Yet another rich guy leaves a mess for the middle class and poor to clean up. And New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo must be thrilled.

Rich guy Michael Bloomberg. He broke
all the toys, and his friend Andrew Cuomo
won't come to your rescue.

It’s the same story over and over again. The rich kid comes over to your house, takes all your toys out of the toy box, smashes them to pieces, and leaves. No apology. No note from his mother. No offer of restitution. No nothin’. In fact, he probably blames the breakage on you.

Somehow it’s usually that way in politics, too. President George W. Bush broke the whole setup, diving into Iraq for no authentic reason at all, “paying” for the billions it cost by cutting taxes, nearly bankrupting the nation, and now sitting at home, nonchalantly painting pictures of his feet in the bath tub.

John Lindsay, a popular Republican mayor of New York back in the 1960s, at least until he was out of office and people started counting the broken toys, left New York such a financial basket case that it essentially went into receivership. The economic fallout from that deeply wounded the local economy and caused a precipitous drop in the city's home prices. Recovery took a decade.

And now we have former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, against whom I have railed almost since this blog was born. The damage Bloomberg has done is more subtle – or should I say more insidious?

Bloomberg hasn’t left his city bankrupt. At least not on the surface he hasn’t. But he seems to have done everything in his power to make sure that the next guy would have to deal with one humongous financial mess.

For one thing, like a rich kid who takes the broccoli on his plate and surreptitiously shovels it onto the plate of the kid sitting next to him, Bloomberg quietly and deliberately postponed all labor contracts until after his third term expired.

There isn’t a union in town representing city's employees that’s working under a contract. Most of the contracts expired five years ago. Some ran out years longer ago than that.

Clearly, employees who haven’t had a raise in five, or six, or even seven years have a beef. And clearly, if they don’t get a raise, they’re going to strike. So de Blasio will have to eat Bloomberg's broccoli and find the money, either by raising taxes, if the governor and the state legislature let him, or by cutting city services. 

There are quite a few other broken toys and plates of broccoli that Michael Bloomberg left in his wake, but let me point to one program that heaped mountains of praise on Bloomberg and is leaving de Blasio with a heap of broken wheel spokes and brake levers.

 I’m talking about the city's bike share program, immensely popular, but now mired in a mess. There is insufficient money to make bike repairs, expand the program, or eventually replace worn out bikes.

Turns out that, with the exception of New York, in every city – in every city – that has a bike share program, government kicks in some cash.  How much did Bloomberg kick in? Nada. Zilch. Not a plugged nickel.

To be fair, some of the program’s troubles stem from the brutal winter we’ve had here in New York, which rendered the streets un-navigable for many days. And even when the streets were clear, all but the heartiest New Yorkers found it just too cold to ride a bike through the subzero winds.

 Equally to blame, according to officials, is that tourists aren’t renting the bikes in the numbers expected. Well hell, you’re limited to a 45-minute ride, which doesn’t take you far in New York traffic. And the price is $9.95, which is pretty steep. (Yes, you can return the bike to a bike stand and pick another one up later the same day, for your $9.95. But c’mon, we’re talking about tourists out for a day’s fun, not cost-efficiency experts gaming the klunky bike system.)

And even when you're talking about local folks, the program is too limiting. You can't ride a Citibike from the East Village to the Upper East Side, because when you get there, there are no Citibike racks. And you can't do it in reverse, because there's no place to rent a Citibike on the Upper East Side.

So why is all that Bloomberg’s fault? Because Bloomberg gave not a nickel! Nor did he ask a cent of state or federal government. He got all of the glory but refused either to write a check, or to find another government entity that would.

Hey, why should Bloomberg have worried when somebody else would get stuck with the broken bike share system? That person is Bill de Blasio, whose pressed, pressured, and soon-to-be-clobbered budget has to deal with keeping all those union workers paid, keeping the cops on duty, the firemen on the ready, and the city offices humming – without help from New York’s supposedly Democratic governor, actually a Tea Party yahoo in disguise.

Whatever Governor Andrew Cuomo thinks he’s going to run for next, he doesn’t intend to run for it with any tax increase for anything on his record. And already he’s justifying his inaction with the kind of doubletalk and logical non-sequiturs that would make a Tea Party patriot proud.

The New York Post, which is most certainly far to the right of center, quotes Cuomo talking about the injustice – O the injustice! – of taxing the rich, as Mayor de Blasio proposes.

[Cuomo] charged that de Blasio’s proposal is more regressive than the property-tax system that steers more funding to schools in wealthy suburbs than to poorer parts of the state. 

“If you haven’t come up with a system that is less equitable, this would be it. A surcharge on millionaires,” Cuomo said.

Little wonder that far from the city in upstate New York, protestors at the State Capitol are calling Cuomo "Governor One Percent." 

Sorry kids, but Michael Bloomberg is gone, Cuomo has gone Tea Party rogue, and the toys are all broken. Maybe you can put your hand in an old sock and pretend it’s a puppet.

Cross posted at No More Mister Nice Blog

Bloomberg and Cuomo turn New York into a hurricane-anticipating ghost town while local supermarkets sell off the worst crap on their shelves

Above: The view from my window, mid-afternoon. No people. No traffic. No wind. No driving rain. No nothing except for a little bit of drizzle. Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo effectively turned the city into a ghost town.

New York - Well, the subway stopped running at 7 pm last night. It’s now 2:42 pm the next day and so far nothing much has happened.

Okay, okay, it’s drizzling a little here in Manhattan. There’s still hardly any wind. And that's about it. 

On the TV screen I’m seeing meteorologists in rain slickers standing in plastic boots and nylon rain parkas, somewhere in some Godforsaken spot that Chris Christie panders for votes in. Call it Eggvelt, New Jersey. The broadcast jouros are talking about a wave – you shoulda seen it –  that went over the boardwalk a while ago. Maybe if they just stand there blathering long enough, another might come by in real time.

But here in New York?

Listen, I’m not saying a hurricane isn’t coming. The weather radar says it is, and with considerable force. And I’m not saying people living in flood zones – well anyway, most flood zones ­– shouldn’t pack a bag and head for the hills. All I’m saying is, the politicos, aided and abetted by journos with dreams dancing in their heads about broadcasting while holding a lamp post and fluttering sideways like a wind whipped flag, have spread unnecessary panic. They told everybody, way too soon, to head for the spare bedroom at the uphill neighbors (who must be thrilled) or get out of town. Way, way too soon. Call it premature evacuation.

The hurricane may be a big one when it hits. But it ain’t gonna hit until tonight or sometime tomorrow in the wee hours. By that time every theater, restaurant, pizzeria, nail salon, hamburger joint and specialty shop (businesses like those are even open on Sundays in New York), not to mention the subway, bus and suburban rail systems, will have already lost a full 24 hour cycle’s worth of income, or more, for nothing. Nada. Zilch. Plus a day's worth of Wall Street productivity today.

There’s no reason why businesses couldn’t have been open a half or three-quarters day today, with the subways shutting down after 5 pm. But once the subways are closed, as they did yesterday evening, everything closes. So now one of the key enablers of the local economy has put the entire economy out of business. 

(As I write this, I've just received a call from Con Edison, the local utility, telling me to "turn off all major appliances" so that "if" they cut off the juice, they won't fry my refrigerator when the power comes back on. If it goes off.)

Irony of ironies, even people living downtown in Battery Park City high rises, a score to several hundred feet above where the waves could possibly rise, are getting told to pack up and leave. Nice trick if they can do it, with public transport and now some of the city’s automotive tunnels closed in anticipation. But hey, you know, if the basements of their skyscraper homes flood, they might have to walk down the stairs. Or use flashlights when they brush their teeth.

The one kind of business that seems to be doing well in Manhattan is the supermarket business. Last night, out for a stroll, I stepped into my neighborhood D'Agostino to pick up a quart of milk and a box of strawberries, since I was out of both. Big, big mistake. Each of the five checkout lines there was about fifty people long. The shelves were nearly empty. (Make an exception for the milk fridge. Milk didn’t seem to interest anybody.) The clerks, since they couldn’t get home any more, were talking about sleeping on the floor in the basement. (Most basements in Manhattan are a lot more waterproof than either the subways or, evidently, Con Edison's power lines.)

New Yorkers had been told to stock up on water and canned goods, and that was what the fools were trying to do. Except that, save for a dented can kumquats here, and a tin of tomato paste there, the canned goods were  sold out by 4 pm yesterday. So people were buying anything that can survive outside of a refrigerator. Cheese doodles. Beef jerkey. Twinkies. Super Sugar High Cereal. All the stuff that gives Mayor Bloomberg the vapors, save that he’s the one who indirectlh caused the run on this junk food in the first place.

Let’s assume that we really do have a bad, street-flooding, tunnel-deluging, electric wire-frying storm tonight, about the time that Jay Lenno starts making jokes about it in Burbank. At that point, the city will have already been through about 29 hours of near lockdown. Let’s assume that the city then goes through 24 hours of real hurricane conditions, followed by cleanup. With any luck the city (and perhaps the nation’s financial system, since Wall Street is currently shut down, too) will have suffered nearly an economy-wrecking week. Millions of people will have been inconvenienced two days more than necessary. Local citizenry will have unnecessarily lost about $2 billion on this. 

Why all this concern from our politicians? I’d like to think they worry about my life and health, but it’s a bit hard to believe that when they close the means of egress, lock up the subways, send the busses back to the garage, and then tell people in dry, sky-high apartments to leave town or die. I think what they’re really trying to do is make sure that if there is a disaster, nobody’s going to blame them for it. The last thing Michael Bloomberg wants to hear is, “You’re doing a helluva job, Bloomie.” Cuomo, who’s is cultivating presidential ambitions, also wants to emerge from this blame free. 

So screw all if it costs the city’s citizens and business a billion, or a couple of billion, or ten billion (roughly half as much money as Bloomberg personally owns) to get through a day or two of  real crisis with manufactured pre- and post-crisis days that double or triple the losses.

If Cumo and Bloomberg (and Governor Fatso in new Jersey) really wanted to make themselves useful, they’d find a way to pump out the subways and car tunnels as water gurgles in, so that transportation can’t be flooded back to the 12^th Century. And they'll figure out how to keep the buried power lines dry.

But that’s never going to happen, kiddo. So sit back and munch a Twinky or three. And wash it down with that $5 water, instead of the free stuff that’s coming out of your tap. When it’s over, Bloomberg will be back to hectoring you for being too obese. (Notice, he never makes the same criticism of Chris Christie.)

And that’s the way the hurricane hovers, here in drizzly New York.

6:25 pm update: Well, at long last, we're having a hurricane out there. The wind is whistling past my windows. Whistling! And sheets of water are coming out of the sky. Twenty-three hours after Cuomo and Bloomberg closed down New York, the weather is finally cooperating with them.

Subway fares, overcrowding, off-peak idiocy, clueless Bloomberg, and the insanity of letting people who ride to work in limos set transit policy

Hello, suckers! If you live in New York, you’re on the verge of getting smacked in your wallet again. Good and hard.

A big subway fare is in the works because the Metropolitan Transit authority is crying poor, even though they’ve got a billion dollar budget surplus this year. So says the New York Times this morning

Yeah yeah, I know a billion bucks isn’t what it used to be. But even with some of the crappiest Manhattan co-op apartments going for a piffling million dollars these days, a billion bucks is still real money. Or at least real enough to avoid forcing the MTA board to go to soup kitchens for lunch and sleep in cardboard boxes on a church step.

So what’s the problem at the
Metropolitan Transit Authority?

From their limos and office aeries, the high muck-mucks who run the system have decided to compete with Mme. Galzorist, the often off-base fortune teller on the block where the offices of The New York Crank are located.

The transit moguls say a money shortage is coming – they can see it in their crystal balls. It’s going to be caused by all the pension benefits they’ve negotiated, debts they’ve decided to take on, and an “anticipated” decline in income from real estate transaction taxes.

So okay, I’ll tell you what. Let’s say their crystal ball is 100% correct. Let’s forget about who negotiated and planned us into the financial tsunami that the Transit Authority insists is just down the road. Instead, let’s focus on some new stupidity.

Transit planning peak freaks

Some genius at the Transit Authority got the bright idea that while they’re probably going to raise fares by double-digit percentages, they ought to reduce fares for off-peak use. That way, goes the thinking of these geniuses, they’ll reduce peak hour use of the subway.

Small problem with that, dudes. Peak hours are peak hours because those are the hours when the bosses insist that everybody show up for work. Or the hours when everybody gets to come home from work. The average working stiffs have as much control over when they use the subway as they do over high tide in Upper New York Bay.

It happens when the boss says it’ll happen. So don’t even bother practicing excuses like, “Sorry I’m three hours late, boss. I was waiting for off-peak hours to kick in.”

Or better yet, “Honey, I’ll be home at 11 o’clock tonight. No, it has nothing to do with the blonde in the next cubicle. I’m waiting for off-peak hours.”

Transit capacity maxes out

But Transit Authority bosses are desperate. Says the New York Times article this morning:

Overcrowding is a growing concern for the authority. It is undertaking customer surveys for its subway lines, and initial results show packed subway cars a major complaint among riders. But the century-old system has little capacity to add service.

Which brings me to the next doofus in the New York Transit mess – Mayor “Mike” Bloomberg. As crankily complained about on this blog back on August 1, “Mayor Mike,” who takes two limos to the subway sometimes, wants to slap an $8 fee on drivers in midtown to keep them off the streets, presumably so they’ll take mass transit to work.

Mike, Mike, Mike, if the subway is already jammed just about to capacity, what’s going to happen when you coerce even more people to use it?

Right. You guessed it.