Bloomberg Beats Democracy

The Nation: NYC's Popular Mayor Bypasses Voter Imposed Term Limits To Run Again

(The Nation)  This column was written by Nicholas von Hoffman.

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Michael Bloomberg should be called "Iron Mike" because he is tough as nails, more than a little authoritarian, and has gotten a lot done in his two terms as Mayor of New York City.

Before using his millions to get himself elected mayor, Bloomberg made billions supplying the banking and finance industries with information indispensable to their machinations by displaying them on his computer terminals, which he rented to stock brokers and hedge fund operators at a price the rest of us cannot afford.

Now he's convinced the City Council to allow him to pursue a third four-year term. In his quest, he faces the same problem that Vladimir Putin had to confront when he came up against the two-term limit in Russian law. Putin installed a pliant member of his entourage as president and made himself prime minister while abrogating to himself the powers of the presidency.

"Prime minister of New York City" does not sit well on the tongue. Beyond the euphemisms, there is a problem. The citizens of New York have voted twice on different referendums to have a two-term limit on the office. Now that the City Council is setting aside the two-term limit, New Yorkers will learn, like their fellow city dwellers in Moscow, that their vote counts only when they cast it the right way.

Vox populi and Bloomberg's Putinesque traits aside, what has been done to New York by its mayors over the past six decades is a story that's relevant to the rest of the nation. New York has evolved from a production economy to a service economy.

Sixty years ago New York City may have been the largest manufacturing center in the world. It had few of the dramatic smokestack industries you once saw in Pittsburgh's steel mills or Detroit's automobile factories, although it had a few big, visible companies such as Otis Elevator. But the city nurtured thousands of small manufacturing enterprises--machine tool shops, specialty metal fabricators and jewelers. It was the epicenter of the garment and printing industries. Once upon a time there was nothing a person might want made that some small company in New York City couldn't make.

Today this once-enormous manufacturing base is all but gone, run out of town by decades of mayors and city administrations bent on favoring banks, venture capitalists, law firms, accounting firms, stock brokers and the rest of the apparatus of finance. And that takes us to Mayor Bloomberg and Willets Point.

Willets Point is a sixty-acre area near LaGuardia Airport, which the Mayor wants to raze to make way for the usual sterile mix of shops, convention center and apartments. To be sure, Willets Point is an eyesore, but it is teeming with jobs and enterprise.

A work day at Willets Point was described by the Village Voice:

There were no tourists watching as the metal gates went up on the corrugated-tin auto body shops, muffler repair outfits, and scrap dealers in this part of Queens. Workers took up their posts on the street to spot customers driving by, asking them, "Hey, Papi, what you need?" Massive earth movers growled to life in the bay used by Tully's Construction, and diesel-fired dump trucks plowed through street-width puddles toward Evergreen Recycling. At Feinstein Iron Works, a guy positioned a machine to bore into the end of a steel beam, while over at Bono's, a man in a cloth mask stacked bags of sawdust as they came off a conveyer belt. A driver for United Steel Products tossed his lunch bag into the flatbed he'd steer to a work site.

At the same time the City is destroying the small industrial enterprise that creates employment, it is subsidizing Manhattan real estate. This year it is handing out a half a billion dollars in subsidies to organizations who do not need them, some of which are as frivolous as Major League Baseball. Gotham has bet big on the service economy, particularly the finance part of it, and as a result there could be a loss of 165,000 jobs in the next couple of years.

What New York City has been doing, so has the nation: misdirecting capital, energy and invention away from productive enterprises into activities that put no food on the table. With nothing to sell to foreigners, we have become a nation that borrows from them to pay for both necessities and luxuries. A nation that cannot earn its own living is in for a long, painful decline.

[mkrajca]

Although I agree with Mr. von Hoffman''s premise about Mr. Bloomberg, it would be remiss not to point out that Willets Point is not an area teeming with jobs and enterprise. Unless of course you consider the mafia backed junk yards and "Waste Management" facilities enterprising. Anyone who knows anything about how New York runs knows all about Willets Point.

Go ahead and call Mayor Bloomberg on his circumvention of the law, but don''t be dilusional about places like Willets Point.

[hotwitch]

This all came about after His Majesty discovered he had zero viability on the national stage, so concerned was he to help NYC thru this current crisis.

[davide73-2009]

It is now up to the people of New York to elect someone else as mayor, who will try to restore the greatness of the city that has turned into a financial swamp.

[neoconslayer]

Bloomberg craps on voters!
It sounds like a Republican wetdream...

[memerider]

Bloomberg is a self-aggrandizing bully--and an independent. This is outrageous that democracy is trumped by dictatorship, even with 89% of the people opposing it. This needs to be stopped.

[enriquecaliente]

Bloomberg and the City Council = Self serving Ba$tards.

[girlsailor]

I knew it years ago: Mike & His Money are sufficient. No voters need show up.

[tallyman2008]

Sorry, author needs to make up their mind.

Is this a story about Bloomberg and Term Limits ?

Or is it a story about Economics, City Planning, and Zoning ?

And if the two are directly related, please do not merely infer - make the connection concrete.


In regard to Term Limits:

This is not Russia. What is the problem ?

We already HAVE ''term limits'' - called Elections.

If do not want someone again - do not vote for them.

''Problem'' solved.

[joycesaly]

When people say that elections are just like term limits they don''t understand that there are no campaign financing limits. Bloomberg''s war chest of $80 million for his campaign will practically silence the oppostion. It''s disgraceful that Bloomberg has created a sense of fear among the electorate and that he road rough shod over their right to have a say in term limits. He could have worked as a consultant to the next mayor to help lead the city through this fiscal crisis, but he is too pompous to do that. No one can have a voice in steering the city other than Bloomberg because he is too egotistical to let that happen.

[joycesaly]

When people say that elections are just like term limits they don''t understand that there are no campaign financing limits. Bloomberg''s war chest of $80 million for his campaign will practically silence the oppostion. It''s disgraceful that Bloomberg has created a sense of fear among the electorate and that he road rough shod over their right to have a say in term limits. He could have worked as a consultant to the next mayor to help lead the city through this fiscal crisis, but he is too pompous to do that. No one can have a voice in steering the city other than Bloomberg because he is too egotistical to let that happen.

[joycesaly]

When people say that elections are just like term limits they don''t understand that there are no campaign financing limits. Bloomberg''s war chest of $80 million for his campaign will practically silence the oppostion. It''s disgraceful that Bloomberg has created a sense of fear among the electorate and that he road rough shod over their right to have a say in term limits. He could have worked as a consultant to the next mayor to help lead the city through this fiscal crisis, but he is too pompous to do that. No one can have a voice in steering the city other than Bloomberg because he is too egotistical to let that happen.

[caldwellptr]

If only Congress, the States and the Public would have overturned the Constitution so that Arnold could have run for President.

[hennighg]

I''m shocked! Shocked! Imagine! A rich person buying his way through democracy! Has this ever been allowed before?

[blackyowe]

This is soooooooooooo sooooooooo creepy. Republican hypocrite SCUM!

[missingamerica]

You take something like this money-centric redefinition of democracy to its logical extension, include the amount of oil and gas wealth that Russia has, and you might conclude that one day New York City may indeed wake up to find that Putin is their mayor.

I''m not convinced the blue collar jobs of Willets Point could survive the fundamental labor cost advantage enjoyed by the Asian economies.

"Corrugated-tin auto body shops, muffler repair outfits, and scrap dealers.." are disappearing across America due to much cheaper labor (and lack of labor standards) off-shore.

No city mayor could have solved this over sixty years. This takes consistent national policies that help direct private investment in local industries such as solar/wind manufacture/installation and infrastructure re-building while slowing the off-shoring of jobs through better trade-agreements. Pure, unregulated capitalism does not care what happens to quality of life in any one region or country. It will always find the lowest cost point like free running water.