AlterNet: Hey New York, Michael Bloomberg Is Not Your Daddy

[marmar]

Hey New York, Michael Bloomberg Is Not Your Daddy

By Phyllis Eckhaus, AlterNet. Posted June 20, 2009.

Once-feisty New Yorkers have gone soft, trusting in a powerful daddy to take care of the city. It's not going to work.



It's primal. We'd all love a powerful daddy to protect us and ward off looming dangers.

That yearning made Michael Bloomberg mayor. A long shot before 9/11, he seemed a cartoon, the Billionaire Who Would Be Mayor, until traumatized New Yorkers turned to him for rescue.

And Mayor Bloomberg has been in many ways a good daddy. He has offered a welcome voice of reason and racial tolerance, in contrast to the choler of Rudy Giuliani. The mayor does what often feels like the right thing: banning cigarettes, transfats and traffic from Times Square. His grand-scale projects promise fun, from new baseball stadiums to an ill-fated attempt to host the 2012 Olympics in New York. (The Games have gone to London.)

Bloomberg's critics sound shrill, their vehemence ill-suited to a good man of good will. What is the problem?

The problem is us, we who defer to Daddy. Father Knows Best government may make for comfort and efficiency, but it eats away at the capacity for self-government, damping even the appetite for information that might spur questions of authority. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/politics/140783/hey_new_york%2C_michael_bloomerg_is_not_your_daddy/

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. Rec. What's good is not new; what's new is not good.

>>>>And despite his enthusiasm for the language of accountability and transparency, the mayor's initiatives repeatedly run counter to his rhetoric. Bloomberg's much-touted attempt to take over the cleanup of industrial wastelands, or "brownfields," removes cleanup authority from state environmental experts and puts it in the hands of political appointees potentially beholden to real estate developers. Mayoral control of public education has left the school system unaccountable either to the state or to the city; nonmayoral city agencies have been unable to obtain basic data.>>>>


And a drastic diminution of affordable housing besides! BLISS!

[Raineyb]

2. Bloomberg is making it hard for regular people to actually live in New York

But he doesn't come across as a big an asshole as Ghouliani so he gets a pass.

I said when he first ran that he would be no good. A government should not be run like a business. Businesses run only for profit and the well being of its customers is of little consequence. I had a friend tell me a while back "You know, I didn't agree with you when you said that Bloomberg wouldn't be any good. I was wrong. Everything you said about him was right."

We would have been better off had I been wrong.