But laying off teachers to save $300 million in the city budget, a budget which has a $3,1 billion surplus, btw - that he loves.
The public protests over the layoffs are growing stronger:
Opposition is growing to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to lay off more than 4,000 teachers to help close the city's budget gap.Parents joined elected officials and Teachers Union President Michael Mulgrew for a rally at P.S. 199 on Manhattan's West Side Friday.
More than a dozen teachers from P.S. 199 are on the chopping block.
"They've had it with the mayor," Mulgrew said Friday. "They feel completely disrespected, and what they really say to me is, 'Why doesn't he come to our school and actually stay a whole day and actually teach a class with us?'" Because he doesn't understand what we do. We've dedicated our lives to our children and we've dedicated our lives to make a difference in their lives. And this man, all he talks about is about what he thinks from his perch up on high – and they've had it with him.
On Thursday, Governor Andrew Cuomo decided against repealing the requirement that the layoffs are to be done by reverse seniority.
The outrage I feel at Bloomberg's insistence upon layoffs stems from just how much money he wastes on no-bid contracts, outside consultants and other budget items that I think should be cut before classroom teachers.
The mayor obviously feels differently.
Listen, this is not a man who gives a shit about anybody.
This is a guy who cares about himself and himself only - aggrandizing his own ego, putting his name on everything he owns, being bigger in his own mind and the public eye then he clearly feels deep down inside himself.
On top of this, he is one of the more selfish and hypocritical human beings on the planet - witness his insistence that no one in the city eat transfats even as he enjoys his favorite snack - Cheez Its - that contain trans fats, or his call for humans to be more environmentally-conscious even as he flies a private jet back and forth to Bermuda every weekend to live in his 50,000 square foot air conditioned house.
That the corporate media doesn't point out the hypocrisies or connect the dots on the money he wastes even as he calls for stark budget cuts to schools and senior centers, really bothers me.
Somehow this guy - perhaps because he is a billionaire - is not called on this stuff in public and made to answer for it, not through a spokesman, not through anonymous blind quotes, but himself made to answer for it.
This is how he's gotten away with this stuff for the last ten years.
He is very media savvy, obviously, and he has lots of money to use against real and perceived enemies.
And so, he doesn't get called on the hypocrisy and contradictions over his "fiscal prudence."
His enormous wealth derived via the media has placed the mayor in an all but untouchable posture. He is taken to task with events as the Blizzard, but his signature policies education and business acumen are only slightly blemished. This is a fact of media coverage of the mayor. The Murdoch publications all but carry water for the mayor and the News and Times editors are careful to offset negative publicity with editorials that minimize or refute negative attacks. With the third term jinx awarded for the buying of office and arm twisting for the third term the media has been more inclined to go after the mayor. I hope that scandals such as city time and his education policies are subject to scrutiny and more investigative reporting. Buy tomorrow's Post as a tease of what the future may hold for Bloomberg.
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Remember he wanted to sell the West Side yards for next to nothing, when it was worth a whole lot more for his hair-brained Olympics traffic nightmare?
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