Michael Bloomberg’s gamble with opprobrium

Michael Bloomberg's 6,000-or-so square foot beach shack in Bermuda.
He escapes there frequently via private jet, usually to play golf. Sound familiar?

In quite a few ways, Michael Bloomberg is simply Donald Trump Lite.

Trump has Mar e Lago. Bloomberg has a waterfront estate called Stokes Bay, in Bermuda.

Trump, when he’s not tweeting obsessively, plays golf obsessively. Ditto Bloomberg when he’s in Bermuda. In fact, “obsessively” is just the word the New York Times used to describe Bloomberg’s golfing behavior there.

Perhaps more pertinently, neither man has demonstrated much respect for established law. With Trump I wouldn’t know where to begin. With Bloomberg, I know where it all might end. After New York City’s voters approved mayoral term limits by referendum, Bloomberg overrode the referendum by a tricky political maneuver. He essentially bribed New York City Council members by granting them an extra term as well. 

Bloomberg's excuse for flipping his own city's inhabitants the bird was that he needed a third term to fix the city's financial crisis. He alone could do it! Does that sound familiar? 

The 120-year-old President?

So much for the will of the people, and possibly for presidential term limits. If Bloomberg, now 77 years old, lives to be 120, we could have a 120-year-old President of the United States.

Would Bloomberg be a better president than Trump? Absolutely yes, for the same reason that getting bitten on the ankle by a rabid pig would be better than getting crushed to death and then swallowed by a boa constrictor. 

Bloomberg has already placed “at least” $37 million worth of advertising, CNN reported recently. Even billionaires don’t throw that kind of money around just to hear the sound of money bags knocking network advertising sales managers off their feet.

That’s also why, just for starters, Los Angelinos who watch the local news on NBC in the afternoon or evening could be seeing nine ads for Michael Bloomberg every day, according a tweet from Shane Goldmacher, a New York Times political reporter.

Moreover, Bloomberg’s sudden apology to the African-American community, for 12 years of stop-and-frisking black people for the offense of being outdoors while black, rang loud with almost the same total lack of sincerity that marks Donald Trump when he reads a prepared speech written by some political consultant.

An apology of convenience

“I see now that I was wrong,” Bloomberg said to a black church congregation that he had chosen for his mea culpa. 

How come now rather than a dozen weeks ago, or when you were mayor for twelve years and could do something about it, Mike? You didn’t notice all the lives needlessly ruined, all the jobs lost, all the loss of civic comity created by needlessly harassing African-Americans for twelve years? Of course you didn't. Or perhaps you just didn't care.

For Mr. Bloomberg’s sake, if God forbid he wins the Democratic primary, I sincerely hope he also wins the Presidential election.  Because if he jumps in and spoils it for strong Democratic candidates, and then the election goes to Trump, the cloud of opprobrium that follows Bloomberg for the rest of his life will be so thick you’ll be able to cut it with a crowd of waving pitchforks. And my guess is, he'll want to spend even rainy weekends in Bermuda. Not to mention midweeks.

If he gains the Democratic nomination, Bloomberg will either make himself President … or the Democratic Party’s biggest pariah in history.

“Let them eat compost!” While 21,000 children starve and sleep on New York City streets, Mayor Bloomberg frets about composting potato peels.

From the New York Times:

More than 50,000 New Yorkers slept in city homeless shelters and on the streets last night. About 21,000 were children. These numbers are huge and appalling, higher than they were in 2002, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office, higher than in the dismal days of the fiscal crisis, the Reagan ’80s and the surly administration of Rudolph Giuliani…. 

… The shelter population has risen 61 percent while Mr. Bloomberg has been mayor, propelled by a 73 percent increase in homeless families, according to the Coalition for the Homeless, whose relentless advocacy has been provoking mayoral fury since the 1980s. These surging numbers — of families with children, especially — undercut claims that New York is steadily becoming a better place to live, and that its government has gotten better at helping its most vulnerable citizens meet their most basic needs.

And also from the New York Times:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has tried to curb soda consumption, ban smoking in parks and encourage bike riding, is taking on a new cause: requiring New Yorkers to separate their food scraps for composting…. 

… Anticipating sharp growth in food recycling, the administration will also seek proposals within the next 12 months for a company to build a plant in the New York region to process residents’ food waste into biogas, which would be used to generate electricity.

In other words, screw the starving homeless children. They don’t have any potato peelings to contribute anyway. And by the way, who said businessmen-turned-politicians aren't great at setting priorities?

Will the new rallying cry of New York’s power brokers become, “Let them eat seasonal berries?”

Is eight bucks too much to pay for a cup of coffee? How about toast with butter and jam, with (this time) Starbucks coffee or tea for a piffling $29?

What’s that, Dude? You say you’re on a healthy diet, and that includes breakfast? Not to worry. 

How about a plate of seasonal berries for $23, coffee not included? And if you’re bringing along your pal, the starving lumberjack, he can have a three-egg omelet with bacon and blueberry pancakes. But he may have to chop down a few extra trees to pay the bill. His chit, not including coffee (or tip in any of these cases) will come to $52.

By now, I guess you’ve figured out that I’m not talking about breakfast at Denny’s. Au contraire, mon ami.

An act of charity for the super-powerful

What I have in mind is an eatery called Park Avenue Winter, which out of the kindness of its management’s heart has let leak the news that it will take in orphaned politicians and other power brokers while their favorite power breakfast hangout, the Loew’s Regency Hotel a bit further down Park Avenue, undergoes extensive renovations.

I have to thank Joanna Fantozzi, writing for a Manhattan weekly called Our Town, for digging up the heartwarming news about a temporary new power broker pit stop. The story appeared the paper’s January 17^th edition. Sorry, no links, because Our Town/East Side may be the last publication on the planet that doesn’t have a web edition.

[Post Publication Note: I got it wrong. Our Town does have a website, and as Joanna informs you in the first comment below, you can get to it here.]

But no matter. Ms. Fantozzi was intrepid enough to dig up the fact that Joe Lhota is a breakfast VIP there. At this point, I can hear the sound of eyebrows arching here in New York, and of heads scratching everywhere else on the planet.

Joe Who?

Joe Lhota is outgoing Chairman of the New York Transit Authority, the organization that runs the subways and busses while it cries poor and raises fares with the regularity that a jackrabbit in a bunny hutch umm, well, you know what I mean.

Over 300 grand a year? You might still be

too poor to pay out of your own pocket.

Joe has been getting paid $332,000 which is so not outrageous in overpriced New York that I wonder how he can afford regular breakfasts in the Power Broker Mess Hall unless he – dare I say it? – unless he expenses his morning meals there. I mean, heaven forbid he should have a power conference in the MTA conference room, or even over the phone.

Joe, although appointed to the MTA by Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, is a product of the Giuliani administration, which was home to coddlers of the rich and superrich in its day. Not surprising that those folks would also want to coddle themselves.

A surprising exception to the eight dollar coffee crowd is Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who despite his billions tends to take his breakfasts – and other power meals – at a run-of-the-mill diner called Viand on Madison and 78^th, around the corner from the Bloomberg Mansion. (The New York Post claims he has "wined and dined" Janet Napolitano and former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer there, although I do wonder about the wine part.) 

A good sized breakfast at Viand will set you back not a whole heck of a lot more than a cup of coffee at Winter. I base this statement on personal experience. I used to live up that way and ate at Viand on a few occasions. Interesting that when the money comes straight from their own pockets, even the richest politicians go cheap.

Ssh! The booths have ears.

Admittedly, there are some drawbacks to taking power meals at Viand. The booths are set so close together that an ordinary unconnected citizen might overhear your conversation. And then there was the little matter of a health code violation a couple of years back. But since Viand had a sign in the window, at least when I lived up that way, announcing that it celebrated “Greeks for Bloomberg,” I imagine they made their mice problem go away quickly.

Now there’s talk in town that, come the next election, Joe Lhota may decide to run for mayor here in New York. Just think of it! This is a financially stressed city. (Yeah I know, you're gonna ask me to name ten that aren’t.) Teacher and other municipal employees’ pay, promotion, and retirements are under pressure. There’s a threat that eliminating so-called tax rebates on co-op and condo apartments will effectively cause taxes on home ownership here to rise – with the money going toward municipal operations. Infrastructure is crumbling.

In the midst of this fiscal starvation, do we need people who make major decisions away from the office, over what might be a $29 plate of eggs? Just asking.

Yucky toilets, stinky bodies, pissed off bus riders and other New York tales of horror from the Con Edison disaster

No, I’m not calling it the Hurricane Sandy disaster. Hurricane Sandy came and went. What we have now is a Con Edison disaster caused by an explosion of unknown cause in Con Edison equipment. (Watch the full video.)

Con Edison, New York’s electrical utility, gets the villain’s hat, thanks to a lack of redundancy in Manhattan’s electrical distribution system, and a doltishly-wired local grid that evidently doesn’t allow the utility to distribute current around the downed substation transformer that has knocked out nearly all of Manhattan from 39^th Street south to the financial district.

An eerie irony

Case in point: My apartment building has no electricity, as a consequence of which my fellow 300-or-so occupants and I have no running water (electric pumps raise the water to rooftop reservoirs in Manhattan), no land line telephones, no Internet, no television, no elevator to our high rise digs (my apartment is on the 10th floor) and not even a functioning toilet. Yet at night, my apartment is ironically bathed in an eerie glow from the art-deco zig-zagging neon lights atop the Chrysler building, six blocks to the north.

With a more intelligently designed – or redesigned – electrical grid, the wasted late night art deco razz-a-ma-tazz in a desolated city could be routed as spare power and sent south long enough to pump water up to the reservoirs on our roofs, so that we could flush our toilets once, and fill up our water pitchers. But no such luck. Why should Con Ed care? They're in this business strictly to make a profit, not to help their customers.

What does all this mean on a personal level? Well, I’m going to tell you what it’s like living with the Con Edison mess. Warning: some of this stuff is beyond disgusting.

Keep reading, but hold your nose

After two-plus days of unflushable toilets, my bathroom reeks like the outhouse from hell. I’ve saved bowel movements for my office, north of 39^th Street, where the toilets are working. Even so, the nauseating odor of standing urine is slowly creeping through my apartment despite my best efforts to keep the toilet covered and the bathroom door shut when the toilet’s not in use.

Showers are impossible. Yesterday morning, for the second time, I took about a cupful of my precious stored drinking water, put it in a Pyrex bowl, and heated the water on my stovetop after lighting a burner with a match.

Then I carried the bowl to the bathtub in my stinking bathroom, dipped a washcloth in the warm water, soaped it, and scrubbed myself down.

Even so, after two days I could smell myself. It was time to beg a favor. I called friends who have power on the Upper West Side. “Look,” I said, “I need a shower and a shampoo. And I have over two pounds of sirloin and a prime rib that are defrosting in my dead freezer. I’ll swap, steak for a shower.”

“Come on over and help us eat it,” they told me. “We’ll prepare some fluffy towels for you.” So last night I had my first hot shower in over two days, followed by a great steak dinner. Even so, it was a horrid evening.

With the power nightmare

comes a transportation nightmare

It was no picnic getting from midtown east side to the Upper West. The trip to my friends’ apartment usually takes about 45 minutes by public transportation. But last night, at 6:30 p.m.,  there was still no subway service. People who have to work here had driven into the city and were now trying to drive out again. (The mayor made no attempt I know of to discourage this.) That surge of extraordinary commuter automobile traffic, combined with an overabundance of busses, meant to substitute for nonexistent subway service, turned my Third Avenue route into a hyper-gridlocked nightmare. Available taxis? Don’t make me laugh. Besides, they would have been just another element of the gridlock.

It took me 45 minutes to ride from 38^th Street to 46^th Street. Realizing I’d never get where I was going if I went by bus alone, I got off the bus and walked briskly almost a mile up Third Avenue, past the gridlock to the East 60s, with my plastic grocery bag of bleeding defrosted steak. Then I re-boarded a bus when one arrived to East 96^th Street, and then took the East 96^th Street crosstown bus to West End Avenue. Total time for a trip of approximately three and a half miles? Two hours and fifty minutes.

The hot shower was worth it. The steak was great. (My friends have a gas barbecue on their terrace.) At midnight, when I headed home, the gridlock had passed and I was able to take a taxi to my apartment (twenty-two bucks including tip.) The taxi and the $16-a-pound steak may have made this the most expensive shower of my life. But hey, when you’re aware of your own stink, you gotta do what you gotta do.

With the pocket flashlight that I now guard as closely as I guard my wallet, I walked up ten flights of darkened stairs to my apartment, opened the door, and tried to ignore the reek of urine. It  had grown even worse by this morning when I woke up.

Con Ed congratulates itself

At the office, I was finally able to check the news. I discovered that Con Edison is patting itself on the back because it got power restored to a tiny corner of lower Manhattan, and it thinks it can have the rest of the bottom half of the island powered up by Friday. Well, if not by Friday, then probably Saturday, they then say. Maybe. I’ll believe it when I can flush my toilet.

And some passing thoughts

There are women in their eighties in my building, trapped on high floors and unable to navigate, seven, fifteen, even twenty-one stories of staircases. One person or another knocks on their doors to make sure they have food and water to drink. But I keep worrying about the ones I don’t know about and others don’t know about. In a building with over 230 apartments, it’s impossible to know everybody. The shy ones, the infirm ones, could be slowly starving to death inside their own reeking apartments.

Fortunately, the weather has been more-or-less cooperative, remaining in the 50s. With a sudden cold snap, some of those old women might freeze to death even if they don’t starve.

If the Con Edison power outage goes on much longer, people will die as a consequence. Not to mention businesses. From 39^th Street south there’s not an open supermarket, deli, pizzeria, restaurant, shoe repair shop, drug store (what if people need their life-saving prescriptions refilled?) or other business. Some of the small merchants are assuredly taking a powerful hit, and some, perhaps many small businesses will fail as a consequence. (Give yourself another pat on the back, Con Ed.)

“Mayor Mike” Bloomberg is been remarkably unvocal during this disaster, at least from what I can tell from my Internet reading. Politician that he is, he’s too smart to get publicly involved with this reeking and rage-breeding mess. Ditto Kevin Burke, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Con Edison.

What if it had been a terrorist?

But Burke, Bloomberg and their pals need to take responsibiity for this mess. And to realize how serious it is, think of it this way:

 If a foreign terrorist had blown up the transformer that evidently caused this half-of-Manhattan outage, bringing a great city to a stop, ruining thousands of businesses, inconveniencing hundreds of thousands of lives, destroying a few, and causing, I’m guessing here, $2 billion worth of business losses, U.S. Navy Seals might be in the process of blowing his head off as you read this.

What consequences will Burke face? His board will probably give him a bonus on top of is already outsized compensation package, which came to $11 million in 2011, part of which he earned by locking out experienced union Con Ed hands who might have known how to prevent the explosion.

Update: A few minutes before 4 pm today I received an anonymous robo-call. I assume it was from Con Edison, but they never said who they were. The terse message told me that "power in your area" "should be" back by 11:30 p.m. Saturday. That's not the four days they were promising on their website. It's 30 minutes short of six days if they deliver. Meanwhile, the weather's growing colder.

And on more thing….

The next time Willard Romney tells you private enterprise can do things better than government, remind him that the government Tennessee Valley Authority electrified millions of acres and hundreds of thousands of homes, factories and farms back in the Roosevelt era. Then remind  him to about New  York’s disaster and tell him to take a Con Edison smokestack and stick it where the sun don’t shine

New York is “Fine City," unless you recklessly kill somebody with a car. In that case, there’s no arrest, not even a fine. Have a nice day.

Mad King Ludwig

Michael Bloombrg

Above, portraits of two crazy people who might almost have been separated at birth. I’m not going into crazy Ludwig’s history of off-kilter activities. You can get an executive summary right here. 

Suffice it to say it’s a coin toss whether Ludwig or Mad Michael Bloomberg is the crazier of the two. 

Today’s case in point – enforcement of petty violations vs. inforcement of vehicular homicide in New York.

If you were a sane mayor, which would you focus on enforcing? Well get this:

The city's Public Advocate, Bill DeBlasio, is resorting to suing the mayor for information that city hall won't release about who’s getting fined, how often, where, and for how much.

It seems overzealous enforcement of petty regulations is a Bloomberg-directed attempt to make up for the city's income shortfall. The zeal comes “without regard for the impact this policy is having on the city’s small-business owners,” according to De Blasio. 

“Stonewall” Bloomberg

DeBlasio, an elected public official, says the city is stonewalling him in his quest to find out how municipal income for fines have managed to double from less than a half a billion dollars to nearly a whole billion since Bloomberg became mayor.

Meanwhile, according to the city’s elected Public Advocate, small business owners…

“…have been forced to pay thousands of dollars in fines for nuisance violations that could be easily addressed through education. By levying hidden taxes and increasing the cost of doing business, the City is undercutting New York’s small businesses and making it more difficult for them to grow and create jobs. 

 “For example, small business owners in the Bronx provided the Public Advocate with a letter from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene regarding fines, that warns (a) if one contests the fine, the business may have to pay more and (b) if one contests the fine, the small business owner may have to wait around for hours before a hearing is granted. This letter is a strong message to small business owners to simply pay fines without asking questions, instead of seeking to resolve legitimate misunderstandings.’ 

What kinds of terrible offenses have these fined small business owners committed? Well, according to the Public Advocate's website:

• Owners of a family-run grocery store in Flatbush, Brooklyn thought they were going above and beyond what the law required by printing their return policy on every receipt, but regulations require return policies to be posted on signs next to each cash register. During an August inspection, the store was unexpectedly hit with three $250 fines—one for each of the cash registers lacking a return policy sign.

 
• In Manhattan, “when a health-department inspector visited XES Lounge in Chelsea ... he gave general manager Tony Juliano a ticket for having unwrapped straws on the bar. [The] straws [had] been there for nearly eight years, but this time it was deemed a $400 violation.”

“If you snitch, we’ll break your bank account”

Don't get any smart ideas, either, about secretly recording the outrageous visits of Bloomberg’s “inspectors” in search of an out-of-place sign or an unwrapped straw, all in an effort to get you socked with a brutal fine. If you get caught recording evidence of how unreasonable the mayor’s shakedown racket is, you’re really in deep doo-doo. Says the elected Public Advocate's website...

• The owner of the popular downtown diner George’s — where Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly have dined — wound up in hot water after he tried to skewer a city health inspector by recording his visit on an iPhone. When the inspector spotted owner Bill Koulmentas’ cellphone scheme, he quickly hit George’s with a slew of violations — totaling 65 points. Koulmentas was accused of everything from having cracked eggs to keeping cold food too hot and hot food too cold .... Having experienced a similarly overzealous inspection a month earlier, Koulmentas said he decided to document what was happening

But hey, killing people with a car? That's OK!

One of the reasons I bring this up is that every year in New York, approximately two thousand people, on foot or on bicycles, get run over, crashed into, crushed, slammed into the air, and sometimes killed by recklessly-driven automobiles, trucks and taxis. 

And what does Mayor Bloomberg, his Popeye-lookalike police commission Ray Kelley, and the rest of the city's bureaucracy do about it?

You were right when you guessed they do next to nothing.

"It's a perverse system," said Councilmember Greenfield today. "Currently, we're saying to the drivers of New York City: Be reckless, drive drunk, unlicensed, run people over, and nothing is going to happen to you. On many nights there is one AIS police officer in the entire city conducting investigations. God forbid you have two accidents in one night! The NYPD has a budget of $4.5 billion a year. If the NYPD wants to put more people on the ground to hold reckless drivers accountable, they can do it." 

So by all means, feel free to drive into New York drunk and run over the first little old lady or  cyclist you see. Or if you’re blind drunk, you don’t even have to see them. We won’t hold any of that against you here. But do you plan on doing business in New York?

Then have a fine day.

Who’s the new Republican presidential candidate waiting in the wings?

The see-saw is doing its thing. Newt is up. Newt is down. Newt is down and Romney is up. Romney is up and Newt is down. Is the see-saw making you sea-sick yet?

The odds are good that it’s nauseating some Republicans, too. My condolences to them. Or maybe not, since what they seem to want to do most is dismantle the economy and the safety net that keeps most older Americans (and many of the younger ones) from freezing to death on the streets. And to lower taxes on the rich even if the rest of us have to pay for it with smaller soup rations on the bread line.

Still, one senses that the Republicans finally sense that they’re not going to beat Obama. Not with Gingrich. Not with Romney. And not with the passel of other candidates who either threw themselves in front of the bus, got thrown there by Republican primary voters, or who simply got sucked under the bus by the vacuum in rational thinking that surrounded them. (Think Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann, for example.)

This morning the New York Times ran an article saying that former Florida governor Jeb Bush is withholding his endorsement from Romney. Cranky old cynics like me immediately start wondering if Jeb is planning for a draft Jeb rally after Newt and Willard (aka Mitt) badmouth each other into a stall at the Republican convention.

Chris Christie, who also says he’s not a candidate, is also possibly a candidate.

Mitch Daniels, the Indiana senator who gave the world’s most boring speech to “rebut” President Obama? Possible candidate.

But I’m going to go with a long shot bet here, and nominate New York’s impresario of self-dealing, Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Never mind that the billionaire “Mayor Mike” who can spend triple digit millions on a local political campaign the way you and I might drop $3.50 for a latte at Starbucks sabotaged the two-term mayoral limit and is now serving his third term.

Never mind that he keeps standing by his police commissioner, Michael Kelly, a character who looks like Popeye in a business suit. There have been outrageous excuses to shoo away Occupy Wall Street protestors in Zucotti Park. There’s the commissioner’s son, who now stands accused of rape and whose case has to be investigated by people outside the NYPD. There have been numerous instances police misbehavior such as this one, which resulted in … err, ah, umm … an “investigation” which has been creeping along at what some might consider a snail’s pace, despite the fact that police miscreants were caught on video pepper spraying their victims. What's to investigate for three months?

Never mind the outrageous Kathy Black scandal, in which the mayor appointed a crony with zero – that’s zero – educational experience to run one of the world’s largest public school systems. Fortunately, she self-destructed by mocking angry parents at a public meeting.

None of this matters. The mayor can only be mayor so long – even if he had to pay what most of us would consider a fortune to blow up the law that limited his term. What Bloomberg wants, Bloomberg buys. And I wouldn’t be amazed to see him try to buy the Republican presidential nomination.

Michael Bloomberg’s grave mistake

The chaos created by New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s police department has been covered up the whazoo. You can even read about it on Bloomberg News. To sum up:

• A handful of demonstrators began an “occupy Wall Street” movement.

• Bloomberg sent in the cops. If you’ve seen the videos, you’ve seen that most of the uniformed guys were doing their sheepish best to follow orders without being brutal. The worse most of them (with a few exceptions) could summon up by way of intimidating the protestors were commands to “Get the fuck back.” This was hardly consistent with the Police Department motto here, “Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect,” but it wasn’t a grave offense against humanity, either.

• Then some white-shirted command-level people – the ones highest up the food chain, and in frequent contact with their commissioner, who takes orders from the mayor – started to run amok. One, for no reason, walked up to a young female demonstrated, pepper sprayed her in the eyes, then walked away. The internal affairs folks at NYPD are “investigating” the incident. Yeah, sure. Burying it, more likely.

Why hasn't the deputy inspector who did the pepper spraying been suspended pending conclusion of the investigation? Once upon a time, New York cops who were known to perform psycho acts like this were called "rubber guns" because even if they were protected until they could collect their pensions, they were kept on unarmed duty at the precinct house, doing chores like sweeping out the detective squad room.

I haven’t brought up the entire demonstrater-police mess before because I detest Bloomberg enough to follow the advice of Napoleon Bonaparte here: “Never interrupt the enemy when he is making a grave mistake.”

Bloomberg’s mistake has been to unwittingly fertilize and water a small group of justifiably discontented demonstrators enough to turn them into a national movement. Now the demonstrations have grown exponentially in New York and are popping up in big cities all around the United States.

As for Mayor Bloomberg’s character, you only have to pay attention to a remark he made, not only after the pepper spray incident but also after the police entrapped roughly 700 of the demonstrators by luring them into a traffic lane of the Brooklyn Bridge and then arresting them for being there. Incidentally, these arrests mean that instead of a traffic jam on the Brooklyn Bridge, there’s going to be one in the city courts.

“The police are doing exactly what they’re supposed to,” Bloomberg said.

I rest my case.

New York’s Emperor Mayor Michael Bloomberg, hoodwinked by fairies, seems to think subway beggars have been whisked off to Never-Never Land

So if you regularly ride the New York subways, you’ve heard speeches something like the these a couple of times a week from somebody shaking a filthy paper coffee cup full of coins at you:

“Ladies and gentleman, your attention please. I got AIDS. My wife is in the hospital with TB. I’m homeless. I got three kids to support and one of them is in a wheel chair when he fell out a window on the other two, who are on crutches. I’m a Viet Nam veteran. I lost my job. All I’m asking is that you give me a dollar, a dime, even a penny will help, anything you got….”

“I am part of da United Effort To Help Da Homeless Inc. If you’re carrying a cheese sandwich you don’t need, a ham sandwich you don’t need, a happle you don’t need, anything like dat, we will pass it on to some hungry people. Udderwise, please donate money…”

“I ain’t out there robbing nobody or killing nobody like other people….all I want is money to buy food. Do you want me to have to mug you for it?”

You’ll also occasionally hear people around you muttering, “Why doesn’t the mayor do something about this? This is against the law.”

Well here’s why he’s doing nothing – or at least nothing effective. According a story by Leo Standora in the New York Daily News, during a press conference somebody asked the mayor about panhandlers in the subway. His immediate reaction?

“Bloomberg got irritated when the question of panhandlers came up in a press conference.

He cut off the questioner, saying, "There aren't very many panhandlers left, in all fairness to the MTA. Come on."

Yeah, right. Come on, Emperor Mike. There are also the quartets that come through crowded cars, elbowing riders out of the way to sing do-wop songs or to play mariachi music, followed by some aggressive passing of a hat. There are people with sunglasses banging passengers' shins with white canes while holding out a cup or a hat or a bag.

And did I mention the insane homeless who can empty a car during rush hour while they lie across seats, reeking unbearably of days-old sweat and excreta in their pants, picking lice and bedbugs from their hair and clothing, while laughing insanely, or cursing, or glaring menacingly at the passengers halfway down the car who are trying not to inhale?

Nope, the mayor, who claims to ride the someway to work regularly (although he takes a limousine, escorted by a security detail, to a subway entrance in midtown rather than walk to the one near his private mansion)…the mayor hasn’t noticed any of this.

Maybe he’s just out of touch. Maybe, as the New York Daily News suggested, the security detail that precedes him into the subway at 59^th and Lexington (his home is on East 79^th Street, a mile and two subway stops to the north)…maybe the security detail scares the panhandlers away. Maybe he’s secretly blind and has cotton stuffed up his nose and in his ears.

Or maybe he’s been hoodwinked by his staff, or maybe even by leprechauns or fairies, into believing those aren’t really beggers, they’re tailors who are sewing him a new suit of clothes. After all, the expensively-tailored Bloomberg did in effect declare himself emperor, overturning a term limits law that he had himself supported so he could run for a third term.

Given the Bloomberg bait-and-switch record on term limits and other matters, my guess is that he’s simply a liar.

So is he so out of touch that he doesn’t see or hear about the legions of panhandlers in the New York subways? Or does he see them but pretend they don’t exist? As my pal Hotwire Kellington from down the block during my Brooklyn childhood used to say, “Youse pays yer taxes and youse takes yer cherce.”

If you were Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, which half-truth and half-lie would you tell? And should you tell it in a suit or shirtsleeves?

From the “Politicker” Column of the New York Observer comes word that Mayor Bloomberg is “testing” at least two different junk mail packages to see which one does more to support his budget and fading reputation.

One talks about “no new taxes” which sounds nice, until you understand that the “no new taxes” he’s talking about amount to a tax saving for the rich. That would be people like, umm, Michael Bloomberg.

The package also talks about “fighting for new jobs in every borough,” while failing to mention that he plans to put some teachers out of jobs, which amounts to destroying old jobs.

The second package talks about “nearly $2 billion for our schools, while working to keep the best teachers in the classrooms.” That would be nice, if completely true, but again, he’s planning to fire teachers. And since younger teachers earn less than older teachers, what do you want to bet that the “not best” teachers will be mostly older than 50, an age category where new job opportunities are slim?

Clearly the $2 billion isn't a wind blowing a lot of good to most New Yorkers. Mayor Bloomberg knows that compared to his own personal wealth of $18 billion, it's a pittance. Why, I wouldn’t be totally surprised if by the time he retires from politics, Bloomberg will have spent almost a billion bucks just advertising himself.

"Police State USA?" Well thanks to its mayor, New York is working hard to earn that title.

You’re walking down the street. Say, on your way to the supermarket. A cop stops you and demands you lie down on the ground, face down. Then he frisks you.

Poof! You're forever a criminal suspect.

You haven’t done anything illegal. It doesn’t matter. The cop finds your driver’s license in your wallet and calls it in. That action puts your name in a database for suspicious people. Along with your picture. Now, whenever there’s a criminal investigation, people will be asked if they recognize you, if they know your name.

Chechnya? Moscow? Peking?

Nope. New York.

As New York Times columnist Bob Herbert recently pointed out, it happens with regularity to African-Americans and Hispanics in New York.

This is racist behavior. It’s police state behavior. And it’s disgraceful.

Why won't Napoleon Bonaparte Bloomberg
stop this disgraceful behavior?

It would stop in a second if Mayor Michael Bloomberg told his police commissioner, Ray Kelley, “Cut it out or you’re fired.”

Fat chance! Since Michael Bloomberg overthrew New York’s election laws and did the equivalent of what another pipsqueak tyrant, Napoleon Bonaparte did when he crowned himself emperor, New York is only for people Mayor Bloomberg thinks ought to be living here.

The Mayor effectively threw out term limit laws by making a devil’s compact with the City Council. It said, in effect, “Let’s all override the public referendum that imposed term limits.” Job-greedy City Councilmen went along.

Drowning out legitimate opposition

Then, with $60 million or so of campaign spending, Bloomberg drowned out the protests of anyone who’d dare run against him.

Now corporations have the same right to drown out the free speech of others, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court. I’ve already made a case for why justices Roberts and Alito ought to be impeached. Now you know why Bloomberg out to be sent to the woodshed, too.

Not that it’ll ever happen. Unless you start to make a lot of noise.

Pissed off groundhog takes a bite out of Bloomberg: an anthropological, meteorological and political explanation for my foreign readership

This piece is solely for the edification of my foreign readers. Please don’t read it if you’re a U.S. citizen and most especially if you’re a New Yorker. Mind your own business.
I want to explain to you, dear foreign readers, a curious American folk custom called Groundhog Day.

The “groundhog,” also known as a “woodchuck,” (M. monax) is a North American rodent about the size of what you Europeans and Latin Americans call a “football.”

It lives in the forests of the northeastern United States where it busies itself burrowing holes to sleep in and munching on nuts and other forest flora.

Death on four wheels

Like its fellow North American forest occupants such as the squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus), the raccoon (Procyon lotor), and the possum (Didelphis marsupialis), the groundhog’s most threatening natural predator is the automobile. (Automobilis horriblis.)

This is because the groundhog likes to cross roads. If in the course of crossing a road it sees an automobile speeding toward it, the groundhog assumes that if it stands very still, the automobile won’t notice it and will kill something else instead. Unfortunately for the groundhog, it is only half correct. Squish!

This may lead you to conclude that groundhogs are not very bright. However, everything is relative. For example, Americans believe you can use groundhogs to predict the arrival of spring weather.

Rodent long-range
weather forecasts

According to a popular myth, if the groundhog emerges from his burrow on February 2nd and sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter. On the other hand, if he doesn’t see his shadow, spring is, umm…well, closer than six weeks away, regardless of the calendar.

Americans believe this myth because we are stupid.

Well, let’s face it. We really are. Mine is the nation that allowed George W. Bush to become president not once but twice, correct? I rest my case.

Belief in the ability of groundhogs to predict weather has led to a ceremony in a little town in Pennsylvania called Punxsutawney. Every year, the Punxsutawney town fathers dress up in top hats and frock coats. While the press watches and cameras roll, the bewildered groundhog gets yanked out of a box that serves as his man-made burrow. He is held up for all to see. Miraculously, he almost always sees his shadow, even if the rest of us can’t.

There are loud cheers, which scare the hell out of the poor rodent. Then all of us go back to work, relieved to know that winter will last another six weeks. And the groundhog can sleep off this horrible moment in the public eye until next year.

The groundhog’s name is always Punxsutawney Phil. I say “always” because this annual ceremony has been going on since 1887. The groundhog you see on TV cannot possibly be the groundhog they started with. All the same, there never seems to be a Phil Jr., or more likely a Phil the Fiftieth or Phil the Hundred-And-Twenty-Second.

Mayor Bloomberg’s New York
grows jealous of Punxsutawney 

Groundhog Day brings a lot of prosperity to rural Punxsutawney, population 6271. The press come and overwhelm the local diner’s capacity to brew coffee. The town gets lots of free publicity. So naturally, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, population somewhere between seven and eight million, grew jealous.

Consequently, we now have a Groundhog Day celebration in New York, starring a groundhog named Staten Island Chuck. Well, it doesn’t happen in the center of New York. If we had this ceremony in Manhattan, too many people would stand in line overnight just to jeer.

Instead, Groundhog Day gets celebrated in a remote zoo in our remotest borough, Staten Island. Only a Staten Islander could tell you how to get there. Not that New Yorkers are all that knowledgeable about getting around their city in any case. If any of us knows how to get to JFK airport by subway, we probably learned it from a French tourist.

This Groundhog Day, Mayor Michael Bloomberg schlepped out to Staten Island, one assumes by limo, to check out Chuck (the groundhog, not New York Senator Chuck Schumer) and see if Chuck’s meterological prediction agreed with Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction.

A furry critter in a foul mood
foils the whole PR thing

Unfortunately, Staten Island Chuck was in a foul mood that morning and didn’t want to come out of his box.

Equally unfortunately, this mayor doesn’t tolerate those who don’t cooperate with his public relations efforts. For example, his cops went out and illegally busted demonstrators, most especially bicyclists, in police state raids against protestors during the 2004 Republican convention.

And when he can’t bully them, the Mayor, who on his own is wealthy enough to bail out a bank, finds a way to buy what he wants.

He has in effect bought elections by drowning the opposition in advertising they can’t possibly afford to match. And he has in effect bribed his own city council into overturning a law twice mandated by voters for term limits on elected officials. He did this by encouraging the Council members to overturn their own term limits as well. But back to Staten Island Chuck…

Irritated critter disses mayor.
I say, “Good for you, Chuck!”

Staten Island Chuck was having none of this photo-op. If the mayor woke you up at 7:30 am so that he could aggrandize himself by having paparazzi fire off strobe lights in your face, you’d be disagreeable, too.

Bloomberg then tried the same tactic he used with his City Council. Bribery. He left about half an ear of corn in front of the entrance to Chuck’s box to coax him out. No fool that Chuck. He grabbed the corn and backed into his box with it. I’d rather have breakfast in bed, too.

So the mayor, who wants what he wants — citizens and ground hogs be damned — reached into Chuck’s box to yank Chuck out by the neck. And that’s when Chuck bit Bloomberg, as you'll see in this video.

Well, no real damage done. From what I hear, the Mayor required no more medical attention than a Band-Aid.

All the same, given the fact that a lot of New Yorkers are madder than a pissed off woodchuck about the mayor’s usurping of their term limits mandate, I’d get a tetanus shot if I were Michael Bloomberg.

And now for the weather…

For whatever it’s worth, Staten Island Chuck didn’t see his shadow. Which means, if you believe in this crap, that spring will come very early to New York this year, even if it doesn’t come early in not-so-far-away Punxsutawney. Well, that’s meteorology for you.

Okay, American readers, you can come back in now. Especially if you live in New York. In fact, for your own good, you’d better. As I write this, it’s snowing hard outside.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg demands some poor schnook’s head. Leave it to a bully like the mayor to pick on a little guy.

It happened last Saturday. Giants receiver Plaxico Burress somehow managed to shoot himself in the thigh while packing unauthorized iron at a Manhattan nightclub.

Plaxico’s an idiot. But in the aftermath of the self-wounding, it turns out Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a bigger idiot.

Good intentions,
bad result

An as-yet unnamed hospital “administrator” at New York Hospital failed to call the cops when Burress was brought in bleeding from the thigh.

Under some well-intentioned New York law, such gunshot wounds are supposed to be reported to the police “at once.” How long is “at once?” Who is the person in a hospital emergency room situation who is charged with doing the reporting? The law is a bit, umm, fuzzy on all that.

Meanwhile, it’s clear some hospital administrator, with a tragic instinct for decency, at first refused to give the cops information about the gunshot wound to protect a patient's privacy. Reports the New York Times:

A hospital administrator initially declined to give information to the detectives from the 17th Precinct, citing federal privacy statutes. “They initially cited a statute that does not apply,” Browne said, “in trying to resist releasing information. But they were persuaded otherwise.”

Mistake phooey! Bloomberg
wants to see spurting blood.

Okay, so far we have a little confusion over what to a non-lawyer might look like two conflicting laws. No problem. The cops get the details they want anyway. But then the Mayor of New York jumps into the picture, demanding blood. Again, according to the same New York Times article cited above:

He [Bloomberg] called on the Manhattan district attorney’s office to pursue criminal charges in the case, saying: “It is just an outrage that the hospital didn’t do what they’re legally required to do. It’s a misdemeanor, it’s a chargeable offense, and I think that the district attorney should certainly go after the management of this hospital.”

Right. Maybe we could erect a guillotine in City Hall Park, while we’re at it. Whose head does the mayor want to roll anyway?

Somebody — as yet unnamed in the press — has already been suspended, according to the hospital. Is it an admissions clerk who misunderstood the law and therefore deserves decapitation?

Is it an overworked hospital resident who could be drummed out of the medical profession to satisfy the mayor’s yearning to see a head in a basket over what is essentially an error in legal judgment — made during a medical emergency?

Does Bloomberg really
want a bigwig’s head?
Don’t bet the farm on it, pal.

Perhaps the Mayor wants to behead Herbert Pardes, the medical doctor who, as President and CEO of one the city's leading medical research and teaching hospitals, has more important things to do than hang out in the emergency room in the wee hours of the morning in case any celebrity jock comes in with a self-inflicted thigh wound.

Or maybe Mike the Bully is after John J. Mack, the hospital’s Chairman who is also the Chairman of the Board of Morgan Stanley. Gee, maybe not. I mean, it would be so embarrassing on the golf course down in Bermuda where the Mayor goes for weekends.

But I have a thought here:

While we’re chasing municipal evildoers and preparing to throw the book — or the guillotine blade — at them, how about going after certain corrupt guys who ripped the city off for many millions to build a ball park so they could take their friends out to the ballgame free? And feed those friends free while they're at it?

Here’s something that
does demand outrage

I’m talking about all the taxpayers’ money and property that the Bloomberg Administration ripped from the municipal treasury to help fund the filthy rich New York Yankees in their quest for a new, deluxe stadium.

Consider this report from the New York Daily News:

Mayor Bloomberg's top aides engaged in a behind-the-scenes brawl to win a free luxury suite at the new Yankee Stadium that could wind up costing taxpayers, e-mails show. Some of the mayor's top deputies spent months threatening and cajoling to get the free skybox. They even demanded free food and ultimately got most of what they wanted after they agreed to provide America's richest team 250 free stadium parking spaces in exchange.

Now that’s what I call criminal. Oh wait. Mike The Bully would have to cut off the heads of his own top sycophants. And then his own head.

Oh well, never mind. Let’s just roll out the tumbril holding the poor shmuck from the emergency room.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg vs. New York City’s taxi industry: Here’s wishing a plague of boils and oil leaks on both their vile, law-flouting houses

Let me start with my cranky prejudices. I hate New York City taxis.

Generally speaking, New York’s cabs are filthy, uncomfortable rattletraps. The “clear” Plexiglas partitions between the front and back seats (actually, most of them are opaquely grimy), designed to keep the driver from getting shot by a stickup man, can also get a passenger’s face flattened if the vehicle stops suddenly.

The seats in most of New York’s taxis (they’re rejiggered Ford Crown Victorias) are low on the floor. The seats supposedly offer lots of “leg room” but don’t you believe it. The front seats get pushed so far back (I assume for the comfort of the driver) that sometimes passengers can’t even find “foot room.”

Still more reasons to hate New York taxis: The driver’s identification card, only sometimes posted where it’s supposed to be, is generally unreadable behind the filthy Plexiglas shield. At night, lighted by the rough equivalent of a dim flashlight bulb, it’s just as unreadable.

Cell phone madness

Its also rare — extremely rare — to get in a cab in which the driver isn’t chattering away on his cell phone. I’ve had drivers take me to the wrong destination because they were too engrossed in their conversations to listen to where I said I wanted to go or to notice that we had passed my destination.

Much as I hate the taxi industry I also have an equally intense loathing for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the who's ultimately in charge of regulating taxis.

"The voters be damned!"

Bloomberg campaigned for term limits, got them, and subsequently decided that contrary to the term limits law and he will of the voters, he wanted a third mayoral term. So now he has used his considerable political clout to overrule term limits (which the New York's citizens voted for twice) with the complicity of the City Council. The Council was in effect bribed by having their own term limits lifted, too.

That's only a small part of it. Another item: In his misguided efforts to achieve something that would make his record look good, the mayor unsuccessfully fought for a lunatic congestion pricing plan which would have done little to relieve congestion, but would have driven up the cost of doing business in New York. You’ll find a number of informative rants on the subject here:

Turning yellow cabs “green”

The latest bee in the mayor’s slightly cockeyed bonnet has to do with “green taxicabs” — you know, the kind that spew out less pollution and carbon dioxide and drink up less fossil fuel.

Never mind that Mayor Bloomberg could save New York from tons of hydrocarbons, not to mention a good part of the traffic that’s clogging the streets simply by outlawing cruising. That’s the practice the cabs have of trawling the streets for passengers—a practice that puts just about all 13,000-plus cabs on the city on the street. They're out there 24 hours a day, seven days a week according to a taxi industry legal brief for which I’ll produce a URL shortly.

If we simply had a law like the one in Paris that prevents flagging down taxis in streets, the vehicles could line up at designated taxi stands, engines off, until a passenger came along. And during rush hours, you wouldn’t have potential passengers desperate for a ride wading into oncoming traffic to snare an empty cab.

Less traffic? Less pollution? A safer city? Nope, that would be too easy. Instead, the Bloomberg-controlled Taxi and Limousine Commission suddenly decreed that all new taxis have to be of a new and fuel efficient design that gets 25 miles to the gallon. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Sad to say, wrong.

Cute, clean, green and dangerous —
maybe the mayor’s people can’t read.

There are already some of these cute 25 mpg-or-better vehicles out on the street. I like to ride in  them. They’re of a completely different design than the traditional, modified Ford Crown Victoria that gets only 12 mpg. They’re higher off the ground, therefore more comfortable than the Crown Victoria. They're easier to get into and out of. They seem to offer about the same amount of legroom, but offer passengers the added advantage of being able to sit up straight. And maybe just because they’re new, they’re not as filthy as the Crown Victorias.

A small problem:
they’re also not as safe.

The taxi fleets that successfully sued the Mayor to lift his regulations pleaded that the little cars weren’t as safe as the big Fords. I assumed for many weeks this was just an industry red herring. I was wrong, as I learned when I examined court papers filed by the taxi industry. Some examples of safety problems:

…just weeks ago, the TLC [Taxi and Limousine Commission] was forced to issue a warning and directive stating that one of its mandated after-manufacturer vehicle alterations - the addition of vinyl seat overings – hinder the deployment of side curtain and front seat air bags in the hybrids. Had the TLC taken time to read the owners manuals of the approved vehicles, it would have seen that they explicitly warn against the installation of vinyl seat coverings. The TLC, however, ignored this safety warning and many others in its rush to mandate hybrid taxis.

Oh, and even one of the manufacturers agrees these fuel efficient babies aren’t safe as taxis:

…Toyota, who created and licenses hybrid technology – refuses to support the use of its cars as taxis due to its engineers’ concerns. A Toyota spokesman said: “Our engineers are nervous about it because they were not designed for commercial use. (NY Times, April 27, 2008) Another Toyota representative explained that the hybrids “have not been designed to withstand the rigors of 24/7 commercial use.”

And in the “You’re doing a
heckuva job, Bloomie” department…

In October 2004 the TLC [Taxi and Limousine Commission] conducted a sealed bid auction fort the CNG or hybrid (collectively “alternative fuel”) licenses. The City set the minimum bid price at an amount significantly below the then-prevailing market price for unrestricted licenses because the TLC recognized that alternative fuel vehicles are more costly to own and operate than conventional gasoline-powered vehicles…

…At the time of the auction, the TLC knew that there were no commercially available alternative fuel vehicles that meet TLC specifications for use as a NYC Taxi….Despite the lack of available alternative fuel vehicles, the TLC went forward with the auction …Eighteen of the licenses were successfully bid on…The bidders proposed the use of hybrid Ford Escapes, but the TLC refused to allow them to use these vehicles because they did not meet the TLC specifications for interior room. The TLC rejected all other vehicles the bidders proposed, and did not offer any other vehicles that could be used with the alternative fuel licenses…

Congatulations, license bidder —
you’ve successfully bid on…nothing.

Because the TLC refused to issue the bidders licenses and refused to approve any vehicles for use with the alternative-fuel licenses, on April 21 2005 the bidders sued the TLC demanding that the TLC close on their licenses.

We were for the Hondas before
we were against them —but now we’re
umm...ahh...ummmm....

In July 2008…the Honda Civic Hybrid and Honda Accord Hybrid were removed from the list. Plaintiffs were told that the Honda Civic Hybrid was removed due to particularly poor performance. Later in July, however, the Honda Civic was inexplicably added back to the approval list. In August 2008…the Honda Civic was also removed again.

Here are my own cranky solutions
to New York congestion and taxi problems

1. Outlaw taxi cruising. Require all taxis to wait for passengers at taxi stands, or to be summoned to specific addresses by telephone. It works in Paris, where the streets are even crazier. It'll work here, too.

2. Detroit’s on the rocks. Require them — require them I said — to manufacture hybrid cars safe enough to be used as taxis. Just tell them, “no taxis, no bailout.”

3. With city taxis lined up at taxi stands, it’ll be easy enough to subject them to a daily filth inspection. If they’re filthy inside, cut off their medallions (which the City auctions off like permanent real estate for a minimum upset price of $700,000. In fact, in the aftermarket those medallions sell for well over a million bucks. Is it any wonder a taxi ride costs so damn much in New York, while taxi drivers barely eke out a living working 12 hour days?

4. Stop the city’s cabbies from talking on the phone, with or without hands-free devices. If they’re caught talking on any telephonic devices in their taxis, don’t cut off their medallions. Cut off their ears.

5. Put a moratorium on those million dollar taxi medallions. (An exception can be made for individuals who own just one medallion and are trying to make a living.) After two years, all other medallions should become invalid and the taxi owner (usually a multi-car fleet) will be forced to rent taxi medallions from the city for an annual and more reasonable price. The city will collect a steady income stream — instead of an occasional taxi medallion windfall that the city then has to pay for by spewing more taxis onto the street. And because taxi overhead will be so much lower, drivers who lease their cars should be able to earn more, while passengers pay less.

But it all has to start with dumping Mayor Bloomberg. Despite a considerable amount of image doctoring, he’s not a successful mayor. He’s just as incompetent as George Bush. Send him back to Wall Street, with the rest of the investment world failures.