Michael Goodwin Really Takes It To Bloomberg

Nails him on the phonied up test scores, the phonied up graduation rates, the b.s. bonus pay program that was a miserable failure, the the outside tech consultant scandals, the latest of which has seen a top official at the DOE resign after she perjured herself, uh, misspoke at an inquiry involving corruption charges against a contractor she was supposed to oversee. This scandal comes only days after the last DOE scandal when an outside consultant was arrested for stealing $3.6 million from the city with the help of major DOE vendors IBM and Verizon.

Here is what Goodwin concludes:

The winter of public discontent with Mayor Bloomberg has turned into the spring of white-hot anger. If he's got any more Kool- Aid in his emergency kit, Bloomy better break it out now because the natives are decidedly restless.

Starting with the Christmas blizzard debacle, the grievances against him continue to pile up. Hardly a day goes by without a new scandal headline, yet he seems unable or unwilling to respond in ways that would move the needle.

He spent several millions on TV ads and direct mail, but it didn't work. He fired his unpopular choice for schools chancellor, Cathie Black, but didn't get a boost from that, either.

Most peculiar, he seems stuck in a loser narrative -- that he is unpopular because he is right and everybody else is wrong. His mind is shut tight against any view except his own -- bicycle lanes uber alles -- even as New Yorkers believe his third term is a bust.

If he cares about his sinking fortunes, he has an odd way of showing it. In the twilight of his tenure, Bloomberg is becoming the Popeye of politicians: "I am what I am."

He might want to rethink that approach. The top line of the Quinnipiac poll spelled trouble and the findings get worse as you dig into the numbers. A dismal 40 percent approval rating and a 49 percent disapproval count as the good news, which means there isn't any.

A tiny 3 percent say Bloomberg's third term is better than the first two, with 47 percent saying it's worse. Most say he is not focusing enough on the job.

Bad as those numbers are, they are worse on his signature issue. The "education mayor," a tag he gave himself, is becoming a parody.

By a whopping 64-25 percent, voters turn thumbs down on his management of the schools. Among New Yorkers with children in those schools, 78 percent disapprove, and only 20 percent approve.

Overall, by 57 to 23 percent, New Yorkers say his takeover of the schools has been a failure. That could put mayoral control in jeopardy for his successor, with the unions and their lawmaker puppets eager to curb City Hall's power.

For Bloomberg, this is beyond the lame-duck danger zone -- this has the makings of a collapse. Unless his attitude changes, and he is able to convince the public he is fully engaged, I don't see how he can substantially recover.

...

In all its angles, his predicament threatens the essence of Bloomberg's cultivated image: savvy guardian of the public dollar, competent manager and historic school reformer.

Come to think of it, that's why he's fixated on bike lanes. He knows they'll be his third-term legacy.

Savvy guardian of the public dollar - ha!

When the Bloomberg administration finally has to show its books openly and honestly to an outside independent entity, the CityTime scandal, the Willard Lanham scandal and the Judith Hederman scandal will just be the tip of the iceberg of the corruption and cronyism that has been going during the last ten years.

As for competent manager - ha!

I have two words to retort to that - "Cathie Black"!

There's your "competent manager" for you.

And as for the ultimate outrage to me - that Bloomberg is the "Education Mayor" - well, parents and NYC citizens have seen through that jive.

The grad rates and test scores are phony. The school closings are purposefully chaotic and destructive. Same with the constant reorganizations of the system. The charter school community and the traditional public school community are deliberately set against each other by the mayor's policies. Morale in the school system among teachers is the lowest I have ever seen it. Hundreds of millions are spent on outside consultants while the classrooms and schools themselves are starved of funds. Goodwin never mentioned Tweed - just how much more money has Bloomberg shifted toward central office managers and programs and away from classroom and schools?

It is all a mess and the public is seeing that, understanding it and responding accordingly.

Ironically, people outside New York, at least in Bloomberg's natural constituency - the press and the media - aren't running with this narrative.

Bloomberg can still show up on Meet The Press or Tavis Smiley and be taken seriously as somebody who is competent, deserving of esteem, and with something substantive to offer.

Here in NYC, the majority of people and even the media see Bloomberg for who he is - an arrogant, authoritarian man with a thin skin, a bullying streak, a reputation for competence and managerial expertise that is overblown at best, totally fabricated at worst.

The tone of the Goodwin columns on Bloomberg - and the evolution of them in this third term - are a pretty good symbol of just how little esteem Bloomberg now has here in NYC.

In this way, it is good that Bloomberg won a third term, just the way it was good that Bush won a second term.

Had Bush lost to Kerry in 2004, Bush would have left office with a higher approval and popularity rate than he ultimately did because people wouldn't have seen the natural conclusion to his incompetent and corrupt presidency - the Iraq implosion, the Katrina debacle, the financial collapse spurred on by Bush policies (and Greenspan.)

Similarly, Bloomberg is taking the sole blame for the mess of the school system, for the economy of the city that sees Bloomberg and his cronies raking in more bucks than ever even as the rest of us have to fight it out for crumbs.

This reality cannot be overstated on the school issue.

In D.C., people get to say Michelle Rhee's ed reform policies could have worked if only she had been given more time and they can sound reasonable (even though the reality is that Rhee's miracle was based on smoke, mirrors and cheating.)

Here in NYC, Bloomberg and Klein do NOT get that luxury.

People can see with their own eyes what the policies have wrought.

And as Goodwin notes in his column, the mayor, who has governed the school system like a Mideast dictator with an enemies list, has assured that sole mayoral control will be a thing of the past when that law comes up for re-authorization.

So enjoy your legacy, Mike - people hate your bike lanes too.

Bloomberg Sucks The Lifeblood Out Of The City

Like a giant vampire squid - that was the message of the protests yesterday in NYC:

They marched to Wall Street to protest issues as varied as the war in Afghanistan, bonuses for bankers and budget cuts. But many of them directed their unhappiness in the same direction: at Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

To the thousands of protesters who inundated Lower Manhattan on Thursday, New York’s billionaire mayor seemed a fitting symbol of much that they found wrong with society, including the wide gap between rich and poor and the call to lay off teachers.

Teachers wore black shirts reading, “ ‘The Education Mayor’ Really?” Others called Mr. Bloomberg out of touch. One man carried a sign comparing him to Mr. Burns, the cold-blooded businessman from “The Simpsons.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s popularity has suffered in his third term, and public criticism has escalated since last Friday, when he proposed laying off 5,400 city workers, the majority of them teachers, to balance the city’s budget.

Mr. Bloomberg, speaking with reporters before the protests on Thursday, blamed Albany for the city’s budget cuts, which he attributed to a reduction in state aid. The mayor suggested that the protesters would have been wiser to direct their energy at pressuring the governor and the Legislature to allocate more money for the city.

“If they thought we should have more money, why don’t they go up to Albany and fight for it?” he said. “We’ve been up there and we haven’t really got a lot of help.”

There he goes again, blaming Albany for budget cuts when it is he who has chosen to a) spend $550 million on technology upgrades to the school system even as he lays off teachers to save $377 million b) refuses to raise ANY taxes on rich people or corporations even though many (like General Electric, for example) pay little to no tax at all c) has a surplus which he would rather use to pay next year's debt service than pay this year's bills d) continues to hand out no-bid contracts to all his cronies - like Rupert Murdoch and Joel Klein getting a $4.5 million extension on Wireless Generation's School of One contract, a contract which Klein himself signed originally when he was chancellor of the city schools.

He could change any or all of those things I named above and have more money to avoid layoffs - but he has chosen not to.

Meanwhile, more and more scandals come down the pike showing an absurd amount of crime being perpetrated on taxpayers by the outside consultants Bloomberg hires.

The latest outrage was reported by Juan Gonzalez in the NY Daily News this morning and involves a top DOE official who resigned after retracting some testimony she made in a corruption inquiry of a company she was supposed to be conducting oversight on.

How much has been stolen in this latest scandal? Dunno, but it is looks like a lot - the contract she had oversight over was for $43 million. Here again are the details of this burgeoning scandal:

Judith Hederman, the $168,000-a-year executive director of the DOE's division of financial operations, submitted her resignation on May 4, DOE officials confirmed.

That was the day the Daily News reported that Richard Condon, the schools' special commissioner of investigation, had filed court papers saying a "high-level" executive at the DOE with "oversight" over the $43 million contract of Florida-based Future Technology Associates, had a "personal relationship" with one of the owners of FTA.

FTA, which has not been charged with wrongdoing, is under investigation for "potential corruption and conflict of interest," the court papers say.

An affidavit submitted by Condon's deputy, Gerald Conroy, as part of a court dispute over the agency's subpoena power, did not identify the DOE official. A source at the DOE has since confirmed it was Hederman.

The affidavit said the unnamed official, who was interviewed under oath on April 14, initially denied having a personal relationship with either of FTA's owners, Tamer Sevintuna or Jonathan Krohe.

Four days after that interview, the official's lawyer called Condon's office and retracted the original denial of a personal relationship.

Hederman worked at the DOE since 1995. For nearly two years, until last November, she supervised the FTA contract.

She did not respond to phone calls and email requests in the past week for comments. Sevintuna and Krohe have repeatedly declined to respond to questions.

For more than a year, Condon's office has been probing a web of companies that Sevintuna and Krohe secretly controlled and utilized as subcontractors for themselves, including two that supplied consultants in Turkey and India to service the DOE computer system remotely.

FTA's contract bars the company from subcontracting or using outside consultants, and officials say the firm never told them about the practice.

Some of the Turkish workers, The News has found, were paid as little as $3,370 a month by a separate firm Sevintuna and Krohe owned in Turkey, yet FTA billed the DOE $22,400 a month for the labor of those workers. At least six were still on the DOE payroll as recently as March.

Nearly two years ago, The News began asking DOE officials about the unusual aspects of the agency's contract with FTA.

For example, the firm has never had any established offices, even though it has supplied as many as 80 consultants at a time to the DOE and has received close to $100 million from the school system over the past decade.

FTA headquarters in Jacksonville, Fla., is a mailbox in a UPS store. So is a second address in Brooklyn.

Another FTA subcontractor, MERA consulting, which received $14 million from the DOE contract, was wholly owned by Krohe. MERA's main address was another mailbox in the same Florida UPS store.

Only weeks after Condon's investigators began asking questions about MERA, Krohe dissolved the company.

Much of this appears to have happened while Hederman was supervising the contract. Hederman is gone, but the probe continues.

Couple this scandal with the CityTime fraud and the Williard Lanham DOE computer consultant fraud and a pattern emerges - the outside consultants are stealing the city blind, they're doing it with the help of some of the city vendors (like Verizon and IBM in the Lanham case) or with the help of the very city officials who are supposed to have oversight over them (like Joel Bondy in the CityTime scandal and Judith Hederman in the FTA scandal.)

Major money is going missing, yet Bloomberg, rather than take responsibility for his failures and his refusal to conduct decent oversight of the outside contracts, points a finger at Albany and at protesters as the crux of the budget problems.

But I'm glad to see that nobody's buying the garbage he's trying to sell:

The protests on Thursday were backed by some of the city’s biggest unions, including the United Federation of Teachers and 1199 S.E.I.U., which have been highly critical of the mayor.

“Who protects the kids?” shouted Michael Mulgrew, president of the teachers’ union, on a stage near City Hall Park. “Who’s going to fight the mayor?”

As the crowd meandered down Broadway, Karriem Akbar, 41, a vendor from Harlem, joined in. “The spirit just overtook me,” Mr. Akbar said. “Bloomberg is a multibillionaire, and he is making these cuts? We should help the poor and tax the rich.”

Donna Chin, a literacy coach at Public School 184 in Manhattan, said the prospect of teacher layoffs had made it difficult for educators at her school to focus. “This is usually a time when we can reflect and plan for the next year, but right now there is too much uncertainty,” Ms. Chin said.

The budget proposed by Mr. Bloomberg still faces debate in the City Council, which must approve the city’s annual spending plan. Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, has pledged to try to prevent teacher layoffs, but has not said how she would balance the budget without them.

Many of the demonstrators called for the state to impose on high-income New Yorkers a surcharge sometimes referred to as a millionaire’s tax. But state leaders, including Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, have rejected the idea. A previous elevated state income tax rate for high earners expired in December.

Is Cuomo and his refusal to raise taxes on his wealthy Wall Street and corporate cronies part of this budget problem?

Of course - but so is Mayor Bloomberg and his refusal to be held accountable for the mess that is his government and the waste and fraud that seem to transpire in it every day.

Partying Like It's 1975 All Over Again

Here's a timeline history of teacher layoffs in the New York City school system.

Enjoy some period music from one of the other times in history there have been teacher layoffs in NYC:




Yes, that's right - the last time there were as many layoffs as Bloomberg announced today, glam music was still hot, The Sweet were on the Top of the Pops and that blue jacket the lead singer is wearing was in style.

That was one long-ass time ago.

NOTE: Layoffs were actually in 1974 and The Sweet were #2 with a bullet on the British charts in 1975. I could've found some Bolan or Bowie from 1974, but what the hell - gotta love that blue jacket.

As for the layoffs, not so much.

Bloomberg Party After WHCD

Seth Meyers on the ever popular Bloomberg party after the White House Correspondents Dinner:

Tonight is not about our political differences. Tonight is about the afterparties. I keep hearing how people are excited to go to the Bloomberg party. You know how you know I’m not in New York? In New York, no one is excited to go to a Bloomberg party. In New York, a Bloomberg party is five people standing outside of a bar complaining about Bloomberg.

Got a really big laugh and some applause.

In years past, if there was a Bloomberg joke, it was about how much money he had or something innocuous like that.

This time around, the joke was "Bloomberg sucks and people hate him!"

How times change.

I wonder if Bloomberg will come to regret the third term as much as Donald Trump came to regret going to the White House Correspondents Dinner?