Cleaning out my closet.

More housecleaning especially relevant in light of recent press conferences. Another gem from the drafts queue...

[from 10/18/09]

Fair’s fair.

You cheesy f**kers!

Way back in ’01 during the midst of the 9/11 attacks New York City’s primary election was postponed. The primary was later held and the election went forward but at the time and for long afterward the general consensus was to paint the whole incident as a power grab by then mayor Rudy Guiliani - going as far as to compare the man to facist dictator Mussolini.

All done because in this country today, it’s easy to be deride people of Italian descent. Italians are easy targets, they’re a group that you can get away making bigoted slurs about. It’s okay...

On September 11, the day of the terrorist attacks, New Yorkers were heading to the polls to vote in their mayoral primary. Under the direction of the outgoing incumbent mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, city election officials quickly postponed the election. Giuliani, one who never misses an opportunity to emulate the former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, toyed with the idea of amending New York City's term limits law so that he could run for mayor for a third consecutive term. Another Giuliani plan would have postponed the primary and regular mayoral election for one year, giving him at least one more year in office with the possibility of a change in the city law to allow him to run for a third term. Another plan would have made Giuliani a write-in candidate. Wary of Giuliani's various proposed election contrivances and his intention to use the attack on the World Trade Center for his own political advantage, New York's City Council and the New York State Legislature quickly put the kibosh to Giuliani postponing the election indefinitely, extending his term for one year, or amending the city's term limit statute. The mayoral primary took place on September 25, two weeks after the terrorist attack, and the general election occurred on schedule on November 6. Michael Bloomberg was sworn in as the new mayor on January 1, 2002.

Current mayor Mike Bloomberg has been no less dictatorial towards the city than his predecessor (congestion pricing anyone?) but, somehow he escapes the fascist rap or any other slurs. Now with the economy doing poorly, we are led to believe the NY City Council should just rescind terms limits (an issue City voters enacted via two referendums) to keep the city‘s future in the stewardship of Bloomberg.

What elitist crap!

If anyone wants proof of what a mistake it is to give a mayor a third term, they need look back no further than the third term of Ed Koch.
[and that’s where I stopped]

Nobody really wants to talk about Mayor Mike and his power grab. Nobody seems to notice the mayor is really good at telling people how to live their lives because he knows what’s good for them. He’s a man who takes the whole idea of being a public servant and turns it on its ear.

Mayor Mike is the penultimate NIMBY dick. How so? Well, let‘s take a look at that old congestion pricing plan Mayor Mike had... basically anyone coming into Manhattan from 96th Street to the Battery would have had to pay eight dollars for the privilege of driving their car in.

Hey Mayor Mike, if public transportation should be used in this congestion zone, why is it so many Manhattanites have cars? I have to say where I live, I can’t just walk down to the corner and catch a subway or a bus that will take me wherever I want to go and I can assure you that the buses or trains within distance here (and it isn’t walking distance) don’t run every five minutes like the ones in Manhattan do.

So, if we were going to enact congestion pricing, why wasn’t the very first part of that discussion something about placing a surcharge on any resident of Manahattan that has a car and thereby contribute to the congestion?

I’ve worked night shifts in the city and when I do, public transportation is a non-starter. All too often working a second shift can mean getting out far too late too late to even be able to catch a train home. What about people who live in outer boroughs whose neighborhoods aren’t served by public transportation the way Manhattanites enjoy?

Let‘s take it one step further...

Congestion pricing does absolutely nothing to address congested areas in the outer boroughs. There are quite a few parts of the city (hell quite a few parts of the tri-state region) with congestion but, what Mayor Mike won’t tell you is very simply this: the fare on mass transit is subsidized by drivers. It’s subsidized through tolls, gas taxes, surcharges on registration and host of other levies.

The city enjoys a good mass transit system but it doesn’t pay for that system. Manahattanites in particular enjoy the luxury of a system other parts of the city and region couldn’t even begin to imagine. How about they start paying for it?

Further, I’m really, really tired of the world‘s 17th richest billionaire (and the city’s richest resident) telling me and other New Yorkers how to live our lives when he is full of crap himself - take for instance his bs about being a subway rider:

On mornings that he takes the subway from home, Mr. Bloomberg is picked up at his Upper East Side town house by a pair of king-size Chevrolet Suburbans. The mayor is driven 22 blocks to the subway station at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, where he can board an express train to City Hall. His drivers zip past his neighborhood station, a local subway stop a five-minute walk away.

That means Mr. Bloomberg — whose much-discussed subway rides have become an indelible component of his public image — spends a quarter of his ostensibly subterranean commute in an S.U.V.

And Guliani was a dictator? Wake up New York!