The case against Bloomberg
Now that the 2008 Elections is blessedly over, it's time to move forward. A good part of that move forward is the fight against Mayor Bloomberg's despotic (and probably unconstitutional) Power grab.
The attraction of a third Bloomberg term - never mind that third terms historically haven't worked out so well, cf. Mayors LaGuardia (died), John Lindsay Robert Wagner (fixed!) and Ed Koch - is assumed to lie in what is being sold as his managerial competence and wall Street background in the midst of a Wall Street crisis. Why on earth it would occur to anyone to pick a Wall Street high-flyer to fix a mess caused by other Wall Street high-flyers eludes me, but there's that trusty old sense of logic that really has no place in politics again.
In terms of managerial competence, however, there are very solid arguments to make against a third Bloomberg administration. Consider the World Trade Center.
Over seven years after the attack, there is no new World Trade Center. The new Path station is a shambles, plagued by cost overruns and design changes. It is years from completion. The overall master plan for the site has been revised more times than the mayor has hairs on his head (a shrinking number to be sure, but we're talking about revisions to the biggest urban renewal project in the country). The time tables keep on being revised, and always further out. The memorial? Non-existent, and don't expect it to be built until 2011. What has been built on the site is 7 World Trade, notable for one reason: it was the one part of the rebuilding effort that the Bloomberg administration played no role in.
Meanwhile, rescue workers at the site, the same people we all applauded as they traveled down to the pit, are the victim of, to use the proper term, Bush EPA lies, with increasing rates of sickness. Has the mayor sued? No, of course not. Adults near the site on 9/11 are twice as likely as the general population to develop asthma.
The list of failures, of lost opportunities and tragic human impact goes on and on. And apparently, we need four more years of this, according to some worthless human beings (using the term loosely) on the City Council, and a bunch of billionaires who know better than we do what we need in our government.
Update: Dan Jacoby emails that Fiorello LaGuardia didn't die in office. True enough, but it's commonly assumed that the stress of the office contributed to his death.
Add These On To Your List
West Side Stadium, Olympics, ACS, the agency that monitors construction and crane collapes, closing firehouses, reducing the starting salary for police, an ice storm when you couldn't move your car for alternate side of the street parking and Bloomberg had tickets issued (I believe his answer was "tough") until his "handlers" told him this wasn't the right thing to do, congestion pricing, more crime, more homeless, dirtier streets, less money for education, a city geared to the wealthy and screw the middle class and there is much more that I can list but this should be the start.
The rebuilding of the WTC and the Memorial are a disgrace. There should be absolutely no reason why the Memorial at least shouldn't be 100% completed in time for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Bloomberg should have made this a priority from the beginning but he sat back on this matter. His uncaring attitude those those responders and the illnesses they are beginning to suffer from shows how little he cares about them and their families and what they're going through (and will go through in the years to follow).
Another item of business mismanagement
Bloomberg was so monomaniacally set on putting in a tunnel near the World Financial Center that he ended up giving Goldman Sachs (as I recall) $1.4 billion in tax credits (or some such benefits) just for them to remain in the city.
Not a good business move from the businessman.