In order to get away with his theft, he has to mischaracterize what he claims is a " Christmas bonus."
Yesterday, the cops and firemen called him on his lies:
Mayor Bloomberg Friday shrugged off union attacks calling him a "liar" in the increasingly ugly fight over pension benefits.
The heated rhetoric over the $12,000 payout given to retired cops and firefighters every December reached new heights this week when union leaders stood on City Hall steps and denounced the mayor.
Bloomberg did not hit back and even conceded he does "understand the unions are upset" - but he also refused to back down.
"What we said was the truth," Bloomberg said on his radio show. "The reforms that we're talking about are fair, and they protect pensions and the taxpayers."
The $12,000 payout, which Bloomberg has dismissed as a "Christmas bonus," is not constitutionally protected and can be overturned by the state Legislature.
Hizzoner has repeatedly appealed to Albany to scrap it, claiming the cash-strapped city would need to lay off teachers in order to keep paying for the benefit. That charge has inflamed the unions.
"The mayor has unfairly categorized it," said Al Hagan, president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association. "I understand why he's trying to sway public opinion - he doesn't have the facts on his side, so he has to distort them."
More than 30,000 retired cops and firefighters receive the payout, which was established in 1968 when the unions gave the city tens of millions of dollars to invest in the stock market.
Hagan vowed his union would support the other rank-and-file labor groups and lobby state legislators to defend the payouts.
"We have the legal and moral high ground on this issue," said Hagan. "We feel that City Hall is not being honorable."
Bloomberg wants people to think this payout is like the Christmas bonuses his Wall Street cronies get - anywhere from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions every December - so that people who don't have this will say "Hey, why do they get that when we don't!"
But of course $12,000 additional dollars every Christmas to a retired cop making $20,000 for his pension (DISCLOSURE - my father is a retired cop and that is his pension) is a lot different than some Goldman Sachs criminal making one million a year and taking home another three million at Christmas.
Bloomberg has decided that the cops and the firemen and the teachers and the sanitation workers and all the other people that keep this city running are not worth anything.
He has decided to balance the budget on their backs so that he can make sure that hedge fund criminals like Whitney Tilson don't have to pay their fair share in taxes.
And he is lying to do it - lying about teachers and seniority, lying about cops and firemen and the "bonus".
Bloomberg is a liar and a cheat - a dishonest, dishonorable, dictatorial man who ought to be sent to the same exiled island Hosni Mubarak inhabits today.
But the outrage has to build first.
Many cops and firemen voted for Bloomberg.
Hell, the cop's union supported his third (illegal) term run
How's that working out now, guys?
Time to ratchet up the outrage against not only Bloomberg but the bankers and hedge fund criminals.
Until these people ARE AFRAID of the consequences of their crooked actions, nothing will change.
I'll say it again and again until the firefighters and the cops get it - the PBA and the UFA have not, to date, publicly stood with the UFT (nor has the UFT, until recently, stood up mightily in its own defense) on issues of protecting the teachers. Did they not realize that as soon as Mikey bulldozed his way through the teachers his attentions would turn to them next? Bloomberg IS a liar. If you examine his words, such as when he said the protestors at the recent PEP meetings were "dissing the teachers, the principals, the students, etc." (I paraphrased) and that "the ones who provide the service poorly are the ones protesting," it begs the question if Mikey is a diagnosed narcisstic personality. Think about it - he steamrolls over everyone he doesn't like, he considers himself to be superior to everyone, the "truths" that are uttered out of his mouth change with the direction of the wind, depending on what he wants to accomplish. It amounts to a load of horseshit. If he wants to rescind the $12,000 variable supplement, he'll just say over and over again that it's a "bonus." He'll keep talking about the "inflated" pensions and that layoffs will hurt poor children because only the youngest and most inexperienced (and cheapest) teachers are the most effective and therefore we must "cut the bloat" of the (apparently wealthy and lazy) senior teachers.
ReplyDeletePuh-leez. The frustration is overwhelming. Isn't there anything we can do about this asshole?
Get in the real world people, we can't afford these pensions
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