Mike Bloomberg and Bill Thompson: New York City's Dreadful Mayoral Choice

If Mike Bloomberg doesn't have a Lonesome Rhodes moment in the next 24 hours, he's a shoo-in for a third term as New York City's mayor. On the eve of the mayoral election, polls indicate that Bloomberg enjoys a double-digit lead over his Democratic challenger, New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson. But neither man deserves to occupy Gotham's highest office.

Lonesome Rhodes was a fictional media star played by Andy Griffith in the 1957 film "A Face in the Crowd." Rhodes's downfall occurred when he was caught calling his viewers "idiots" during an unguarded moment on national television. Bloomberg appears to have a similar opinion of New Yorkers.

During his tenure as mayor, Bloomberg has been hell bent on regulating the eating habits of New York's eight million denizens, banning trans-fats from local fare and forcing restaurant chains to post calorie counts on menus. There's conflicting evidence as to whether New Yorkers actually eat less as a result of these efforts, but Bloomberg's attempts at micromanaging the lives of Gothamites are unmistakably Orwellian.

Earlier this year, New York City subways and buses were plastered with mayoral pronouncements indicating that people should not consume more than 2,000 calories per day. Thanks for the suggestion, Mike, but I've been doing fine for 48 years without your help.

Most people are capable of deciding how much they want to eat. I have a pretty healthy diet, but that's my choice. It may not be yours. If a person wants to eat junk, he or she should have a right to do so without government interference. While it is true that obesity is a serious societal problem, government should not be in the business of jawboning people into altering their personal habits.

If City Hall can regulate New York eating habits, there's nothing preventing it from keeping tabs on frequency of drinking, bathing, and other personal preferences. Several months ago, I reported on the Bloomberg administration's intensification of a Rudy Giuliani policy enforcing a long-dormant city regulation prohibiting daytime beach swimming when lifeguards are off-duty.

To be sure, some of Bloomberg's health and safety rules have been helpful. His ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, for example, has spared non-smoking New Yorkers the discomfort and harm of second-hand smoke. Government intervention is necessary to protect people from air pollution, but it should not be a tool for pressuring them into making lifestyle choices preferred by the mayor.

A June 23, 2003 Gotham Gazette article describes a nauseating litany of nitpicking Bloomberg horrors, including the fining of a man for sitting on a milk crate in front of the hair salon in which he worked, the $50 ticketing of another for taking up two seats while sleeping on the "F" train, and the $50 fining of an 86-year-old for feeding pigeons in a park.

Bloomberg's nanny-mongering extends to small businesses. The oppressive economic climate in which New York's small businesses operate is described by City Journal senior editor Steven Malanga in an October 26, 2009 article adapted for the New York Post. Mike Bloomberg began his mayoralty taxing everything that moved, famously enforcing an obscure 1962 statute to slap $400 fines on stores that had a certain type of inscription on their awnings. According to Malanga, between 2002 and 2009, New York City real estate taxes, half of which are paid by businesses, nearly doubled.

But all these matters pale in comparison with the way in which Bloomberg extended term limits so that he could run for a third time. Bloomberg was against term limits before he was for them. In 1993 and 1996 referenda, New Yorkers voted overwhelmingly to limit elected New York City officials to two terms in office. After repeatedly saying that he had no interest in a third term, Bloomberg strong-armed two other billionaires, cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder and perennial New York gubernatorial candidate Tom Golisano, to force a toothless, spineless, New York City Council into changing the law to enable Bloomberg and council members to serve three terms.

This change applied to a number of officials holding high office, including the mayor, council members, the comptroller, and five borough presidents, but this fig leaf could not hide the fact that the measure was a bill intended to benefit Bloomberg.

According to a tally compiled by NY1, 23 out of 29 council members who voted to extend term limits were themselves term-limited and therefore ethically conflicted.

Ironically, Mr. Lauder successfully bankrolled the two term-limit referenda. Bloomberg.com reported that Lauder's price for supporting Bloomberg was a seat on the Charter Revision Commission which will determine whether term limits should be reduced after Bloomberg's coronation in 2010.

Golisano was also initially opposed to Bloomberg's third-term run but Bloomberg convinced him otherwise. This picture suggests that New York City is a government of billionaires, by billionaires, and for billionaires. Many good arguments can be made for and against term limits, but passing a law overturning a referendum in order to politically benefit the mayor is not one of them. Such an unsavory spectacle might be appropriate in Putin's Russia but should have no place in New York City or any other part of the United States.

Bloomberg thinks he's indispensable. He's sneeringly said so. He apparently believes that he is the grand home of the hour, the only person capable of leading New York through these dark days of economic crisis. Lauder apparently agrees with him.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt made a similar argument during the presidential election of 1940. Roosevelt was also running for an unprecedented third term. But there are huge differences between FDR in 1940 and Mike Bloomberg in 2009. In 1940 there was no law prohibiting a president from running for a third term. Secondly, we are in an economic recession, not a Great Depression. Thirdly, Bloomberg does not have to deal with a budding world war.

And Bloomberg is no FDR. Despite his great wealth, FDR was able to connect with ordinary people in a fundamentally human way, a skill that eludes the politically tone deaf Bloomberg.

Bloomberg uses political labels like the average person uses toilet paper. He's often described as a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Independent. For political convenience, he now the Republican nomination. Bloomberg has said that political parties aren't very important. Why on earth would any self-respecting party endorse someone who thinks it is unimportant?

Bloomberg continues to cozy up to Independence Party leader Lenora Fulani. A September 7, 2005 New York Times article described Fulani as a "former neo-Marxist who has made inflammatory remarks about Jews." A November 2, 2009 New York Post article about an unrelated topic ended with this gem: "Later, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Midtown, Bloomberg joined a crowd of 500 in a standing ovation for controversial activist and Independence Party leader Lenora Fulani at a get-out-the-vote rally."

FDR was a loyal Democrat. Mike Bloomberg is a political whore.

Bloomberg's signature issue is education. For years, he's boasted about the incredible gains New York City public school students have been making on statewide reading and math tests. The improvements are incredible because they aren't real. The federal assessments, far more reliable instruments, indicate that student achievement is really about half of what their New York State counterparts say it is.

The New York Post reported on October 17, 2009 that while the most recent statewide scores show that 80 percent of fourth graders are competent in math, the latest federal assessments indicate that only 40 percent of them are up to standard. The respective percentages for eighth graders are 87 and 34, according to the Post.

A November 16, 2007 New York Times article noted that federal assessments administered during that year indicated that 43 percent of fourth graders scored below "basic" in reading. Basic is the lowest skill level. Forty-one percent of eighth graders failed to reach the basic standard. These figures are almost identical to those obtained from the 2005 federal assessment, according to The Times.

Bloomberg and his propaganda minister, New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, have used meaningless statistics to make themselves look good. This manipulation of public opinion does a huge disservice to kids who think they're competent in reading and math when they're not.

Until recently, most of the media uncritically swallowed the Bloomberg line. But respected critics like Diane Ravitch have been warning for years that the vaunted improvement in New York State test scores is illusory because the tests have been watered down.

Another major issue that Mike Bloomberg likes to crow about is the steady reduction in crime that has occurred under his watch. But even that talking point is subject to attack.

Yes, crime is significantly down, and Bloomberg and Giuliani deserve a certain amount of credit for that. But it's impossible to say how much. Under Giuliani, there were numerous reports of police captains and others in the NYPD doctoring crime statistics. I very much doubt that this practice has disappeared under Bloomberg. If public school tests under Bloomberg have been massaged to produce soaring pass rates, why can't other statistics, such as reported crime rates, be similarly altered? A November 10, 2006 Chief Leader article suggests that such manipulation is a distinct possibility.

Although I'm skeptical about the objectivity of NYPD statistics, I feel safer in New York now than I did 10 or 20 years ago. New York has become safer, but probably not nearly as safe as Bloomberg claims. I don't know how much of a difference there really is, and that bothers me. When citizens can't trust their mayor to report information honestly, that's a huge problem.

I'm deeply uncomfortable with a megalomaniac running New York, no matter how smart or good a manager he is. And Bloomberg's Democratic challenger, Bill Thompson, who has ethical issues of his own, doesn't inspire much confidence.

It has been extensively reported in The New York Times and elsewhere that Thompson, during his eight years as New York City comptroller, accepted $500,000 in campaign contributions from money managers running New York City's pension funds. New York pension funds have consistently underperformed comparable big-city entities, according to The Times. This has the stench of an ethical sewer, and Bloomberg rightly used it to hammer Thompson during the second mayoral debate on October 27, 2009.

"Give back the money, Bill," Bloomberg counseled. Thompson had no response.

In addition, Thompson made the mistake of nakedly displaying his contempt for Bloomberg. When asked how he would grade his opponent, Thompson let loose with a sardonic laugh worthy of Spencer Tracy's Mr. Hyde and quipped, "I'll be generous. I'll give him a D-minus."

The error is almost certainly fatal. It makes Thompson look mean-spirited, petty, and unprofessional. Bloomberg appeared far classier when he complimented Thompson on his work as comptroller.

Astoundingly, neither Thompson nor Bloomberg discussed the biggest issue facing New Yorkers: lack of jobs. They barely mentioned the topic. Could it be that neither candidate has any good ideas on how to stem of the tide of rising unemployment?

In an October 18, 2009 New York Post opinion piece, Steve Cuozzo provides an exceptionally balanced assessment of Mayor Bloomberg. Cuozzo concludes that the mayor deserves a third term because he's kept New Yorkers safe by greatly reducing crime. Assuming that the NYPD's statistics are accurate---and that's a big assumption---physical safety, although an essential ingredient for the existence of any city, should not be the sole determinant of an election.

Adolf Hitler virtually eliminated street crime in Nazi Germany, but no sane person in America would want to live under his regime. Mind you, I am not comparing Bloomberg in any way to Hitler. I am suggesting that physical safety is necessary but insufficient for the well-being of a great city. Another necessary characteristic is integrity, an element that both Bloomberg and Thompson sorely lack.

A race this important shouldn't have two lousy choices, but that's what we've got. And, in this place, and at this time, that's downright dangerous.