Mayor de Blasio marches New York back to the future
Since the city’s recovery from the 1975 fiscal crisis, mayors and the media have treated the city’s budget-day announcement as a sober technocratic event. Mayor de Blasio, by contrast, used his annual unveiling of the city’s revenue and spending blueprint on May 8 as a campaign-style opportunity to push what he himself called a “progressive” agenda. The budget adds money to enforce the city’s new mandated sick-leave law for private employers, and it spends more for public housing and education. But the most controversial and fiscally explosive portion offers retroactive pay raises to the city’s teachers and, later, raises for other city employees at a projected added cost of $9 billion over four years.
The mayor calls his budget “historic” and “transcendent.” Indeed, for the first time since New York recovered from its near-bankruptcy of the 1970s, the city is willing explicitly to spend beyond its means to buy labor peace. The new teachers’ contract, including $4.3 billion in retroactive pay raises back to 2009, is the acute example.
De Blasio’s plan to march New York right back to the brink of bankruptcy might be stopped by a sort of mayoral safety net put in place after the debacle of the 70s:
After the fiscal crisis of the ’70s, New York state and city set up institutional checks and balances to make sure that no mayor can ruin the city again. Mr. Stringer and State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli serve on the state’s Financial Control Board, ultimately controlled by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The board can take over if it finds an operating deficit of more than $100 million, or if it finds the city is borrowing for operating expenses. Proper accounting for the teachers’ deal would expose the city as committing both of those sins.
Read the whole thing, and remember that de Blasio won in a landslide, 72.2% to 24%. For reasons I’ve not seen satisfactorily explained—but which I think represented lack of enthusiasm for both candidates—the turnout in that election was a record low of 24%.
24% of 72.2%…we can do the math. 17% of the voters selected him. What FOOLS these New Yorkers be!
I’m struck by the common thread connecting all 4 of today’s posts. A fundamental disconnect from reality lies at the core of all.
“De Blasio’s plan to march New York right back to the brink of bankruptcy”
“a “bridge” fuel in the interim, until some other sources magically become practical and plentiful.”
“Three fierce predators living together” while the owner pets the head of a tiger over a three foot tall fence… what could go wrong?
CNN, Zucker, “plane era” and a news organization engaged in “storytelling”…
All examples of ‘magical’ thinking and a complete denial of reality and common sense. Whether reality’s bill will come due is not in doubt, just when it will arrive.
We are so screwed.
The de Blasio election is a mystery wrapped in a riddle surrounded by an enigma: He was waaaay behind the pack, figured to be a sure loser — by the Democrats! — because he’s an actual Red. Most of us thought Christine Quinn would win, not because anyone was excited about her, but because she was the establishment liberal choice.
Then, by mysterious means, the communist guy pulls past Quinn and actually smokes her. I’m still wondering what the heck happened, and I think there’s a story there.
OT, Breaking news: James O’Keefe has struck again. He has a bunch of Hollywood bigwigs on tape and on video conspiring with “Mohammed” to make a movie that supports Arab oil interests and hurts America’s energy industry.
https://www.projectveritas.com/home/
He was hoping this would make the Hollywood Reporter — he caught some big fish in the net (and more will be revealed).
“Mohammed” underlines for the Hollywood stars and producers that his aim is to rein in American oil production and energy independence, and support Arab oil barons. Their responses to this blatant pitch are priceless.
Geoffrey Britain:
Cargo cult thinking.
He has to pay off the people that got him elected…
Perhaps the next perk he will offer them is Paid ‘Menstrual Leave’ for the teachers and others?
HuffPost Live held a discussion about a current topic in employment: whether women deserve paid “menstrual leave.”
Blasio is the kind of guy that would think this great…
Elections, even in NYC, have consequences.
Sam L.: What FOOLS these New Yorkers be!
Please… the smart people statistically are not in the high numbers to win elections…
95 percent of the population scores an IQ between 70 and 130
however… ny has an awful lot of people who work here from someplace else and leave… wallstreeters mostly live upstate or CT (taxes are better for them). lots come in from jersey…
so what you have is a population demographic that is not what one might imagine at first blush if you break it down by who is resident, who can vote, and who does vote…
8.4 million people in the city, 24 million in the work area
the united states as a whole is 12.6% black ny is 25.1%
the united states as a whole is 16.3% hispanic ny is 27.5%
and the remainder is white 44.6% (about the same as in chicago)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City
that last group you divide by women and men and dems and others..
the only way to win here is out socialism the other guy and make a percentage of the 44 into social scapegoats…
The race was between Joe Lhota a privileged christian white male Harvard grad… AND the self deprecating Blasio of unaffiliated religion, who married a lesbian and honeymooned in cuba establishing his ‘creds’
thats all they needed to know
they didnt need to know that Lhota’s parents were blue color and his father with the nypd… and blasio is related to German movers and shakers, and parents went to yale, he went to Columbia… (where every country deposits ilk).
the interesting thing is that a lot of people are upset at him, ranging from the horses, to other things.
by the way, the horses is just the communist thing against luxury, the rest of the arguments are avoiding that. pets are bourgeoisie luxury
there is no way to have any other outcome given the demographics, and that wont change… in fact, they are now writing that there are too few white kids so the schools are taking a dive…
that is, segregation ended, and the population of one group is collapsing (immigration covers it), and now there are not enough white students or teachers in the non white areas.
U.S. education secretary’s speech: ‘Sixty Years after Brown: Where is the Outrage?’
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_25809388/sixty-years-after-brown-where-is-outrage
BUCHANAN: Disparity grows between black, white students
http://www.app.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/05/20/disparity-deepens-black-white-students/9341329/
Achievement gap between black and white city students persist on 2013 Regents exams: analysis
Citywide, only 58% of black students passed the integrated algebra exam while 87% of their white classmates aced the test, State Education Department figures show.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/achievement-gap-persists-regents-exams-analysis-article-1.1796460
NYC school cutting gifted program because too few minority students qualify
Too Few Girls and Minorities Study Tech Subjects
this is why they clipped my wings and the place i work continues to… and why they did it to my son as well…
and now they are starting to clip the Asians who outscore the whites, and on par with Jewish students.
in ny, which people do you think earn enough to leave or live outside? which ones, like gold in a sluice box, get stuck where they are?
explains a lot as to a lot, not just voting outcomes
and yet, the victims of the democide refuse to acknowledge it!! and note, this new low demographic number comes with a dominant group that openly hates them and votes money, and business loans, and schooling away from them actively.
these, along with taxes, caused the group to not have kids… add to that a womens ideology with abortion at it center, and loathing of white males, what happened to the kids who would be in those classes?
the mercury news article wants more and more and more…
The bottom line is that students of color, students with disabilities, and English learners don’t get the same opportunity as their white and Asian-American peers to take the math and science courses that figure importantly in preparing for careers and college.
what are they assuming about ALL caucasians? my father was a refugee of stalin, we lived in a bad inner city area, i worked hard to get into bronx science and now they think i had all these opportunities so now i cant succeed? think i am the only one they did this to in some way? and gone are what i and others would have done (and or our children).
like feminists getting money for the red dress and the heart desease they gave women… this other group now is earning a lot from the things they did to the families with their policies years ago. they socked it to them, now they are collecting and mining their misery for their own lives. the article writer gets paid, the newspaper gets a fee, the feds gather more money and pay people to pass it around, and those get big salaries to organize it… and get fawned on for being so caring.
Beverly: “I’m still wondering what the heck happened, and I think there’s a story there.”
One thing is apparent: Leftist > Democrat.
For people of the Right who wish for compliance by the GOP, the Left’s activist social movement that’s increasing control of the Democrats offers a working model for how the Right would achieve the same control with the GOP.
I would like to respectfully disagree with G. Britain and neo, although there is some confusion on my part about exactly what you both are saying.
If you two are talking about the voters, I agree to a large but not total extent.
If you are talking about the mayor himself, I think you might be wrong about the “magical” thinking “cargo cult” stuff.
The mayor, like BO, is primarily dedicated to the destruction of America as he perceives it. They have no fundamental hope that their policies will lead to the improvement of American lives or lives in NYC.
As with all utopian/nihilistic thinkers, they are focused on the necessary destruction of the existing to pave the way for the glorious.
This is childish thinking, but like so many children, the thinking has a coarse but extremely effective, highly successful result: getting what is wanted.
The psychology of it all is remote from anyone who has not heard of Hoffer or who does not have the life experience of making judgments which affect many people.
NYC will be a disaster area in a couple years. Few people will learn or understand why. The mayor will have accomplished what Ronald Reagan set out to do with SDI: to drain the resources of the enemy, and to create chaos in the enemy’s camp.
BO may be the most successful president this country has had. He is wildly achieving what he set out to do, and making sure it is permanent.
Their thinking is far from magical or cargo cult. They are doing exactly what they intend to do, and doing it with amazing political acuity, in part a bizarre tribute to them – – like a tribute to Barnum – – and in part a function of the really stupid society we have become.
It has all drained away so rapidly.
“It” meaning the maturity, prudence, judgment, care, understanding and knowledge necessary to maintain a society of engaged adults, free people who have a mind of their own.
The barbarians always win.
I hope the idea of civilization comes back soon, in a few centuries or so. Yeah, just a sentimental thought.
Tonawanda:
I’m talking more about the voters.
As far as leftists like the mayor go, as I’ve written before, I think there are various kinds of leftists. Some really are idealists, dreamers, wishful thinkers. Others are into power and are hardened and the opposite of idealistic. Sometimes the first morphs into the second. Sometimes, strangely enough, there’s a combination of the two, although that wouldn’t seem possible (but people can be very compartmentalized and contradictory).
I don’t know enough about de Blasio to know which kind he is, but my guess is that he’s mostly the non-idealistic kind. In which case he doesn’t believe what he’s saying he believes, and is into it for the power.
I see Obama as that sort, too, with a soupé§on of belief mixed in. Just a tad.
The big question is strategic: how do we fight this?
Our founding fathers constructed a government that accepted men’s fallen nature, and pitted the branches against each other. That, plus our Protestant Christian backbone, worked for quite a while to keep us free.
Now the different branches and, to a large extent, the two parties, have joined forces — and turned on US.
So what do we do now?
Remember Milton Friedman’s advice: you don’t expect to elect Good People who can “save” you; you make it in their interests for Imperfect People to do the right thing.
Now that they’ve figured out how to get out of the Founders’ mangel-wurzel, we need to build a new one.
Beverly: “The big question is strategic: how do we fight this?”
http://doingdemocracy.com/
Start competing for real, all-in, first, non-stop, and always, in the activist game, the only social-political game there is.
Stop looking to the GOP to save the day. Think beyond electoral politics.
Realize that the GOP isn’t just matched up with the Democrats. The GOP is matched up against the Democrats-Left symbiote in a relationship where left activists are increasingly dominant.
The GOP can match up with the Democrats head-to-head. The GOP cannot match up against the Left, which plays a bigger game than electoral politics. In the activist game, elected office is merely a lesser included element.
Mayor de Blasio and President Obama are more avatars of the Left than representatives of mainline Democrats like Quinn and Clinton.
The GOP can’t champion this fight. Rather, the GOP needs the Right to be competitive in the activist game in order to save the GOP.
Remember, the Founders were activists. Activists founded our nation. Activists can take it away. Activists are needed to save it.
If the barbarians always win, who do they keep winning against? Those losers must do something right to keep the barbarians winning.
And, just as the medieval ages weren’t medieval, so the barbarians weren’t barbarian. We’ve got as much or more barbarous/medieval nations now than in Rome’s or Constantinople’s time.
The city on the hill, the torch, the light, the freedom, may and is passing from that which is officially USA, and it will not extinguish. Where it goes, no one knows, but all that are good will follow it, and so the cycle continues.
The Left was already using Hollywood to fund their war on humanity. They might as well invite in Islamic Jihad, it’s been enough time.
I don’t agree with the distinction between “idealist”and power monger. The idealism is power and the power is idealism. There may be degrees of ruthlessness, but the psychology of hate and amorality (their “higher” morality) are there in all Leftists.
Drat, now I am boring myself.
But it is a lovely morning and the birds are merrily chirping. TCM had a Victor Moore festival and it was a revelation what a great (mostly comic) actor he was. And it’s time to plant the tomatoes.
I’m old enough to remember when NYC was considered an unmanageable hellhole back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Then Giuliani came along and showed that proper management could be achieved. The city became a decent place to visit again (muggings and other violent crime decreased a lot). Bloomberg was a -huge- step down, but he more or less continued along his predecessor’s path of city management. This gave NYC 20 years or so to forget what things were like before and during General Dinkins’ term. De Blasio’s landslide election simply proved yet again that the average person doesn’t remember things that happened the day before yesterday. Congratulations, residents of NYC. You bought the ticket, but I don’t think that you’re going to enjoy the ride that much.
Transcendent looting. Only the Left’s death gods can achieve that.
So instead of the US taking over Iraq and Afghanistan, to crush Iran between them.
The Left is taking over California on the West and New York on the East, to crush us. Lovely.
Beverly: “The big question is strategic: how do we fight this?”
been trying to tell you that answer for 10 years, but people want a different answer… so instead of fighting it, people just talk and move to the next distraction. i tried to show there is a process… first: understand the other… we never got past first… we never got to anticipation, but always late reaction… also, we never cared to get facts right, they kind of mess up the cleverness of points made (which aesthtically is more important than validity)
so… you get what we got…
what you want cant be fixed cause the deal is sealed with demographics… those feminist grrrrls, didnt have children, and those that did certainly did not make up for what the others didnt do. so, you have democide, and there is absolutely no way to get the little darlings to like being women enough to actually have children!!!
game, set match…
not a damn thing you can do..
even less than nothing if you consider that no one will even accept that the condition that exists actually exists!!!
but you see it in the articles and such that there are not enough children of X class… and what you want requires votors and people acting, and demobraphically they ended up in the vaccume sucker of the abortion doc, the infertility of deseases, the infertility of putting off life, and so on.
for each women who doesnt or cant have a child, another women HAS to have 5 so the population is stable and does not go down.
for 40 years plus they aint been doing that
and their money has been taken to fund the birth of others who would not vote the same… ie. given their genetics… dont believe that? think its wrong…
well then thats one more reason.. no?
right now, if you wanted the births to start being able to correct things in 20 years, you would need a birth average of 10 kids per woman… think that will happen?
no population has survived the birth rate of this group. ie. any group that falls to this rate is exterminated, even if there are some remaining who havent died yet.
have a nice weekend!!! 🙂
at some point you pass the “event horizon”…
its not a real solid thing… but its real enough!!!!
your in manhatten…
you want to go to california…
if your time frame has a limit of one week
you can make it by flying or driving, but walking wont do
why? cause walking would put you outside the event horizon… a physicists way of saying “you cant get there from here EVER’
as the time gets smaller, the things you can do shift.
so when your born, your horzons of what you can do are wide open… as you get older they get smaller. at 75, you cant be a prima ballerina who never danced before… your outside the event horizon
we are outside the event horizon in terms of demographics…
the definition applies way too much to black holes when its really just a general concept…
you dont leave the house in time, your outside the event horizon of catching the bus.
Whites’ deaths outnumber births for first time
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/white-deaths-outnumber-births-for-first-time/2013/06/13/3bb1017c-d388-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html
From Slate:
White Americans’ Deaths Outnumber Births for First Time Ever
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/06/13/census_white_deaths_are_outnumbering_white_births_for_the_first_time_in.html
Huffington post:
Census: White Population Will Lose Majority In U.S. By 2043
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/12/census-hispanics-and-black-unseat-whites-as-majority-in-united-states-population_n_2286105.html
White people will no longer make up a majority of Americans by 2043, according to new census projections. That’s part of a historic shift that already is reshaping the nation’s schools, workforce and electorate, and is redefining long-held notions of race.
The official projection, released Wednesday by the Census Bureau, now places the tipping point for the white majority a year later than previous estimates, which were made before the impact of the recent economic downturn was fully known.
you see… the ‘others’ now see capitalism connected to white males the way it was connected to judaism…
so… your going to have to figure out how hated people who are dying out can convince the people who are replacing them that their values (that resulted in them dying out) are better to keep and go with than the altenrative values.
Whites Will Soon Be A Minority Of The U.S. Population
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/whites-will-soon-be-a-minority-of-the-u-s-population/
Whites Becoming The Minority Among U.S. Population Under Five
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/whites-becoming-the-minority-among-u-s-population-under-five
see? i Told you, the feminist white women are not the future… they SELF EXTERMINATED and are PROUD of it!!!!
you see. it takes a speical kind of mentality to believe you can avoid having children and still think your decendents will exist… women have that mentality!!!
before you argue… think about it..
in less than 100 years…
they went from over 80% to what will be under 14%…
basically they were too nice and easily manipulated to survive reality…
Based on current rates of growth, whites in the under-5 group are expected to tip to a minority this year or next, Thomas Mesenbourg, the Census Bureau’s acting director, said.
The government also projects that in five years, minorities will make up more than half of children under 18. Not long after, the total U.S. white population will begin an inexorable decline in absolute numbers, due to aging baby boomers.
go argue with them…
but you see..
you cant fix a damn thing if you
A) wont recognize the problem
B) dont believe the problem
C) talk about jello instead
D) find other distractions
E) are socially forbidden to promote the cure as being a form of supremacy (only one group is not allowed to delusionally love themselves)
so… regardless of what you think to do now
the kids are going to grow up that exist
and your constituency, does not exist.
and long ago i said, the people that dont exist are not the future of anything.
Beverly said:
“The big question is strategic: how do we fight this?”
A: Containment.
– As I’ve said before, socialism is it’s own cure. I’ve also said that the real problem is the voters. The voters of New York (and other leftist enclaves) need to bear the consequences of their own ill-advised choices. When New York City reverts to the same hell-hole status it previously occupied, change may be possible.
– Much like the Cold War strategy, you wall off the rest of the country from contagion and then wait for “nature to take its course.” This can be easily sold to the rest of the country on the grounds of states’ rights. I think there’s very little chance of Kansas adopting the policies of deBlasio voluntarily in the interim.
O Keefe is like this really sharp and durable knife that you stick in the Left’s guts and keep on screwing it in and around, but they can’t get it out.
No doubt Eric would say O’Keefe represents the kind of activism he advocates.
And I have to say, it’s rather illustrative. Whether it’s reaching a wider audience is another question.
There won’t be a country left if people try to contain the zombie virus.
-Capitulation is off the table.
-If you aren’t going to contain the problem, then the only policy left is to assault it.
-The problem with assaulting it is that leftism is a religion, and impervious to argumentation.
-If you can’t use logic and persuasion, then the only recourse is civil war.
I’m pretty sure there’s no appetite for that.
I liken the leftist attitude to that of a recalcitrant teenager: any suggestion or critique, no matter how well-intentioned and honest, is discounted out-of-hand because of the avenue from whence it comes; the parents (i.e., us conservatives).
“Letting nature take its course” (i.e., reality) reaches them precisely because reality isn’t us. It is an impartial, second source that refutes their worldview.
And reality can’t be argued against. Even most leftists, deep-down, know that.
(and yes, I’m aware of the reality-denying zealots. They are in the minority, and don’t count)
Weaklings have never had an appetite for victory, neither theirs nor humanity’s.