Bloomberg: We're Lucky The CityTime Crooks Ripped Us Off!

Yeah, he said it:

New York City is lucky it got ripped off hundreds of millions of dollars in the CityTime scandal, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this morning.

Mr. Bloomberg’s argument was that because the fraudsters agreed to pay the city back $500 million after being hounded by federal prosecutors and the city’s Department of Investigation, the project of modernizing the municipal payroll system ended up being a bargain.

“That whole system cost us something like only a 100 million dollars and it should have been many times that,” he said. “We were lucky because of the fraud. And in the end it turned out, because of the recovery, we saved a lot of money.”

The mayor arrived at this topic after defending the city’s much-maligned 911 system, which has been barraged with reports of dysfunction and shutdowns. Mr. Bloomberg compared the two cases and maintained the system was working just fine.

“When was the last time you heard a complaint about the basic accounting system for the municipal workforce that has something like two thirds of all municipal workers on it? None one. Not one complaint,” he said, latter adding, “It certainly works and this 9/11 system certainly works as well. Will there be glitches? Computer systems all the time have glitches. Nothing’s perfect.”

A little 4 year old girl died during one of those 911 system "glitches".

Bloomberg's response?

Oh, well - what can you do?  Nothing's perfect...shit happens...

I'm sure he believes his own b.s. here that the CityTime fraud was awesome because it ended up saving the city money and the new 911 system is working swimmingly despite the half dozen crashes a day it's been having and the dead 4 year old who just might have been saved had the system worked like it was supposed to work.

He's clearly delusional and divorced from reality at this point in his life and I wouldn't be surprised to see him diagnosed with some kind of disorder or dementia in the coming years.

Crazy Things Mayor Bloomberg Says

A commenter in an early thread wrote the following:

The mental stability of the mayor should become an issue. Recent comments should be interpreted as not only delusional, but, the possibility of mental incapacity as these comments can no longer be excused.

The commenter is talking about this kind of stuff:

 Mayor Bloomberg yesterday put his foot in his mouth by suggesting homeless shelters are bursting at the seams because anyone can get a bed — even the filthy rich.

“You can arrive in your private jet at Kennedy Airport, take a private limousine and go straight to the shelter system, walk in the door, and we’ve got to give you shelter,” the billionaire mayor fumed on his weekly WOR radio show.

“That’s what the law is. I didn’t write the law.”

Or this:

"I got in trouble every time I say this. But I would do anything to have better quality teachers, even if it meant bigger class size, even if it meant them standing rather than sitting. That's what really makes a difference.”

Or this:

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — It’s a jaw-dropping prescription for fixing city schools.
“Professor” Michael Bloomberg said Thursday he would accomplish more with less by slashing the teaching staff in half — and that’s just the beginning, reports CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.

He looked like he was from another planet when he dressed as a hippie for a political show, but the mayor’s blueprint for fixing city schools have some asking “what was he smoking?”

“Education is very much, I’ve always thought, just like the real estate business. Real estate business, there are three things that matter: location, location, location is the old joke,” Bloomberg said. “Well in education, it is: quality of teacher, quality of teacher, quality of teacher. And I would, if I had the ability - which nobody does really – to just design a system and say, ‘ex cathedra, this is what we’re going to do,’ you would cut the number of teachers in half, but you would double the compensation of them and you would weed out all the bad ones and just have good teachers. And double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students.”

That’s right. The mayor told people at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology conference it would be far better to run city schools with way fewer people. And, by the way, on the billionaire’s perfect planet that would mean cramming more kids into each classroom.

Or this:

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has a solution to the nation's immigration problem: Let immigrants come to the United States... "as long as they agree to live in Detroit."

Bloomberg, the mayor of America's largest city, believes the federal government has an immigration problem and that Detroit has a people problem — "half the population has left; you've got to do something about that" — so why not flash some of that American ingenuity and kill two birds with one stone?

"If I were the federal government, assuming we could wave a magic wand and pull everybody together, you pass a law letting immigrants come in as long as they agree to go to Detroit and live there for five to 10 years, start businesses, take jobs or whatever," Bloomberg said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"You would populate Detroit overnight because half the world wants to come here," Bloomberg said of the continued appeal of living within the United States, yet implying perhaps Detroit is not the most desirable new home town.

Or how about this:

Mayor Bloomberg’s recent criticism of President Obama for allowing the debt reduction Supercommittee to fail led many political tea leaf watchers to believe he’s eyeing a potential White House bid. To the dismay of those who hope he’ll mount presidential campaign, Mayor Bloomberg began his speech last night by discussing why City Hall is just fine by him.

“I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world. I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom’s annoyance. We have the United Nations in New York, and so we have an entree into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have,” Mayor Bloomberg said.

When I listen to Michael Bloomberg talk, I feel like the crew members on the U.S.S. Caine:




Maybe it's time to go over Admiral Halsey and have a talk?

Sanitation Dept Crews Want To Work On Sandy Relief, City Puts Them On Marathon Duty

I've said for a long time that we have an insane man in City Hall.  Bloomberg's refusal to cancel the NYC Marathon even as NYC struggles with storm recovery efforts just goes to prove that.

Here is the latest:

Some New York City sanitation workers who have expressed a desire to work on Staten Island and in Queens neighborhoods hit hard by Hurricane Sandy are complaining to their union about being assigned instead to clean up after the New York City Marathon, the union president said on Friday.

The workers have called their shop stewards to complain, according to the union president, Harry Nespoli, who heads Local 831 of the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association. The union represents the 6,200 workers at the Department of Sanitation.

“Many of our workers have similar problems that these other people have,” Mr. Nespoli said, referring to the New Yorkers whose homes have been damaged or destroyed by the storm. “They have no lights, they have water in the basement, but they’re coming to work and doing their jobs.”

“They just feel, ‘Why are they doing the marathon when they can be helping other people?’” he said. “They feel we should be focusing on this particular part of the cleanup and not the marathon.”

Mr. Nespoli  said he understood “it’s a tough call,” but he said that he, like the members of his union, believed that the residents of the Rockaways, Staten Island and other neighborhoods in distress deserved  priority when it came to the use of city resources.

“I know this administration is looking to show the public that they can perform,” he said. “The thing is, I’ve been out and the mayor’s been out there, too, and I see that people are hurting out there.”

Mr. Nespoli said he expected that his union members, who have been working 12-hour shifts since the storm hit, to follow orders and carry out their assignments.

Sanitation workers were hit with charges that they slowed down work during the Bloomberg Blizzard of 2010 (charges that were unfounded) -now they're working 12 hour shifts and asking to continue helping with Sandy relief efforts.

But the little priss in charge of the city wants his race.

Nearly every politician is running from him on the marathon issue:

Two days before nearly 50,000 runners are scheduled to gather in Staten Island for the start of the New York City Marathon, opposition to the race continued to swell Friday and the Police Department, stretched thin from handling relief efforts, has called for department retirees to help with storm work and the marathon on Sunday. 

Debate over whether to hold the race began soon after Hurricane Sandy hit the region Monday night. Critics have said that it is in poor taste to hold a race through the five boroughs while people are trying to cope with the storm’s aftermath and that city services should focus on storm relief, not the marathon. Proponents of the marathon believe the race will provide a needed morale boost, as well as an economic one. 

Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, was the latest in an increasingly long line of public officials to call for the marathon to be postponed or canceled. In a statement Friday, Stringer said that “New York has experienced a tragedy of historic proportions” and residents in many hard-hit areas of the city “are struggling to keep body and soul together, deprived of basic essentials as temperatures drop.” 

Stringer said the race should be postponed “to focus all of the city’s resources on the crucial task of helping our neighbors recover from this disaster.” 

The likely Democratic candidates for mayor of New York have offered their opinions.

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker and an ally of the mayor’s, added her voice to a chorus of politicians calling for the race to be postponed or canceled. “The decision to move forward with the marathon is not a decision I would have made,” she said in a statement. “That said, I think we need to look forward and continue to focus on the task at hand — helping those without electricity, food and water and rebuilding our city.” 

William C. Thompson said the race should be canceled because “our neighbors are hurting and our city needs to make them its priority.” John Liu, the comptroller, told Reuters that it should go on because “it’s a big economic generator.” Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, who earlier in the week supported the decision to hold the race, reversed his view on Friday. “The pain and suffering still unfolding in our neighborhoods is too deep for words,” de Blasio said after touring Staten Island on Friday. He added, “It’s convinced me the needs are simply too great to divert any resources from the recovery.” 

The comments by elected officials were echoed by thousands of people on social media. While some support Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s notion that the marathon can help get the city back on its feet, many others are disgusted that precious public resources will be used for a sporting event while millions of New Yorkers are without power, heat and food. Several online petitions and message boards have sprung up with thousands of signatures calling for the marathon to be postponed or canceled. 

“This will forever tarnish the marathon as a brand and an event,” said Stephen Robert Morse, a 27-year-old from Brooklyn who started stopthemarathon.tumblr.com. “There are still thousands of people downtown and businesses that still lack necessities and it’s insulting to have tourists prioritized over the people of this city.” 

 Doesn't Stephen Robert Morse understand that the mayor cares more about tourists than people in Coney Island, Staten Island or Queens?

Please review the tapes from the Bloomberg Blizzard of 2010 for that lesson.

If he's smart, Bloomberg will find a gracious, face-saving way to postpone the race.

If he's not, he'll go on with the race and take a big political hit:

The mayor who put the marathon before flood/storm victims.

We who work in education know this side of Bloomberg - stubborn, knows it all, won't change course no matter how insane the policy or decision.

We'll see if Wolfson or somebody else close to him can talk him out of this.