Posted: November 2nd, 2009 | Author: Dump Bloomberg | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
On October 29, the New York Times published a front page article detailing Bloomberg’s flawed development strategy and its increasingly negative consequences for New York City neighborhoods - even though the Times attempts to blame the strategy’s failure largely on “market forces.”
A Stalled Vision: Big Development
as City’s Future
“Over the past seven years, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has presided over a historic re-envisioning of New York City, one that loosened the reins on development across the boroughs and pushed more than 100 rezoning measures through a City Council that stamped them all into law.
His administration poured $16 billion into financing to foster
commercial development and affordable housing and created quasi-local
organizations to promote its initiatives and blunt neighborhood
opposition.
And when the economy was burning white hot, as it did for several
years, the mayor’s plan appeared to be bold and forward-looking, a
prescient decision to remake portions of the city in order to lure
companies, create jobs and increase economic vitality.
But that vitality is missing in some sections of New York today,
where developments spurred in part by easy credit and in part by city
initiatives are now stalled or in danger of collapse.
No question, the upheaval in the real estate world was primarily
caused by a recession that Mr. Bloomberg had no role in starting and no
power to stop. But Mr. Bloomberg has campaigned as a business
visionary, better suited than most to lead in tough times, and any
review of his term needs to confront his embrace of development as a
stimulus tool…
The whole article is available at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/nyregion/29develop.html?_r=2&emc=eta1
Posted: October 22nd, 2009 | Author: Dump Bloomberg | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
While his $200 million budget in campaign ads have covered up the reality of most New Yorkers,
the Chinatown community recently publicly graded Bloomberg oon the impact of his administration on the working families and small businesses,
making up the majority of our communities.
Is your community better off now than they were eight years ago before Bloomberg came into office?
We urge other communities in the five boroughs to issue their own report cards. Score the Mayor on the issues below and how he has affected
your community in the last 8 years.
Mayor Bloomberg’s Report Card
From the Chinatown Community
While the Chinatown community is still trying to recover from the 9/11 disaster,
Mayor Bloomberg’s policies have only made immigrant working families and small businesses suffer more during his eight years in office.
F In Safety
· The closure of Park Row has cut off emergency vehicles and commerce.
· Bloomberg’s plans for Chatham Square and his other transportation policies have made it unsafe for pedestrians, resulting in multiples deaths at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge
· Bloomberg, against community opposition, is putting an emergency command center in One Police Plaza, making Chinatown an even bigger target.
F In Economy
l Bloomberg has tripled utility rates during an economic crisis.
l Unemployment and homelessness have soared in our community and citywide
l Increase in all sorts of fines, permit placard abuse, and the elimination of sanitation services, parking spaces, among others, have made it harder for
small businesses in Chinatown to survive.
F In Quality of Life & Housing
l Bloomberg’s rezoning plan in the community has resulted in eviction for hundreds of residents and soaring rents of as much as 400% for both residents and small
businesses.
l Bloomberg has allowed illegal rent gouging to continue on City property without any oversight for many years.
l While working families are being displaced from NYC, Bloomberg continues to give tax incentives to luxury developers, only resulting in luxury condos and
hotels sitting empty our community.
F In Education
· Bloomberg is Cheating! He is inflating school performance scores to cover up problems of overcrowding,
cuts in afterschool services in schools, and disparities in schools in different communities.
· He is excluding parents from important decisions.
F In Democracy
l Overturning term limits is something even Gulliani did not do- even right after 9/11; but Bloomberg does it after promising
otherwise.
l Bloomberg pushed the rezoning plan, the Chatham Square plan in Chinatown, amongst others against
l overwhelming opposition from the community, or without allowing community input.
l His hijacking of democracy coupled with a $200 million dollar budget, denied New Yorkers a broader choice of candidates for Mayor.
l Recently, after failing to visit the community since his last election, Bloomberg sneaked through the back door of a breakfast he held in Chinatown to buy the votes of seniors.
F In Environment
l Despite his claims of “greening NYC” Bloomberg’s employees issued 145,000 parking permits while in office and does nothing to get government workers to use
mass transit; meanwhile New Yorkers have to bear the burden of increases in MTA fares.
l Bloomberg’s transportation policies have led to increases in tractor trailers, trucks, and other vehicles, passing through Chinatown, leading to increasing levels of
pollution, keeping our asthma rates the highest in the city.
A+ In Lying
l Bloomberg is a master of saying one thing and doing another!
* Lin Ze Xu Foundation, Chinatown Small Business Alliance, Civic Center Residents Coalition, Chinese Staff & Workers’ Association
Posted: July 2nd, 2009 | Author: Dump Bloomberg | Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
If Mayoral control isn’t resurrected, is Bloomberg going to crack up?
“I think that there’d be riots in the streets.”
That’s what he said back in February when asked what would happen if Mayoral control over the school system is not renewed. Now he’s back at it. Last Thursday, June 25th, we had these absurd ravings:
“If the Senate passes something that differs by one word or more [from the proposal to continue Mayoral Control] it is saying to the city: ‘We want to resurrect the Soviet Union. We want to bring back chaos.’ ”
Aside from incoherent metaphors (“Soviet Union,” i.e., a highly controlled government-run system, equals… “chaos”?), this blather also contains insight into Mayor’s paranoid twilight world. It seems anything short of total personal control by Michael R. Bloomberg is “chaos.” (Of course, this makes the Mayor himself seem a bit like Stalin. Which would fit in with Bloomberg’s self-promotion as the historically-determined Dear Leader, necessitating the extraordinary law that is permitting him, and only him, to run for a third term as mayor).
Javier C. Hernandez, ended his article in The New York Times Friday June 26th by noting that, the “Police Department, when asked if it was preparing for any riots, did not comment.”
If the Senate does not resurrect Mayoral control, we will just have the old system, where borough presidents would have some influence, each of them controlling one seat on a seven member Board of Education. This is what went into place last week when Mayoral Control went through its “sunset.” This doesn’t exactly sound like “chaos” or Anarchy [in?] the “Soviet Union” to me.
Hopefully the sunset for Mayoral control will be the beginning of the Sunset for Bloomberg.
Posted: June 12th, 2009 | Author: Dump Bloomberg | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bloomberg, mayoral control | No Comments »
Arthur Goldstein is an English-as-a-Second-Language teacher at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, and he’s furious at Mayor Bloomberg. In a Daily News article published Sunday, May 24th 2009, Goldstein fumed that “mayoral control has been an absolute disaster.” Although he teaches at an “A-rated” school, Goldstein can still see that “class sizes just took their biggest leap in 10 years.”
As a teacher, Goldstein knows from first hand experience how much class size matters: “The fewer kids I have,” he wrote, “the more individual attention each one gets.”
Bloomberg’s charter schools, of course, have smaller class sizes and get the best technology.
Goldstein’s school “was built to hold 1,800 but enrolls 4,450 students.” He went on to paint a horrific picture of the conditions: “My kids sit in a crumbling trailer, with no technology and often no heat in the winter.”
Goldstein pointed out that we need a chancellor that is accountable to the kids and to our families, not to the Mayor. This will be impossible, “if the mayor can fire him for not following his orders.”
Goldstein also exposed how Bloomberg’s top-down actions have lacked any accountability to students or families: “A few years ago, the mayor fired two members of the Panel for Educational Policy who had the nerve to disagree with him. Consequently, the PEP is a mayoral rubber stamp. No mayoral appointee dares to stand up for kids.”
In Goldstein’s view, the continuation of Mayoral control over the schools “guarantees the privatization and destruction of public education in New York City. That’s a prospect we should all oppose.”
Posted: June 11th, 2009 | Author: Dump Bloomberg | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bloomberg rezoning racist lower east side chinatown | No Comments »
On Monday, June 1st, African-Americans, Latinos, NYCHA residents and other members of the Lower East Side community protested their exclusion by Mayor Bloomberg’s Chinatown Working Group. Outside the Working Group’s townhall meeting on “The Future of Chinatown,” community members denounced the group’s racist mission from the outset—planning the development of Chinatown without equal representation from the community of Chinatown and the Lower East Side.
The Chinatown Working Group is composed of so-called representatives who are mostly white and Chinese; there are no representatives from the Latino, African-American residents or low-income workers. Like Bloomberg’s East Village re-zoning plan passed last fall which excluded Latinos and African-Americans from the planning process and ignored the interests of NYCHA and low-income people who are the majority of the community, the Working Group’s new plans will turn Chinatown into a playground for the wealthy and tourists. Together these plans will displace Chinese, Latino, African-American and other low-income working communities of Chinatown and the Lower East Side.
The protesters, who were part of the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side, demanded Bloomberg:
1. Stop separating Chinatown from the Lower East Side; stop the racist planning process
2. Ensure equal representation for Latino and African-American residents and low-income workers.
3. Preserve and protect NYCHA and build more low-income housing.
Posted: June 11th, 2009 | Author: Dump Bloomberg | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bloomberg popularity | No Comments »
According to David W. Chen and Marjorie Connelly (6/9/2009), a poll conducted by the New York Times, NY 1 and Cornell University suggests that a majority of New Yorkers think Bloomberg “does not deserve another term.”
As fear increases in response to the economic downturn, confidence in Bloomberg’s “ability to lead the city out of the recession” has plummeted. This is “a troubling sign” for Bloomberg, whose entire justification for seeking to circumvent the will of the people as expressed in the term limit law was that his business expertise would be indispensable in these tough times.
According to the polls, 51 percent of New Yorkers believe “the city is on the wrong track”; over one-third were not able to answer when asked what they thought was the “best thing” Bloomberg has done as mayor.
Nevertheless, the Times pointed out, in addition to the traditional advantages enjoyed by an incumbent, Bloomberg has spent $20 million already on the race, and may spend as much as $100 million before it is over.
Instead of another Bloomberg term, many feel that “a fresh perspective” is needed.
Fifty-eight percent of New Yorkers feel that city taxes are rising under Mr. Bloomberg.
The impact of Bloomberg’s racist spending cuts and rezoning plans that are disproportionately harming people of color are also affecting his ratings. Bloomberg’s favorability is 10 points lower among black residents than whites. Blacks are also more likely than whites to say that a new mayor is needed.
A majority of New Yorkers believe “important aspects of city life, including affordable housing and crime,” have not improved or have gotten worse under Bloomberg.
The poll suggests that one third of New Yorkers are part of a household in which someone has experienced unemployment in the past year. For a majority of these people, unemployment “had a serious effect on the family’s standard of living.”
Only 20 percent are confident that Bloomberg’s policies will generate new jobs.
Finally, fifty-eight percent of New Yorkers disapprove of Bloomberg’s term limits extension.
Posted: May 26th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Bloomberg, the walthiest person in NYC, still refuses to tax the rich, but will raise sales taxes. According to the NYT (May 1, 2009) we will have one of the highest sales taxes in the country at 8.875 percent. The mayor’s budget is also going to hurt working people, especially low-income workers, who in NYC are disproportionately people of color, by cutting social safety net services and jobs. He is pushing for a budget that raises taxes, slashes jobs and reduces services. Bloomberg “dismissed calls from Democratic officials and labor unions for an increase in the income tax on the city’s wealthiest residents, contending that such an increase would drive people, and businesses, out of the city.”
Posted: May 26th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Bloomberg has appointed a former Wall Street investment banker, with no record of experience in housing issues (except perhaps regarding mortgage speculation), to head NYCHA. John B. Rhea was a former managing director at the-now bankrupt Lehman Brothers (not encouraging, considering Lehman’s relationship to the mortgage-related financial crisis) and a former exec at Chase. With NYCHA in a deficit “free market” solutions like selling off some of the public housing stock are likely to come to the fore. The racist displacement of low-income people of color is obviously going to be stepped up under Mr. Rhea.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/nyregion/14nycha.html
