Imagine This Happened Under De Blasio Instead Of Bloomberg

I'm still on a rant over the Post coverage of the "skyrocketing crime" in NYC because it's politically motivated and jive.

As I pointed out earlier today, horrific crime took place during Mayor Mike's term in Bloombergville, but it never got connected to the larger narrative of "NYC Unraveling" that the Post and others connect these stories to now.

In going back and looking at the last months of the Bloomberg administration, when the Posties were already hawking a "The Bad Old Days Are Coming Back If De Blasio Is Elected" narrative, I found this post.

I reprint it now to point out how the Post easily could have run with a "NYC Unravels Under Absent Bloomberg" narrative if they had so chosen back in 2013 when these horrible crimes occurred and almost certainly would run as a "NYC Unravels Under De Blasio" narrative if they occurred today:

Why The "Historic Low" Crime Statistics Bloomberg Hawks Are Not Believeable

Howie Wolfson likes to tweet the lie that NYC is the safest it's been since the 1950's, with crime at "historic lows."

But tell that to the man who was chased 50 blocks by a motorcycle gang and then beaten on a Washington Heights street in broad daylight in front of his wife and two year old.

The man had called 911 from his cell phone as he was being chased by the motorcycle gang, but police never responded to the call until after the man was brutally beaten and the gang got away.

The chase went on for more than 50 blocks, then ended up in Washington Heights where the motorcycle gang pummeled the man.

There were no NYPD officers anywhere in that stretch that saw this chase?

There were no NYPD officers in the area who could respond to the 911 call from the man?

Where the hell were the cops?

Were they too busy down by Zuccotti Park frisking people to respond to Mad Max on the West Side Highway?

As I wrote last night, this is just an unbelievable story.

And yet, it happened in Bloomberg's New York.

Just the way a man was punched in the face and put into a brain dead coma at Union Square a couple of weeks ago:

A white man who was punched in the face in Union Square by a black man who was spewing anti-white sentiment died early Monday at Bellevue Hospital, a police source said.

Jeffrey Babbitt, 62, fell into a coma after he was randomly attacked Wednesday afternoon by a man who was yelling, “I’m going to punch the first white man I see!”

Lashawn Marten, 31, was arrested on charges of misdemeanor assault in the attack. The unprovoked punch knocked Babbitt backward, and he hit his head on the ground.

Babbitt lived in Brooklyn and was caregiver to his mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease, neighbors said.

After Marten assaulted Babbitt, he attacked two men who tried to help the stricken man, and then challenged two responding cops, officials said.

Just the way another man was pounded by a group of men in a bias crime in Sunset Park last week:

An attack in Brooklyn is being investigated as a hate crime, but the victim says he's not gay.

David Jimenez, 40, was on South Third Street and Bedford Avenue walking his dogs last Wednesday night.

He says he ignored a group of people screaming gay slurs at him, but he says the group attacked him anyway.

He suffered a broken nose and a fractured eye socket.

Police caught one suspect and charge him with assault and possession of a controlled substance, but the Brooklyn District Attorney's office says the defendant wasn't charged because of discrepancies regarding his identity.

"My head, it cannot comprehend how this is the case, where you literally catch someone with blood in their hands, because when he was taken in, his fist was full of blood, and he's out here walking while I'm in here locked in my house because I'm afraid of going outside," Jimenez said.
Jimenez is now resting at home.

He's expected to undergo surgery on Wednesday.

Wolfson and other Bloomberg shills like to point out the official crime statistics that show the lowest levels of violent crime since the 1940's and 1950's as proof positive why Mayor Bloomberg is a municipal genius.

But the statistics are phonied up - the crime data is manipulated.

We know that the NYPD downgrades crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, we know that they try and talk people out of filing crime reports, we know that they play funky with the stats.

That's proven.

We also know that so much of the data the Bloomberg administration touts as being "historic" is manipulated and phony - from the test scores and graduation rates to the emergency response times.

Given the preponderance of these violent stories in the media, it's difficult to believe the "historic lows" propaganda Wolfson and the other Bloomberg shills hawk on Twitter and elsewhere.

Especially when you have a man and his family chased for more than 50 blocks on the West Side Highway and beaten in broad daylight and not one cop is in sight to stop this or responds to the 911 call the man frantically put in.

And especially when we know the cops manipulate the stats because they've been caught doing it.

This is less about defending de Blasio than just pointing out the criminal negligence many in the media displayed in their coverage of Bloomberg as mayor and how they don't give de Blasio the same kid glove treatment.

I guess that's how it goes when one mayor is a media mogul who can hire 30 journalists in one fell swoop and the other, well, isn't.

But when it comes to the NY Post, this is just a daily, concerted effort to frame a narrative meant to destroy de Blasio and usher in a mayor more friendly to Rupert Murdoch's political views.

And you can bet once they get their mayor more friendly to Murdoch's views, they'll drop the "City Unraveling" narrative no matter how many people get punched to death in Union Square or chased and beaten by a 50+ member motorcycle gang of thugs and undercover cops.

Ben Chapman Goes Back On The Perv Teacher Beat

Daily News reporter Ben Chapman loves to hunt perv teachers.

It's an obsession with him, perhaps stemming from a message he gets from his superiors at Team Zuckerman that this is a story they want covered every few weeks, perhaps originating from something darker and more Freudian.

In any case, it's a subject he comes back to over and over and over.

Today, he and Rachel Monahan have a rubber room piece in the Daily News that reports the city spends $29 million a year on salaries for 326 teachers and administrators who have been "accused of abusing kids, breaking rules or just being lousy educators."

Bloomberg Tells Walcott: Drinks Are On Me!

Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Walcott took what the New York Daily News termed a "victory lap" yesterday over the Common Core test scores:

Cheers to us!

Under relentless criticism from his would-be successors, Mayor Bloomberg took a victory lap Monday over the fact that 22 of the 25 top-ranked schools on new state tests are in the city.

The mayor even suggested that his teetotaling Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott toast the results.

“You can have an extra drink tonight, it can be cranberry juice or vodka tonic, anything you want, but you deserve it,” Bloomberg said.

Sixteen of the 22 highly ranked schools have selective admissions, so only top students can get in.

Bloomberg said it was cause for celebration that city schools can compete with “wealthy suburbs."

“In ’01, zero out of the 25 best schools in the state were in New York City. Today, 22 out of the 25 schools,” he said. “I don’t know how you could write anything other than, ‘It is just amazing.’”

Actually the test scores have plummeted during Bloomberg's Reign of Error over the city school system - first in 2010 when the state admitted to test score inflation and city scores fell 26 points in reading and 24 points in math (to 42.4% proficiency in reading, 53% in math), then again in 2013 when the state changed the 3rd-8th grade tests to the so-called Common Core and test scores fell to 26% proficiency in reading, 30% in math.

Bloomberg has hawked tests scores throughout his Reign of Error as proof positive his Children First education reforms are working, so he has had to live and die by the test score numbers.

With scores now lower than they have ever been and with this his final year in office, he has been looking for any way he can to fool people into thinking his Reign of Error over the NYCDOE hasn't been a disaster.

Thus the "Hey, we've got 22 out of the top 25 schools!" bit (even though they've manipulated that by using selective admissions to certain schools.)

It's pathetic, really, and I bet even Walcott, who sort of lives in reality, knows that (I've always suspected Walcott's just in this for the money he will make off Bloomberg when his governmental service is done - Bloomberg is notoriously generous to those who stick by him.)

Bloomberg, however, believes his own b.s., so I have no doubt he really thinks he's done a swell job with the schools, despite having to spin the new Common Core test scores as another Bloombergian victory when they are anything but.

The Mayor of Money surrounds himself with yes men and women like Howard Wolfson and Dennis Walcott who never tell him anything he doesn't want to hear, so he's rarely given the opportunity to have to confront reality as it is rather than reality as he wants to see it.

As NYC Educator noted in a comment on another post I wrote about Bloomberg and his beloved statistics:

What I notice is when scores go up, it's great. When they're proven inflated and static, that's also great. And when they introduce new tests and scores plummet, that's great too.

So I guess when you're Wolfson, you just can't lose.

 And indeed, that seems to be the case.

No matter what the stats are, what the test scores are, Bloomberg always wins!

No wonder the drinks are on him.

Who Is Polakow-Suransky Kidding?

Michael Mulgrew outside of Stuyvesant High School, one of the Regents grading sites, today:

“Who was the genius who decided that it was a good idea to take all the tests that the children take and put them in trucks and send them to Connecticut to get scanned into systems so they can send them back here?” Mulgrew asked.

That's a very good question.

Why, it was the geniuses at the NYCDOE, that's who.

But they don't think there's any real problems with the grading and think the UFT is using the mess to score political points.

In fact, Deputy Chancellor Shael Polakow-Suransky said the UFT was politicizing the problems:

 “It’s ugly to be using this for political gain,” he added.

Shael is so right - the DOE would never ever politicize something like test scores or graduation rates or teacher evaluations or whatever.

What a joke.

Polakow-Suransky lies every time he opens his mouth.

This time is no different.

The Regents grading has been a disaster.

They have lost tests.

They can't get the test scanned.

They can't get them graded.

They can't get the computer system to run right.

Even when they can scan the tests, sometimes they can't scan the tests correctly.

Can you imagine if this were teachers tasked with this job and these kinds of foul-ups and instances of incompetency were occurring?

Polakow-Suransky, along with Bloomberg's other paid shills and liars, would be screaming to high heaven about the "failing teachers."

But since Shael is to blame for this mess, along with the rest of the geniuses at Tweed, there's nothing to see here, just move on, all is well, have a nice weekend.

All of these changes were wrought so that the NYCDOE could hold teachers accountable via "objective" and "scientific" scores based on the state tests.

As I wrote earlier this week, the screw ups have ensured that there is NOTHING "objective" and "scientific" about the Regents results this year - NOTHING.

Meanwhile no one holds Bloomberg accountable for this mess, no one holds Walcott accountable, no one holds Shael and the rest of the shillsters at the Tweed p.r. firm accountable for this mess.

Once again, there are two sets of standards here - one for elites like Bloomberg and their functionaries like Shael Polakow-Suransky and Dennis Walcott and one for the rest of us.

There is no accountability for the elites in this country or this city.

Alex Pareene: How Come Bloomberg Not Held Accountable For Schools Disaster?

Alez Pareene mocks both Michael Bloomberg and The Atlantic in his Salon column for the latest example of a media suck-up to Bloomberg:

If you hate Michael Bloomberg you will find a lot to hate in his conversation with the Atlantic’s James Bennet, part of the magazine’s gag-inducing “Brave Thinkers” issue. What makes Bloomberg a “brave thinker”? Banning soda, it seems like. (Also, lord, no one needs another Bloomberg interview. If you want to know what he thinks about things, he is on the radio every week and he owns a news outlet that has an opinion section devoted in part to opinions he agrees with.)

You will also find some things about Bennet to be annoyed with, like his complete indifference to Bloomberg’s approval of the NYPD’s various major violations of civil liberties and general complete lack of oversight. The words “NYPD,” “Muslim,” “frisk” and “surveillance” never come up once in the full transcript of the interview.

New York’s billionaire mayor is as self-satisfied as ever, and he is very proud of his low approval ratings.

...


There are a bunch of other things that conveniently don’t come up (New York’s poverty rate and severe wealth gap, the taxpayer-funded stadium bonanza Bloomberg ushered in) but the most annoying omission is that Bloomberg, who has always wanted to be known as the man who saved New York City public schools, is not actually held accountable for the fact that after three terms under mayoral control, Bloomberg’s policies have not actually demonstrably improved public education in New York, and the huge gains Bloomberg trumpeted in his first two terms were shown to be largely illusory. (And hey, remember Cathie Black? Bloomberg’s biggest media fans don’t!)

Bloomberg does volunteer, himself, without prompting from Bennet, that “[we] haven’t improved the schools as much as we want.” Or, arguably, at all! Oddly, that has not led to any sort of reexamination of his beliefs on education policy — beliefs that both major political parties basically share.

But as the mayor kicks off his last-year-in-office national media victory tour, I imagine we won’t hear a whole lot about the failure of his signature policy goal. (Or, you know, everyone will just blame teachers unions.)

No, we probably won't hear much about those failures because most people in the corporate media (or the wanna-be corporate media) are afraid that someday they may need a job from Bloomberg, the media mogul, so instead we get suck-up pieces like this crap from The Atlantic.

Or this one from Martha Stewart's Whole Living that celebrates Bloomberg as a "Food Visionary" for banning biggie soda drinks.

You'll note how the latest phase of the Bloomberg media suck-up has dubbed Herr Bloomberg as a "visionary" "thinker".

Meanwhile members of the city council exploded on the D.O.E.’s chief academic officer Shael Polakow-Suransky over the DOE's lack of transparency and its refusal to take responsibility for mistakes or policy.

Instead they blame others - teachers, principals, networks.

Nothing "visionary" about any of that.

That's just an old-fashioned shirking of responsibility and a refusal to be held accountable to the same standards that they hold everyone else accountable to.

That's a marked trait of the Bloomberg administration and of Bloomberg the Man himself.

But you never hear about that in the Bloomberg suck-up pieces.

Or about CityTime.

Or the NYPD ticket-fixing scandal.

Or the $2 billion 911 system that is years overdue and a billion overbudget.

Or the various other consultant scandals.

Or the people who died during the Bloomberg Blizzard of 2010 because Bloomberg The Visionary couldn't get the outer borough streets plowed and emergency vehicles couldn't get through.

Just once I'd like to see the Oprah or Martha publications (or the Times, Post, Daily News, Atlantic, etc.) cover those topics while they're sucking up to the mayor.

Bloomberg Gives Pal's Girlfriend 110G Job While Threatening Layoffs For City Employees

To paraphrase Mel Brooks, it's good to be the Mayor of Money:

At the same time he was forecasting lay offs and issuing dire warnings that the city couldn't afford the size of its work force, Mayor Bloomberg was also nailing down a $110,000-a-year city job for the girlfriend of one of his closet political allies, The Post has learned.

Sources said City Hall arranged the hiring of Joan Cusack, the longtime companion of Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, right after she was bounced from the state payroll last year.

Now a manager at the Human Resources Administration, Cusack, 65, is making $19,200 more than she did as a member of the state Crime Victims Board, which went out of business last June.

The very month she was booted from the state payroll, Cusack landed an interview with HRA Commissioner Robert Doar, who promptly offered her a newly created position to manage procurement and commodity contracts.

HRA spokeswoman Connie Ress said Doar determined Cusack "had an appropriate background to do the job. Other staff interviewed her as well and agreed with this analysis."

The job was never posted, and no other candidates were interviewed.

Cusack started work on Sept. 20 -- one day before Bloomberg imposed a hiring freeze on all agencies.

Molinaro and Cusack declined comment.

Interesting - the mayor hired Cusack the same way he hired his own girlfriend's drinking buddy, Cathie Black, to replace Joel Klein.

There was no job opening posted.

No actual search for candidates was conducted.

And someone with connections but only oblique qualifications for the job was hired.

In Cusack's case, Bloomberg actually had the position created.

In Black's case, he had to declare Shael Polakow Suransky Black's Keeper of the Education Knowledge.

Either way, these boondoggle hirings cost the city money.

No worries though - Mayor Mike will just make sure he cuts $12,000 from NYPD and NYFD pensions and lay off a few more senior teachers.

And it will all be good.

Bloomberg Decides To Cut DOE Contractors Instead Of Firehouses

This has to be more fall-out from the Bloomberg Blizzard Disaster of 2010 as well as the CityTime payroll project scandal:

Mayor Bloomberg is saving firehouses by cutting highly paid Department of Education consultants - after the Daily News started asking questions about the pricey contracts.

As schools struggle to keep class sizes from ballooning and hang onto after-school programs, the Education Department paid more than 100 consultants six-figure salaries in 2010, records show.

The city forked over more than $200,000 each to close to two dozen of the education contractors - a higher salary than anyone in the department except the chancellor. Between 2008 and 2010, the city approved some $200 million in consultant contracts.

The City Council struck a deal with the mayor to cut $4 million from the high-tech consultants as part of a package to stop City Hall from closing 20 firehouses to save cash.

Bloomberg's sacrifice of education consultants - coming on the heels of the snowstorm fiasco - is significant since he has long defended them.

This must have been a difficult move for the Mayor of Accountability because Bloomberg LOVES paying outside contractors tons of money for doing little to nothing every year:

"It's utterly ridiculous," said James Dandridge, president of the parents council in Canarsie and Flatbush in Brooklyn. "They pay so much for these computer consultants, and we have schools in our district that don't have working computers. That should be unheard of in this day and age."

One of the highest paid consultants during the 2009-2010 school year was John Whitson, who was brought in from IBM in Massachusetts to head up internal computer security. The agency agreed to pay $225 an hour and his fees totaled $516,881 in 18 months - more than twice the annual salary of Schools Chancellor Cathie Black.

The department has hired some of the high-priced, high-tech contractors for years, sidestepping competitive bidding rules meant to save taxpayers money by limiting contracts to 18 months, records show.

One of the consultants, Manikanta Krishnamoorthy, has worked for the Education Department since 2004, according to his resume, and took in more than $514,000 as a software programmer from October 2008 through June 2010 alone. He was hired as an official employee in October at an annual salary of $131,004.

The city has paid Hudson Valley Systems more than $415,000 for software programmer Michael Manner as part of a $12 million contract to put an automated personnel system in place for the system's teaching force.

The Education Department defended the spending as worthwhile but acknowledged they'll be scrutinizing the contracts more closely.

"Given the changing fiscal conditions, we are going to be taking a hard look at all of these contracts," said spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz.

But many parents said the money could be better spent.

"We need more teachers' assistants. They've cut so many of them. They need more help inside the classroom," said Anitrah Thomas, whose son, Jalend Milton, attends the Academy of Scholarship and Entrepreneurship in the Bronx.

City Controller John Liu said his office had beefed up its review of the Education Department's consultant contracts.

"As classroom and student programs are being cut and the number of teachers is being reduced," said Liu. "The last thing that should be a sacred cow are these expensive consultants."

Ah, but to Bloomberg they ARE sacred cows, because outside consultants are the emblem of his political and economic ideology - private consultants with ties to the mayor and/or the mayor's cronies good/unionized government workers.

I am glad to see that the DOE has decided to cut these salaries, but I must ask, how come these consultants weren't cut BEFORE this?

Bloomberg announced salary freezes for all DOE employees in 2010 to save money.

And yet these consultants were STILL raking in between $264,000 and $516,000 for 18 months work?

I bet John Liu's looking into these contracts had something to do with the DOE's move.

You see, outside scrutiny of Moneybags uncovers some amazing things.

He's not such a good manager after all.

CityTime employees steal $80 million.

CityTime project goes $700 million over budget.

Bloomberg continues to hand out six figure salaries to computer consultants to work on computer issues in schools without computers.

Bloomberg can't get 20 inches of snow removed from the city until Mother Nature melts it for him.

Not such good management by Herr Moneybags.

And if any independent auditor actually looked at the city crime stats, graduation rates, and other stats that Bloomberg is always promoting as proof positive he is a municipal managerial genius, we would see just how manipulative and dishonest Bloomberg has been as mayor.

There is still three more years for that.

You can see that the press have decided Bloomberg is no longer to be handled with kid gloves like he was during his first two terms.

I am hopeful that we will get some exposure of the "data" Bloomberg loves so much as the phonied up distortions and lies that it is.

Daily News: Bloomberg Won

The news that Bloomberg had agreed to appoint a "Chief Academic Officer" was reported by the NY Times last night as a "major concession" by the mayor.

I didn't see how changing one word in the title of the "Chief Accountability Officer" at the NYCDOE and making him the "Chief Academic Officer" was a major concession and said so at the time.

Sure, there are a whole host of duties the new academic officer is supposed to have - but who really knows if he'll really have them?

Let's be honest, Bloomberg is very big on winning even when he has supposedly "lost."

Take congestion pricing.

Did you notice how all those pedestrian plazas showed up around the city in the year after Bloomberg lost that battle?

Did you notice how traffic got slower around the city now that cars cannot drive through Times Square, Herald Square and other places around the city?

The mayor may not have won the congestion pricing battle, but he sure made his point about traffic in the city - and then he made sure he put an exclamation point on it by making it even slower.

And who knows - perhaps congestion pricing comes around again and gets passed.

Certainly the mayor set the conditions for just that to happen.

I suspect we are seeing the same thing with this Black matter.

It looks like Bloomberg lost on the face of it, but really, who knows what power the #2 guy has?

Joshua Greenman in the Daily News says pretty much the same thing:

Few men who made their names as political moderates are as uncomfortable with compromise as Mayor Bloomberg, who's just not used to having to bend in a city where he's basically the only political game in town.

But that's exactly what he appeared to do Friday, in naming a chief academic officer to be at Cathie Black's right hand so state Education Commissioner David Steiner agrees to grant Black the waiver to serve as chancellor.

The question now, which will be answered in the coming months: Was it a real concession or a cosmetic one?

...

in the end, the crow may just taste like chicken. Because what kind of power Shael Polakow-Suransky, the chief accountability officer promoted to be the new No. 2, will actually have remains to be seen.

For the school system to run efficiently, one person ultimately has to be in charge of making all major decisions. One person has to take marching orders from the mayor and take the heat from the public.

That will still be Black ... won't it?

Sure, Polakow-Suransky will presumably be in the room when big calls are made. He'll be able to give Black advice and insight on the often vexing issues. He'll be able to hold the map and be the navigator while she drives.

But Presidents use their vice presidents as they see fit. Same with governors and lieutenant governors. Mayors have first deputy mayors. Sometimes they listen; often they don't. There is no question, zero, where the buck stops.

Bloomberg laid out the new No. 2's responsibilities, and they are substantial. But he is still clearly under Black, and everyone knows that a job description on paper means nothing if a boss wants to use you differently.

So unless Polakow-Suransky has formal authority, Steiner might have just taken a stand to earn the illusion of a concession.

Then we'll come to learn that Bloomberg won this particular power struggle. And those dashed expectations may make some Bloomberg critics even angrier a few months from now than they are today.

So the Times can frame this as a major Bloomberg concession all it wants.

The fact is, Bloomberg got Black as chancellor.

Steiner gave her the waiver.

The #2 guy is just some Broad Foundation-trained eduwanker who specializes in testing, data and "accountability."

Black herself specializes in cost-cutting and layoffs.

Between the two of them, the New York City school system is going to get more of what it got from Klein.

And at the end of the day, Bloomberg got what he wanted.

NY Times Performs P.R. Task For Steiner

This piece of puffery about NYSED commissioner David Steiner should not be read on a full stomach.

It's pretty glucose-heavy.

The gist I get is that Steiner - lover of the classics, quoter of of Shakespeare - is agonizing over the Cathie Black waiver matter.

Oh, please.

Steiner may play an educator on TV for the public but behind closed doors he is a Bloomberg/ed deform shill through and through.

He has been bought and sold and had a Bloomberg LP stamp on his forehead.

Anybody working in official education circles in New York these days has to have that stamp of approval.

And you can see it from how Steiner conducts his official duties.

What lover of the classics agrees to reduce good teaching to test scores and ELA curriculum to multiple choice test prep?

The Times piece says Steiner likes to weave the works Plato, Dante, Homer and Shakespeare into his emails.

How fantastic!

But what I see him weave into his efforts as NYSED commissioner is the works of Bloomberg, Gates, Rhee, Klein, Duncan, Broad, et al.

As such, I am certain his hero Dante will have a special circle in hell for Steiner where he can try and engage hungry special education students, fresh from Obama's food stamp cuts, on test prep.

In order to get out that special circle in hell?

He's got to have all of them improve on their tests, year after year, for eternity.