Mayor Bloomberg Plans On Bringing NYC's Homeless Problem To The Rest Of The World

Mayor Bloomberg, fresh from arguing that there's no place as good as NYC to be homeless and down on your luck, brags that the consulting firm he has put together to help governments around the world make their income inequality problems as bad as NYC's is very much in demand:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, burnishing his legacy in all five boroughs this week as he prepares to leave office, shed a sliver of light today on the new consulting firm he’s planning to found once he leaves office, aimed at helping cities across the world.


Mr. Bloomberg, who was in Brooklyn to herald the opening of a new ice skating center in Prospect Park, told reporters that many other cities want to replicate the “wonderful things” New York has accomplished in his tenure.

“We’ve got enormous demand and we’ve had for years now from other cities around the world, not just around the country of, ‘How do you do these wonderful things?’” Mr. Bloomberg said. “We are, no matter we may whip ourselves, but we are the poster child for most of the good things that have happened in big cities.”

And what are some of those good things he's brought to NYC that he now wants to bring to the rest of the world?

Why despair, hopelessness and abject poverty of course!

Wonkette has the story:

So we have all read the New York Times story about homelessness in New York, yes? And we have all cried for the smart, tough little girl named Dasani, who lives in a “520-square-foot room with her parents and seven siblings” in a most wretched shelter, where life is most wretched, and we have all said, “Goddamn, this is unacceptable and something must be done.” Yes?

No. Apparently, some of us think, ‘Meh, that’s just God for ya.’ Some of us who happen to be bazillionaires and soon-to-be-ex-mayors of New York.

Asked today if he was similarly moved by the story, current Mayor Michael Bloomberg told Politicker he’d had a different reaction.

While calling her life story “really quite extraordinary,” Mr. Bloomberg insisted Dasani’s situation was not representative of the city’s broader homeless population. 

Well, actually, Mr. Mayor, the point of the story is that actually, Dasani is not “really quite extraordinary.”

Yet Dasani is among 280 children at the shelter. Beyond its walls, she belongs to a vast and invisible tribe of more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression, in the most unequal metropolis in America. 

But hey, don’t blame the city or its mayor for that. Nope, blame God.

“This kid was dealt a bad hand. I don’t know quite why. That’s just the way God works. Sometimes some of us are lucky and some of us are not,” he said. 

Yes, God sure does work in mysterious ways, arbitrarily dealing bad hands like that. Sometimes he hands out lots of money, like to Mayor Bloomberg, who is just lucky that way, and sometimes he does not. Shrug, we guess. Whatcha gonna do? Hey, maybe you can fight the scourge of extra-large sodas! Sure, God invented the Big Gulp, but that’s, like, a Serious Problem, the kind of problem that a mayor should do his very best to do something about. Unlike homeless children living in filth and squalor and where guards sexually assault their moms, because that’s just bad luck. Sorry, Dasani and the thousands of children like you, but if you wanted to be not poor and homeless in one of the wealthiest cities in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, you should have asked God for better luck.

Yeah, NYC surely is the poster child for most of the good things that have happened in big cities and I'm sure many other cities can't wait to have Bloomberg and his consultant group bring them what he's brought to NYC.