Andrew Cuomo As Roose Bolton

From the NY Times:

Daniel J. O’Donnell, a Manhattan Democrat and the chairman of the Assembly’s Correction Committee, hopped over the teachers’ union petition before discussing the prison break in Dannemora, N.Y., and the continuing search for two escaped inmates.

Mr. O’Donnell, who had visited the Clinton Correctional Facility, where the inmates had been held, was not pleased with the governor’s approach to the breakout, which involved news conferences at the prison and multiple television interviews.

“We need a governor who behaves like a governor,” Mr. O’Donnell said, before attending a hallway rally for new action on rent regulations. “Not like the Warden of the North.”

Cuomo as "Warden of the North"?

Like this one?

Oy.

Bloomberg Threatens Us All

In case you missed the Bloomberg story in the Post this morning:

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.

Read the whole article and tell me that Bloomberg isn't a threat to us all once he leaves office.

He's got an "Enemies List" in his head of people and groups he's going to get even with and he's got the billions to do it.

This is scary stuff.

Don't know how you stop a billionaire intent on using his money to destroy people or groups he doesn't like.

But we're going to find out in January once Bloomberg leaves office.

Because it seems so long as he remains on this mortal coil, he is going to be looking to get even with people he feels have screwed him or beaten him.

That group includes not only the taxi industry but also the NRA, gun owners, the soda industry, teachers, teachers unions, government workers, and anybody who was opposed to his bike lanes, congestion pricing or Manhattan stadium.

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.

The Good-Grade Pills Fit Right In With The No Excuses Education Reform Philosophy

I remember seeing some fluff piece in the Times a while back about KIPP founder David Levin and how he works 75-90 hour weeks and only sees his own child on Sundays.

There's no time Monday to Saturday to see his kid, you see, because KIPP keeps him that busy and he just can't break away from his 12.5 to 15 hour work days to spend time with the family.

Nowhere in the fluff piece from the Times does anybody say "Uh, maybe you've got a problem, David. You'd rather work 90 hours a week rather than spend time with your family. Are you familiar with this condition called workaholism? It's similar to alcoholism and drug addiction, in that it allows sufferers to numb out from feelings and escape from anxiety and low self-esteem, only workaholism is a more socially respectable form of addiction and avoidance from uncomfortable emotions."

But no, the word "workaholism" never comes up in the Times piece. Instead David Levin and his 75-90 hour work weeks are fetishized as some grand thing.

I was thinking about that story when I saw this NY Times story about teens so obsessed with grades and achievements that they're loading up on stimulants and ADHD drugs to work longer and harder:

At high schools across the United States, pressure over grades and competition for college admissions are encouraging students to abuse prescription stimulants, according to interviews with students, parents and doctors. Pills that have been a staple in some college and graduate school circles are going from rare to routine in many academically competitive high schools, where teenagers say they get them from friends, buy them from student dealers or fake symptoms to their parents and doctors to get prescriptions.

...

The D.E.A. lists prescription stimulants like Adderall and Vyvanse (amphetamines) and Ritalin and Focalin (methylphenidates) as Class 2 controlled substances — the same as cocaine and morphine — because they rank among the most addictive substances that have a medical use. (By comparison, the long-abused anti-anxiety drug Valium is in the lower Class 4.) So they carry high legal risks, too, as few teenagers appreciate that merely giving a friend an Adderall or Vyvanse pill is the same as selling it and can be prosecuted as a felony.

While these medicines tend to calm people with A.D.H.D., those without the disorder find that just one pill can jolt them with the energy and focus to push through all-night homework binges and stay awake during exams afterward. “It’s like it does your work for you,” said William, a recent graduate of the Birch Wathen Lenox School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

But abuse of prescription stimulants can lead to depression and mood swings (from sleep deprivation), heart irregularities and acute exhaustion or psychosis during withdrawal, doctors say. Little is known about the long-term effects of abuse of stimulants among the young. Drug counselors say that for some teenagers, the pills eventually become an entry to the abuse of painkillers and sleep aids.

“Once you break the seal on using pills, or any of that stuff, it’s not scary anymore — especially when you’re getting A’s,” said the boy who snorted Adderall in the parking lot. He spoke from the couch of his drug counselor, detailing how he later became addicted to the painkiller Percocet and eventually heroin.

...

The number of prescriptions for A.D.H.D. medications dispensed for young people ages 10 to 19 has risen 26 percent since 2007, to almost 21 million yearly, according to IMS Health, a health care information company — a number that experts estimate corresponds to more than two million individuals. But there is no reliable research on how many high school students take stimulants as a study aid. Doctors and teenagers from more than 15 schools across the nation with high academic standards estimated that the portion of students who do so ranges from 15 percent to 40 percent.

“They’re the A students, sometimes the B students, who are trying to get good grades,” said one senior at Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, a Philadelphia suburb, who said he makes hundreds of dollars a week selling prescription drugs, usually priced at $5 to $20 per pill, to classmates as young as freshmen. “They’re the quote-unquote good kids, basically.”

The trend was driven home last month to Nan Radulovic, a psychotherapist in Santa Monica, Calif. Within a few days, she said, an 11th grader, a ninth grader and an eighth grader asked for prescriptions for Adderall solely for better grades. From one girl, she recalled, it was not quite a request.

“If you don’t give me the prescription,” Dr. Radulovic said the girl told her, “I’ll just get it from kids at school.”

Read the rest of that story and tell me that you don't see a connection between these kids taking drugs to achieve higher grades and the founder of the KIPP schools who works 75-90 hours a week, sleeps just a few hours a night and brags about his addictive lifestyle like it's a badge of honor rather than an illness.

And tell me this isn't EXACTLY the kind of lifestyle the charter industry, especially KIPP, and the education reformers champion.

Work 75-90 hours a week, do whatever you have to do to overachieve and out-compete the competition - including putting your health at risk - these are the lessons so many in the charters and education reform movement try and teach kids.

And why not?

This is the lesson our corporate overlords want the kids to be taught - that in our neo-feudal future, everybody is going to have to work a lot longer and a lot harder to out-compete the competition and bring home an ever-diminishing paycheck.

It's survival of the fittest in a world where resources are decreasing because our corporate overlords are stealing them.

And it's our corporate overlords who fund the education reformers and their charter schools with the 75-90 hour work weeks.

Which brings me back to David Levin, our intrepid KIPP founder (corporate-sponsored, of course.)

If he's doing his 75-90 hour work week sans stimulants, more power to him.

But either way, the lifestyle he is leading isn't healthy for him, it isn't healthy for his kids or his marriage, and it definitely sends the wrong message to his son - you are what you work at and how long you work at it.

Nothing else in life matters - not children, not your spouse, not your other relationships, not hobbies, not time for reflection or meditation.

Nope - the only thing that matters is how well you do on your tests so you can get into a good college and get a good job and out-compete the crowd in our neo-feudal, survival of the fittest world.

Now go work 75-90 hours a week.

Study Finds 10% Of Those Who Work On Wall Street Are Clinical Psychopaths

If you've ever watched Larry Kudlow's show for even five minutes, this news will not surprise you:

A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are “clinical psychopaths,” exhibiting a lack of interest in and empathy for others and an “unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation.” (The proportion at large is 1 percent.) Another study concluded that the rich are more likely to lie, cheat and break the law.

Hey, I know. Let's put these clinical psychopaths in charge of everything - from government at the local, state and federal level to social policy via "philanthropy" to education to the environment to the media to...

Well, you get the idea.

No wonder the world's in such bad shape.

Maybe it's time to stop worshiping wealth and material goods and start valuing occupations in our society other than the criminal activity the psychopaths and sociopaths on Wall Street do on a daily basis.

Just saying.

Oh, and putting some of these psychopaths from Wall Street in jail, where they belong, wouldn't be a bad idea either.