"When I become mayor, you know what I’m going to spend my first year doing? I’m going to have a bunch of ribbon-cuttings tearing out your [expletive] bike lanes." —Anthony Weiner to Mike Bloomberg, June 2, 2010
"Come January 1st, when I am out of office, I am going to destroy your f–king industry." —Mike Bloomberg to Taxi Club Management CEO Gene Freidman, May 16, 2013
"Go fuck yourself." —Christine Quinn, lots of times probably
The NRA has responded to the Mike Bloomberg-backed Mayors Against Illegal Guns by casting doubts on whether or not the "curious" man in the group's latest pro-background checks ad is who he says he is—or AN ACTOR. Despite MAIG's insistence that he's a real West Virginia gun owner, one blog has offered $500 for anyone who can prove he is (or isn't).
One of the NRA's key questions is how a real gun owner would have such terrible "trigger discipline," meaning, placing a finger on the trigger at any time before the exact second a shot is to be taken. "The NRA recommends Mayor Bloomberg use some [...]
Let's look at the winners and losers of this week in the reality show that is New York City Mayoral Election 2013!
It was a quiet week in the mayoral campaign. Why is that? Because it's all already basically a done deal, pretty much. The Republicans are fighting it out towards a primary, instead of settling on a candidate, which is fine. We're all basically pretending that there's an active race and that anything could happen! Well, it could… maybe. There's the people with the money and there's the people without the money. Once again. Polls describe everyone as substantially lagging behind Quinn.
• Mike Bloomberg Mayor Mike [...]
"City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said she won't be at a rally on the City Hall steps this afternoon to criticize Mayor Bloomberg for comparing the United Federation of Teachers to the National Rifle Association, because she'll be inside with the mayor."
.@mikebloomberg says 500 tax filers pay an incredible 15 percent of the city's income tax.
— Jill Colvin (@colvinj) October 12, 2012
On radio, .@mikebloomberg says .1 percent (3700 people) of New Yorkers pay 27 percent of the city's taxes.
— Dana Rubinstein (@danarubinstein) October 12, 2012
Questions!
1. Can this be true. 2. I suppose it totally can be? 3. Can you show me the list though? 4. I presume these are all corporation-people, not people-people, yes? I mean, same difference. 5. I bet Eliot Spitzer is on there. Or at least Bernard Spitzer. 6. What about Jay-Z? 7. Also Mariah. [...]
Looking forward to community board meeting about Midtown East rezoning. City envisioning vast upzoning that will change skyline. Good idea?
— Michael Kimmelman (@kimmelman) July 11, 2012
Glad the Bloomberg Admin is pursuing zoning change to allow smaller apartments + address growing demand in NYC for affordable studios.
— Michael Kimmelman (@kimmelman) July 10, 2012
I love me some Michael Kimmelman, even when he is profoundly wrong, in his new role as Times architecture critic, about how New York City does and should work. (Though when he's right, he's right! People should be rioting over the $4-BILLION World Trade Center PATH station!) He [...]
.@MikeBloomberg says he will sign bill penalizing taxi drivers who engage in sex-trafficking after all.
— Dana Rubinstein (@danarubinstein) June 22, 2012
"There is no iota of evidence linking yellow medallion taxi cabs to sex trafficking," as the head of the taxi drivers alliance put it, but now cab drivers face a $10,000 fine for knowingly transporting trafficked victims. That's good! But pretty sure that's already a couple of crimes, if you're transporting an unwilling person? Called "accessory" and/or "aiding and abetting"? And "false imprisonment"? And "kidnapping"? So in this case, cab drivers also face the risk of a $10,000 fine and license revocation for [...]
.@mikebloomberg says, because it can't be automated, becoming a plumber is a better deal economically than going to Harvard.
— Kate Taylor (@katetaylornyt) May 17, 2013
Bloomberg: "We would love to get billionaires from around the world to move here; they're the ones who go to the stores, spend a lot of $."
— Kate Taylor (@katetaylornyt) May 17, 2013
Good grief! I mean "at least he doesn't smoke crack" I guess?
"I think the basic answer to your question is you have to have a revolution among the voters. You cannot expect, at a state, federal or city level, the elected officials to go and to do something that will keep them from being able to feed their families. And this is a job for them. It's just not gonna happen. There's no chance whatsoever. So where you can have a referendum, that's where you have a chance of changing things." —The mayor's "fuck you"s are getting more and more meta.
"Bloomberg is expected to use part of his address to push initiatives that would increase the number of parking spaces for electric cars and begin recycling more plastics and food waste. The mayor who has taken on smoking, sugary drinks and salt is also expected to talk about working with the City Council to ban Styrofoam food packaging from stores and restaurants." —Just 12 years into his life term as mayor, Michael Bloomberg is now coming for your takeout containers.
"It is one of the great ripoffs of the public any place I've ever seen" Mayor Bloomberg on the structure of the NYC taxi industry.
— Dana Rubinstein (@danarubinstein) December 14, 2012
Good! New York City will begin a year-long pilot of working with taxi-hailing apps starting early next year. The program will be pretty restrictive, but lots of the hard tech work is to ensure that the app systems work with the taxi meters. So that, you know, we don't get ripped off. That wasn't so hard, petulant, pouty, Ayn Randian startup boys, now was it!
Also apparently Mike Bloomberg went crazy about taxis this [...]
The debating season may be presidential, but if the spectacle of supersized pandering served with an unlimited salad bar of platitudes, slogans, and empty promises strikes you as strangely unfulfilling, there is always academia, where, sometimes, the politics are as equally vicious because the stakes are equally as high. Such was the case in San Antonio recently, at the Obesity Society's 30th annual meeting, the premier scientific conference in the US on what is, arguably, the nation's most pressing health problem. As the prologue to a four-day Finnegan's Wake of technical discussion (did you know that NMDA receptor NR2B subunits in the parabrachial nucleus mediate compensatory feeding?), the society's presidential [...]
On June 28th, public officials, neighborhood civic leaders, parents and their eager toddlers, poured under the iconic vaulted archway of the McCarren Park Pool.
For the actual poolgoers, it was their first visit inside the building since at least 2008, when the Parks Department permitted a series of ticketed and free live shows in the pool's empty basin. For some, it was step all the way back into their childhood, when summer meant splashing around Greenpoint with thousands of their friends.
On Thursday, everyone saw what the outdoor pool had become, for $50 million, here were one million gallons of cerulean blue water with tufts of surf, a mirror to [...]
"I love a Dunkin' Donut." –Mayor @MikeBloomberg
— Mike Grynbaum (@grynbaum) June 15, 2012
Mm, it's Friday mornings on the radio with our wacky Mayor Mike.
But he says to only have one!
— Mike Grynbaum (@grynbaum) June 15, 2012
Don't you ever wonder how and when Mike Bloomberg's going to die? I mean not in a hateful way! Just like: he's an extremely good-looking 70-year-old! He looks as fit and plastic as one of those tiny horses! I wonder if he will outlive us all. Of course, Ed Koch is 87 and has treated his body like a garbage can and [...]
Why did the Bloomberg administration expend hours and hours of City time keeping the Cathie Black emails private? There weren't that many of them. They weren't that interesting, overall. Their defense showed that the Mayor's office—or "Mb" himself, as Bloomberg's permanent #2, Patricia Harris, refers to him in emails—believes this: "the principles permitting government employees to exchange opinions, advice and criticism freely and frankly, without the chilling prospect of public disclosure, should extend to individuals who have been elected or selected to public office but have not yet assumed office." That's right. Because the machinations of installing an entirely unqualified local famous person to run (ruin?) New York City's [...]
How much can one man get done in twelve years? Well, quite a bit. "At this rate of decline"—in the admission of black and Latino students to the eight academic specialized schools in New York City—"six years from now there will be no black and Hispanic students admitted at all." Okay, while that, thanks to math, is actually unlikely to occur, still that is absolutely the trending on admissions to gifted and talented schools in the city. We're actually pretty close! For example, that's nine black students admitted to Stuyvesant in 2013. How's everyone else doing? "Hispanic students are 40.3 percent of the system. Currently, they [...]
Let's look at the winners and losers of this week in the reality show that is New York City Mayoral Election 2013!
• Christine Quinn: Man. Christine Quinn started out the week with a bang. The New York magazine cover story was great, it really cast her in a terrific light, and it made Mike Bloomberg look kinda like a pig. She went saucy on Giuliani, which was fun, though she trashed Jodi Foster at the same time, which was weird. AND THEN. She threw it all away by being a complete terrible despicable idiot, by signing on to the campaign to suppress academic freedom. She and a [...]
Bloomberg BusinessWeek has a very rude message for those fun people who use "climate change" as a punchline on the campaign trail: Global warming is real, superstorms are but one devastating result, and people who continue to say otherwise are "stupid."
Just to make this science-based rude behavior clear, BusinessWeek editor Josh Tyrangiel had this to say to the world of Twitter:
Our cover story this week may generate controversy, but only among the stupid.buswk.co/PIUzUl via @bw
— Josh (@Tyrangiel) November 1, 2012
So, again, where is our mayor? He's had no public schedule for three days in a row & he's calling into his radio show.
— Mike Grynbaum (@grynbaum) July 13, 2012
So it turns out @MikeBloomberg is at MogulFest in Sun Valley, Idaho. Here he is looking thrilled about it: bit.ly/M6Rzgz
— Mike Grynbaum (@grynbaum) July 13, 2012
Pretty sure he's clad in head-to-toe Loro Piana. MAYBE Cucinelli. But you know, he's from Boston, so it just might be high-end JC Penney.
We're big fans of @girlsHBO and hope it will inspire future Hannahs everywhere to move to NYC nyp.st/MsrdTi
— NYC Mayor's Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) June 25, 2012
"About 22 percent of viewers who DVR the show are white men over age 50." Only one of them is the mayor of New York City. One other is Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson.
