De Blasio Has His Work Cut Out For Him

Everywhere I went today, I kept hearing variations on the same theme:

De Blasio is an idiot.

Heard it at Starbucks, heard it on the train, heard it in the elevator in my building, heard it at work - de Blasio is in over his head, we miss Bloomberg.

In the past, I might have defended Mayor de Blasio and pointed out Bloomberg's past foibles, including the "Go See A Broadway Show" debacle from the Bloomberg Blizzard of 2010.

But not anymore - two months into his mayorality, I see a politician who has already spent his political capital, has managed to piss off a good part of the city with his handling of yesterday's snow storm, is under attack and on the defensive for a questionable call to the police to help a political ally, and trails Governor Cuomo badly in popularity even in NYC.

Memes get set fast in politics and if Bill de Blasio is not careful, the meme will be set very, very soon that he is an idiot, a man in over his head who cannot manage the city.

Sure, the corporate press like the News and Post want to solidify that meme in people's heads.

But de Blasio has done almost everything in his power to help them out by fumbling first the fake UES snow crisis last month (apologizing for something he didn't need to apologize for), then badly screwing up yesterday's storm by failing to close schools and backing up his tone deaf chancellor when she said it was a beautiful day, of course schools were going to be opened.

Compounding the snow messes is the mini-scandal over the call de Blasio made to the police after a political ally and member of his transition team was arrested, a mini-scandal made worse by de Blasio's fumbling red-faced response to it.

After two months post-Bloomberg, you don't want to be walking around the city and overhearing people say "I miss Bloomberg!" but that's what I heard today.

Those statements are a direct result of the de Blasio administration's poor start these past two months.

De Blasio has his work cut out for him, erasing the memory of yesterday's snow debacle and restoring public confidence in his ability as mayor.

Here's hoping he starts soon.

Here's Hoping The Snow Debacle Is Not An Indication Of The Future Direction At Tweed

I bet Carmen Farina's wishing she stayed retired right about now- here's how the Daily News framed yesterday's "It's A Beautiful Day!" debacle:

Ten inches of snow. School buses colliding with cars. Half empty schools.

“It’s absolutely a beautiful day out there,” beamed New York Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña.

The clueless chancellor added insult to inclement weather with that head-scratching remark at a news conference Thursday. She and Mayor de Blasio were defending the decision to keep schools open as a snowstorm bombarded the five boroughs.

They tried to fend off criticism that came from everyone from elected officials to students to weatherman Al Roker.

“Unlike some cities, we don’t shut down in the face of adversity,” said de Blasio, noting that New York City schools have been shuttered only 11 times since 1978. “I’m going to make decisions based on the information we have.”

Within minutes of wrapping up the press event, Fariña bailed out of the city’s storm center at the Office of Emergency Management. A short time later, Fariña’s office announced that her town hall meeting in Brownsville, Brooklyn, was canceled “due to inclement weather.”

The Daily News spotted her leaving her office Thursday evening, climbing into her taxpayer-funded red Ford Escape SUV after her full-time driver waited about an hour for her.

Fariña, whose husband resides full-time in sunny Florida, had nothing to say outside of Tweed on Chambers St.

I'll defend her taking her SUV - that's one of the perks of working in a mayoral administration and I don't remember the Daily News getting too mad about Bloomberg having two idling SUV's waiting for him wherever he went.

What I won't defend is the foolish decision she made the night before the storm hit, a decision she and her boss, Mayor de Blasio, refused to revisit in the morning as reliable meteorologists like Craig Allen warned of snow bands dropping 2-3 inches of snow an hour heading our way right through the morning rush or the tone deaf and idiotic statements she made both before the storm and afterwards when she needed to defend the decision.

I will point out one more thing about our intrepid chancellor.

Back when she was Klein's deputy and the DOE had decided to impose a standardized curriculum on many schools, Tweed had this fetish over measuring bulletin boards so that every one was standardized around the city and making sure every classroom had a reading rug.

There were rumors that educrats used to go around the city with rulers to measure the bulletin boards and punish teachers whose boards did not measure up to the standard.

The rumor was the bulletin board measuring fetish emanated from Carmen Farina's office, that she was the Tweedie who wanted the standardized bulletin boards and reading rugs in every classroom.

When de Blasio named Farina chancellor, I thought about the bulletin board measuring/reading rug fetish thing and hoped that the lack of judgment that episode showed was due to someone else in the Tweed braintrust, not Farina.

Can't say one way or the other whether the reading rug/bulletin board stuff was Farina's imposition, but I can say with certainty that she showed just that kind of bad judgment the last two days with both the snow call and then the defense of it.

I hope this does not indicate the future direction she will take at Tweed.

We have had many a year with education leaders making bad decisions and defending them to the end no matter what - we don't need another chancellor like that.

NY Post: Farina Says No Excuse For Students Who Took A Snow Day

Wow, Chancellor Farina now rivaling Cathie Black for eye-raising statements.

Here's the latest, as reported by the NY Post:

Farina also callously declared that students who were absent from school Thursday would not be given a pass for taking the day off.

“At the course of a whole day, you can still get to school,” she said.

The Daily News reports that only 45% of NYC school children showed up to school today, so that's an awful lot of unexcused absences Chancellor Farina will be tallying up.

I was too busy teaching the handful of students who showed up to my classes today a rigorous Common Core-based lesson to watch the De Blasio/Farina presser, but I have to say that's the kind of statement that pisses parents off and solidifies the meme that the person who made the statement is clueless (as the Post put it.)

Especially when the same person earlier said “It’s absolutely a beautiful day out there..." as it was sleeting and raining on top of the 9-10 inches of snow that had fallen.

BTW, the chancellor's town hall meeting that was to be held in Brownsville tonight was canceled “due to inclement weather.”

Not so beautiful a day that the town hall meeting could go on.

The problem for Farina here is that she not only made a very poor decision to call school at 10:30 the night before the storm even started, but she has defended that decision with absolutely tone deaf statements that have helped make her one of the newest Internet memes.

Like here:

Or here:

She's not helping herself by stating that students who took the day off will not be given a pass because “At the course of a whole day, you can still get to school."

In fact, De Blasio and Farina both spent a lot of political capital today defending a poor decision.

It's never good when something you say becomes the target of Internet meme mockery or the target of an Al Roker twitter barrage.

De Blasio had no problem apologizing to the entire UES over a manufactured snow outrage last month.

But for some reason, neither he nor his chancellor will acknowledge the poor decision they made here or stop compounding it by saying stupid stuff to defend it.