has, in our view, no political implications whatsoever.
Willets Point of Contention
Eliot Brown over at the Observer has an interesting piece on Willets Point-one that raises the question of what kind of plan the city has for the Iron Triangle. The costs of development are apparently escalating way beyond what the city has budgeted-and that's even before an expensive, and drawn out legal battle: "There’s a number of things that aren’t told in that number, particularly what the city is spending in terms of relocation costs. There’s been $424 million allocated for both acquisitions and off-site infrastructure, an amount that would seem to be too small to do everything the administration has discussed.:
Way too small-and it's past time for the city to give its beleaguered tax payers an accurate accounting: "The city has said the off-site infrastructure will cost about $150 million, for one. And then there are land costs, which are substantial. Here’s the most recent closed deal: $11,993,825 for a lot that is 57,000 square feet (on the less valuable northern end of the site), according to the real estate tracking firm PropertyShark. That comes out to $210 a square foot, which, if extrapolated across the full 45 or so acres that are privately held on the site, would come out to $412 million."
And we haven't even gotten to remediation-although the city claims that this tab will be picked up by a developer. But if the project is done in stages, this possibility could be compromised: "Going forward, the Bloomberg administration has taken a phased approach to the project, attempting to develop the southwest corner first, likely to be followed by two other phases...Still, the prospect of a phased development directly contradicts statements made by the city in the run-up to Council approval: officials insisted that everything had to be developed at once, lest the pollution in existing properties seep into the rest of the development (the city even had an environmental consultant emphasize this point). This was a major justification for the use of eminent domain."
All of which raises so many questions that you really have to wonder what EDC is thinking with its plans to expedite an early eminent domain hearing in the next couple of months: "The next major step in the Willets Point plan is the eminent domain process, which the city expects to begin with hearings in the next few months. As that process readies, the business owners—the bulk of them automotive repair—are trying to apply new pressure on a number of legal and political fronts."
Now the owners, and members of Willets Point United, are wondering just what happened to the mayor's, "win-win" scenario-and the sweetheart deals for a few early deciders could set an expansive precedent: "The city’s Economic Development Corporation, which runs the Willets Point project, contends it would be misleading to apply these early deals' costs outward for the whole project, as the city paid more to find early sellers, and different sites have different values. “We’ve paid a premium for early acquisitions,” David Lombino, an EDC spokesman, said."
But EDC has established an off set price here-and if the numbers are added up they probably would exceed $700 million. Where does the city expect to come up with this cash from-at a time when it is evicting the businesses and putting thousands of workers on the unemployment line?
It seems to us that the city can ill afford to knock these businesses out in the absence of a cogent relocation plan. As we told the Observer: "Mr. Lipsky said that the efforts of the businesses—which organized a cohesive opposition after the project was approved by the Council—are aimed at raising questions about the broader viability of the project, the unrealistic budget, fighting the use of eminent domain, and raising concerns about the business relocation plan. "There is no strategic plan in place that would pay for this,” he said. “There is no relocation plan that will enable these jobs to be safe.”
And with record levels of unemployment-particularly in the low income and immigrant communities-what does it say about Mike Bloomberg that he would proceed with use of eminent domain at this early juncture? Can the disparities between the two New Yorks be made any greater?
The city needs to come clean-about its change of plans; about its use of illegal lobbying tactics; about its lack of any relocation plan; and about the kind of money it will need-money it simply doesn't have to spare-in order to do all that it plans for these picked-upon 60 acres. And it needs to do so before it starts a process that could easily become the road to nowhere.
Way too small-and it's past time for the city to give its beleaguered tax payers an accurate accounting: "The city has said the off-site infrastructure will cost about $150 million, for one. And then there are land costs, which are substantial. Here’s the most recent closed deal: $11,993,825 for a lot that is 57,000 square feet (on the less valuable northern end of the site), according to the real estate tracking firm PropertyShark. That comes out to $210 a square foot, which, if extrapolated across the full 45 or so acres that are privately held on the site, would come out to $412 million."
And we haven't even gotten to remediation-although the city claims that this tab will be picked up by a developer. But if the project is done in stages, this possibility could be compromised: "Going forward, the Bloomberg administration has taken a phased approach to the project, attempting to develop the southwest corner first, likely to be followed by two other phases...Still, the prospect of a phased development directly contradicts statements made by the city in the run-up to Council approval: officials insisted that everything had to be developed at once, lest the pollution in existing properties seep into the rest of the development (the city even had an environmental consultant emphasize this point). This was a major justification for the use of eminent domain."
All of which raises so many questions that you really have to wonder what EDC is thinking with its plans to expedite an early eminent domain hearing in the next couple of months: "The next major step in the Willets Point plan is the eminent domain process, which the city expects to begin with hearings in the next few months. As that process readies, the business owners—the bulk of them automotive repair—are trying to apply new pressure on a number of legal and political fronts."
Now the owners, and members of Willets Point United, are wondering just what happened to the mayor's, "win-win" scenario-and the sweetheart deals for a few early deciders could set an expansive precedent: "The city’s Economic Development Corporation, which runs the Willets Point project, contends it would be misleading to apply these early deals' costs outward for the whole project, as the city paid more to find early sellers, and different sites have different values. “We’ve paid a premium for early acquisitions,” David Lombino, an EDC spokesman, said."
But EDC has established an off set price here-and if the numbers are added up they probably would exceed $700 million. Where does the city expect to come up with this cash from-at a time when it is evicting the businesses and putting thousands of workers on the unemployment line?
It seems to us that the city can ill afford to knock these businesses out in the absence of a cogent relocation plan. As we told the Observer: "Mr. Lipsky said that the efforts of the businesses—which organized a cohesive opposition after the project was approved by the Council—are aimed at raising questions about the broader viability of the project, the unrealistic budget, fighting the use of eminent domain, and raising concerns about the business relocation plan. "There is no strategic plan in place that would pay for this,” he said. “There is no relocation plan that will enable these jobs to be safe.”
And with record levels of unemployment-particularly in the low income and immigrant communities-what does it say about Mike Bloomberg that he would proceed with use of eminent domain at this early juncture? Can the disparities between the two New Yorks be made any greater?
The city needs to come clean-about its change of plans; about its use of illegal lobbying tactics; about its lack of any relocation plan; and about the kind of money it will need-money it simply doesn't have to spare-in order to do all that it plans for these picked-upon 60 acres. And it needs to do so before it starts a process that could easily become the road to nowhere.
Monday, October 05, 2009
Taking Leave
Intro 1059 in the City Council would mandate sick leave for even the city's smallest businesses. As City Room has reported: "New York City could soon join San Francisco and Washington in requiring paid sick days for employees — a move that could affect as many as one million workers in the city. On Thursday, the City Council introduced legislation mandating that large employers give workers the ability to earn least nine paid sick days to workers per year, while small businesses who have fewer than 10 employees would earn five sick days."
That was in August, but now the measure has 38 sponsors and is moving forward-but has anyone done a fiscal impact on how the law would affect local small business? One letter writer to the Staten Island Advance put it this way: "I read in the Aug. 31 Advance that Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) introduced a bill requiring employers to give all their employees paid sick days...When all the business-owners go out of business because of these clowns, and the workers are on unemployment, who then will pay these oppressive taxes?"
He has a point-as do the sponsors who are concerned about the health of NYC residents in the midst of a swine flu outbreak. Jim Dwyer opines on this subject in yesterday's NY Times: "To questions of cost and coverage, add one more detail to the national debate about health care: time. In New York, time may be more important than cost. The city’s empire of public hospitals finds ways to serve hundreds of thousands of people who don’t have enough money or lack private insurance. But people who have no health insurance through their jobs are not likely to have paid sick days, either. By some estimates, 765,000 workers in the city do not get paid when they stay home sick."
But some of the anecdotes-as with the president's use of some compelling narratives in his own quest for health care reform-don't past the smell test: "Whatever its economic and social merits, the bill, if it becomes law, would bring the city into the workplace equivalent of the domestic dispute: intimate, furious, with the truth tied up in tangles." And Dwyer goes on to relate the story of one sick leave-taking worker-with two distinct and contradictory tales of what actual had happened.
Dwyer does point out, that there are many small businesses that do provide for sick days for their workers, because it makes good sense to keep good employees that you depend on: "There are plenty of employers who do give their employees time off when they are sick, because it’s good for business. “You get more committed people if you stick with them when they have their crisis,” said Freddy Castiblanco, owner of the Terraza 7 Train Cafe in Elmhurst, Queens, just down the block from the 82nd Street stop of the No. 7 train."
Still, the road to hell, well, you know the rest. If this mandate passes, will it put an unfair burden on struggling businesses-leading to more failures and less jobs? Our friend Albor Ruiz believes that the benefits outweigh whatever the costs might be-and perhaps he's right. But what will the costs end up being? This is vital to know before the legislation is enacted, and the city council must take a long look before it leaps here.
That was in August, but now the measure has 38 sponsors and is moving forward-but has anyone done a fiscal impact on how the law would affect local small business? One letter writer to the Staten Island Advance put it this way: "I read in the Aug. 31 Advance that Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) introduced a bill requiring employers to give all their employees paid sick days...When all the business-owners go out of business because of these clowns, and the workers are on unemployment, who then will pay these oppressive taxes?"
He has a point-as do the sponsors who are concerned about the health of NYC residents in the midst of a swine flu outbreak. Jim Dwyer opines on this subject in yesterday's NY Times: "To questions of cost and coverage, add one more detail to the national debate about health care: time. In New York, time may be more important than cost. The city’s empire of public hospitals finds ways to serve hundreds of thousands of people who don’t have enough money or lack private insurance. But people who have no health insurance through their jobs are not likely to have paid sick days, either. By some estimates, 765,000 workers in the city do not get paid when they stay home sick."
But some of the anecdotes-as with the president's use of some compelling narratives in his own quest for health care reform-don't past the smell test: "Whatever its economic and social merits, the bill, if it becomes law, would bring the city into the workplace equivalent of the domestic dispute: intimate, furious, with the truth tied up in tangles." And Dwyer goes on to relate the story of one sick leave-taking worker-with two distinct and contradictory tales of what actual had happened.
Dwyer does point out, that there are many small businesses that do provide for sick days for their workers, because it makes good sense to keep good employees that you depend on: "There are plenty of employers who do give their employees time off when they are sick, because it’s good for business. “You get more committed people if you stick with them when they have their crisis,” said Freddy Castiblanco, owner of the Terraza 7 Train Cafe in Elmhurst, Queens, just down the block from the 82nd Street stop of the No. 7 train."
Still, the road to hell, well, you know the rest. If this mandate passes, will it put an unfair burden on struggling businesses-leading to more failures and less jobs? Our friend Albor Ruiz believes that the benefits outweigh whatever the costs might be-and perhaps he's right. But what will the costs end up being? This is vital to know before the legislation is enacted, and the city council must take a long look before it leaps here.
Not Ading Up
As we have been saying, the Bloomberg ad blitz on education is in bad need of a fact check-as the NY Daily News reported yesterday, the attacks on Bill Thompson's presidency of the old BOE is grossly misleading: "Thompson was one vote out of seven; you can't say he was in control of the system," said Manhattan Institute scholar Sol Stern. "It was dysfunctional." Thompson was president of the board from 1996 through 2001, mostly under the tenure of popular Chancellor Rudy Crew and formidable Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Mayoral control of the schools did not become law until 2002, when Albany passed it during Bloomberg's first term, making comparison tricky. "Even when people had the best interests at heart, nothing went anywhere," said Claire Shulman, Queens borough president from 1986 to 2002, who appointed one of the seven board members and is supporting Mayor Bloomberg."
But this classic case of misdirection avoids the controversy of the benchmarks that the mayor is using to "measure" his own success-and fudges some of the testing numbers that were acheived under the older system as well: "Bloomberg says reading scores went down when Thompson led the board, with no change in the math tests. He also accuses Thompson of doing "nothing to end social promotion." In fact, fourth-grade reading scores went up by 11 percentage points between 1999 and 2001 and went down by two percentage points for eighth-graders, the Department of Education says. During the same period, the DOE says, math scores went up by two percentage points for fourth-graders and stayed flat for eighth-graders. Under Thompson's term, the board ended principal tenure, as well as local school boards' power to hire them. The board also ordered summer school for failing students, who were held back if they didn't comply. It was the city's first attempt to end social promotion."
But the real missing link in this misuse of advertising millions is the failure to talk about educational spending-and the gap between what was spent when Thompson was at the BOE, and what the mayor is laying out today: "The schools operating budget has jumped to $18.4 billion this year from $7.9 billion in 1996. It was $8.9 billion in fiscal year 1998. "The untold story of this administration is success through funding," said Brooklyn College education Prof. David Bloomfield. "The mayor doesn't want to say that because it would make him sound promiscuous in his spending. Thompson doesn't want to say it because it makes Bloomberg look good."
No, professor, it is success that is built on a sand castle foundation; one that needs to be evaluated in a cost/benefit analysis in order to determine whether we are really getting our money's worth. Given what Diane Ravitch has argued about testing, the mayor's fiscal promiscuity might well be seen as educational and fiscal child abuse.
But all of this is, of course, moot because Bloomberg will continue to spend and say whatever he damn well pleases-with press hectoring the equivalent of whizzing in the ocean. This is what the abuse of the campaign finance system amounts to when an open wallet trumps any chance of an open election.
But this classic case of misdirection avoids the controversy of the benchmarks that the mayor is using to "measure" his own success-and fudges some of the testing numbers that were acheived under the older system as well: "Bloomberg says reading scores went down when Thompson led the board, with no change in the math tests. He also accuses Thompson of doing "nothing to end social promotion." In fact, fourth-grade reading scores went up by 11 percentage points between 1999 and 2001 and went down by two percentage points for eighth-graders, the Department of Education says. During the same period, the DOE says, math scores went up by two percentage points for fourth-graders and stayed flat for eighth-graders. Under Thompson's term, the board ended principal tenure, as well as local school boards' power to hire them. The board also ordered summer school for failing students, who were held back if they didn't comply. It was the city's first attempt to end social promotion."
But the real missing link in this misuse of advertising millions is the failure to talk about educational spending-and the gap between what was spent when Thompson was at the BOE, and what the mayor is laying out today: "The schools operating budget has jumped to $18.4 billion this year from $7.9 billion in 1996. It was $8.9 billion in fiscal year 1998. "The untold story of this administration is success through funding," said Brooklyn College education Prof. David Bloomfield. "The mayor doesn't want to say that because it would make him sound promiscuous in his spending. Thompson doesn't want to say it because it makes Bloomberg look good."
No, professor, it is success that is built on a sand castle foundation; one that needs to be evaluated in a cost/benefit analysis in order to determine whether we are really getting our money's worth. Given what Diane Ravitch has argued about testing, the mayor's fiscal promiscuity might well be seen as educational and fiscal child abuse.
But all of this is, of course, moot because Bloomberg will continue to spend and say whatever he damn well pleases-with press hectoring the equivalent of whizzing in the ocean. This is what the abuse of the campaign finance system amounts to when an open wallet trumps any chance of an open election.
Terminal Limits
Well, now at least we no know why crime in the streets is lower-it has migrated over to the city's Buildings Department. As the NY Post opines Saturday: "Clearly, the agency needs urgent attention: Six former city buildings inspectors, including three associates of the Lucchese crime family, were nabbed Thursday on bribery charges, following a two-year probe by the Manhattan DA. Sure, organized crime -- or bribery -- in the construction biz isn't exactly new. But typically, the inspectors themselves aren't bona fide mobsters, right?"
But the mayor's certainly got his priorities straight, right? In the middle of an election cycle that finds him overwhelming the airwaves with wave after wave of airbrushed pictorials of what is administration has done, or will do, for the city, this is no time for inconvenient truths: huge upcoming budget deficits that will have to be addressed by hard choices; record levels of unemployment that are a result of private sector stagnation; street peddler chaos on the streets resulting from little or no oversight-of this we hear not a peep.
Instead, we learn the following: "Mayor Bloomberg this week said that getting Albany to pass gay marriage is the city's "No. 1 priority." This, we are to assume, represents progress and not politics-and isn't simply an example of what the normal pol does when he is trying to change the subject during hard times-pander to a constituency on an issue that affects just a small sector of the city's floundering electorate'
But it is remarkable, isn't it, that Bloomberg has spent over $65 million and hasn't said boo about the looming crisis-you know the one that was trumped up to be the rationale for overturning the public's will? And is it little wonder that the NY Times finds that folks remain upset with his power grab-even when they support his efforts over the past eight years? If in fact the economic crisis is a compelling reason for giving Blomberg a third term, then don't we deserve an explanation of just how he will confront these not insignificant challenges?
Instead we get avoidance, and a refusal to honestly address the issue: "Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s re-election campaign can generate reams of statistics on how quickly the city repaired potholes in each neighborhood. It can produce memos on climate change and public health, and even translate fliers into Creole. Just don’t ask about term limits."
What the electorate deserves is a simple commercial that outlines the steps that the mayor will take, if elected, to ameliorate the budget deficit, raise revenues, and reduce the ongoing municipal pension time bomb. Can NYC afford to continue to grow the size of its government while the private sector shrinks and tax revenues plummet? Someone who is not beholden to the special interests would, one assumes, be free to speak the truth about the kind of pain that lies ahead.
Normal politicians, however, typically avoid inconvenient truths in favor of bloviating and misdirection. Which category does Mike Bloomberg fall into as he runs for a third term? Heck, he doesn't even want to talk plainly about the immaculate deception of term limits removal: "Rosemary DeStefano found that out on her doorstep in the Bronx the other day when a Bloomberg volunteer showed up, asking for her vote. When she complained about how the mayor had the law changed to stay in office, the volunteer recited details of his economic plan. When she persisted, he extolled Mr. Bloomberg’s promise to create 400,000 jobs.“They missed the whole point,” she said."
The re-election strategy here is fundamentally-and thoroughly-dishonest; and seeks to flood the airwaves with subject changing paeans to proposed policies that will, in all likelihood, never come close to fruition. This is literally breathtaking in its disingenuousness-and the people are chaffing at the campaign's failure to level with them on term limits: "The Bloomberg campaign can’t convince voters to not be upset about this. It won’t work,” said John H. Mollenkopf, a professor of political science at City University who has informally advised the Bloomberg campaign. “If you ask New Yorkers what they did not like over the last eight years,” he added, “term limits is the major negative.”
A, "Why I changed the term limits law," message to voters is desperately needed-and the avoidance of the topic-like is so often the case with a dying relative-creates the kind of discomfort that will pervert the mayor's, hopefully, last term; precisely because it is built on falsehood: "The mayor’s political advisers privately acknowledge the public anger, but since they cannot reverse Mr. Bloomberg’s actions, they are looking for ways to deflect attention from it. They have created a new round of commercials that play up Mr. Bloomberg’s middle-class roots, to soften his image as an imperious billionaire who defied the will of the voters."
Everything, that is, but the unvarnished truth-and a clear explication of the rationale for doing what Bloomberg did. Adding insult to injury here is the use of millions to attack the hapless Thompson: "They are leveling frequent attacks at Mr. Thompson’s record, as president of the Board of Education and comptroller, to send the message that, even if voters are still resentful about term limits, they would be foolhardy to choose an untested leader."
All this is by design: "If voters insist on talking about term limits, volunteers are instructed to tell them the mayor “is not guaranteed” a third term and has given them “more choice” by changing the rules." This ploy is not only besides the point, it is nonsense-and when Thompson brings it up, the Bloombergistas attack him, rather than talk candidly about why the mayor did what he did: "Bill Thompson wants to make this election about one issue,” said the mayor’s campaign manager, Bradley Tusk. “And given his track record that’s understandable. But the performance of the mayor has an enormous impact on people’s lives, and because of that, voters choose their mayor based on very real tangible issues.”
So, in our view, should the mayor-as is likely-achieve his third term coronation, it will be an achievement that is built on a dishonest foundation, one that thoroughly contradicts his-false in our opinion-image as an honest leader, free from the tawdry aspects of politics and, therefore willing to tell New Yorkers what they may not want to hear. It will be an inauspicious start to a final foray that does not bode well for either NYC or the legacy of Michael Bloomberg.
But the mayor's certainly got his priorities straight, right? In the middle of an election cycle that finds him overwhelming the airwaves with wave after wave of airbrushed pictorials of what is administration has done, or will do, for the city, this is no time for inconvenient truths: huge upcoming budget deficits that will have to be addressed by hard choices; record levels of unemployment that are a result of private sector stagnation; street peddler chaos on the streets resulting from little or no oversight-of this we hear not a peep.
Instead, we learn the following: "Mayor Bloomberg this week said that getting Albany to pass gay marriage is the city's "No. 1 priority." This, we are to assume, represents progress and not politics-and isn't simply an example of what the normal pol does when he is trying to change the subject during hard times-pander to a constituency on an issue that affects just a small sector of the city's floundering electorate'
But it is remarkable, isn't it, that Bloomberg has spent over $65 million and hasn't said boo about the looming crisis-you know the one that was trumped up to be the rationale for overturning the public's will? And is it little wonder that the NY Times finds that folks remain upset with his power grab-even when they support his efforts over the past eight years? If in fact the economic crisis is a compelling reason for giving Blomberg a third term, then don't we deserve an explanation of just how he will confront these not insignificant challenges?
Instead we get avoidance, and a refusal to honestly address the issue: "Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s re-election campaign can generate reams of statistics on how quickly the city repaired potholes in each neighborhood. It can produce memos on climate change and public health, and even translate fliers into Creole. Just don’t ask about term limits."
What the electorate deserves is a simple commercial that outlines the steps that the mayor will take, if elected, to ameliorate the budget deficit, raise revenues, and reduce the ongoing municipal pension time bomb. Can NYC afford to continue to grow the size of its government while the private sector shrinks and tax revenues plummet? Someone who is not beholden to the special interests would, one assumes, be free to speak the truth about the kind of pain that lies ahead.
Normal politicians, however, typically avoid inconvenient truths in favor of bloviating and misdirection. Which category does Mike Bloomberg fall into as he runs for a third term? Heck, he doesn't even want to talk plainly about the immaculate deception of term limits removal: "Rosemary DeStefano found that out on her doorstep in the Bronx the other day when a Bloomberg volunteer showed up, asking for her vote. When she complained about how the mayor had the law changed to stay in office, the volunteer recited details of his economic plan. When she persisted, he extolled Mr. Bloomberg’s promise to create 400,000 jobs.“They missed the whole point,” she said."
The re-election strategy here is fundamentally-and thoroughly-dishonest; and seeks to flood the airwaves with subject changing paeans to proposed policies that will, in all likelihood, never come close to fruition. This is literally breathtaking in its disingenuousness-and the people are chaffing at the campaign's failure to level with them on term limits: "The Bloomberg campaign can’t convince voters to not be upset about this. It won’t work,” said John H. Mollenkopf, a professor of political science at City University who has informally advised the Bloomberg campaign. “If you ask New Yorkers what they did not like over the last eight years,” he added, “term limits is the major negative.”
A, "Why I changed the term limits law," message to voters is desperately needed-and the avoidance of the topic-like is so often the case with a dying relative-creates the kind of discomfort that will pervert the mayor's, hopefully, last term; precisely because it is built on falsehood: "The mayor’s political advisers privately acknowledge the public anger, but since they cannot reverse Mr. Bloomberg’s actions, they are looking for ways to deflect attention from it. They have created a new round of commercials that play up Mr. Bloomberg’s middle-class roots, to soften his image as an imperious billionaire who defied the will of the voters."
Everything, that is, but the unvarnished truth-and a clear explication of the rationale for doing what Bloomberg did. Adding insult to injury here is the use of millions to attack the hapless Thompson: "They are leveling frequent attacks at Mr. Thompson’s record, as president of the Board of Education and comptroller, to send the message that, even if voters are still resentful about term limits, they would be foolhardy to choose an untested leader."
All this is by design: "If voters insist on talking about term limits, volunteers are instructed to tell them the mayor “is not guaranteed” a third term and has given them “more choice” by changing the rules." This ploy is not only besides the point, it is nonsense-and when Thompson brings it up, the Bloombergistas attack him, rather than talk candidly about why the mayor did what he did: "Bill Thompson wants to make this election about one issue,” said the mayor’s campaign manager, Bradley Tusk. “And given his track record that’s understandable. But the performance of the mayor has an enormous impact on people’s lives, and because of that, voters choose their mayor based on very real tangible issues.”
So, in our view, should the mayor-as is likely-achieve his third term coronation, it will be an achievement that is built on a dishonest foundation, one that thoroughly contradicts his-false in our opinion-image as an honest leader, free from the tawdry aspects of politics and, therefore willing to tell New Yorkers what they may not want to hear. It will be an inauspicious start to a final foray that does not bode well for either NYC or the legacy of Michael Bloomberg.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Spendthrift
As City Room is reporting, Mike Bloomberg has already spent $65 million on his campaign to defeat the formidable Bill Thompson. Which leaves only one unanswered question: How much would he spend if he were running unopposed?
One commenter on the web site has a cogent response: "This level of campaign spending certainly seems like overkill. Thompson is unlikely to raise more than a few million bucks. So why does Bloomberg think he needs to spend such a massive amount? If he wants to spread his money around why not donate a sum sufficient to the Red Cross or similar to enable it to provide free Swine Flu immunizations for all New Yorkers? It would “buy” him enormous good will and publicity and actually do a social good by positively impacting public health in the City."
Now, what will the NY Times do with this perversion of its signature campaign finance issue? Stand on principal no doubt.
One commenter on the web site has a cogent response: "This level of campaign spending certainly seems like overkill. Thompson is unlikely to raise more than a few million bucks. So why does Bloomberg think he needs to spend such a massive amount? If he wants to spread his money around why not donate a sum sufficient to the Red Cross or similar to enable it to provide free Swine Flu immunizations for all New Yorkers? It would “buy” him enormous good will and publicity and actually do a social good by positively impacting public health in the City."
Now, what will the NY Times do with this perversion of its signature campaign finance issue? Stand on principal no doubt.
A Stern Warning
Sol Stern has another of his incisive education pieces in City Journal-and points out the glaring contradictions in Mike Bloomberg's attack on Bill Thompson's tenure as president of the old Board of Ed: "In 2002, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg convinced the state legislature to give him control of the city’s schools. He argued that the old Board of Education had become “dysfunctional” and thus incapable of producing significant academic improvement...That meant, Bloomberg maintained, that “no one was in charge” and no one could be held accountable for the school system’s dismal performance."
But that was then, and this is now-with Bloomberg piling on the hapless Thompson with millions of dollars of misdirection: "But Bloomberg has now performed a dizzying about-face in his assessment of the old governance arrangement (and thus implicitly of his rationale for mayoral control of the schools.) According to a Bloomberg campaign ad now saturating the media, someone actually was in charge at the old Board of Ed and should be held accountable for the schools’ failure: Bloomberg’s opponent in the upcoming mayoral election, City Comptroller Bill Thompson."
As Stern reminds us: "The truth is, as Bloomberg once affirmed, that Thompson had only one vote out of seven, and the position of board president was largely ceremonial." But leveling this false accusation is only adding insult to injury as far as being honest with the electorate is concerned; but Thompson seems incapable of belling the cat here: "In his much anticipated education speech of September 22, Thompson couldn’t even coherently lay out the accumulating evidence that the Bloomberg administration’s claims of success are based on inflated state test scores."
And, as Stern points out, the one serious institutional critic that could be providing New Yorkers with some real truthful information-the UFT-has been stifled from doing so with an expensive muzzle: "But the advent of mayoral control, coupled with Bloomberg’s success in buying off potential opposition, has made the Democrats’ traditional union-based political strategy inoperable. In the early days of mayoral control, the UFT was one of the mayor’s only institutional critics on education. Union president Randi Weingarten regularly blasted Schools Chancellor Joel Klein for trying to dictate what teachers should be doing in the classroom. Of late, however, the billionaire mayor has domesticated and co-opted the union, partly through taxpayer funds, which have so far produced 43 percent teacher salary increases and the promise of more to come. The salary hikes have swelled the union’s coffers, since member dues go up in proportion to any pay increases."
And-voilà!-attack dog meet lap dog: "Confrontation has changed to cooperation, and Weingarten has been at the mayor’s side offering support during his periodic press conferences announcing spectacular test score improvements, which the union knows are questionable. Right now the UFT takes in about $140 million per year; that will go up by $10 million more if, as is rumored, teachers get another 8 percent pay increase in the new contract starting October 31st. Top union operatives will thus have seen a 50 percent increase in their own salaries since the advent of mayoral control."
And the public is paying the price, since the UFT's cooptation rendered the legislative oversight process on mayoral control a nullity; and the only thing that's lacking now is a single powerful voice capable of actually speaking truth to power. With the mayor's money and political power acting as a deterrent, New York is caught in the middle of a truth telling vacuum-and the emperor's nakedness on the issue of real educational achievement is left unremarked.
But that was then, and this is now-with Bloomberg piling on the hapless Thompson with millions of dollars of misdirection: "But Bloomberg has now performed a dizzying about-face in his assessment of the old governance arrangement (and thus implicitly of his rationale for mayoral control of the schools.) According to a Bloomberg campaign ad now saturating the media, someone actually was in charge at the old Board of Ed and should be held accountable for the schools’ failure: Bloomberg’s opponent in the upcoming mayoral election, City Comptroller Bill Thompson."
As Stern reminds us: "The truth is, as Bloomberg once affirmed, that Thompson had only one vote out of seven, and the position of board president was largely ceremonial." But leveling this false accusation is only adding insult to injury as far as being honest with the electorate is concerned; but Thompson seems incapable of belling the cat here: "In his much anticipated education speech of September 22, Thompson couldn’t even coherently lay out the accumulating evidence that the Bloomberg administration’s claims of success are based on inflated state test scores."
And, as Stern points out, the one serious institutional critic that could be providing New Yorkers with some real truthful information-the UFT-has been stifled from doing so with an expensive muzzle: "But the advent of mayoral control, coupled with Bloomberg’s success in buying off potential opposition, has made the Democrats’ traditional union-based political strategy inoperable. In the early days of mayoral control, the UFT was one of the mayor’s only institutional critics on education. Union president Randi Weingarten regularly blasted Schools Chancellor Joel Klein for trying to dictate what teachers should be doing in the classroom. Of late, however, the billionaire mayor has domesticated and co-opted the union, partly through taxpayer funds, which have so far produced 43 percent teacher salary increases and the promise of more to come. The salary hikes have swelled the union’s coffers, since member dues go up in proportion to any pay increases."
And-voilà!-attack dog meet lap dog: "Confrontation has changed to cooperation, and Weingarten has been at the mayor’s side offering support during his periodic press conferences announcing spectacular test score improvements, which the union knows are questionable. Right now the UFT takes in about $140 million per year; that will go up by $10 million more if, as is rumored, teachers get another 8 percent pay increase in the new contract starting October 31st. Top union operatives will thus have seen a 50 percent increase in their own salaries since the advent of mayoral control."
And the public is paying the price, since the UFT's cooptation rendered the legislative oversight process on mayoral control a nullity; and the only thing that's lacking now is a single powerful voice capable of actually speaking truth to power. With the mayor's money and political power acting as a deterrent, New York is caught in the middle of a truth telling vacuum-and the emperor's nakedness on the issue of real educational achievement is left unremarked.
A Master Politician
There is really no question in our mind that Mike Bloomberg is a master politician-and the reason lies with his ability to convince enough folks that his actions and policy decisions owe little or nothing to the behind the scenes political machinations that determines these manifest moves. Of course, it helps when you have millions of your own money to spend to encourage others to parade around pantomiming your party line as you remain aloof and seemingly uninvolved with the play.
The Village Voice's Tom Robbins underscores this theme with his discussion of Bloomberg's term limit scheme-and the subsequent quest for the third title: "As it heads into the home stretch, the Bloomberg campaign has adopted a new slogan to sum things up and help focus voters on the big picture. The new motto was rolled out at the big Bloomberg rally held primary night on a West Side pier, a gala celebration aimed at snatching attention away from Democrats and on to Mayor Mike. The slogan was emblazoned on Bloomberg's podium, and tattooed over and over on a TV backdrop. Which made it hard to miss. It read: "Progress. Not Politics." The first word is a debate worth having. The next two are simply lies."
And it is only in New York, where one candidate has unlimited funds, and the other's tapped out, that any one could seriously advance the idea that Mike Bloomberg was somehow above the nastiness of normal politics. And his quest for ballot lines dramatizes the fraud: "Not politics? Whatever you think of Bill Thompson's erratic campaign, at least he was being nominated that very night by his own party in an open primary. Mike Bloomberg? His GOP endorsement came courtesy of a classic, old-school political deal in which five Republican county leaders sat down in a room and agreed to give the mayor their ballot line. He cut the same insiders' pact with the cultish local chapter of the Independence Party. The party's nominating convention this spring featured all the democracy of a Chinese Politburo meeting, including a ruling clique that fawned over the visiting mayor. A few weeks later, Bloomberg sealed the deal with a $250,000 down-payment to the party's coffers, with presumably a great deal more to come."
If we had a real competitive race here, the buying of the ballot lines-along with the mayor's disbursement of his own money to aggrandize his political self interest-would have been emblazoned on countless screaming ads decrying the corruption of the political process by a wealthy candidate. And this would have been a follow up to the attacks on the term limits power grab itself. But that, of course, didn't happen, and the reason lies with the lassitude of the Thompson campaign, as well as its lack of resources.
But Robbins highlights-courtesy of Joyce Purnick's book that took a beating from us last month, but may deserve a second look-just how politically clever the term limits maneuver really was; and in the process reveals how Bloomberg skillfully employs his great wealth to his own advantage: "But there's new light shed on the subject by Joyce Purnick, the veteran New York Times editor and reporter whose insightful political biography, Mike Bloomberg: Money, Power, Politics, is out this month...It was clear he had given a third term some thought," she writes. The mayor told her that "the mechanics" of such a bid were "difficult" because he would need the backing of the city's daily papers. Bloomberg told her that he knew he could count on Post publisher Rupert Murdoch and the Daily News' Mort Zuckerman. But he was in the midst of saying he was "uncertain about Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr." when a press aide cut him off, insisting that the rest of the conversation had to be off the record. That spring, Bloomberg commissioned a poll on public attitudes about changing term limits. Purnick confirms that it showed that voters were likely to vote thumbs down on any move to change term limits in a new referendum."
So what did Mike do? Did he give up the quest realizing that it was not what the citizens wanted, or would publicly back? No, this pol did what any normal elected official concerned purely with self interest would do-he looked for an end run to achieve his objective-one that would avoid the counter productive aspects of a democratic referendum: "Bloomberg hesitated, Purnick writes, concerned in part about the response of fellow billionaire Ronald Lauder ("Complication No. 1," she dubs him), who spent millions to win the original term limits referendum and who successfully beat back a later challenge to the law. That hesitation, she says, helped the mayor avoid pressure to put term limits on the ballot that fall, when it was even more likely to be defeated by the pro-Obama voters expected to swamp the polls. She said that one close friend of the mayor who was also urging him to run for a third term told her that the mayor "deliberately ran out the clock because of the poll in June." The friend told her that Bloomberg's "political advisers were telling him he wouldn't win a referendum" overturning the term limits law."
And, in the absence of any public clamor to overturn the law, who was urging Mike on in his quest? "In July, Bloomberg attended the annual tycoons' retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho. There, Purnick writes, Bloomberg mingled with Murdoch and other pro–third term chums, including investment mogul Henry Kravis and Time Warner's Richard Parsons. The mayor was apparently treated to a full-court press from those moguls, who were in turn consulting with real estate big Jerry Speyer and investment strategist Steven Rattner, both of whom were aggressively pushing a third term."
A masterful hijacking of the democratic process by someone with real political skills-and the fortune to enhance them; aided in this by the fiscal crisis that was exploited even though it postdated Bloomberg's decision to try to grab the third term: "It was while that clock was running down that the financial collapse struck, giving the mayor what Purnick dubs "a plausible reason" to push for a fast Council vote rather than a public referendum."
Then there's the tawdry deal with Ron Lauder, a naif who was duped into removing his objections to the power grab with an illegal offer of a job: "But after what Purnick says was heavy lobbying by the pro-Bloomberg business crowd, Lauder bowed to a one-time change in the law in exchange for a small concession: that the mayor agree to name him to a new Charter Review commission panel in 2010—one that would recommend reinstituting term limits."
Quid pro quo, no? No: "Lauder clearly wasn't getting much in return: The commission doesn't even exist, and if it is convened, he'll be just one member. But it was also a glaring example of the city's top executive using the perks of office to win political advantage. That is something officials are explicitly barred from doing by the City Charter. As good-government advocates Gene Russianoff of NYPIRG and Susan Lerner of Common Cause put it in a letter a few days later to the city's Conflicts of Interest Board, "We believe that Mayor Bloomberg has used his position in a prohibited manner to obtain personal advantage in a quid pro quo deal with Ronald Lauder."
And then the Board acted: "Whatever became of that complaint? "Nothing," said Russianoff last week. "We never heard a word from the board." That's the policy, a board official said when asked about the matter. When the board doesn't find any violation, "the public never finds out," he said. Which is just how the mayor wants to keep it until after November."
So we have a political coup of the most sophisticated kind-one conceived and concocted by the city's richest man and most Machiavellian practitioner of the political arts. Mike didn't rise to the top of a multi-billion financial empire observing Marquis of Queensbury rules-and he has used these skills to good advantage in his mayoral tenure. But please, don't say that somehow he is above, or outside of the political process-or of the special interests that, at least in the case of his third term, have supported him proudly as their true native son.
The Village Voice's Tom Robbins underscores this theme with his discussion of Bloomberg's term limit scheme-and the subsequent quest for the third title: "As it heads into the home stretch, the Bloomberg campaign has adopted a new slogan to sum things up and help focus voters on the big picture. The new motto was rolled out at the big Bloomberg rally held primary night on a West Side pier, a gala celebration aimed at snatching attention away from Democrats and on to Mayor Mike. The slogan was emblazoned on Bloomberg's podium, and tattooed over and over on a TV backdrop. Which made it hard to miss. It read: "Progress. Not Politics." The first word is a debate worth having. The next two are simply lies."
And it is only in New York, where one candidate has unlimited funds, and the other's tapped out, that any one could seriously advance the idea that Mike Bloomberg was somehow above the nastiness of normal politics. And his quest for ballot lines dramatizes the fraud: "Not politics? Whatever you think of Bill Thompson's erratic campaign, at least he was being nominated that very night by his own party in an open primary. Mike Bloomberg? His GOP endorsement came courtesy of a classic, old-school political deal in which five Republican county leaders sat down in a room and agreed to give the mayor their ballot line. He cut the same insiders' pact with the cultish local chapter of the Independence Party. The party's nominating convention this spring featured all the democracy of a Chinese Politburo meeting, including a ruling clique that fawned over the visiting mayor. A few weeks later, Bloomberg sealed the deal with a $250,000 down-payment to the party's coffers, with presumably a great deal more to come."
If we had a real competitive race here, the buying of the ballot lines-along with the mayor's disbursement of his own money to aggrandize his political self interest-would have been emblazoned on countless screaming ads decrying the corruption of the political process by a wealthy candidate. And this would have been a follow up to the attacks on the term limits power grab itself. But that, of course, didn't happen, and the reason lies with the lassitude of the Thompson campaign, as well as its lack of resources.
But Robbins highlights-courtesy of Joyce Purnick's book that took a beating from us last month, but may deserve a second look-just how politically clever the term limits maneuver really was; and in the process reveals how Bloomberg skillfully employs his great wealth to his own advantage: "But there's new light shed on the subject by Joyce Purnick, the veteran New York Times editor and reporter whose insightful political biography, Mike Bloomberg: Money, Power, Politics, is out this month...It was clear he had given a third term some thought," she writes. The mayor told her that "the mechanics" of such a bid were "difficult" because he would need the backing of the city's daily papers. Bloomberg told her that he knew he could count on Post publisher Rupert Murdoch and the Daily News' Mort Zuckerman. But he was in the midst of saying he was "uncertain about Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr." when a press aide cut him off, insisting that the rest of the conversation had to be off the record. That spring, Bloomberg commissioned a poll on public attitudes about changing term limits. Purnick confirms that it showed that voters were likely to vote thumbs down on any move to change term limits in a new referendum."
So what did Mike do? Did he give up the quest realizing that it was not what the citizens wanted, or would publicly back? No, this pol did what any normal elected official concerned purely with self interest would do-he looked for an end run to achieve his objective-one that would avoid the counter productive aspects of a democratic referendum: "Bloomberg hesitated, Purnick writes, concerned in part about the response of fellow billionaire Ronald Lauder ("Complication No. 1," she dubs him), who spent millions to win the original term limits referendum and who successfully beat back a later challenge to the law. That hesitation, she says, helped the mayor avoid pressure to put term limits on the ballot that fall, when it was even more likely to be defeated by the pro-Obama voters expected to swamp the polls. She said that one close friend of the mayor who was also urging him to run for a third term told her that the mayor "deliberately ran out the clock because of the poll in June." The friend told her that Bloomberg's "political advisers were telling him he wouldn't win a referendum" overturning the term limits law."
And, in the absence of any public clamor to overturn the law, who was urging Mike on in his quest? "In July, Bloomberg attended the annual tycoons' retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho. There, Purnick writes, Bloomberg mingled with Murdoch and other pro–third term chums, including investment mogul Henry Kravis and Time Warner's Richard Parsons. The mayor was apparently treated to a full-court press from those moguls, who were in turn consulting with real estate big Jerry Speyer and investment strategist Steven Rattner, both of whom were aggressively pushing a third term."
A masterful hijacking of the democratic process by someone with real political skills-and the fortune to enhance them; aided in this by the fiscal crisis that was exploited even though it postdated Bloomberg's decision to try to grab the third term: "It was while that clock was running down that the financial collapse struck, giving the mayor what Purnick dubs "a plausible reason" to push for a fast Council vote rather than a public referendum."
Then there's the tawdry deal with Ron Lauder, a naif who was duped into removing his objections to the power grab with an illegal offer of a job: "But after what Purnick says was heavy lobbying by the pro-Bloomberg business crowd, Lauder bowed to a one-time change in the law in exchange for a small concession: that the mayor agree to name him to a new Charter Review commission panel in 2010—one that would recommend reinstituting term limits."
Quid pro quo, no? No: "Lauder clearly wasn't getting much in return: The commission doesn't even exist, and if it is convened, he'll be just one member. But it was also a glaring example of the city's top executive using the perks of office to win political advantage. That is something officials are explicitly barred from doing by the City Charter. As good-government advocates Gene Russianoff of NYPIRG and Susan Lerner of Common Cause put it in a letter a few days later to the city's Conflicts of Interest Board, "We believe that Mayor Bloomberg has used his position in a prohibited manner to obtain personal advantage in a quid pro quo deal with Ronald Lauder."
And then the Board acted: "Whatever became of that complaint? "Nothing," said Russianoff last week. "We never heard a word from the board." That's the policy, a board official said when asked about the matter. When the board doesn't find any violation, "the public never finds out," he said. Which is just how the mayor wants to keep it until after November."
So we have a political coup of the most sophisticated kind-one conceived and concocted by the city's richest man and most Machiavellian practitioner of the political arts. Mike didn't rise to the top of a multi-billion financial empire observing Marquis of Queensbury rules-and he has used these skills to good advantage in his mayoral tenure. But please, don't say that somehow he is above, or outside of the political process-or of the special interests that, at least in the case of his third term, have supported him proudly as their true native son.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Whither Willets?
The ultimate fate of what happens at Willets Point was not-despite what Mike Bloomberg likes to tell everyone-decided when the City Council approved the land use application last fall-with the illicit help of a Claire Shulman-led profitable not-for-profit. We say this because the undertaking at the Iron Triangle will be immensely costly, and no one has had the fortitude-least of all Bloomberg-to put a real number on the prospective development.
Honesty in politics isn't apparently always the best policy-and the mayor has been mouthing costly promises of late; hopes and dreams that are not accompanied, as they say in the accounting biz, with any fiscal back-up. Or, as in the case of his $50 million community college program, we get the cost but not the source of the money to cover it.
This all becomes relevant, four years after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of New London in the now famous Kelo case, because the property that the court then ruled was ripe for condemnation, lies empty till this very moment-the victim, so it is claimed, of a stagnant economy. And this all preceded the real economic meltdown of last year.
So now we take a hard look at where the city stands with Willets Point, and what do we see? Well, not much since EDC, in charge of all the sleight-of-hand, isn't the most transparent agency around. For instance-and this is a question that elected officials and media alike should be asking-how many properties have been actually bought out? And by, "bought out," we mean where real money has changed hand.
This is key because any money that has been forwarded is in the form of non-refundable deposits; payments which are theirs to keep, even if the planned development doesn't go through! (Or if, for some reason, the city fails to take title to the property). A potential classic case of money for nothing.
This is a crucial issue because no one to our knowledge has been forthcoming to the public as to what the cost of acquisition for all of the 60 Willets acres will actually be. Keeping these costs opaque works to EDC's advantage because the real amount of money that the city will have to come up with is, we believe, staggering. The preliminary cost estimate of Willets Point United is close to $700 million!
And as property values rise, so could the ultimate price tag to the city-and to its tax payers, of course. And this acquisition cost is just the start. No one, as the Municipal Arts Society points out, has yet publicly price tagged the cost of remediating the property-also likely to be in the high hundreds of millions of dollars. So, even before a developer is designated, and the first shovel is put into the ground, the city could easily be out over a billion dollars.
But that's only if all of the hurdles are successfully navigated by EDC-and the traffic issue is one hurdle that, while consciously hidden by the city during ULURP, could easily comer back to bite it on the butt. The development at the Point can't proceed without the building of two Van Wyck off-ramps; and these ramps must pass approvals at both the state and federal levels. And we believe this is no slam dunk; but the irony here is that, if the ramps are built, they will themselves generate the kind of congestion that our carbon foootprint reducing mayor should be alarmed about-but isn't because of his serious edifice complex.
It's past time for real transparency about the Willets Point development-and honesty about the true costs of this pipe dream. The mayor, spending millions to convince enough New Yorkers that what they're seeing with their own eyes is somehow a product of hysterical blindness, is claiming that he is the champion of immigrants and small business-and doing so nightly on Spanish language television.
There are, however, over 200 small businesses and 2500 mostly immigrant workers at Willets Point who need to be forgiven for their skepticism in regards to the grandiose Bloomberg claims. When it comes to real workers and small business, the mayor comes, like the Grim Reaper, with a scythe to cut down their hopes and dreams. In Bloomberg's reality, only virtual immigrants and small businesses are thriving-in the real world, not so much.
So it's time for a thorough scrutiny of what's going on at Willets Point-from phony grass roots lobbying campaigns, to exhorbitant hidden fees. Laid bare, this entire enterprise looks more and more like a White Elephant-a monument to the skewed vision and overly large ambition of the city's richest man.
Honesty in politics isn't apparently always the best policy-and the mayor has been mouthing costly promises of late; hopes and dreams that are not accompanied, as they say in the accounting biz, with any fiscal back-up. Or, as in the case of his $50 million community college program, we get the cost but not the source of the money to cover it.
This all becomes relevant, four years after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of New London in the now famous Kelo case, because the property that the court then ruled was ripe for condemnation, lies empty till this very moment-the victim, so it is claimed, of a stagnant economy. And this all preceded the real economic meltdown of last year.
So now we take a hard look at where the city stands with Willets Point, and what do we see? Well, not much since EDC, in charge of all the sleight-of-hand, isn't the most transparent agency around. For instance-and this is a question that elected officials and media alike should be asking-how many properties have been actually bought out? And by, "bought out," we mean where real money has changed hand.
This is key because any money that has been forwarded is in the form of non-refundable deposits; payments which are theirs to keep, even if the planned development doesn't go through! (Or if, for some reason, the city fails to take title to the property). A potential classic case of money for nothing.
This is a crucial issue because no one to our knowledge has been forthcoming to the public as to what the cost of acquisition for all of the 60 Willets acres will actually be. Keeping these costs opaque works to EDC's advantage because the real amount of money that the city will have to come up with is, we believe, staggering. The preliminary cost estimate of Willets Point United is close to $700 million!
And as property values rise, so could the ultimate price tag to the city-and to its tax payers, of course. And this acquisition cost is just the start. No one, as the Municipal Arts Society points out, has yet publicly price tagged the cost of remediating the property-also likely to be in the high hundreds of millions of dollars. So, even before a developer is designated, and the first shovel is put into the ground, the city could easily be out over a billion dollars.
But that's only if all of the hurdles are successfully navigated by EDC-and the traffic issue is one hurdle that, while consciously hidden by the city during ULURP, could easily comer back to bite it on the butt. The development at the Point can't proceed without the building of two Van Wyck off-ramps; and these ramps must pass approvals at both the state and federal levels. And we believe this is no slam dunk; but the irony here is that, if the ramps are built, they will themselves generate the kind of congestion that our carbon foootprint reducing mayor should be alarmed about-but isn't because of his serious edifice complex.
It's past time for real transparency about the Willets Point development-and honesty about the true costs of this pipe dream. The mayor, spending millions to convince enough New Yorkers that what they're seeing with their own eyes is somehow a product of hysterical blindness, is claiming that he is the champion of immigrants and small business-and doing so nightly on Spanish language television.
There are, however, over 200 small businesses and 2500 mostly immigrant workers at Willets Point who need to be forgiven for their skepticism in regards to the grandiose Bloomberg claims. When it comes to real workers and small business, the mayor comes, like the Grim Reaper, with a scythe to cut down their hopes and dreams. In Bloomberg's reality, only virtual immigrants and small businesses are thriving-in the real world, not so much.
So it's time for a thorough scrutiny of what's going on at Willets Point-from phony grass roots lobbying campaigns, to exhorbitant hidden fees. Laid bare, this entire enterprise looks more and more like a White Elephant-a monument to the skewed vision and overly large ambition of the city's richest man.
Tale of Two Cities
Albor Ruiz has an interesting look today at the other New York-you know, the one that Mike Doesn't see that clearly as he motors around in his chauffeured limo or SUV: "Is New York the greatest city in the world? Without a doubt, it is for some. Although for hundreds of thousands of its residents, who seem to survive only by the grace of God in the most expensive city in the country, it may be difficult to give their hometown the thumbs up. New York is a place of startling contrasts and deep disparities."
The poverty levels are startling-and have escalated in the past eight years: "More than 1.5 million New Yorkers (or as the New York Coalition Against Hunger puts it, enough to fill Yankee Stadium 25 times over) lived in poverty last year, the study shows. This, before the full impact of the economic downturn hit the city. More worrisome, the report confirms what many New Yorkers already knew: Poverty in the city and the state has been growing by leaps and bounds over the last few years. Actually, as hard as it may be to believe, more than 125,000 city residents last year had to survive on an annual income below the meager federal poverty line of $17,660 - about $340 a week - than in 2000."
And on top of this bleak outlook, the city's unemployment rate is now at record levels-making the increasing poverty rate even more challenging to overcome. But the answer here lies not-what a nice turn of phrase-with the Bloomberg propaganda machine's incessant drivel about five borough plans and middle class uplift. The way out is through real economic growth, something that both the Wall Street cohort down at city hall, and their partisans opponents of the WFP fail to grasp.
On the one hand we get big real estate aggrandizement at the expense of local businesses-to wit, the travesty at Willets Point where 2500 workers are facing eviction and the loss of their jobs for a pie-in-the=sky development pipe dream. On the other we get the equally deleterious WFP-driven "tax the wealthy" crowd-seeking to increase the size of local government and tax their way to prosperity.
Talk about a Hobson's choice! And, as Steve Malanga wonders today in the NY Post, who will speak for the middle class New Yorkers? While doing so, over at the NY Daily News, Errol Louis seems to luxuriate in the prospects of the return of the Dinkens coalition, the same one that has led the Democrats into mayoral exile for the past sixteen years. It may, as Louis indicates, be the rise of a true minority-led coalition for a new politics-but in our view, it simply bodes a back to the future for New York that will have little to offer in the way of positive solutions for the city.
So, here we are, caught between a rock and a hard place-with the likelihood of a ultra-liberal mayor with the heart of an accountant pitted against folks for whom business is all too often simply a piñata for the latest government spending scheme. Make no mistake about it, NYC is in for some very rough sailing over the next few years, with all of our putative problem solvers handicapped by their own unique trained incapacities.
But have no fear-because Mike Bloomberg is geared up-fired up, you might say-to tackle these serious issues in the years ahead. How so? He's ready to stop people from smoking in the parks. All New Yorkers, but especially tose out of work, can now rest easy, the city is in really good hands.
The poverty levels are startling-and have escalated in the past eight years: "More than 1.5 million New Yorkers (or as the New York Coalition Against Hunger puts it, enough to fill Yankee Stadium 25 times over) lived in poverty last year, the study shows. This, before the full impact of the economic downturn hit the city. More worrisome, the report confirms what many New Yorkers already knew: Poverty in the city and the state has been growing by leaps and bounds over the last few years. Actually, as hard as it may be to believe, more than 125,000 city residents last year had to survive on an annual income below the meager federal poverty line of $17,660 - about $340 a week - than in 2000."
And on top of this bleak outlook, the city's unemployment rate is now at record levels-making the increasing poverty rate even more challenging to overcome. But the answer here lies not-what a nice turn of phrase-with the Bloomberg propaganda machine's incessant drivel about five borough plans and middle class uplift. The way out is through real economic growth, something that both the Wall Street cohort down at city hall, and their partisans opponents of the WFP fail to grasp.
On the one hand we get big real estate aggrandizement at the expense of local businesses-to wit, the travesty at Willets Point where 2500 workers are facing eviction and the loss of their jobs for a pie-in-the=sky development pipe dream. On the other we get the equally deleterious WFP-driven "tax the wealthy" crowd-seeking to increase the size of local government and tax their way to prosperity.
Talk about a Hobson's choice! And, as Steve Malanga wonders today in the NY Post, who will speak for the middle class New Yorkers? While doing so, over at the NY Daily News, Errol Louis seems to luxuriate in the prospects of the return of the Dinkens coalition, the same one that has led the Democrats into mayoral exile for the past sixteen years. It may, as Louis indicates, be the rise of a true minority-led coalition for a new politics-but in our view, it simply bodes a back to the future for New York that will have little to offer in the way of positive solutions for the city.
So, here we are, caught between a rock and a hard place-with the likelihood of a ultra-liberal mayor with the heart of an accountant pitted against folks for whom business is all too often simply a piñata for the latest government spending scheme. Make no mistake about it, NYC is in for some very rough sailing over the next few years, with all of our putative problem solvers handicapped by their own unique trained incapacities.
But have no fear-because Mike Bloomberg is geared up-fired up, you might say-to tackle these serious issues in the years ahead. How so? He's ready to stop people from smoking in the parks. All New Yorkers, but especially tose out of work, can now rest easy, the city is in really good hands.
Parking Ticket to Deride
The other day Mike Bloomberg -putting progress over politics no doubt-took a stand for reforming the way New Yorkers are ticketed by the city's parking meter army: "Now, we want to make life a little easier for New Yorkers on an issue that is so often a source of frustration: parking. We want to make it easier to find a parking spot, easier to avoid a ticket, and - if you do get a ticket - easier to pay it, by paying over the phone or on a wireless PDA device."
Hey Mike, this parking ticket frustration ain't about making it, "easier," to pay for the ticket-it's about the use of parking tickets to raise revenues and erode the neighborhood quality of life. Oh, and did we forget, it's also an assault on neighborhood business? What burns us here, aside from the misdirection, is how the mayor has discovered this issue-even in his own maladroit technocratic manner-so late in his mayoralty. Where has he been?
Councilman Vinnie Gentile's rebuttal in the NY Daily News gets to the nub of this issue: "Mayor Bloomberg's new parking promises are way too little and way too late. The real problem that needs to be fixed on our streets - a problem that just about any commuter understands - is the aggressive and unfair culture of parking enforcement and ticketing in this city. It's a culture of acrimony instead of partnership; of unfair targeting instead of fair ticketing; of raising revenue instead of keeping our streets safe and clear."
And it becomes another way to drive shoppers away from their neighborhood stores: "Local businesses are struggling because ticketing agents ruthlessly target drivers along once-flourishing commercial avenues. Some of those businesses, in recognition of the ceaseless ticketing blitz, have even offered to pay customers' tickets." Another reason why local store vacancies are at record levels.
And Bloomberg's typical technological approach avoids the real issue: "Making it easier for drivers to pay (often unfair) tickets only makes it easier for the city to collect revenue; introducing new technology to help drivers keep track of when their time at the meter is up could be costly and complicated, and doesn't get to the heart of the matter."
At the heart is the rapacious nature of the process-starting with the agents themselves; but culminating in an injustice system that gives those who challenge tickets little chance at success, even in the most egregious situations: "My south Brooklyn district office is regularly inundated with complaints from drivers who are hit with unfair, undeserved tickets from ticketing agents. Agents seem to swoop down en masse on busy, commercial avenues with the sole objective of issuing as many tickets as possible in as short a time as possible. Drivers trying to back up into a curbside metered parking spot are routinely issued $115 tickets for double-parking despite the fact that the departing car was on its way out of the spot. A senior citizen dropping his spouse off for a dialysis treatment was issued a double-parking ticket because he dared leave his vehicle to escort his frail wife to the front door of the treatment center."
Getting any justice? Fuhgettaboutitt! "The out-of-control ticketing is upheld over and over in court. In 2006, an agent issued a ticket to a driver for parking at a hydrant. A hydrant did not exist at that location - but an administrative law judge upheld the ticket anyway. The driver appealed the decision to New York Supreme Court; the presiding judge dismissed the ticket. The plaintiff was even awarded damages of some $6,000 for his legal fees."
This is the same adjudication process that is inflicted on the city's retailers in neighborhood shops; one that is designed to simply raise revenue with no sensitivity to the need to nurture these businesses and not beat them like a drum. What the city needs is a fairer, and less aggressive revenue producing posture towards its neighborhoods: "Ticketing in New York City is no longer a method of keeping our streets safe. It has evolved into a desperate attempt to put the burden of closing the city's budget gap on the backs of the people who live, work and raise families here. Since Bloomberg took office, nearly 80 million tickets have been issued, costing New York City drivers more than $4 billion. Did drivers need to be targeted upward of $4 billion for the mayor to acknowledge that something is wrong?"
And Gentile has legislation that makes much more sense than Bloomberg's more complex, and less germane, approach: "One bill would require the city to allow drivers to upload and submit photos and scanned images to their online appeals of issued tickets. This would give all plaintiffs an equal, fighting chance to have their tickets overturned. A second bill would require an affirmative statement from administrative law judges who decide to uphold contested tickets. They'd need to explain why they're upholding a ticket, instead of simply rubber-stamping it. Finally, we should suspend the accrual of all late fees, fines and penalties while a driver is actively appealing a ticket. Today, drivers are penalized by fines and fees if they choose to contest a ticket or refuse the Finance Department's offer of a lower fine. This is unreasonable, costly and only discourages drivers from appealing unfair tickets."
The mayor has neglected neighborhoods for eight years now-and has let the local businesses suck the hind teat in the process. His campaign reincarnation here as some one sensitive to middle class concerns is simply unbelievable-and certainly won't have any legs should he be anointed once again in November-particularly as the city revenues continue to crater after his eight year aggrandizement of city government at the expense of New York's hapless tax payers.
Hey Mike, this parking ticket frustration ain't about making it, "easier," to pay for the ticket-it's about the use of parking tickets to raise revenues and erode the neighborhood quality of life. Oh, and did we forget, it's also an assault on neighborhood business? What burns us here, aside from the misdirection, is how the mayor has discovered this issue-even in his own maladroit technocratic manner-so late in his mayoralty. Where has he been?
Councilman Vinnie Gentile's rebuttal in the NY Daily News gets to the nub of this issue: "Mayor Bloomberg's new parking promises are way too little and way too late. The real problem that needs to be fixed on our streets - a problem that just about any commuter understands - is the aggressive and unfair culture of parking enforcement and ticketing in this city. It's a culture of acrimony instead of partnership; of unfair targeting instead of fair ticketing; of raising revenue instead of keeping our streets safe and clear."
And it becomes another way to drive shoppers away from their neighborhood stores: "Local businesses are struggling because ticketing agents ruthlessly target drivers along once-flourishing commercial avenues. Some of those businesses, in recognition of the ceaseless ticketing blitz, have even offered to pay customers' tickets." Another reason why local store vacancies are at record levels.
And Bloomberg's typical technological approach avoids the real issue: "Making it easier for drivers to pay (often unfair) tickets only makes it easier for the city to collect revenue; introducing new technology to help drivers keep track of when their time at the meter is up could be costly and complicated, and doesn't get to the heart of the matter."
At the heart is the rapacious nature of the process-starting with the agents themselves; but culminating in an injustice system that gives those who challenge tickets little chance at success, even in the most egregious situations: "My south Brooklyn district office is regularly inundated with complaints from drivers who are hit with unfair, undeserved tickets from ticketing agents. Agents seem to swoop down en masse on busy, commercial avenues with the sole objective of issuing as many tickets as possible in as short a time as possible. Drivers trying to back up into a curbside metered parking spot are routinely issued $115 tickets for double-parking despite the fact that the departing car was on its way out of the spot. A senior citizen dropping his spouse off for a dialysis treatment was issued a double-parking ticket because he dared leave his vehicle to escort his frail wife to the front door of the treatment center."
Getting any justice? Fuhgettaboutitt! "The out-of-control ticketing is upheld over and over in court. In 2006, an agent issued a ticket to a driver for parking at a hydrant. A hydrant did not exist at that location - but an administrative law judge upheld the ticket anyway. The driver appealed the decision to New York Supreme Court; the presiding judge dismissed the ticket. The plaintiff was even awarded damages of some $6,000 for his legal fees."
This is the same adjudication process that is inflicted on the city's retailers in neighborhood shops; one that is designed to simply raise revenue with no sensitivity to the need to nurture these businesses and not beat them like a drum. What the city needs is a fairer, and less aggressive revenue producing posture towards its neighborhoods: "Ticketing in New York City is no longer a method of keeping our streets safe. It has evolved into a desperate attempt to put the burden of closing the city's budget gap on the backs of the people who live, work and raise families here. Since Bloomberg took office, nearly 80 million tickets have been issued, costing New York City drivers more than $4 billion. Did drivers need to be targeted upward of $4 billion for the mayor to acknowledge that something is wrong?"
And Gentile has legislation that makes much more sense than Bloomberg's more complex, and less germane, approach: "One bill would require the city to allow drivers to upload and submit photos and scanned images to their online appeals of issued tickets. This would give all plaintiffs an equal, fighting chance to have their tickets overturned. A second bill would require an affirmative statement from administrative law judges who decide to uphold contested tickets. They'd need to explain why they're upholding a ticket, instead of simply rubber-stamping it. Finally, we should suspend the accrual of all late fees, fines and penalties while a driver is actively appealing a ticket. Today, drivers are penalized by fines and fees if they choose to contest a ticket or refuse the Finance Department's offer of a lower fine. This is unreasonable, costly and only discourages drivers from appealing unfair tickets."
The mayor has neglected neighborhoods for eight years now-and has let the local businesses suck the hind teat in the process. His campaign reincarnation here as some one sensitive to middle class concerns is simply unbelievable-and certainly won't have any legs should he be anointed once again in November-particularly as the city revenues continue to crater after his eight year aggrandizement of city government at the expense of New York's hapless tax payers.
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