Bloomberg Doesn't Allow Pictures

I was strolling around New York last week, snapping pictures along the way, as I do most every day. I was in Midtown and noticed I was near the historic restaurant Le Cirque, so I veered into the circular glass courtyard on E. 58th Street where the place is located, an address formally known as One Beacon Court. Place reminds me of that circular shaft where Luke and Darth Vader had their duel in "The Empire Strikes Back." I saw Le Cirque to the right. I swiveled. Opposite it was a doorway with the word "Bloomberg" above it.

Oh, yes. I remembered. This building is also the headquarters of Bloomberg L.C. They take up 700,000 of the 900,000 square feet available in the thing. I lifted my camera to take a picture, and a big man in a blue jacket approached me with a stern look on his face. "No pictures!" he said. A security officer. "Why not?" I asked. When people say I can't do something, I always ask why not. Deniers must always be made to explain. If only to inconvenience and annoy them. "They're not allowed," he said. Well, that clears it up.

I didn't take it further. Arguing with security guards never pays off. They only parrot the company line. They don't ask why. I noticed he said nothing when I took a picture of Le Cirque. It was only the Bloomberg entrance that he objected. Draw your own conclusions. I drew mine: more evidence that Bloomberg is a jerk who has one set of rules for us and another for himself.

Some Stuff That's Interesting: Bloomberg Edition

Bloomberg still thinks he surreptitious weekend escapes to his Bermuda estate (above) are none of our business. Because being mayor of NYC isn't like a seven-day-a-week thing or anything like that. [NY Times]

Willets Point landowners are out to prove that Bloomberg lied about traffic projections in its push to ram through a redevelopment plan for the Queens battleground. [NY Times]

No wonder I feel so poor. A new reports that, while New Yorkers have a median family income of $56,000, our high cost of living renders that a real income of $41,000. We're the poorest people in American, relatively speaking. Think Bloomberg sympathizes? [Daily News]

A brief profile of Bloomberg's comrade in denuding New York of all character and diversity, Amanda Burden, in a magazine I'm sure she subscribes to. [Vanity Fair]

Bloomberg, who puts salt on everything he eats, harasses food companies into slashing the salt in their products, because we do what he says, not as he does. [Gothamist]

Justice: EPA Designates Gowanus Canal a Superfund Site

In a rare defeat for Mayor Bloomberg and his powerful pals in Big Development, the Environmental Protection Agency has seen obvious sense and designated the long-putrid Gowanus Canal a Superfund Site. They thus rejected Bloomberg's hastily and cynically constructed plan to clean up the canal, which was nothing but a chimera designed to preserve the ravenous and selfish interests of the Troll, er, Toll Brothers, who planned to building a series of towers alongside the poisoned canal. How interesting and strange, in today's New York, for the interests of the greater community to be put ahead of a single wealthy developer. And how typical that such a decision has to come from outside the City. Little Boy Bloomberg, who thinks Wall Streeters deserve bigger raises and that rich people are the salt of the earth and the heart of this town, would never have for a second listened to the arguments of a community that thought the general welfare trumped private ambitions.

“After conducting our own evaluations and consulting extensively with the many people who have expressed interest in the future of the Gowanus Canal and the surrounding area, we have determined that a Superfund designation is the best path to a cleanup of this heavily contaminated and long-neglected urban waterway,” Judith Enck, the agency’s regional administrator, said in a statement.

The Toll Brothers, showing their true colors, and petty and vengeful to the end, said "Given the way Superfund sites work, it could be a decade or more from now before clean up starts. We just don't have that time horizon. We will most likely walk away from the properties." Great supporters of the community, they. Real loyal. Did they think the City plan was going to take six months? No. Because it was fictional. The City would have done squat if the EPA has decided not to confer Superfund status and went away. That's the "time horizon" Toll wanted to work with. The real contest here was always a Real Cleanup (the EPA version) vs. No Cleanup (the true City version). That's why it was so easy for people like me and other South Brooklyn activists to make a decision.

And besides, the E.P.A. readily estimated that the federal cleanup would last 10 to 12 years and cost $300 million to $500 million. Big cleanups take time. And the Gowanus has been steadily polluted for decades.

Now we just await Bloomberg's stubborn, childish condemnation of the EPA's ruling. Let's hope this is only the first policy defeat in the robber baron's ill-gotten third term.

Restless on the New Permanence of Bloomberg's Suburban Times Square

Bloomberg's arrogant, cynical plan—to lull us into acceptance of his bourgeoise-Disney-hotel-atrium vision of Times Square by plunking it down without any civic say-so and then leaving it there for half a year until we get tired of complaining about it, and he's successfully bought his reelection—worked like a dream. Times Square isn't for New York citizens anymore. It's for tourists, people Bloomberg honestly likes a lot more than us. They're neat and clean and reasonable and render under Caesar what is his with minimal grousing. 

Bloomberg thinks we're unfit; we need to cut down on the calories, the smoking, the salt, live better. Yet he wants everyone to park his fat ass down in a patio chair indefinitely, in a space where people should really be walking very fast. He's not a man of troubling contradiction and hypocrisy. He's a man of depth you and I can not fathom.

Here's what the author of Restless thinks. I wouldn't have said it this way, but I basically agree. The man should be given a Times Op-Ed column. He cuts right to the bone.

Where TV viewers and tourists can sit and inhale their transfat-free 3000 calorie Happy Meal without inhaling tailpipe exhaust, and revel in the reflected, throbbing emptiness of that shiny corporate ad mall, that Romance Novel Vampire Circle Jerk House of Mirrors. Where the flagships of all the corporations that own culture are lined up and waiting to ferry us out to sea, where they'll prime us with free cocktails and slot machines quarters, wait till we're drunk and hypnotized, then roll us for every last cent of our cash, identity and dreams before they dump us -- over the New Jersey Trench, full of soggy styrofoam, dirty needles and axle grease -- then turn around and head back to Bloomberg Times Square for a fresh load of suckers...

Below, a picture of Queens Plaza at Northern Boulevard. How about cleaning that up, Bloomberg? Oh, wait, that wouldn't benefit tourists or Wall Street princes. Only citizens. Why bother?

Our Mayor, the Eternal Hypocrite

From today's New York Times, by Jim Dwyer:

The average New Yorker uses one-half to one-third the electricity of other Americans. Our carbon footprints are just 29 percent of people who live outside the five boroughs, and City Hall has practical plans to reduce even that amount by nearly a third over the next two decades. No wonder that this month, in a talk at the New York Academy of Science, Rohit Aggarwalat, the mayor’s chief adviser on sustainability, said the city was “the most environmentally efficient society in the United States.”

So it makes perfect sense that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is going to Copenhagen on Monday and Tuesday to address the international conference on climate change: his administration is working to head off problems that will not emerge until long after he is gone.

A strong case can be made that when it comes to energy and climate issues, Mr. Bloomberg is the most visionary public official in the country.

And a strong argument can also be made that on a personal level, he ranks among the worst individual polluters ever to hold public office.

Mr. Bloomberg owns a helicopter and two jets, both Falcon 900s. He flies everywhere on private jets, by far the least efficient form of transportation on or above the earth. He takes his jet to Bermuda many weekends. He has flown around the globe on it. He uses it to go to Washington. He is planning to get to Copenhagen for the climate conference by private jet, too.

The carbon math works out like this: by taking his Falcon 900 to Denmark, Mr. Bloomberg will be responsible for the release of 37 times the carbon dioxide than if he and his entourage flew on a scheduled commercial flight. The calculations were done at my request by Dimitri Simos, the developer of software used by the airline industry to assess aircraft emission and performance. Mr. Simos said that a Falcon 900 carrying eight people from Newark to Copenhagen would produce 21.6 tons of carbon dioxide. By adding eight people to the scheduled Scandinavian Airlines flight, the aircraft, usually an Airbus A330-300, would produce an additional 0.58 tons of carbon dioxide.

Mr. Bloomberg’s routine trips to Bermuda are even more carbon costly: the private jet produces 130 times more emissions than going commercial. On those jaunts, Mr. Simos said, the Falcon produces 4.3 tons of carbon dioxide; putting another two people on an American Airlines Boeing 757-200 that flies to Bermuda would produce only 66 more pounds.

Dwyer than goes on to say, "This is not Bloombergian hypocrisy; it is a paradox, shared by most of humankind."

No—it's hypocrisy.

A Victory

New Yorkers who have fumed for a year over how Michael Bloomberg overturned term limits, and simultaneously overturned democracy in the city, should have reason to smile this morning.

No, the blinkered billionaire megalomaniac did not lose. But for a man who spent $100 million on his campaign—"a sum without equal in the history of municipal politics that gave him a 14-to-1 advantage in campaign spending," as the Times reported; and who had no strong opposition to speak of, he did not win in any way that the Bloomberg administration could call satisfactory, let along a mandate.

51% to 46%. After 12 months of non-stop campaigning, of spending tens of thousands of dollars a day, of sending out whole forests of mailings, Bloomberg could not make half the city like him or forgive him for his highhanded power grab. Thompson was not a strong candidate. He had no money. No one knew what he was about. He didn't articulate his positions well, or give you a reason to vote for him. Therefore, it's a safe assumption that at least one out of every two Thompson votes was not a vote for the comptroller, but a vote decidedly, angrily against Bloomberg. The Times reported that "exit polls indicated that 45 percent of voters said that Mr. Bloomberg’s handling of term limits was a factor in their decision not to vote for him."

Rest assured Bloomberg and his minions feel the rebuke. Remember, our mayor ran for a third term not just because he wished to retain his hold on power, but because he likes being universally acknowledged and loved as a great leader and forward thinker. He's craves attention and praise. But he's lost our love, now. Even his supporters are kind of "meh" about him now, if you've read the various news reports in recent weeks. Read this, today, from the Times:

Stav Brinbaum, 37, a Web producer from Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, described his own vote for the mayor as “unfortunate.”

“I feel he bought himself the election,” Mr. Brinbaum said, and “ran a smear campaign against a nonexistent opponent.” But, he added, “He’s doing a really good job.”

“If there were somebody stronger running against him, I would have happily voted for them,” said Paul Ranson, 56, a designer also from Prospect Heights. “But there’s not, so I unhappily voted for Bloomberg.”

Some support base!

As expected, the turnout will be among the lowest in New York history, the voters enthusiasm sapped by the unfairness of the election. The third term debacle (and it was a debacle, for us, for City Council, and, inevitably, for the mayor) has ruined Bloomberg's credibility, forever besmirched his reputation. He's the man who first rigged the election, and then bought the election—and didn't even do a very good job at that, since he had to run his campaign at full speed in order to squeak by. Now, he can be considered corrupt and weak.

It's going to be a grim, cheerless four years. But at least it won't be grim only for us.

Stating the Obvious

The New York Times weighed in big time on Mayor Bloomberg's myopic vision for economic development in New York yesterday. The revelations in the article should come as no surprise to anyone who has bridled at the longtime, wholesale, City Hall-backed, real-estate rape the five boroughs have suffered over the past eight years. But it's nice to see the Paper of Record state it in plain terms:

The administration’s economic development policies started with a simple concept: New York must grow to compete with other cities.

Development became the means toward that end. Create new opportunities for developers, the wisdom held, and good things will happen for New York as a whole. Companies will rush to glorious new towers in reinvented neighborhoods, diversifying the city’s economy in the process.

Many mayors have favored the real estate industry, whose campaign contributions are often generous. Mr. Bloomberg lobbied forcefully for developers even though he did not need their money.

“I think a mistake that mayors have made,” said Seth W. Pinsky, president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, “is that they’ve really only been willing to push projects where they would be around to cut the ribbon to open the project, and what this mayor has done is to take the long-term view.”

The first obstacle to remaking the city was the lack of available parcels for large-scale development. Rezoning became the solution, Mr. Doctoroff said. He had headed the committee that sought to bring the Olympics to the city and had become familiar with largely undeveloped tracts outside the Manhattan core, like sites along the Brooklyn waterfront.

“That sort of became the genesis for the effort,” he said in a 2007 interview.

The effort became the most extensive rezoning in modern city history. Sections in all the boroughs were rezoned to boost their development potential. Fallow factory sites were recast as places for housing or office towers as the city confronted the idea that it was no longer a manufacturing center. At the same time, the city reduced allowable densities in many neighborhoods that were troubled by illegal or unpopular development.

More choice outtakes:

At times, urban planners have questioned whether the Bloomberg administration has gone overboard in offering incentives to developers. The Hudson Yards on the West Side of Manhattan have been looked at successively as a potential Olympic venue, a football stadium and now an urban village. And the city, through a specially created authority, has issued $2.1 billion in debt to pay for the extension of the No. 7 subway line to the area.

The debt is supposed to be paid from taxes generated by the new development, but if no development occurs, the city could be on the hook for $100 million a year in payments....

Some housing advocates say the gain in moderately priced housing units has been offset by the loss of 200,000 apartments that switched back to market rates under state rent-regulation laws that they say Mr. Bloomberg did not push Albany to change.

“Everyone will admit that New York City can’t build its way out of its affordable housing crisis,” said Mario Mazzoni, lead organizer at the Metropolitan Council on Housing, a tenants’ rights organization. “If you are talking about building affordable housing, the way they conceive of it is as a massive subsidy to developers.”...

“It seems like in a lot of places, the attitude has been like a field of dreams: If you zone it, they will come,” said Robert Perris, district manager of Brooklyn Community Board 2, which includes the downtown area. “It’s been kind of a mixed bag here.”

Brownstoner, assessing the article, said "they don't say so explicitly, but it looks to us like the authors would not give it anything higher than, say, a C-."

The result of this great "vision"? People are leaving New York City and New York Stage in droves. From the New York Post:

New Yorkers are fleeing the state and city in alarming numbers -- and costing a fortune in lost tax dollars, a new study shows.

More than 1.5 million state residents left for other parts of the United States from 2000 to 2008, according to the report from the Empire Center for New York State Policy. It was the biggest out-of-state migration in the country.

The vast majority of the migrants, 1.1 million, were former residents of New York City -- meaning one out of seven city taxpayers moved out.

"The Empire State is being drained of an invaluable resource -- people," the report said.

Politician, Heal Thyself

Hear the one about the mayor who speeds around town in several SUVs to execute and support his various environmental, biking and pro-mass-transit initiatives? The mogul who thinks he's the one to save the city from an economic crisis partially created by the technology he sold to the Wall Streeters? The zealot who insists we all eat well even as he wolfs down junk food with piles of salt on it? The populist who goes out of his way to make sure the people don't have a say in the running of the city? The self-professed anti-politician who attains offices by whoring himself out to the political party that will most quickly expedite his re-election?

Everything Bloomberg does seems rooted in the most flagrant hypocrisy and do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do self-delusion. A new example of this can be seen in an article in the New York Times today (which paper recently endorsed the would-be third-termer. Remember when one of the purposes of journalism was to bring discomfort to the comfortable?). Bloomberg's people are bemoaning the low turnout in the recent primary and runoff elections, and are determined to get the vote out next week.

“At the end of the day, every election is about one thing: making sure your supporters get to the polls and vote,” Lenny Speiller, the campaign’s get-out-the-vote director, declares on the Bloomberg Web site.

Recalling the record-low turnouts in last month’s primary and runoff, Mr. Speiller exhorts Bloomberg volunteers to shift into overdrive. “Our efforts have been and will continue to be the most expansive and effective grass-roots operation this city has ever seen,” he said in a blog post dated Friday. “Tonight we will knock on our 1,500,000th door, make our 550,000th volunteer phone call and hand out literature at our 4,000th transit stop and high traffic location — and if you think that’s impressive, you haven’t seen anything yet!”

Admirable. Let's put aside, for the moment, the ridiculousness of a campaign that has spend more millions than any other in New York City history calling itself a "grass-roots operation," and focus on what the Bloomberg camp seems to be missing. That is, if there is widespread apathy among New Yorkers at present, the Mayor created it. When an election is hopeless and corrupt, voters react in two ways: some get angry and fight, joining the opposition; but most throw up their hands, give up and walk away in disgust.

Most New Yorkers presently feel as though they have no say in how their City is run; no power whatsoever. Bloomberg's end run around term limits hollowed out voter will. We're all empty hulls now. Why go to the polls when it was clear long ago that Bloomberg had decided he was going to be Mayor as long as he liked, no matter what we said, thought or did? We can't stop him. That he wants our vote seems absurb and unnecessary. He's already King; does he really need us to act like serfs? If he can thwart voter will by overturning term limits expressly to serve his career and ego needs, can't he stuff the ballot box and otherwise fudge the results as he sees fit?

You can either run an honest and fair race, or you can have voter interest, Mike. You can't have both. If you don't give a fuck about us, a lot of us aren't going to give a fuck about you.

(Thanks to Restless for the picture.)

The Affordable Housing Canard Exposed

Gothamist, summarizing a New York Times article, telling us something we've all known for years:

Mayor Bloomberg's $7.5 billion plan to build or preserve city-financed residences for low-, moderate-, and middle-income families has constructed and protected 94,000 units over the past seven years — but over the same period the city's richest man has been unable to prevent rents from skyrocketing on some 200,000 other "affordable" units.

The NY Times reports that the Mayor's efforts to help the city's poor find housing have "been nearly drowned out by the twin waves of gentrification and rent deregulation," resulting in a 17% drop in the number of units affordable to low-income New Yorkers since 2002. Community Service Society senior housing policy analyst Victor Bach said, "We're losing units even with additions to the stock under the mayor's housing plan...I'm not knocking the plan. I'm just saying it hasn't done much to stop the hemorrhaging of lower-rent units across the city."

This is why Bloomberg detractors are never swayed when the Mayor and his developer pals talk up the virtues of the affordable housing units in their new housing towers. It's all bullshit and spin. They're not helping poor and middle income people; they're huring them; they're driving them out.

That Explains a Lot

According to a recent slide show in the New York Times of the Bloomberg campaign's inner circle, Mayor Mike's leading pollster, Bernard Whitman, traces his lineage back to Count Dracula.

Yes. It all makes sense now.

There's more. Bernie, who is 43, also "Became obsessed with Richard M. Nixon in elementary school. Read his autobiography at age 12." That means he read all about Dick in 1978. After he was impeached and disgraced.

Nice. Nice kid.

Surprise: Murdoch Endorses Bloomberg

A billionaire media mogul looks at a billionaire mayor and says "What's not to like?"

And, so, Rupert Murdoch has endorsed Michael Bloomberg for a third term as mayor of New York City. Or, rather, the Brooklyn Paper and the Community Newspaper Group have endorsed Bloomberg, which is pretty much saying the same thing, as Murdoch runs both entities. Both puppet organizations came out with mealy-mouthed paeans to our criminally inclined, richest citizen this week, accompanied by an awful picture of Bloomberg smiling (ugh!) And to show you exactly how independently minded those two bodies are, it's the exact same endorsement!

The endorsement skated over the main reason people oppose Bloomberg for a third term—because he's running for a third term!

Granted, Mayor Bloomberg’s quest for a third term has not been the prettiest thing to watch. First, the billionaire mayor, a former Democrat, renounced his Republican Party affiliation during a flirtation with the presidency in 2008 as an independent.

Then, when faced with the obstacle of New York City’s two-term limit, he spent a considerable sum of money to overturn the inconvenient law.

For many voters, that disqualifies Bloomberg from further service.

But for us, it is but a blemish on an otherwise stellar record.

They should have stopped that passage before the last sentence.

And it rolls out this continuing fiction:

And best of all, he’s not a politician.

Indeed, critics complain that the mayor’s personal fortune is bank-rolling his re-election and silencing democracy, but it is that wealth that frees Bloomberg from the affliction of so many other popularity-craving, poll-watching politicians. He can truly answer to the people of New York because he doesn’t need to answer to anyone else.

Jesus. A popularity-craving, poll-watching politician is just what Bloomberg is. He's pure politician from top of his diminutive frame to his well-shod toes. Anyone who doesn't realize that is a fool or a willful toady.

Well-informed people that I talk to have stopped reading any political reported done by these publications. I suggest you do the same.

One Solution of What to Do With All Those Bloomberg Mailings

My remedy for what to do with all the Bloomberg for Mayor mailings that keep getting stuffed in my mailbox is to immediately deposit them in the circular file before I can catch a glimpse of Megalomaniac Mike's turtle face and blue work shirt. Restless—or, rather, Restless in the guise of Festus T. Tennessee, Esq., PhP, DoD—has a more satirically satisfying solution: wallpaper. Read:

Thank you MIKE for all the big sturdy campaign ads I keep gettin' in the mail!

In between me, my 5 cats, 3 dogs, my surrogate taxpayer rabbit Mr. Chuckles, and the "Dirty Dozen" rats I been trainin' to pull the miniature Santa sled I found in a dumpster -- all of us registered to vote -- we been gettin' 20 mailers a day!

Soon I will have enough to paper the walls, ceilin' and floor of my tar paper shack down here by the crick, near where Kings County meets the Queens. (I don't want to tell nobody which crick, 'cause then they'd all be movin' down here!)

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Thank your ad people for usin' such good lookin' models, and thank your momma for bequeathin' you such a nice soft pleasin' face yourself -- since I'm gonna be lookin' at all y'all for the next 10 years at least!

In fact, since I hear there is no way you can lose, might I suggest you just get elected every 8 years? 'Cause these things is that sturdy -- sturdy as a country girl who can churn butter before breakfast, plow the field all day, and birth a baby in between supper and singin' the chickens to sleep!

Loquaciously Yours,
Festus T. Tennessee, Esq., PhP, DoD

What Your Mayor Is Up To

Not practicing what he preaches about food, calories and healthy eating. Why should he? Those dictum, like term limits, were meant for the little people, not him. [NY Times]

Forgetting who his running makes are on the Republican ticket. [NY Daily News]

Not getting the support of the firefighters' union. [Queens Crap]

Pretending to disapprove of the new MTA chief's huge pay package. [NY Times]

Thinking he's the only man in New York who could pass gay marriage legislation, saying “I’m the main funder. You know, you can’t dictate every piece of legislation, and I don’t want to say that they’re bribable. But they know where I stand, and they want me to be a supporter.” [Gay City News]

Being forced to run against another old, white, lying rich man: Montgomery Burns. [NBC]

Someone Says the Unthinkable

From columnist Michael Goodwin in the NY Post:

Why Dems’ David can topple Goliath Mike

Winning the Democratic primary for mayor ain’t what it used to be. Still, it’s better to win than lose, so Comptroller Bill Thompson wakes up today with a new view of the world.

He’s standing on a molehill, looking up at a mountain.

Most bets are not on whether Mayor Mike wins a third term, but on his margin of victory. Five points, 10 points or a repeat of the nearly 20-point blowout of poor Fernando Ferrer four years ago.

I wouldn’t bet against Bloomy, but his re-election isn’t a slam dunk. Thompson can win.

You read that right. Thompson can win.

I’m not saying he will, just that he can. He won’t need a miracle either. Lightning, thunder and luck, yes, but Thompson would hardly be the first David to bring down a Goliath. One is in the White House, and there are days when Bloomberg looks as ripe for a fall as Hillary Clinton was.

If the upset potential surprises you, welcome aboard. I surprised myself when the words “Thompson can win” first came out of my mouth.

That was three weeks ago. Until then, I subscribed to the conventional wisdom that he didn’t have a chance.

But speed bumps are popping up on the road to the king’s coronation. Reports of Bloomberg Fatigue are coming in from key constituencies — Staten Island homeowners and well-heeled Manhattanites. That could spell trouble for him.

“Think about it,” one formerly firm Bloomy man told me. “He’s been mayor for eight years and he has to spend $100 million now to reintroduce his brand.”

The complaints center on the soaring cost-of-living and binges in government spending, along with a sense the mayor feels entitled to a third term.

Whether Thompson, whose campaign has been lethargic on its good days, can exploit the opening is a big question. But for the first time, he has a real shot. Although the latest Quinnipiac poll puts him 15 points back, one survey showed a majority of New Yorkers wants a new mayor.

I spy three reasons for shifting sentiment. First, elections are a referendum on the incumbent, and this is not a good year for incumbents. The recession pain for many here is acute as incomes fall and prices keep rising.

Much of the pain is driven by City Hall, with spending under Bloomberg about 25 percent above inflation. Real-estate taxes are climbing even as market values fall, and virtually every levy and fee has gone up sharply since 2002, and still it’s not enough to satisfy the government beast. The businessman mayor, who promised to guard the buck, has been too quick to spend it.

The second factor in Thompson’s favor is Bloomberg’s cheesy maneuver to eliminate term limits. He was for them until they hit home, so POOF, he made them vanish. Doing the dirty deed with a scandal-scarred City Council further tarnished the mayor’s reputation.

The third factor is the schools. Compelling evidence shows many of the gains Bloomberg touts are suspect because tests and standards were dumbed down. He has doubled education spending to $22 billion a year, but with 74 percent of city grads who enroll at City University community colleges still needing remediation, the smell of a scam is in the air.

The hitch for Thompson is that swing voters he needs don’t yet see him as a real alternative. While his team believes a black, liberal Democrat in a minority-majority city starts with a voter base of 45 percent, he can’t win without peeling away some of the mayor’s soft support.

To do that, Thompson needs to show more fire in the belly and appeal to a beleaguered middle class that increasingly finds a sour taste in the Big Apple. That means cutting spending so the pressure won’t be there to increase revenues through excessive fines, fees and taxes.

It is a fact that the recession and an empty state piggy bank will force the next mayor into a more penny-pinching course. The first man to admit it now and show the way forward deserves the job.

Don’t be shocked if Thompson’s the one.

Nice to read. Let's hope there's some truth in it, and that Thompson wakes up and realizes he has a chance.

What We Learned From This Week's Election

Several things, only one of them encouraging.

1. The people are damn lazy and pretty much get the government they deserve. Despite the fact that, in this heavily Democratic city, the person who wins the Democratic primary inevitably wins the office; and despite the fact that many of the incumbents for City Council had basically said "Fuck you!" to the voters by overturning term limits last fall, a pathetic minority of the voting public showed up at the polls. Way to ensure corruption goes unpunished, New York!

2. Bloomberg's a shoo-in. The voters stupidly went with the most visible candidate William C. Thompson Jr., the milquetoast foremer comptroller who couldn't even come up with a reason why he wanted to be mayor in a recent debate, instead of voting for the most intelligent, principled and focused candidate, City Council member Tony Avella. With Avella, at least, we would have been assured that Bloomberg would have been called every name he deserves to be called and would have been made plenty uncomfortable until November.

3. There is no justice. Council speaker Christine Quinn, who, along with Bloomberg, strong-armed the council into passing the new third-term legislation, through back-room deals and intimidation tactics, was reelected. Sure, the margin was slimmer than it should have been, so Quinn was humiliated a bit. But to you think that operator cares? As long as she won, that means power, and power is all this gal ever wanted.

4. There is some justice. At least four, and maybe six, City Council members—all of whom voted to extend term limits—were ousted from their seats. In our sad, apathetic city, this amount to a house-cleaning. The losers, who are now spending their nights cursing the darkness that they ever met Devil Bloomberg and his Mephistopheles, Quinn, include the often absent Maria Baez of the Bronx (how will people know she's gone?); Helen Sears, a Queens Democrat; Alan J. Gerson of Manhattan; and Kendall Stewart of Brooklyn. Think Quinn called with condolences?

5. Those who hope for a Gowanus Superfund cleanup lost a supporter. Josh Skaller lost to Bill DeBlasio protege Brad Lander in the 39th district. Lander hedged his language regarding the canal and the developer-loving City Hall's controversial (and probably not viable) plan to clean up the canal itself. Rest assured, Lander will come out strongly against the Superfund soon after taking office. The developers will have his ear.

What Your Mayor Is Up To

Allowing his newly reformed Department of Building to be stocked with criminals! Surprise! [NY Post]

Continuing his abuse of eminent domain, this time in Williamsburg. [Daily News]

Making a nice business profit from being Mayor. [The Village Voice]

Obsessively harassing you with his mayoral campaign. $37 million spent so far on an illegal bid to remain Mayor for a third term, all while much of the city is struggling to pay the rent. [NY Times]

Bloomberg is Corrupted and Corrupting. Period

Read this from the Times. Really read it. And understand what your mayor is and what he has systematically, purposefully, and in many ways illegally done to this City. How, in his view, he owns the town, and by right can do whatever he wants with it. How he has handed it over to developers. How he has squashed the rights of the little man left and right. How his vision must prevail. How no one must tell him no. And how he will lie and lie and lie about it when he is caught in the act.

Read it. And vote accordingly. Don't elect the Fox mayor of the Chicken Coop.

New York Paid to Lobby Itself, Group Claims

By RAY RIVERA

In late 2006, as the Bloomberg administration girded for what promised to be a bruising rezoning fight over the Willets Point section of Queens, it enlisted the help of Claire Shulman, the former Queens borough president.

At a meeting in City Hall that December, Ms. Shulman and Daniel L. Doctoroff, then a deputy mayor, agreed to form a nonprofit group with city and private money. Its primary purpose, Ms. Shulman said, would be to lobby on behalf of the mayor’s plan to turn the long-neglected area near the New York Mets stadium into a thriving hub of shops, hotels, condominiums and a convention center.

The group, the Flushing Willets Point Corona Local Development Corporation, eventually received hundreds of thousands of dollars in public and private money, and spent much of it to help push through the plan through the City Council.

It hired the Parkside Group, one of the city’s best-known lobbying firms. It brought in the Glover Park Group, the powerful political consulting firm, to bolster its media campaign. And Ms. Shulman, as the organization’s president, made countless personal appeals, promising to meet with every member of the City Council as it prepared to vote on the plan last fall.

“That was the whole idea,” Ms. Shulman said in an interview. “The idea I had with Dan Doctoroff was that we would help the city do what the mayor wanted, to clear Willets Point and develop it in the best interest of the city, and that’s what we’ve been trying to do.” In other words, Ms. Shulman added, “We lobbied the city for the city.”

Local development corporations like Ms. Shulman’s have been around for decades. Ranging from tiny neighborhood groups to giant quasi-public agencies like the city’s Economic Development Corporation, these loosely regulated organizations are designed to encourage businesses and industry to invest in local areas.

But one thing they are not supposed to do is lobby.

State law says local development corporations are not permitted to “influence legislation by propaganda or otherwise.” Ms. Shulman’s group eventually reported spending $450,000, roughly half its total budget, on lobbying, city records show.

Half the group’s revenues came from the Economic Development Corporation, which is also barred from lobbying. The other half came from corporate sponsors, including the Mets organization, which has long eyed the property, and several developers and construction firms that are expected to vie for lucrative redevelopment contracts when the city puts out requests for proposals in coming months.

Last November, the City Council voted 42 to 2 in favor of the plan, which authorizes the city to use eminent domain to remove the various auto repair shops and salvage yards that occupy the 62-acre portion of Queens. A group of business owners is suing to stop the city.

The group, known as Willets Point United, has asked Andrew M. Cuomo, the state attorney general, to investigate the organization’s lobbying efforts.

“They knew what they were doing,” said Gerald Antonacci, the leader of Willets Point United and the president of Crown Container, one of the area’s more than 250 companies that will be required to move when construction begins. “This was all planned out. They knew she was hiring lobbyists. This wasn’t a mistake.”

The attorney general’s office is reviewing the complaint. In recent months, the office has been looking into lobbying by local development corporations, and has identified a “small but not insignificant set” of groups that appear to be improperly lobbying, said a person briefed on the attorney general’s initial review.

The administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg says that it never encouraged Ms. Shulman to lobby and that the $450,000 it gave to the group was not used for that purpose.

“The city regularly partners with local organizations that promote growth and economic development,” said David Lombino, a spokesman for the Economic Development Corporation. In the case of Ms. Shulman’s group, he added, “we are funding a scope of work that includes public outreach, organizing community support and proposing and advocating for area improvements.”

Andrew Brent, a Bloomberg spokesman, pointed to a letter Mr. Doctoroff sent Ms. Shulman three weeks after their first meeting. It outlined the goals of her group, including conducting and leading “outreach, public relations and marketing efforts” to support the proposed redevelopment in Willets Point, but it never mentioned lobbying elected officials.

Mr. Doctoroff, who left the administration at the end of 2007 to run the mayor’s financial news and data company, Bloomberg L.P., did not respond to requests for comment made through the company and the mayor’s office.

Ms. Shulman, borough president from 1986 to 2001, provides a starkly different account. “We hired lobbyists from the time we began, because we were told it was something we were supposed to be doing,” she said.

Ms. Shulman, an 83-year-old veteran of Queens politics, seemed a natural ally for the city. After retiring from office, she remained well regarded in the community and continued to serve on various boards. And she had long had her sights on Willets Point.

As borough president in the early 1990s, Ms. Shulman rejected as shortsighted a city economic development study that said development would flourish on its own if the city provided sewers and basic services to the area.

Instead, she proposed her own plan, which included a pavilion for international trade.

But like various redevelopment plans dating back to the era of Robert Moses, who unsuccessfully sought to turn the area into a park and parking lot for the 1964 World’s Fair, her vision went unrealized.

Her lobbying for this latest plan became an issue this year when the city clerk’s office, which regulates lobbyists, fined her group a record $59,090 for failing to register her activities with its office. But the issue of whether the group should have been lobbying at all went unaddressed.

Even now, Ms. Shulman is not sure her group did anything wrong.

In its 2007 federal tax returns, the group claimed it had spent no money on lobbying. The group has hired a lawyer to help it comply with all laws and regulations.

The border between what is legally acceptable advocacy of a position and what is illegally trying to influence legislation is often blurry. But critics of the Bloomberg administration’s aggressive and varied development ambitions say these neighborhood groups are increasingly crossing the line.

In a recent example, the Coney Island Development Corporation, essentially a subsidiary of the Economic Development Corporation, hired three buses to carry people to a hearing last month on the mayor’s proposal to revitalize 19 blocks of the Coney Island amusement district. Officials say the buses were open to those who favored or opposed the plan, but council members say it was clear that most riders were supporters.

“I don’t ever remember L.D.C.’s lobbying council members or elected officials the way they have been to promote Bloomberg projects,” said Councilman Tony Avella, a Queens Democrat who is chairman of the Council’s subcommittee on zoning and franchises and who is a candidate for mayor.

The Coney Island group also paid more than $182,000 to Yoswein New York, another of the city’s major lobbying firms, to help promote its efforts to help the mayor gain public approval for his redevelopment plan, records show. “We do public relations as well, and for this client we were hired to do marketing and public relations,” said Jamie Van Bramer, who handled the account for Yoswein. “We did no lobbying on this one at all.”

Likewise, the Glover Park Group, which received at least $30,000 from the Flushing Willets Point organization, said it focused on “press relations,” not lobbying. Harry Giannoulis, president of the Parkside Group, which lobbying records show got $125,000, said Ms. Shulman hired it to lobby, among other duties.

“We didn’t want to do anything improper,” Ms. Shulman said. “We have been working very hard to try to do something that is in the best interest of the city, and we did what we thought was correct.”

Some Stuff That's Interesting: Political Edition

The primaries are coming up folks. Pay attention! The winners will rule your lives!

Three out of four candidates for Public Advocate support eminent domain abuse. How's that for advocating for the public! [Times Ledger via Queens Crap]

Restless finds the Urban Shed Competition is just another dodge on "how to paint a Happy Face on the unbridled development required by Bloomberg's core constituency: the Masterds* of the Universe and the greedy developers who build condos for them and their legions of wannabe Masterds (who binge crawl all over the LES, East Village, and soon Williamsburg, doing their best to eject their soul along with their stomach contents and thus attain Masterdhood)." Amen, brother!

Bloomberg administration puts off the long-planned rezoning of Gowanus until they figure out a way to kill the Superfund bid and fool the public into thinking they've got a real plan for the clean-up of the canal. Are they panicking, or is this political blackmail? [Brownstoner]

Bloomberg criticizes the MTA workers' raises. Wait, no, he supports them. No, he does both. [NY Times]

The Bloomberg Legacy

The Center for an Urban Future has come out with its second annual ranking of national retailers in New York City. It found that, while we're all reeling from the recession, trying to pick up the pieces, the big chains have been going on a plot-buying spree. More than "30 percent of the retailers from last year’s report actually expanded their presence in the city in the past year, despite the sour economy. Dunkin' Donuts tops our list for the second straight year, with a staggering 429 stores."

(Uh. I hate Dunkin' Donuts. Hate their vile food. Hate their nauseating pink and brown color scheme. When the rest of the world pictures The Ugly American, they picture them standing in line at a Dunkin' Donuts.)

Here are the top 10 in 2009. As we all know, each and every franchise was welcomed with open arms by Mayor Mike as A Good Thing For New York. (Yeah! More crap food! More low-paying jobs! More destruction of neighborhood character! More suburban personality!):

Dunkin' Donuts: 429 (up 88!!)
Subway: 361 (up 26)
McDonald's: 258 (up 10)
Starbucks: 258 (up 24)
Duane Reade: 229 (up 13)
Baskin-Robbins: 207 (down 8)
Rite Aid: 195 (down 14)
Radio Shack: 115 (down 1)
GNC: 110 (down 5)
Sleepy's: 108 (up 3)
CVS: 107 (down 1)
Payless: 106 (down 3)
T-Mobile: 96 (up 14)
Burger King: 94 (up 2)
Jackson Hewitt Tax Service: 92 (up 9)
GameStop: 75 (up 6)
Domino's Pizza: 71 (down 3)
Golden Krust: 70 (down 2)
KFC: 69 (down 1)
Walgreen's: 64 (up 16)
Staples: 63 (up 2)

To which we can only say, "Golden Krust?" Also, "Walgreen's means business!"

The above map tells you which neighborhoods are the most saturated with chains. As you can see, much of the chain love goes to Manhattan, because that's the only borough Bloomberg really cares about, and he wants to reward it with beautiful, wonderful outdoor malls.

Paterson Joins the United Traitors of Gowanus

So, Bloomberg, Toll Brothers, Buddy Scotto and the whole truth-defying, money-grubbing gang got to Governor Paterson, who now agrees with them that it's just a terrible idea to allow the Superfund to clean up the Gowanus Canal, which has sat fetid and stinking for decades now without New York City or New York State ever thinking about how to clean it until now.

Not that anyone should expect anything noble from a man like Paterson. He's show himself a thousand times over unfit for his position since becoming New York's Accidental Governor follow Eliot Spitzer's meltdown.

Writes the Brooklyn Paper:

The state Department of Environmental Conservation told the Bloomberg administration that it was not opposed to the mayor’s plan — as long as it sought a comprehensiv e clean-up. That Aug. 6 letter was a departure from the state’s December request to add it to the Superfund list.

“The Department remains committed to the need for a clean-up to Superfund standards,” wrote Stuart Gruskin, executive deputy commissioner. “We believe that it is appropriate for the EPA to carefully review and consider the [city] proposal.”

Gruskin’s correspondence said that the EPA should investigate if the mayor’s claims are true that his plan will be faster and more efficient than the Superfund and to make sure that the city approach won’t delay or hinder the clean-up if a Superfund designation is later deemed necessary.

The Bloomberg administration heralded the letter as a vindication of its idea, which has been criticized by the EPA and Gowanus Canal zone neighbors who doubt the city has the ability or the interest in fully restoring the channel.

There's nothing Bloomberg won't do for wealthy developers, is there? He'll tell the Feds to get lost on one hand—the Gowanus clean-up—while taking their stimulus money with the other hand and giving it to—needy working people? small businesses?—NAH! Wealthy developers, of course!

Josh Skaller, a candidate for the City Council seat that includes the canal, and the strongest critic of Bloomberg in the bunch, spoke the truth soon after Paterson's announcement. “Governor Paterson has not knocked on thousands of doors in Carroll Gardens, but I have,” said Skaller. “It is clear the community supports Superfund status. [Superfund] is not a perfect solution, but it’s the best way to make sure the Canal gets the clean-up needed before we can build along its banks.”