I think Galtians, as a group, are too politically tone deaf to take direct control of our government, but when they want to try, their ability to bribe people helps them a lot (via):
In the old days, and in every other city in the world most days, favor-seekers bribe politicians — with cash in envelopes, with legal contributions, or with political support. In Mike Bloomberg’s New York, the mayor bribed you, buying the silence or cooperation of individuals, cultural organizations, and social service groups with hundreds in millions of dollars spent on small personal favors — a legal payment here, a medical procedure there — and charitable contributions.
Belafon
Maybe he should have bribed some black guys to carry guns so that stop-and-frisk would have been justifiable. “I’ll make sure your kids go to college.”
This is either sarcasm or pointing out that Bloomberg just didn’t think big enough.
Roger Moore
I’ve been assured by right wingers that this is nothing new. Politicians are always trying to bribe us by offering “free” services like public safety, retirement, and health care. What they don’t tell you is that those bribes are actually being paid for by taxes! At least Bloomberg is offering bribes with his own hard-earned money.
Waspuppet
“My superior intellect, work ethic and very being are the reason I have the money to bribe you into agreeing that I’m right.”
I was going to say that’s a parody of Galtian logic, but that’s actually what they would say, isn’t it?
BGinCHI
Maybe de Blasio can bribe them with good government.
Gene108
@BGinCHI:
Bloomberg was not bad as mayor during his first couple of terms. He should have quit while he was ahead in public opinion, because he really stepped on his dick during his third term.
BGinCHI
@Gene108: I was referring to libertarians in general and not to Bloomberg.
Curious whether everyone thinks he was a good mayor or just better than Rudy. No complaint about homogenizing NYC?
David in NY
Our recent mayors have all wanted to be absolute dictators. In the wake of 9-11, mayor Rudy “9-11” Giuliani wanted to stay on beyond his term because, apparently, he was the indispensable man (who will someday join all the other indispensable men in a graveyard). He was followed by Michael “Third-Term” Bloomberg who, speaking of bribes, essentially bought himself an exception to term limits and thus a third term and who, as we write now, is still trying to protect his unconstitutional “stop-and-frisk” policy from a District Court’s finding that it violated the Fourth Amendment (by convincing a super-favorable Court of Appeals panel to hear the merits of the case, and rule for him, by the end of the year, an unheard of schedule), and is trying to set his zoning plan for midtown enough in stone to prevent any changes by his successor (see today’s Times editorials).
Guys like this have no respect for democracy.
Sly
@BGinCHI:
Aside from his initiatives around public health and startups, Bloomberg’s tenure pretty much peaked at “meh” and hit several valleys of awful. So, yeah, just better than his predecessor.
MattR
@David in NY:
And this is exactly why Bloomberg considered Mayor of NYC one of his ideal jobs, while President of the United States is not on the list (and why Bloomberg will never run for POTUS)
PurpleGirl
The organization I formerly worked for received donations from Bloomberg. Several times the Mayor’s office asked our executive director to stand at the podium as Bloomberg announced something pertaining to schools. And each time, our ED declined to participate in the event. The organization tried to keep political distance from the Department of Eduction and the teachers’ union. I don’t think the Mayor was too happy with this but our stance was always one of independence.
Jewish Steel
A noun, a verb, and a large cloth sack with a dollar sign.
Goblue72
@Sly: Except for that whole lowest murder rate since the 1960s thing, sure.
NYC Murders 1990 (Dinkins) – 2245
NYC Murders 2012 (Bloomberg) – 418
Memories are short – I don’t think a lot of people remember how out of control crime was in NYC in the 80s & early 90s.
JGabriel
Smith/Arkin @ Buzzfeed:
I’ve been wondering about this too. Bloomberg was able to keep city taxes relatively low, by NYC standards, because he personally made up much of the difference with charitable contributions to organizations that would otherwise have applied to the city for funds.
There will probably be an uproar, especially among the top 5% or so, if and when DeBlasio has to raise taxes to make up the difference. And even with that, he probably won’t be able to make up all of the difference.
It’s a little worrisome.
JGabriel
Goblue72:
That’s not due to Bloomberg though. The crime rates started going down nationwide back in the mid-90’s, under Clinton.
I’m not saying that none of Bloomberg’s policies had a synergistic effect with the national decline in crime rates, but I don’t think one can give him the majority of the credit — particularly since the decline began before Bloomberg took office.
Sly
@Goblue72:
A murder rate that had been declining since Dinkins’s 12th month in office, and had been declining nationwide.
There are also a lot fewer deaths in NYC due to smallpox and being impaled on the steering column of a 1961 Chevrolet Corvair. I guess Bloomberg deserves credit for that, too.
Xecky Gilchrist
It’s looking like the “Declining murder rate under Bloomberg” is the newest “Hey, JFK cut taxes!”
BGinCHI
@Goblue72: Man, that Dinkins was straight killing it.
Goblue72
@JGabriel: @JGabriel: NYC’s crime rate reduction exceeds that of other major Ametican cities, in some cases by significant margins. There are also cities that have not seen material sustained crime rate reductions over that same time period.
It is simply inaccurate to dismiss the effects of NYC policies over that time period as primarily a consequence of nationwide trends.
Take Chicago – a city run by Democrats over the same period – which did NOT pursue policing strategy changes until well after other cities did. In 1999, although crime was slowly decreasing from its peak, it was still the most dangerous major city in the U.S. at 641 murders, or 22 murders per 100,000. NYC had 671 murders or 9 murders per 100,000.
Meanwhile, in Oakland, CA – a city run by the Left, murder remains completely out of control – despite significant taxing authority provided by Oakland voters specifically for public safety.
Policies matter – a lot. Are there nationwide demographic trends? Sure – but you can say that about anything. That’s just the clay. It’s what you do with it that matters.
teiresias
@Goblue72: There also needs to be money to implement the policies. NYC has 9 million people and is one of the most important cities in the world; it’s also a city with exceptionally good transportation infrastructure. Perhaps more than any other city in the country, it had/has the ability to spring back from nearly anything, simply because nearly the entire world has a direct or indirect relationship with the city; it’s the urban equivalent of too big to fail.
Oakland is a little different, and its situation is intimately tied in with the race politics of 50 to 70 years ago. That was a time when even the Federal government helped perpetuate the meme that minority-majority means lower property value and real estate developers managed to make white flight look like a good deal financially even for white people who weren’t at all racist. Intentionally depressed property values make for lower tax revenue, which in turn left Oakland in a poor position to capitalize on the 1970s tech boom. (I mean, who was going to take their Masters from Stanford to some run-down cubbyhole in Oakland when there was a brand new office park with much more space and better security down in Santa Clara?) The Community Reinvestment Act was supposed to help fix that, but racism hasn’t gone away, business in many cases has (Detroit, for example), and when the housing bubble of the 90s and 2Ks collapsed, the banks used it as a fig leaf to avoid owning their own stupid business decisions.
So, looking away from a place like New York that the entire world has a vested interest in keeping functioning, that’s what you find — run-down cities without the infrastructure to support jobs and a population saddled with the aftereffects of race politics that most of them weren’t even alive for. Mind you, that’s not the only factor — the city of Lawrence, MA was developed as sort of a “company town” for the local textile industry, and when the mills went away, Lawrence became “that immigrant city that everybody leaves as soon as they have money and a green card”. But these things in general resonate for generations until people start to think that’s the way things are supposed to be.