Hey New York, Michael Bloomerg Is Not Your Daddy

By Phyllis Eckhaus, AlterNet. Posted June 20, 2009.

Hoping Bloomberg has our best interests at heart, we New Yorkers shy away from scrutinizing his underlying ideology -- a distinctly big-business bent. "We love the rich people," he declares, and indeed, his economic-development program offers a kinder, gentler version of trickle-down economics.

Real estate interests trump even child health, as Bloomberg demonstrated when he vetoed the City Council's lead paint law. His suspicion of the poor spurred him to stop giving homeless families with children priority on federal housing vouchers. This 4-year-old policy has resulted in unprecedented numbers of families with children in city shelters -- recently more than 9,400 families, or more than 28,000 people. Still, Bloomberg defends it as a way to prevent the poor from scamming the system.

Bloomberg has pressed for systemic changes that beg for discussion but draw little attention. In the name of efficiency and economy, he has sought to curtail public participation, eliminating community school boards and threatening to defund local community boards. Instead of respecting the natural crime control that comes from neighborhoods with community-based small businesses, Bloomberg instead places faith in a fleet of thousands of surveillance cameras.

And despite his enthusiasm for the language of accountability and transparency, the mayor's initiatives repeatedly run counter to his rhetoric. Bloomberg's much-touted attempt to take over the cleanup of industrial wastelands, or "brownfields," removes cleanup authority from state environmental experts and puts it in the hands of political appointees potentially beholden to real estate developers. Mayoral control of public education has left the school system unaccountable either to the state or to the city; nonmayoral city agencies have been unable to obtain basic data.

Once-feisty New Yorkers have gone soft, trusting in Daddy to take care of us. This Father's Day, consider how that innocent childhood longing, misdirected at any politician, may put the public interest and democracy at risk.

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Phyllis Eckhaus has written for In These Times, The Nation and other publications. Trained as a lawyer and social scientist, she was a senior policy analyst for former New York City Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman.

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