Bloomberg Dictatorship Ends

It's over.

Finally.

Bloomberg: "After January, I am Going To Destroy All You F---ing Guys!"

Oh yeah, he said it:

Mayor Bloomberg went on a spitting-mad rant against a city cab-fleet boss who won a court victory over Hizzoner’s planned “Taxi of Tomorrow” — vowing to “destroy your f--king industry” when he leaves office, The Post has learned.

A fuming Bloomberg made the threat against Taxi Club Management CEO Gene Freidman at Madison Square Garden’s private 1879 Club during last Thursday’s Knick playoff game, a witness said yesterday.

“It was like Gene had kidnapped his child. He used the f-word twice,” the witness said.

Freidman confirmed the blow-up to The Post, and said Bloomberg’s tirade included the warning that, “After January, I am going to destroy all you f--king guys.”

That’s bad news for Bloomberg’s political enemies, who could all become targets once the revenge-minded billionaire has nothing but time on his hands

I am not surprised that Bloomberg acted like this toward the taxi CEO.

When Bloomberg does not get his way, he turns into a petulant child.

The only problem is, he is a petulant child with billions of dollars to carry out his threats.

You can be sure that if the next mayor overturns some of his signature education policies, Bloomberg will use his billions to bludgeon him or her.

He will look to destroy all these "f---ing guys!"

Here's the rest of Bloomberg's threat to the taxi CEO as reported by the Post:

Freidman approached Bloomberg at the exclusive club a day after a judge ruled that the mayor’s plan to replace the city’s taxi fleet with the Taxi of Tomorrow violated a city code requiring a hybrid-cab option for garage owners.

“I saw Bloomberg and his security there in the club, so I went over and said, ‘Tell me what is going on with the Taxi of Tomorrow?’ ” Freidman, 42, said yesterday.

“He turns to me, and said, ‘Come January 1st, when I am out of office, I am going to destroy your f--king industry.’

“I said, ‘Whoa, Mr. Mayor, calm down! Why can’t I sit down with you and figure out something that works?’ He got back in my face and said, ‘After January, I am going to destroy all you f--king guys,’ ” said Freidman, whose company operates a fleet of 925 yellow cabs.

Freidman said a red-faced Bloomberg’s jaw was clenched.

“He was very angry, very scary, very violent in a non-physical way. He was grinding his teeth, he was spitting, he was red and he was in my face,” the self-styled “King of the Road” claimed.

“The mayor was extremely disrespectful, and not ‘mayorly’ at all. He cursed at me, and when we walked away, I asked a friend who was with me, ‘Did the mayor just threaten me?’

“My friend responded, ‘No, he threatened you twice.’ ”

The mayor’s office declined to comment.

The witness said Bloomberg was just being a sore loser over state Supreme Court Justice Peter H. Moulton’s ruling.

The Taxi of Tomorrow is a Bloomberg pet project that would have replaced nearly the entire of fleet of yellow cabs with a more spacious model that Nissan won the right to design in an open competition.

The taxi industry, led by Freidman, challenged the overhaul — and Bloomberg seeing his foe at MSG set him off, the witness said.

“Bloomberg thinks that everyone should just follow his decisions,” he said.

Freidman said he tried to placate the mayor by reminding him of a meeting in 2006 when Bloomberg praised him for introducing hybrid fuel and wheelchair-accessible taxis.

But nothing would calm Bloomberg — who at one point looked about for security to toss Freidman from the club.

“This was my club that Bloomberg was a guest in, that I had paid to get in, and he wasn’t getting me kicked out of my own place,” said Freidman.

His lawyers have asked MSG to preserve any surveillance video that may have captured the exchange.

Freidman wondered how the mayor planned to “destroy” his industry.

“I don’t know how he’ll destroy me, whether he’ll start a black-car service that will take people for free,” he said. “Perhaps he’ll put $10 million of his own money to lobby against the taxi industry — that is pretty powerful.”

Classic - Bloomberg tries to have security toss Friedman out of his own club until Friedman tells him the mayor is not getting him kicked out of his own place.

While there's a lot of fun reading this story and seeing what a petulant, arrogant jerk Bloomberg is, this story is also quite troubling.

Because it suggests that like Nixon before him, Bloomberg has an "Enemies List" and like Nixon before him, he is going to look to get even with people on that list.

Unlike Nixon, however, Bloomberg has the press in his back pocket since he owns so many news outlets and has the billions to get away with his vengeance.

No wonder the United States of America feels like a Third World country these days.

We're ruled by banana republic dictators like Bloomberg.

More on this later.

Bloomberg: Why Won't Courts Of Law Let Me Do Anything I Want?

Pathetic whining from the Mayor of Money:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg railed against the court system Friday, blaming lawsuits for railroading his agenda in his final term.

“We’ve got to do something about our court system. Because they just stop everything,” Mr. Bloomberg lamented during his weekly radio interview Friday morning with WOR’s John Gambling.

Mr. Gambling chimed in in agreement: “Everything gets stopped–everything the city does.”

“Every single thing,” Bloomberg echoed. “You just can’t run a railroad this way.”

NOTE TO MAYOR OF MONEY: 

New York City is not a "railroad."  

You do not get to "railroad" through whatever you want no matter the level of opposition in the city.

You do not get to break the law, circumvent the rules or do whatever the hell you want despite your billions.

It's true that we live in a mostly fake democracy, which his how some rich arrogant ass like yourself was able to buy 12 years of power.

But there are enough vestiges of democracy left that even a billionaire like yourself does not get everything he wants.

I suppose you can use Bloomberg Philanthropies to remedy this sort of thing once you leave office and start bludgeoning judges with your PAC money the way to you plan to bludgeon politicians who don't agree with you 100% on your policies.

But until you do, God bless the courts of law in this country.

They're about the only thing standing between NYC and totalitarianism.

Bloomberg, NYPD, and Microsoft Go Into The Crime-Fighting Business Together

Sounds like a story from The Onion - but it's not:

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has unveiled a new crime-fighting system developed with Microsoft – and revealed that the city will take a cut of the profits if it is sold to other administrations.

The innovation, which bears a passing resemblance to the futuristic hologram data screens used by Tom Cruise in the science fiction film Minority Report, will allow police to quickly collate and visualise vast amounts of data from cameras, licence plate readers, 911 calls, police databases and other sources.

It will then display the information in real time, both visually and chronologically, allowing investigators to centralise information about crimes as they happen or are reported. "It is a one-stop shop for law enforcement," Bloomberg said at a City Hall press conference unveiling the new technology.

But, though it has many screens, maps, and flashing visuals that make it look like science fiction, the new technology has a distinctly un-Hollywood name: the Domain Awareness System. Developed by Microsoft engineers working with New York police officers, DAS will allow a host of activities to be carried out, such as spotting a suspicious vehicle and being able to track its recent movements or use cameras to track back and see who left a suspicious package.

It features live video feeds, huge databases of recent crime patterns and can take input direct from the field in real time via things like 911 calls or police radios. "All the information is presented visually and geographically and in chronological context," said police commissioner Ray Kelly.

If other cities purchase this system, Microsoft will share 30% of the profit with NYC.

Given how shoddy Microsoft products generally are, I doubt this thing will work as Bloomberg and Microsoft are advertising it, so we'll just have to see if any other municipality signs on to it.

Even so, I am a little disturbed that Microsoft and the NYPD are partnering on a crime tracking system.

Maybe the Gates Foundation can add a test score/teacher evaluation and really bring the school-to-prison complex together into one huge database?

Oops - maybe I shouldn't give Uncle Bill any ideas - he's been known to steal them before and make them into a core component of his Microsoft business model.

Although as I noted above, if this thing is as bad as Microsoft ME, Vista, Zune or Windows 8, I suspect it will spend more time freezing up and causing frustration than actually helping police track "criminals."

Cuomo's Power Grabs

Teachers weren't the only group to experience Andrew Cuomo's dictatorial power grabs this week:

ALBANY — In his proposed budget for next year, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has inserted language that would allow him to move money between state agencies without legislative approval.

He has included a clause that would allow him to give out some contracts without the customary review of the state comptroller. And he added another provision that some budget experts fear could expand his authority to borrow money for construction projects.

Riding high after a string of successes during his first year in office, Mr. Cuomo is now taking an expansive, and expanding, view of the role of governor, in the name of reining in the state’s sprawling bureaucracy.

But even some of Mr. Cuomo’s fellow Democrats are raising questions about what they view as a power grab. And suddenly a staple of civics class — the notion of checks and balances between different branches of government — is the talk of the Capitol.

“I think many of us, including myself, feel that there is overreaching proceeding down the path by our new governor, and that it is ultimately not healthy for there to be excessive power in the executive branch, even though he’s popular,” said Assemblyman James F. Brennan, a Democrat of Brooklyn.

Within the last two weeks, the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, and the Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, a Republican, both criticized Mr. Cuomo’s administration for a pact that allowed the state inspector general to see the tax returns of state employees. The state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, a Democrat, offered a broader critique, raising questions about proposals that his office said “would give the executive greater powers that would reduce long-established checks and balances.”

Cuomo didn't dispute the assertion that he is grabbing more power for himself. He didn't apologize either. Rather he said he is making government "more efficient" by taking powers granted legally to the legislature for himself.

In other words, he is going to make the trains run on time.

This isn't the only power grab Cuomo has made, of course:

At the Capitol, concerns about Mr. Cuomo’s maneuvers have escalated over the past year, even as he has used a combination of charm, intimidation and strategic skill to push his agenda through a change-averse Legislature.

He offered an all-or-nothing proposition with his first budget last year: Lawmakers could accept his plan or he would impose it through emergency spending measures. (They accepted it.)

He also made waves by merging the state insurance and banking departments to create what skeptics have viewed as his own attorney general’s office — the State Department of Financial Services. The governor initially sought to give that agency sweeping investigatory powers that some experts said could have made it more powerful than the attorney general’s office, but he ultimately scaled back his proposal.

...

Much of the concern over Mr. Cuomo’s latest budget proposal has focused on provisions that would increase his office’s authority over financial matters — a provocative move in part because New York’s Constitution already gives the governor significant power in deciding how the state spends its money.

For example, a 130-word paragraph sprinkled hundreds of times throughout the budget would allow the governor to move appropriations between state agencies after the Legislature had approved the state spending plan. Mr. Cuomo’s budget office said the clause would allow the state to consolidate back-office services like purchasing and information technology more easily, saving hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few years.

Mr. Cuomo is also proposing to strip the comptroller’s office of the power to review some state contracts before they are approved. And he is seeking to allow public authorities to transfer funds among themselves; lawmakers said that could have the effect of allowing, for example, revenues from the New York Power Authority to be used to pay for rising construction costs at the World Trade Center.

Richard L. Brodsky, a former Democratic assemblyman who wrote legislation to improve accountability of the state’s public authorities, said the provision would undo safeguards that lawmakers had put in place with some difficulty.

“It goes to the heart of the reform efforts that took six years, three governors and two attorneys general to get done, and it’s extremely important,” Mr. Brodsky said.

To Cuomo, what is important is taking power for himself, disempowering others in the process, and advancing his own agenda and his own career ambitions.

This is what he did to teachers this week by pushing through an evaluation deal that turns over the intents of the Race to the Top law passed by the legislature and agreed to by the unions back in 2010.

This is what he is doing to the legislature by subsuming more power into the executive.

Judging by the poll numbers, New Yorkers are cheering Cuomo's dictatorial power grabs - at least for now.

But dictators often come to bad ends - even the ones who get the trains to run on time.

Bloomberg Continues Pedestrian Plaza Juggernaut

When the Mayor of Money lost his battle to bring congestion pricing to Manhattan, he did not allow the idea or his enthusiasm for it go gently into that good night.

Rather he started sticking "pedestrian plazas" at some of the busiest intersections in Manhattan and expanded bike lanes, taking away precious driving space for buses, trucks, cabs and cars and making Manhattan driving an even bigger nightmare than it already was.

Bloomberg says he's just pursuing pedestrian, biker and tourist-friendly policies, but I see something else in this effort: it's a rather aggressively passive aggressive way to get his way on congestion pricing by slowly eroding driving spaces, blocking streets and making traffic in the borough worse and worse by the year.

Now I'm no car guy - I don't own a car, I wouldn't drive in Manhattan if you paid me and I am generally in favor of policies that favor pedestrians over cars.

That said, the mayor's policies have struck me as another example of his authoritarian dictatorship ways - beaten by Shelly Silver in Albany a few years ago, he's coming back around with the congestion pricing thing after log-jamming traffic all over Manhattan with his pedestrian plazas.

That's why I thought it was extraordinary that he actually was forced to back down on the latest logjam attempt on 34th Street - until I read further and realized, he wasn't backing down at all. The city was simply SAYING it was acknowledging community concerns and would roll out a new version of the proposal in the near future.

You can bet the new version of the plan won't look all that different from the old one.

Maybe it will have a new name or something. But that's about it.

Time and again, that's what the Little Mayor does - picks and picks and picks at every issue until he gets his way.

Sometimes he SAYS he's changed on something, even as he continues with his original plans.

Don't be surprised Manhattan isn't pedestrian-plazaed over by 2013, congestion pricing (and all the cameras they'll use to enforce it) isn't re-introduced into the city, the Jets don't have a West Side stadium, and the Eva Moskowitz School System hasn't replaced the old DOE.

That's how this guy operates.

Other people's wishes or feelings?

Who cares - only the billionaires matter.

Bloomberg Acts Like The Sun King -- Or Nixon

The Mayor of Money was on the spot today for why he refuses to say where he was before the Christmas Bloomberg Blizzard hit the city:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg today addressed the controversy surrounding his whereabouts during the December blizzard, after the Wall Street Journal published a story today that essentially confirms that he was in Bermuda during the storm.

The mayor reiterated that where he goes when he does not have a public schedule is private and that he is not required to disclose his whereabouts.

“The mayor has to be able to have a private life and not disclose where he is,” said Bloomberg. “We’ve set up a policy day one, we’re going to tell you whenever there’s a public event. And I can guarantee you the mayor is always in control and there are always people here. Even if the mayor wasn’t in contact, there’s an executive order that lays it out clearly who’s in charge.”

As part of an exhaustive review of the federal records for Bloomberg’s private planes, the Journal reports one of the mayor’s planes left for Bermuda at 9 a.m. on Christmas Day. That plane returned to New York at 2:49 pm on December 26th.

The Journal says that return flight to LaGuardia was the last private plane allowed into LaGuardia before it was forced to shut down because of the storm.

The mayor made a public appearance a short time later.

Bloomberg said that he has never deputized anyone to be mayor while he was away.

He said that he pays for lodging and food for the police escort whenever he is traveling for personal reasons.

Bloomberg went on to say that there will be no compromise on legislation that is making its way through the City Council that would require the mayor to notify the City Clerk whenever he leaves the city.

Couple of things here:

First, notice that Bloomberg refers to himself in the third person here as "the mayor."

It's as if the position and he are now one.

Maybe after he leaves office - if he leaves office without a Egypt-like coup needed - he'll wanted the title of the office changed to "the Bloomberg."

As in, I wonder who is running for "the Bloomberg" next year.

Also, notice how he says he refuses to disclose where he goes on his off time EVEN IF THE CITY COUNCIL PASSES A LAW SAYING HE HAS TO.

Seriously, think about that for a minute.

He's saying he doesn't have to abide by the law because he doesn't want to.

It's like when Nixon said "It's not against the law if the president does it!"

He's amazing, the Little Mayor - a dictator, the Sun King, Nixon, and a robber baron all wrapped up in one.

I think it's time he gets sent off to San Clemente with Bebe Rebozo.

Michael Daly: This Ain't Egypt, Bloomberg

Mayor Moneybags criticized parents, students and teachers who protested at Thursday's Panel for Educational Policy and said that they were an embarrassment to New York City, an embarrassment to New York State and an embarrassment to the country.

Here are his remarks from his Friday radio show:

“This is embarrassing for New York City, for New York State, for America,” Mr. Bloomberg said during his weekly appearance on WOR-AM. “This is not democracy, letting people yell and scream. That’s not freedom of expression — that’s just trying to take away somebody else’s rights."

UFT president Mulgrew responded, calling the mayor Hosni Mubarak after the Egyptian dictator and pointed out that the PEP is a rubber stamp for the mayor's policies and about as democratic as the old Politburo:

The outraged parents, students and teachers union officials, though, said the mayor's comments were the real embarrassment.

Teachers union official Michael Mulgrew, who joined in chants of "fraud" on Wednesday and a walkout during Thursday's meeting, suggested a nickname for Bloomberg based on his remarks: "Mayor Hosni Mubarak."

"It's clear that Mike Bloomberg has the same idea of democracy as Hosni," he said, referring to the protests in Egypt. "For him to bring up democracy -- anything about democracy -- when speaking about a (Panel for Educational Policy) meeting is beyond hypocrisy, because the last time the PEP panel said the mayor was wrong, they were fired."

In 2004, the mayor removed panel appointees critical of his plan requiring students to earn a minimum score on state exams before being promoted to the next grade.

The panel, which functions as a school board, is seen as a rubber stamp to Education Department policy since the majority of the members are appointed by the mayor.

Panel members have never voted down a school closing - or any significant policy made by the agency.

Today NY Daily News columnist Michael Daly joins the chorus against Bloomberg. Here is his entire column - a broadside against Mayor Moneybags and his authoritarianism:

"This is not democracy, letting people yell and scream."

No, that was not Hosni Mubarak talking about the demonstrators in Egypt.

That was Mike Bloomberg talking about the parents, teachers and students who turned raucous at two meetings preceding a rubberstamp vote to close 22 schools.

How does Bloomberg propose NOT to let them yell and scream in an actual democracy? Eject them? Lock them up?

Bloomberg went so far as to say they had embarrassed their city, their state, even their nation.

He did not seem to consider that they were roused to fury by much the same feeling that rouses the protesters in Cairo. This is the sense that whatever you say in more reasonable tones will be ignored.

Bloomberg is no Mubarak, silly sound bites by teacher's union boss Michael Mulgrew aside.

But, the folks in that auditorium at Brooklyn Tech had no more real voice than the folks in Egypt.

Schools Chancellor Cathie Black and the ruling majority of the panel on stage are mayoral puppets. They hardly even pretended that whatever the people in the auditorium had to say made much difference.

"Not one person on the panel was actually listening," said Charm Rhoomes, who was there Thursday night as the mother of a student at Jamaica High School and the president of its PTA. "Even Cathie Black. She was on her BlackBerry."

Rhoomes came with her 16-year-old son, Shawn Nevers, and did not join in the yelling. She understands those who did. "They know that whatever they are saying is falling on deaf ears," Rhoomes said. "The decision was already made. It was horrible."

The only ears that mattered were not there. The mayor would hear afterward of what he deemed shameful behavior. He would say, "When you're yelling at a meeting like they had ...you're yelling at the teachers, you're dissing them, you're dissing the principals, you're dissing the school safety officers, you're dissing the custodians, you're dissing the taxpayers paying for it."

They were really dissing the mayor. And to demonstrate their outrage, a good number of them staged a walk-out. Rhoomes stayed, and calm had returned when it came her turn to speak.

"There was no shouting, there was no screaming," she recalled.

Had they bothered, the minions on the stage would have had no trouble hearing Rhoomes as she spoke with a Caribbean lilt of her son, who never misses school and gets good grades and was so thrilled when he was admitted to college-level math. He attended one class only to be told at the second that it had been dropped from the curriculum because the teacher had been cut. He would still love to have college math, but he does not want to lose the school where he has worked so hard. "He still loves the school," she said.

This magnificent working mother of three was speaking from her very core, the place of her greatest hopes and deepest fears. There is really no measure for the disrespect that the people on the stage showed her.

"They were absolutely not listening," she recalled. "There was not one person I could see that was listening."

The dis far outdid the dissing the mayor called a national disgrace. It may be bad manners to shout at a meeting. It is truly shameful to sit there and ignore the heartfelt and considered words of a mother who is everything a mother should be.

The meeting ended with a sham vote to close the designated schools, including Jamaica High. I'll tell you what's not democracy, Mr. Mayor. Democracy is not a vote whose outcome is pre-ordained by the boss.

Afterward, Rhoomes and her son journeyed home across Brooklyn and Queens. He had school in the morning. He got there on time, ready to make the best of it, just like his mother said at the hearing where nobody listened.

Bloomberg is no different than any of the other education deform people - from Obama to Duncan to Rhee to Gates.

They don't listen to others, they don't care what anybody else has to say and they think ONLY they have all the answers.

In a classroom, a teacher would have to write these kinds of kids up - the ones who are so selfish and self-centered, they cannot get along with others and absolutely HAVE TO HAVE THEIR OWN WAY - and send them for counseling.

Unfortunately in the "real world," they have all the power.

Which is why, after nine years of NOT being heard by Bloomberg and the NYCDOE braintrust, the anger on the other side is becoming palpable.

NYC Educator said he has never seen anger against the DOE like he saw the other night at the PEP meeting:

I've never seen anger like this before, even at these meetings. It's palpable. Several speakers made references to Egypt, rising up against tyranny. Mayoral dictatorship is a bad policy and must end. And absolutely everyone at the meeting last night could see that New York City has had just about enough of it. Those feelings aren't going away, and neither are any of the people who took their time to show Ms. Black she's not in her penthouse anymore.

People are fed up with the corporate education policies that purposely starve large schools that serve the neediest children in order to close them and reopen them as charter schools with non-unionized staff.

People are fed up with the school closure policies that is designed NOT to improve schools but to disrupt the system, punish traditional public schools and reward charter schools.

People are fed up with the emphasis on testing over teaching, standardized assessment over rich content and varied curriculum, and rote learning over critical thinking skills.

People are fed up with a mayor so detached and imperious that he appoints his girlfriend's Upper East Side drinking buddy to be schools chancellor.

People are fed up with a mayor who circumvents the law to illegally run for a third term, spends hundreds of millions on that re-election bid, then win by only 50,000 votes but governs like he has a million vote mandate anyway.

People are fed up.

And in a democracy, when people are fed up, they can protest the policies the elected officials - even oligarchs like Mayor Moneybags - are imposing upon them.

That is what people were doing on Thursday night at the PEP and it is good to see a columnist like Daly note just how democratic those protests were and just how authoritarian Bloomberg's reaction was.

It is interesting how the ed deform movement really thought the zeitgeist was moving their way this year - Rhee in place in D.C. and on the cover of TIME with her broom ready to sweep away traditional public schools and unionized teachers, Bloomberg back for a third term to finish off what hasn't been destroyed by his ed deform policies in NYC, Obama in the White House quintupling the punitive measures in NCLB and promoting policies that demonize teachers and traditional schools, and "Waiting for Superman" winning an Oscar and giving the ed deform movement the "teachable moment" they need to complete their ed deform policies nation-wide.

But Rhee is gone into private lobbying, Bloomberg is getting heavy pushback on his ed deform policies and some pretty harsh criticism in the media for them, Obama's chances of getting NCLB Jr. through a Republican/Tea Party Congress aren't looking so good and "Waiting for Superman" was snubbed by the Oscar Academy after it became clear the film was less a documentary and more a propaganda film with made-up scenes and false "facts".

The zeitgeist in education now is that the people who actually run schools on a daily basis - the teachers and administrators - and the people who send their kids to the schools - the parents - are pushing back against the imperiousness of the corporate education deform movement and clamoring for the return of democratic education policies decided by the people, not authoritarian ones decided by the oligarchy.

This ain't Egypt. Even if Bloomberg, Obama, Rhee, Klein, Gates, et al. think it is.