Michael Goodwin produced a poignant piece on our Mayor in today's NY Post...
The polls say he is ahead, but Bloomberg is running scared. His obscene spending could hit $100 million and is increasingly devoted to negative ads, a sign he has lost confidence in his own record.
Most surprising, the mayor has stooped to distortion to shape his key attacks against Democratic comptroller Bill Thompson.
After weeks of pounding Thompson over the lagging investment returns of city pension funds, Bloomberg, a Republican, conceded last week that his representatives voted for the very investments he denounces.
...that demonstrates that this billionaire Liberal will do anything it takes to win on Election Day - and that includes LYING directly to the people of NYC. Goodwin goes on...
Bloomberg is also pulling a fast one on education. As Sol Stern of the Manhattan Institute first noted, the mayor is rewriting history by claiming Thompson ran the schools a decade ago and was responsible for their failures.
While it's true Thompson was president of the Board of Education, Bloomberg's successful argument for mayoral control in 2001 was that nobody was in charge because board power was split among five borough presidents and the mayor. Mayoral control, he and others said, would end dysfunction by making one person accountable.
...this line of deceptive tactics makes clear who Mr. Bloomberg really is. It is sad that the media isn't pointing this out on a more regular basis, but it is good to see some movement in the NY Post. Here's another education lie that everyone inside knows about, but too few regular voters know...
Unfortunately for the mayor, the economic problems come just as the big education gains he touted are suspect. First, it was the revelation that state tests were dumbed down to where it's amazing anybody managed to flunk.
Now comes word that national tests show the real level of achievement among state students, including those in the city, has been flat. So instead of 87 percent of fourth-grade students being proficient in math, only 40 percent are.
The test mess is exacerbated by teachers and principals getting nearly $40 million in bonuses on the basis of the phony results -- a deal Bloomberg negotiated.
...that last line ties into another story in the Post that demonstrates one of Bloomberg's biggest flaws as a "manager": he just throws money at everything and calls that "leadership"...
As part of a PlaNYC initiative to give the public access to 290 schoolyards and give kids more open space by 2030, custodians get an extra $50,000 per school to cover annual expenses of opening the gates at 8 a.m. and closing them at dusk seven days a week.
While park advocates are happy the city is opening the playgrounds -- the City Council reported in 2006 that 81 percent of yards were locked after school hours, relegating 1,170 acres of public land inaccessible -- they bristle at the $50,000 price tag.
"It makes no sense," said Geoffrey Croft, president of watchdog group New York City Park Advocates. "The custodians are already there during the school week, and they have to clean the schoolyard regardless. So they're really just getting paid to open and close the gates."
...so Bloomberg takes a good idea and makes it unaffordable and wasteful because he really DOESN'T know how to manage things better than the average person. We give $50k to people who should just "do more with less" in their jobs out of managerial lazyness - and this is really a very small thing to ask a group of highly paid custodians to do.
Four more years of this and NYC will be flat broke - if we aren't already...
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written by Behold a Pale Horse , October 18, 2009
Bloomberg sells himself as being above politics, yet he uses negative campaigning like any other politician, Democrat or Republican.
What's sad is that he could win because his competition is so weak.
We can take solace that third terms for NYC mayors usually turn bad for them (i.e. Mayors Wagner and Koch).
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