The Nation: Dem Doldrums in Gotham

[marmar]

Dem Doldrums in Gotham
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By Theodore Hamm

October 21, 2009


The unemployment rate in New York City is higher than 10 percent, exceeding the national average. Each week finds more families entering the city's homeless shelter system, and the city's once-mighty manufacturing sector has shrunk to a paltry 2 percent of the job market. Such indicators suggest that the future of the city's economy should be at the forefront of the mayor's race. Democrats should be troubled that it is not.

Whatever his party label, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's firmest loyalties are to Wall Street and the financial sector. Early in his first term he went to court to stop the City Council from cracking down on subprime lending. More recently, amid the uproar over the financial sector bailout, he positioned himself as Wall Street's champion, defending exorbitant bonuses and claiming that Timothy Geithner "walks on water." Throughout his two terms, Bloomberg has promoted development oriented around luxury condos as the middle class has been squeezed out of the city. Meanwhile the low-wage retail sector has become the main area of job growth for New York's working class.

That Bloomberg's Democratic challenger, Bill Thompson, has been the city's comptroller for the past eight years makes his unwillingness to challenge the mayor's economic blueprint all the more puzzling. Aside from hammering Bloomberg for overturning term limits, Thompson has other lines of attack, containing varying degrees of economic critique: he has gone after the mayor, the richest person in the city, for his self-financed campaign spending, which outpaces Thompson 16 to 1; and he has assailed the mayor's preference for raising sales taxes and city fees rather than income taxes on the wealthy. Yet none of these positions suggest a clear new direction for the city's economy.

There are plenty of ideas out there that Thompson could spotlight. Earlier this year, a progressive coalition of unions, immigrants' rights groups and think tanks issued a blueprint called "One City, One Future." Given that the "finance sector is likely to emerge from the current meltdown much smaller in scale," the report calls for building up other components of the local economy. Many of its recommendations center around a living wage, which would give service-sector workers a much-needed pay boost. Though he signed a wage increase for healthcare workers in his first term, Bloomberg does not support full-scale local living-wage legislation, arguing that hikes should be handled at the state and federal levels--which ignores New York City's high cost of living. Thompson--despite being endorsed by the Working Families Party, a key player in the One City coalition--has not made such legislation a centerpiece of his campaign. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091109/hamm

[bluestateguy]

1. Well maybe if they would stop nominating McGovern/Mondale/Dukakis type LOSERS things would change

Ruth Messinger? Mark Green? Fernando Ferrer? And now this joker Thompson?

What do you expect?