Bloomberg the Bully

Mayor Bloomberg will leave office next year having had what many media pundits will say is a wonderful three terms in office. They will hail his centrism, being “above politics” and working for a dollar a year. They might even mention the times he took on the power elites, as with the raise in property taxes a few years ago to deal with the budget deficit. But how should we really rate “Bloomberg the Bully?”

I think a lot is left out of the official narrative. For one, his signature legislative success has been an abject failure by almost any objective measure. Bloomberg ran for reelection based on the notion that he had made NYC schools better. But as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the numbers don’t add up. He made the tests easier and said he had both improved achievement and cut the racial achievement gap. However, results on the National NAEP exam actually showed a slight decline in skills and the racial achievement gap measured by point differentials on both tests has stayed exactly the same. Buying the same books for all students sounds great on the surface, but the diversity of the city certainly calls this strategy into question. And the notion that kids are better critical thinkers able to compete in the new global economy seems suspect at best.

A second underreported issue is the bullying that his rule has encompassed (see this Salon article: Why Bloomberg Snapped for an extensive record of his actions in this regard). He has a tendency to attack, cajole, bully or buy off opponents in a way that both reinforces how rich he is and undermines the very idea of democracy. But is this surprising? Any billionaire has to have elements of a narcissistic personality and a firm belief that they are right most of the time. Many were happy to hail a successful businessman coming in to clean up the city. But do they really have the skill set and empathy necessary to rule a city of 8,000,000 diverse citizens with widely disparate goals and aspirations? Are efficiency and the profit motive really the best ways to govern? And is it a good move to put someone in charge who is building a media empire that may someday rule the world (aka Berlusconi)?

Finally is the issue of serving those less fortunate in our society. Bloomberg has certainly done some good in this regard, but overall many poor and working class people have either been pushed to the outer boroughs or out of the city altogether as rents rose, posh new restaurants, clubs and shops replaced the institutions that preceded them and public service workers saw their wages and benefits cut. Bloomberg laid off tons of teachers, forced them to teach in ways that have been shown not to work for underachieving poor and minority students, undermined local control of school boards and essentially ruled the school system and most of the city by official fiat. He undermined and then destroyed the Occupy Wall Street movement, throwing them out illegally in the middle of the night with a media blackout somehow upheld. He has attacked the unions at will and essentially ran for a third term even as few outside his inner circle and a supplicant media wanted him to.

Bloomberg will be remembered as a great mayor and leader by many, but a closer look shows a megalomaniac who undermined the city’s long history of democratic localism, attacked the poor and working class, made Manhattan glitzier and more affluent while dissecting its heart and bullied his way to victory at the expense of too many. It is also worth noting, of course, that he oversaw a Wall Street that just about destroyed the global economy and did nothing to help regulate it afterwards. I, for one, hope he does go quietly into that good night …