Bloomberg Survives the Kiss of Death

Subject: Wrecking Families Party and City Loonies Magazine
Date: 6/28/2005 6:06:24 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)


NB-
For those who may not be aware, Bertha Lewis heads up ACORN which has
made a deal with Brunce Ratner for the Nets Arena in Brooklyn that is
expected to displace up to 1,000 people and small businesses. Ms. Lewis is
also one of the heads of the Working Families Party (which many call
"Working Phonies" or "Demapublicans")which,according to Brooklyn activists,
is giving unofficial support to the Ratner plan as well as to Inclusionary
Zoning, a mechanism that results in a net-loss of affordable housing and
overwhelming overdevelopment adverse impacts on communities, but creates
poverty-pimp management contracts under the guise of Community Benefits
Agreements.

City Limits Magazine, up until recently, was an intelligent journal. In the
last year or so -- some would say with the closer involvement of its
alter-ego Center for Urban Future under Jonathan Bowles -- has become an
apologist for bad development.

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Publication: The New York Sun; Date:Jun 28, 2005; Section:New York; Page:3

ANDREW WOLF on the Mayoral Race

Bloomberg Survives the Kiss of Death
ANDREW WOLF awolf@nysun.com

The famous photograph of a tightlipped Mayor Bloomberg being kissed by Bertha Lewis, the executive director of the far-left activist group ACORN, is displayed in glorious color on the front page of the current issue of City Limits magazine. A few weeks ago, the same liplock was featured on the
editorial page of the Sun. That a Republican mayor, Mr. Bloomberg, is the recipient of this �bacio della morte�from the far left�s diva of dependency is astounding.

Even more surprising is that Mr. Bloomberg is lionized in much of this issue of the magazine as �the people�s mayor.� But amazingly, Mr. Bloomberg appears to be able to move as far to the left as he wants, without paying any price from Republicans, who can�t possibly agree with even a small part
of Ms. Lewis�s agenda.


The campaign of Thomas Ognibene, the former Queens council member, seems to be on life support. The mayor has aggressively moved to prevent the Ognibene forces from gathering the requisite number of signatures he needs to win a spot on the Republican primary ballot. At the beginning of the petition period, Bloomberg forces descended on the very areas of strength
that Mr. Ognibene was counting on to provide him with petition signatures.

Under the election law, once you�ve signed one petition, you cannot sign another. Mr. Ognibene is also lagging in fund-raising. This spells big trouble for the Republican challenger.

Under normal circumstances, favorable notices in City Limits would doom a Republican among members of his own party. For those unfamiliar with it, City Limits could be described as the official house organ of the crowd that believes that it has been all downhill in New York City since Mayor Dinkins left office.

In the world of City Limits, the worst mayor Gotham has ever had is clearly Rudolph Giuliani. In starting their editorial asking if Mr. Bloomberg is the �people�s mayor,� the editors make this clear. �If being an improvement from the Giuliani era were the only criteria, Michael Bloomberg would have been anointed the People�s Mayor a long time ago,� the editorial reads.

Mr. Bloomberg won praise for abandoning what they termed the �punitive� welfare programs of the past,�softening the city�s approach.� More welfare for less (or better yet, no) work is a central tenet of City Limits and its partisans.

So is �affordable housing,� the reason why Ms. Lewis was feeling so amorous toward Mr.Bloomberg.Affordable housing is today�s shorthand for heavy government subsidies. The mayor is praised for what the magazine terms the �modest� plan to �protect or create 65,000 affordable units.�

While excoriating Mr. Bloomberg�s �predilection toward stadiums and giveaways to big business,� the magazine notes that �the mayor�s [sic] also quietly pushed economic revitalization from the bottom up in the boroughs.�

Could all this translate into an endorsement from the political arm of the folks who run City Limits magazine, the Working Families Party? That ballot line is currently occupied by a �placeholder,� a candidate who can be removed almost at will by party leadership, which includes the lip-locking Ms. Lewis. This would be a valuable ballot line for the mayor, a place
where the furthest left wing of the Democratic voter base could comfortably pull the lever for Mr. Bloomberg without dirtying its hands on the Republican or Lenora Fulani�s Independence Party lines.

Lest the mayor get too captivated by Ms. Lewis�s charm and the adulation of her minions, City Limits makes note of the things that it doesn�t like: �consolidating power in the school system � a love of big tax giveaways to megacorporations � a secretive management style inherited from his private sector days that doesn�t work well in the public sector.�

But as the editors look at Mayor Mike and remember Rudy, they sum up the reality of the Republican mayor who shares so many of their goals: �Yet seeing light notes in a dark era reminds us that our work in communities, or laboring quietly for good in seemingly immovable bureaucracies, need not always be in vain.�

Can you imagine what they might say, and indeed what they might expect, if their Working Families Party provides Mr. Bloomberg with the margin of victory in November?