Thursday, October 20, 2005
9/11 Panel Gets Cranky...
9/11 panel: Subway threat shows feds not on right track0 comments
It's now clear that having Republicans in positions of authority is just going to get us all killed.
Michael Bloomberg, George W. Bush or Tom DeLay: trust any of these men with your life at your peril.
posted by Gotham 3:56 PM
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Disgusting Numbers...
Mike Bloomberg touts his revival of New York City.1 comments
He has done some very good things for New York.
But, squabble over spinning these numbers as the two campaigns may, these are still very bad numbers for our CEO / Mayor.
the proportion of minority men who are employed—not unemployed—a statistic known as the employment-to-population ratio. He found that in 2004, 60.7 percent of working-age black men and 67.7 percent of Hispanic men were employed. Both groups trailed behind white men, who had a ratio of 76.6 percent.
Again, that's:
White men: 76.6% employed
Black men: 60.7% employed
Hispanic men: 67.7% employed
The campaigns are geeking over what you can say the inverse of these numbers "really mean," but these numbers are butt-ugly all by themselves.
Because, they are core numbers.
Who wants to do the research into breaking this data down? What income levels do the bulk of those white jobs land on? Or what is their median or average wage/salary or compensation?
What then of the average/median wage/salary level for the Black group or the Hispanic group?
These numbers are ugly all by themselves. But when you consider they're comparing every Bernie Ebbers with every garbage-hauling porter of your corner pizza shop, you start seeing Democrat Freddy Ferrer is definitely onto something.
He just didn't spin it correctly.
Clean up your act, Freddy, and do it again!
posted by Gotham 1:02 PM
Can You Be Bought?
Mike Bloomberg says you can.0 comments
What do YOU say?
Are YOU that easy?
posted by Gotham 12:12 PM
It's Not The Meat,
It's The Motion...
Well, folks, here comes the political Category 5 hurricane everyone was expecting...0 comments
Rival's Largess Meets City Hall Claims in Mayor's Race
Mike's Money has made landfall, and no one should be shocked. We've been tracking this for weeks, if not months, and should be prepared.
But rather, we should all be amazed at just how afraid Mike Bloomberg really is of Freddy Ferrer. And should all just keep pointing to that in "obscene money-spent" terms.
What Would Karl Do?
OK, so Mike has more money than God. And he'll spend every last nickel of it to stay The Mayor.
We knew this. No surprise.
The trick now is fourfold, and right out of the Karl Rove playbook: first, constantly accuse the media of being biased in favor of Mike's Money—make them defend themselves into more balanced coverage; of course, then raise every dollar you can; then wisely maximize EVERY dollar you've got; then make EVERY ONE of Mike's dollars a liability.
Media snippets like this are important (like bulletin-boards clips in football locker rooms):
Next year, the city's budget gap is projected to be $4.5 billion, in part because of rising costs for pensions, health care and debt service, city officials said.
So much for the wise, business-savvy CEO / Mayor.
For his part, Mr. Bloomberg would not promise to spare any city agencies from budget cuts when asked to respond to Mr. Ferrer's comments during a news conference yesterday in Chelsea, where he announced a program to create more low-cost housing.
Instead, Mr. Bloomberg went into detail about his administration's accomplishments in all areas of city life during the last four years.
This is a 3-for-1 quote! It hits three key constituencies.
1.) For Mike's white, well-heeled base, Mike's just told you he's going to chop the hell out of all the services you'll be expecting after paying your $7,000/mo. for your luxury rental or the $1.3 million you've just plunked down on your spacious and/or tacky condo. Even the police, whom you'd expect to keep you safe from all that riff-raff out there, is being chopped to hell. And cops still on the force will be pissed. At you, since they just lost their friends, and none of them can afford to live here anymore. Nor can the teachers in your private schools, or the home nurses for your elderly mother, etc., etc.
All this after the immense tax giveaways he's given to Corporate NY in order to have them bring you all here in the first place. He won't raise corporate taxes, so he'll cut out all the services you'd expect to have already paid for, plus he'll have to raise income and property taxes to cover the shortfall, since there just aren't enough cuts to cover it all.
2.) For those of you in the large civil service employee sector who still live in the city, Mike's just painted a massive target on your backs. No teacher, cop, fireman, librarian, nurse, doctor or white- or blue-collar city employee who work with any of the above should expect to have a job next year under Bloomberg. This is as clear a self-interest vote as you could possibly draw.
3.) For those remaining NYers who make anything UNDER a seven-figure income, you'll notice in rereading the snippet above that decent housing for anyone not increadibly well-heeled comes up only during the sprint for the voting booth—and then gets dumped as soon as a reporter asks a question about The Challenger on another topic. You now clearly see the single, greatest issue currently facing The City of New York, reduced to a sound bite that's easily tossed over. There, folks (if all the luxury high-rise development destroying our neighborhoods haven't already shown you), you have all you need to know about the commitment of one Michael Bloomberg, Rich Guy, towards keeping you in a safe, secure affordable home.
So...
On the one hand you pummel away at Mike's Money, while continuing to use whatever resources YOU DO HAVE wisely, getting the best bang for your money. Wise and efficient will bring down Goliath.
This is a great start:
Still, the Ferrer campaign began running a new 15-second television advertisement that emphasizes what Mr. Ferrer has called a dropout crisis in the city's public schools. The spot, which has a this-is-your-brain-on-drugs simplicity, shows a hand holding an unsharpened pencil against a black screen.
A male voice says, "This is how many students enter New York City's public schools." The pencil goes into a sharpener and then emerges, short and stubby. "This is how many graduate," the man continues. "A system that fails half our children, fails us all."
Brilliant.
Keep this up, Freddy.
And remember:
Your guys always vote; his don't always.
You want turnout. A threatened citizen votes. Always. Your people come out because they are afraid of changes in their lives, on an acute, personal level. Mike's using 9/11—the vague terror threat that worked so well for George W. Bush. Of all the spots his well paid staff already have in the can, all his ad buys in the weeks after the subway threat have been the fear-mongering "A-BOOGA-BOOGA, I'LL KEEP YOU SAFE! SEE RAY KELLY? SEE ALL THE SWAT GUYS?" spot. If run once or twice during the campaign, it would have been hard to counterpunch that ad. Now that he's used it incessantly, he's dropped the "BLOOMBERG = BUSH" angle right into your lap.
And never doubt: New York HATES George Bush.
So, it's not HOW MUCH you can afford to do, Freddy, it's WHAT you do.
Be wise, be smart, be tough. Be a Democrat! Be a NYer!
posted by Gotham 12:05 PM
Saturday, October 08, 2005
Mike's Money Touts Accomplishments...
Mike Bloomberg for NYC | Accomplishments: Housing0 comments
This is what Mike Bloomberg is running on? Whew...
Lordy...lordy...lordy.
His business acumen is unchallenged. But his political prowess needs a bit of work here, we see. Housing would be the single issue that he should need a Congressional subpoena shoved in his face before he would let anyone close to him talk about.
I guess all the money in the world can't buy you political savvy.
"All politics is local."
And nothing is more local than your home.
The ability to pad down the hallway to the bathroom in the night in a relaxed, secure and private manner moves more mountains than all the explosives on earth.
Mike, of Mike's Money fame, and his well-heeled cronies have overseen an unprecedented housing redistribution here in the city.
"And the rich get richer,
And the poor get poorer --
A-ringy-dingy, cha-cha-cha!
Pa-dap. Dum."
And the middle class just goes away...
Astute business people all, Mike and his friends fully understand the laws of supply and demand.
New York City has a finite land supply. There is only so much land within the five boroughs. So the smart money is always in upping demand. If you can create enough demand, there are untold riches to be gained here.
New York's leaders have been aware of this for centuries. Which is why NYC has always been in the forefront of careful urban management. The pressures of greed, utilizing basic economic theory, have always been enormous here. So historially, the city's leaders have forged basic levels of regulation to keep these outsized pressures in check, in order to maintain core demographic balance and habitability.
A prime case in point: the city's history of regulating its apartment rental stock. Greed has always been a player here, so regulation has always been needed. And always undergone bitter attack. But the tenant lobby is strong. So, New York's unique version of a "Green (money) movement" has only been able to chip away at the regulations, not scuttle them altogether.
Mike and his friends have creatively skirted this roadblock by refueling demand for apartment sales, and have supplied that demand by skimming more and more apartments from the city's rental stock, and throwing them out for sale. As a testament to their collective genius, this approach has creatively propelled runaway inflation in both the sales AND rental markets.
It's created the perception that there's an increased supply for the sales market (which, of course, was never enough to actually supply current demand—although it did work in getting the upscale crowd drooling and spending), while simultaneously fueling an explosion in the price of rental apartments.
Due to decreased supply.
Oh.
D'uh!
Brilliant.
This well-choreographed marketing campaign for the shell game was still far out-stripped by the Mayor's support for white-collar service-sector corporations' bringing in a flood of well-paid, career ladder-climbers who still naively believe that paying overly inflated prices for their apartments is "a sound investment," and that an apartment that drops from $1.7 MILLION to $1.3 MILLION is "a steal!"
[Now, why anyone on God's Green Earth would think that some young, upwardly mobile man or woman who thinks this way is somehow qualified to manage MY MONEY or legal affairs, is totally beyond me. But that's for another post.]
The apartment-for-sale market has now begun to cool a bit. So, it's down to an average price of slightly OVER $1 MILLION to buy an apartment here now.
And this cooling of the bubble has heated up the rental market. The New York Times and the Westside Spirit (the upscale crowd's "hometown paper," founded in the mid-'80s during the Yuppie plague) have both recently run articles touting the rental market as "the smart alternative" to a hopelessly expensive sales picture.
Even the young MBAs among us will note that this has begun fueling more runaway excess in the rental market. Non-regulated apartments now easily top $7,000 a month.
That's $7,000 a month to rent an apartment.
With bad pipes. With roaches. With screaming (although, increasingly well-heeled) neighbors.
Yes, ever the astute businessman, Mike has helped produce these overheated real estate markets. But, ever the inexperienced politician, he's accomplished this by pricing out of the city the preponderance of working class and middle class people who make this city run, and who doggedly vote for Republicans against their better economic interests.
Young starry-eyed, upwardly mobiles tend not to vote as a demographic. Nor do CEOs. But tenants do. Religiously.
And no Bush-like terrorism scare campaign will deter them.
Mike's accomplishments have changed the very idea of New York. They've destroyed most every vestige of uniquely New York character we've had left after enduring the real estate giveaways under Mayors Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani. There's precious little difference left these days between New York City and any mall in Toledo.
And, ladies and gentlemen, THAT is quite an "Accomplishment."
Definitely one worth bragging about on your official web site.
posted by Gotham 2:55 PM
Mike's Money
To this point:0 comments
Bloomberg Spends $46.6 Million on Mayor's Race
Freddie Ferrer may be a hack. But...
It's all about Mike's Money. This race has always been about Mike's Money. Every vote in every machine will be about Mike's Money.
Period.
Look, it's true. Basically, we all like to live in a locale where people tend to look like us, act like us and think like us. That's human nature. The herding instinct. A core underpinning of the States' Rights concept.
Mike just wants what everyone else wants.
Mike simply wants to live in a city of other billionaires, where he can chat with neighbors about things—his dreams, his joys and stresses—and have them easily understand what he's talking about. To simply have buddies whom he can attend galas with.
Is it too much to ask for the ability to wander down to the corner upscale Wine Bar, and raise a flute of Dom Perignon on a given Tuesday night, and chat about life, death and tax cuts with your friends?
I mean, when you live in a tuxedo world, however can you communicate with those..., those... people who insist on shopping at Conway? Or Goodwill?
I mean, really?
posted by Gotham 12:48 PM
