Gobblety Gook

You hear the one about the New York billionaire who played the other New York billionaire?

Our Fair Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, helped pave the way to his bid to knock down term limits by drafting cosmetics mogul Ronald S. Lauder to his totally altruistic cause. (The City must be saved!) This was critical because Lauder's the dude who "bankrolled the 1993 campaign to create term limits in New York City and is considered the single biggest threat to changing the law, since he is willing to open his wallet to defend it," as the Times' City Room blog puts it.

Lauder agreed, except he thought he had agreed to a one-time-only waiver of the law, one that would benefit Bloomberg only. Only the Mayor and City Council suddenly found out afterwards that they couldn't do that legally; they would have to make the changed from a two-term limit to a three-term limit permanent. Awwww. Sorry, Ron!

Lauder's rich, though, and rich people don't like feeling like fools. He told The New York Times that he would oppose a permanent change, calling it "a terrible mistake."

Uh-uh. Trouble in Bloomieland!

Caught in London at No. 10 Downing Street (what's he doing there? I thought we needed him to save the City!), Bloomberg tried to explain the situation. You ready? Listen to this (I have boldfaced the laughingly bullshitty segments:

Ron and I had a conversation. He wanted to change term limits one time — from two to three. Not get rid of term limits and not do anything other than change it one time, from two to three. When we talked to the lawyers, the lawyers said that has a significant probability of not standing up in court, but a solution we worked out with his lawyers, and he and I on the phone, was you change term limits, and I promise to appoint a Charter Review Commission, and ask them to put on the ballot — not this coming November, not November 09, but of November 2010, because you don’t want it the same time as a general election. The issue plain and simple: should it be two terms or three terms and leave that up to the public. Not to revisit the issue of term limits — that was voted in by the public, and then reaffirmed by the public, and I understand that — but to say whether it should be two or three going forward. So it’s not bait and switch. It was something that we both agreed to, and I think it will work out fine. I’ll talk to Ron when I get back; I’ll be back in the morning.

Nah, it's not bait and switch! And the public has spoken on term limits—he knows that! Of course, he knows that! He's not changing the law, just tweaking it.

The man is a hopelessly prevaricating dissembler.