Retire Mike Bloomberg

Mayor Bloomberg told a New Jersey couple who want to reclaim WTC ashes from a city dump that he had difficulty supporting their cause because I intend to leave my body to science. His new comments have angered families of 9/11 victims, who describe them as “cold,” “heartless” and “dismissive” of their grief.

In explaining his resistance to their plea for a “proper burial of the dead,” the couple told The Post that Bloomberg said, “I’ve only visited my father’s grave once.”

Then, when a stunned Kurt Horning asked Bloomberg if he “would want his father buried in a dump,” the mayor replied: “I intend to leave my body to science, so that doesn’t really worry me.”
“I was shocked at his responses. I think his response to our request was dismissive of our feelings,” Horning said.

New York Post
June 22, 2003

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented today as follows:
“I am asking Roman Catholics all over the nation to make a Thanksgiving Day appeal to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg regarding the request of those families who lost their loved ones in the World Trade Center (WTC) attack of September 11, 2001: please accede to the plea of ‘WTC Families for Proper Burial’ so that this group can disband.

Since 9/11, these families have yet to be afforded a respectful burial for their kin. It is only fitting that this unconscionable condition come to an end this Thanksgiving.
“It is hard to believe that more than four years after this national tragedy, these families are still being denied a proper burial for their loved ones. The remains of more than 1,200 victims of 9/11 who could not be identified are deposited in the Fresh Kills garbage dump on Staten Island. The families of 9/11 have been told that the remains—including identifiable body parts and personal effects—could be retrieved for a proper burial. But to date, nothing has been done to satisfy their request.

“Norman Siegel, a noted New York City attorney and civil liberties advocate, is a man of great courage and conviction; he is also a personal friend of mine. Because of the recalcitrance on the part of the Bloomberg administration, he was forced to file suit on August 15, 2005 in pursuit of a proper burial; the case is scheduled to be heard December 8.
“As Catholics know, August 15 is the Feast of the Assumption, and December 8 is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception; these are two holy days of obligation honoring Our Blessed Mother. It would be so great if Mayor Bloomberg were to take advantage of a national feast day, Thanksgiving, and put an end to this issue by doing the right thing.”

Mayor Bloomberg rushed to Bush’s defense when the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general blasted the White House for doctoring press releases after 9-11 to portray “hazardous” air quality findings as safe, a distortion that’s led to lung damage for thousands of firefighters and others at ground zero. “I know the president,” Bloomberg said when confronted with the shocking findings. “I think he’s a very honest guy. It would never occur to me not to trust him.”

Village Voice
October 18th, 2005

City councilman Charles Barron, learned about Bloomberg’s management style when he tried to negotiate with the mayor over the 2003 budget and argued that the mayor should reverse plans to reduce the number of city firehouses.

Mr. Bloomberg, frustrated by the haggling, shouted angrily that he did not care, using colorful language, “if you vote for my budget or not,” Mr. Barron recalled in an interview. “I think he has a real thin veil once you push his button. Remember, he’s a C.E.O. used to having his way.”

New York Times
October 18, 2005

When he first ran for mayor in 2001, Michael R. Bloomberg did it without much support from those who are often seen as crucial for winning big-city political campaigns - unions, civic groups and influential minority leaders. But when he ran this year, the story was different: he had a huge number of endorsements from those groups.

But Mr. Bloomberg’s strategists acknowledge that keeping the disparate supporters behind him will take a new level of political care and feeding for an administration that has been alternately criticized and complimented for having an unusual disregard for politics, even when that has undermined its own aims. Deputies to the mayor said it was possible that new hiring could be done by the administration to strengthen ties with Mr. Bloomberg’s various new constituencies in labor, the social service sector and the black and Latino communities.

Yet it remains unclear even to Mr. Bloomberg’s political strategists just how far he is willing to go to keep the disparate parts of his coalition together. He has, after all, frequently expressed a distaste for the sort of “horse trading” that goes into getting things done in New York - and at times displayed a singular knack for alienating potential supporters.

Moreover, Mr. Bloomberg’s policy advisers have grown accustomed to pursuing goals without regard to how they may anger constituencies. These advisers, who achieved a smoking ban and a mayoral takeover of the schools with no huge coalition of support, may not take kindly to working in a more politically minded City Hall. But Mr. Cunningham said that holding the coalition together and staying true to promises to avoid politics as usual did not have to be mutually exclusive.

And the alternative - doing nothing - is especially problematic. Mr. Bloomberg’s ability to pay for his own campaign has bolstered his case that he is not beholden to any outside interests. But associates said there was also a downside to being free of the indignity of begging for money. It can be isolating.

His first test came last week, when the City Council passed a bill to loosen restrictions on union donations to political candidates. The bill is popular with the mayor’s new friends in labor but runs counter to his stated distaste for any regulations giving interests more say in the political process through donations.

Mr. Bloomberg announced he would veto the bill. But he said he was doing so only on the grounds that an elected body such as the City Council should not be able to have a say in the rules policing how its members can raise funds. He said he supported the loosening of the regulations and called upon the Campaign Finance Board, which regulates contributions, to do so.

Union officials said the words of support helped stanch disappointment over the veto. But two officials at two of the city’s most influential unions complained that the campaign had indicated that the mayor would support the bill when it was seeking their support and help. One of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid drawing the anger of the newly empowered mayor, complained that with the campaign wrapped up, “we were left orphaned on this issue.”

One union leader who backed the mayor, Peter L. Gorman, president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, said that the endorsement did not solve his ongoing contract dispute with the administration.

“The mayor and I have had differences in the past, and I have no doubt we’ll have them in the future,” he said.

Even the Citizens Union, a public interest group that supports the mayor for his independent streak, says he needs to be politically astute.

“Political coalitions need to be cared for and fed,” said Dick Dadey, the group’s executive director. “And if the mayor’s administration is going to want to accomplish more things, they’re going to need to invest in keeping this coalition together.”

New York Times, November 20, 2005

“When you look back four years from now, you’ll say the first four years was a prelude”

New York Newsday
November 18, 2005

Little things still have the power to move Mary Brosnahan Sullivan, even after 15 years as executive director of New York City’s Coalition for the Homeless.

Mary Brosnahan Sullivan, executive director of the NYC Coalition for the Homeless, was at Larchmont’s Chat 19 speaker series.
Recently Ms. Sullivan met a woman named Sheila, who with her 12-year-old daughter had fled an abusive relationship on Staten Island.

Sheila was participating in the Coalition’s “First Step” job-training program and living with her daughter in a shelter. The daughter had a chance to take swimming lessons, something she urgently wanted to do.

“But her mother couldn’t afford a swimsuit,” said Ms. Sullivan, speaking to around 50 participants of Chat19 Restaurant’s Food & Thought luncheon series on November 3. “A cheap suit would cost $10 or $15, and she had tried without success for three weeks to save that amount.”

The Coalition stepped in and provided funds for a swimsuit. The daughter learned to swim; her mother is staying afloat, too, with a job as a receptionist at Estee Lauder.

Said Ms. Sullivan, “It’s easy for me to forget how much small amounts of money mean to desperately poor people.”

At present, 34,000 people are sleeping in shelters in New York City, said Ms. Sullivan. The Coalition for the Homeless offers an array of services, from 22 mobile food sites – “we feed 800 a night” – to eviction prevention grants to job training and a summer sleep-away camp for some of New York’s 13,000 homeless children.

“We’re not in the business to provide vast services,” she said. “Our programs serve as a model for what governments should be doing.”

Currently, she takes issue with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s census methods. “It’s a big debate, how you count homeless people on the street. The city did head counts at 2 am in February . . . There are literally thousands of people on the street who’re not reflected in these numbers.”

Ms. Sullivan praised former NYC mayor Ed Koch for committing “billions” to affordable housing units, but was less effusive about another former mayor, Rudy Giuliani. “One of the few times I think I saw Rudy Giuliani caught off guard at a press conference was when he was asked why we have 25,000 people in shelters.”

That number has grown since Mr. Giuliani’s term and Ms. Sullivan expects it to increase further. She cited recent assaults on Section 8, the federal government’s longtime housing subsidy program, and new rules that give shelters the right “to throw people out for the most minor infractions of the rules.”

“Also, there’s a new regulation [pending] that says that while you’re trying to prove you need shelter, you don’t get into a shelter. If this comes to pass, there will be children sleeping on the street and families in cars,” she said.

Larchmont Gazette, Tue Nov 17, 2005

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG BILLS himself in his autobiography as a women-friendly employer. Not so, says former saleswoman Sekiko Sakai Garrison, who filed a sexual harassment and discrimination suit against the media baron and his company in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on June 18. Her suit, which seeks $ 15 million, contends Bloomberg subjected her and other women employees to ‘’repeated and unwelcome sexual comments… sexual overtures…and overt sexual gestures, including unauthorized touching and inappropriate acts.'’

She also charges saleswomen had to wear sexy clothes. Her suit recounts an incident in April, 1995, when she told him she was pregnant. His response: ‘’Kill it.'’ She felt that meant she had to have an abortion to keep her job, which left her too distraught to work and led to her departure two months later. Garrison filed much the same complaint with the New York Human Rights Div. in 1995 but got the agency to issue a right-to-sue letter so she could file the federal suit. Bloomberg told the state body the case was without merit and denied the ‘’kill it'’ remark. But Bloomberg did not respond to requests for comment on the new lawsuit.

Business Week
June 30, 1997

By Juan Gonzalez
Thursday, November 3rd, 2005

Read the entire letter here

As a journalist who has chronicled big city politics in this country for decades, as a Puerto Rican with long experience in movements for racial and ethnic equality, and as a labor activist who has consistently fought to revive the American trade union movement, I learned long ago that outward appearances are often deceiving, that the surface manifestations of any political process often mask powerful currents swirling below.

Yet I have been amazed at the virtual absence of dispassionate and comprehensive analysis about this election; an analysis grounded in facts, one that places the conflict in the context of broader historical patterns, that consistently asks: what is in the best interest of working people and the marginalized or oppressed groups of New York City? Once you begin to look at the mayoral race from that deeper perspective, you begin to realize that there have been few times in recent memory when an urban electorate faced such a clear class choice – in the personalities of the candidates, their stands on the issues, and the forces they represent.

You have only to look at the traditional ruling circles of the city – the banking, corporate, real estate and media barons – to see how much they understand what’s at stake. Rarely have they been so unified in their determination to defeat a candidate who comes from the “Other New York,” who speaks openly about economic inequality and claims to represent the working class and racial minorities.

My experience more than 25 years of covering big city politics has convinced me that Michael Bloomberg, more than any New York mayor in memory, is systematically consolidating a velvet-glove takeover of city government on behalf of Wall Street financiers and the city’s real estate barons. In my columns in the Daily News over the past four years, and I have repeatedly chronicled many of the most flagrant examples of his policies.

If there is any shame in this race, it belongs to New York’s progressive movement, many of whose members failed to properly analyze the stakes of the conflict from the start, while others, succumbing to their class and racial biases, failed to rally behind one of the more progressive working class mayoral candidates in our city’s modern history. Hopefully, we will all learn well the lessons of this conflict, because the working class and the new majorities of our cities are inevitably ones who most suffer when progressive leaders desert the very principles they espouse.

When a young girl complained to Michael Bloomberg about the quality of food at her public school, Mr. Bloomberg told her not to worry because “all girls tend to be vegetarians” after a while.

New York Daily News
June 14, 2001

Launched over 25 years ago, the Wacko Awards have been handed out by the Voice to the biggest bullies, bumblers, screwups, and suck-ups in almost every major campaign. We appropriated the Wacko name from then mayor Ed Koch, who used the elongated version (”waaaacko”) to deride his critics, especially us. Though 2005 offered up a potpourri of worthy recipients, there are only a limited number of Wackos, and most of them this year go to the media. Here are the chosen few:

Grabbing this year’s Bloombucks Bonuses are those four titans of the New York press, Mort Zuckerman, Rupert Murdoch, Arthur Carter, and Pinch Sulzberger, whose Daily News, Post, Observer, and Times competed for the Mogul Mouth-to-Mouth Resuscitation Air Bag. Converting their predictable editorial endorsements of Bloomberg into a campaign-long splurge of double-standard news coverage, their collective invisible hand generated a juggernaut of juiced judgment for their fellow mogul that crossed all ideological or partisan lines. Instead of paying so much as lip service to the level-playing-field job of a free press, the moguls added their own “objective” voices to the torrent of echoing ads purchased by Bloombucks, combining to revive in a breathless six months a mayor who’d hit historic approval-rating lows.

Village Voice, Tue Nov 15, 2005

Forty-eight hours. That’s how long it took for Mayor Mike to double- cross New York and call for new taxes — violating repeated promises that he would do no such thing.

Indeed, the actual direct-from-the-machine vote counts only come today — yet Bloomberg has already announced a plan for socking it to New Yorkers and their neighbors.

On Friday, he renewed his demand to restore the commuter tax, which would zap non-city residents who work here and, indirectly, their employers.

Over and over again during the election campaign, Bloomy vowed not to raise taxes.

“If we focus on trying to do a little more with less, with the expansion of the economy, we will get through [next] year without any tax increases or fee increase,” he said just days before the vote.

New Yorkers thought Rudy Giuliani evicted the Three-Card Monte sharps; little did they know they’d be returning one to City Hall for four more years.

Frankly, though, voters had fair warning. (As they say, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.)

New York Post, Tue Nov 15, 2005

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When Bloomberg first proposed running for office, many of his friends and associates advised him against it, but he apparently was unfazed. At a meeting last year, he summed up his attitude toward electoral politics, and risktaking in general, by telling an off-color joke. “I get slapped a lot, but I get laid a lot, too” was the punch line.

The New Yorker
September 3, 2001

During his $75-million-plus election campaign in 2001, businessman Mike Bloomberg warned voters that his rival for mayor, “politician Mark Green,” refused to rule out tax hikes if elected.

“Higher taxes now will cripple NYC!” shouted his slick mailings that October.

Three months later, in his first state-of-the-city speech, he said again: “We cannot raise taxes at this time.” That sentence was even underlined for emphasis in copies of the speech distributed that day.

His aides freely acknowledge that Bloomberg sought to confine the worst fiscal drama to his first two years in office and then move past it. Now, the city still has expenses outpacing revenues, a problem that experts call structural imbalance.

In 2002, as he got his footing, Bloomberg used $1.5 billion in emergency bonding authorization, enacted after the World Trade Center attacks, to help close the deficit. Financial managers shun long-term borrowing to meet expenses, believing it is akin to putting your electric bills into your mortgage. The mayor vowed he would not do it again.

Bloomberg’s second-year efforts to revive a tax on commuters who work in the city failed in Albany. However, he managed to win other help from the State Legislature, which authorized the tax hikes over Gov. George Pataki’s veto. One-eighth of 1 percent was added to the sales tax, and an income tax surcharge was imposed on the top 10 percent of wage earners. Both are to expire this year.

Bloomberg’s drive to balance the books as required by law also benefited from a massive, highly controversial fiscal gimmick. He saw $500 million a year in old debt removed from his books when the Legislature, in effect, spread out the cost statewide — and rolled it into 30-year bonds. That adds up to more borrowing to meet expenses. Pataki and Comptroller Alan Hevesi sued to stop it, condemning the practice as fiscally unsound. But the courts found it had been enacted legally, and did not address the wisdom of the policy.

Despite his business background, the billionaire mayor rejects privatization as a panacea. He’s gone the other way, in fact, on bus franchises, insisting that the public bus system take over routes that have been run for decades by private companies in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. He also canceled earlier privatization plans for Off-Track Betting and both Queens airports, as well as a planned private contract for compacting city waste in Linden, N.J.

New York Newsday, January 30, 2005

Yanks and Mets stadiums could cost taxpayers $800 million

Village Voice, November 14, 2005

On June 15, Mayor Michael Bloomberg stood before a packed crowd inside the Yankees’ Stadium Club and proclaimed the city’s plans for a new home for the Bronx Bombers. The new 51,000-seat facility, promised the mayor, to be built atop the ball fields and tennis courts just north of the House That Ruth Built, would be a “stunning” addition to the Bronx, with “the state helping the way, but George footing the bill—it doesn’t get any better than that.”
Steve Swindal, George Steinbrenner’s son-in-law (and newly anointed successor as the Yanks’ managing partner), went further, declaring bluntly: “There will be no public subsidies.” Coupled with the new Mets stadium announced three days earlier, the announcement seemed to mean that Bloomberg had pulled off a miracle: From the ashes of his Olympic dreams, he would provide New York with the twin baseball palaces that Rudy Giuliani had proposed in the dying days of his rule—but this time, at no cost to the public.

Well, not exactly. The truth about stadium deals is in the fine print, and nowhere has the print been finer than in the deals concocted by Bloomberg and his sidekick for economic development, Dan Doctoroff. An analysis by the Voice of public documents reveals that when all is said and done, the Mets’ and Yanks’ “privately financed” stadiums would stick taxpayers with a bill of at least $800 million—and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars more.

Playing hide-the-subsidy with sports stadiums is nothing new, of course. Judith Grant Long, a Harvard urban planner who has examined the financing of all 99 existing major-sports facilities, found that when unreported subsidies are included, public stadium costs leap by an average of 40 percent. Even the San Francisco Giants’ SBC Park, considered the Holy Grail of privately financed ballparks, sported a final public price tag of $142 million. “The 1960s and ’70s leases are very different animals” from those in recent years, Long explains. “As the lease terms became more and more complex, the subsidies were obscured.”
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