The Many Faces of the Mayor-for-Life

Maybe you've seen the ad. It's been plastered all over the airwaves. Bill Thompson is being portrayed as a hypocrite for a position he supposedly took opposing the millionaire's tax. The ad overlooks the fact that Mayor-for-Life Bloomberg also opposes it, and has raised the cost of living for middle class New Yorkers in many ways, including water rates that went up 12.9% in the middle of a recession and housing crisis. Of course, Bloomberg can afford to flush his toilets with Perrier for the next million years without feeling the pinch.

The larger question is, who is really the hypocrite here? Isn't Mayor4Ever the man who opposed Rudy Giuliani staying on for 3 extra months in the aftermath of 9/11, yet claimed that he had to give himself another four years so he could save us from the fiscal crisis? Hasn't he been the mayor been in charge during the entire span of the fiscal downturn? Nice job, Mr. Mayor.

Isn't this the mayor who banned cake sales in the schools while stuffing himself with unhealthy garbage?

Isn't this the mayor who once called any attempt to overturn term limits "disgusting"? I guess it didn't seem so disgusting last year when Mayor Eternal and his minions on the city council voted to give themselves a chance to run for a 3rd term.

Instead of voting to limit Bloomberg to two terms, we should have voted to limit him to one face.

But what would be the point? He'd have the law overturned anyway.

Weekend at Mikey's

I saw one of the mayor's henchmen on NY1 the other day make the claim that New Yorkers are living a year longer since Bloomberg became mayor. I assumed this was a misstatement or perhaps a joke by one of the mayor's merry staffers but no--it's there in black and white on the mayor's web site. Here's what it says, in part:

Thanks to Mike’s increased focus on preventive care, New Yorkers are now living longer than ever. For a New Yorker born in 2006, life expectancy was 79 years – one year and three months longer than it was in 2001.

Forgive my skepticism, but someone born in 2001 is only 8 years old and someone born in 2006 is 3 years old. Now, I'm not a math whiz like Mike's statisticians, but as near as I can figure, that means none of them is anywhere near 79. So what we have is City Hall playing with numbers again, much like they do with school data.

I can actually see NYers living longer under Bloomberg, however. Cigarettes are ten bucks a pack now, so few working people can afford them. Mike is hoping to lay off the remaining workers who can afford them. There are, however, only so many smokers left. So how will Mike continue to stretch the longevity stats the way he does with the education stats? My suggestion? Follow the education model.

For example, Mike keeps the drop out rate low by using credit recovery, in which all students have to do is sit for a specified time in order to graduate. I propose that Mike begin corpse recovery. In this new program, Mike can place corpses alongside high school students. As long as they (the corspes) remain seated they are doing just as much as their high school counterparts and can be counted among the living. We might even start issuing posthumous diplomas to lower the dropout rate even more.

Another educational model Mike could follow is turning New York into a charter city. We could accept, let's say, only 3% of the people who apply to live here, much like the Carl Icahn Charter School in the Bronx accepted only 3% of the children who applied to it. As Jeffrey Litt, Superintendent of the school said (and no, I don't know why a single school needs a superintendent), "You cannot fail at Icahn Charter because I have a million programs there to help you." Let's do the same for future New Yorkers. Before you can live here, you have to apply and pass a physical. We'll accept only the top three percent in terms of fitness. And if those people should have the temerity to get ill, we can put them on life support almost indefinitely. Those who blatantly fail to live would be shipped off into the corpse recovery program.

I think Mike should get cracking on this ASAP. He ought to be able to raise the longevity rate to about 106 years with a little creativity. And wouldn't we all like to live that long so that we can help Mike get elected to his 27th and final term under the stringent term limits law?

Worst Person In The World

I woke up this morning to watch NY1, as I usually do. I heard something that made me shudder, from none other than: Mayor Bloomberg. If Keith Olberman needs a worst person in the world for tonight's show, I think I have a winner, uh...loser.

I couldn't find it on NY1's site, but sharp eyed Patrick Sullivan of NYC Public School Parents blog grabbed it from WNYC. The mayor was addressing the quite justified complaints of parents that they had to scramble to get child care because of the late announcement of Monday's school closing. He said:
If you got up this morning, looked outside and it didn't come to you right away, the thought that, gee, I wonder of (sic) school will be closed today, and you didn't know enough to call 311, I'd suggest another day in school is probably a good idea.

Forget that the Mayor hasn't closed schools for snow in the last five years. Forget that the snowstorm of 2006 dumped three times as much snow on many areas and Bloomberg still didn't close the schools. Forget that almost all other schools announced their plans with plenty of time to spare for parents to make arrangements.

And if you're a teacher or a student who trekked out into the storm because your school opens at 7 or if you have a long commute, you must be an idiot because you could not read the mayor's rather limited mind.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the man who wants you to vote him in for a third term and once again give him total control of the schools. He thinks you're an idiot. Let's prove him wrong at the ballot box.