I can't say it enough (especially since Bloomberg and his pro-term limit extension allies did in October) but Mayor Bloomberg loves to tout his financial expertise. In these trying economic times, he argues we need a leader (e.g. him) that knows how to fearlessly go where no Mayor has gone before and hammer out a responsible budget for the city when the tax base is drying up. Well, that would be great, if it were true. The fact is, his people were "spending money like drunken stockbrokers" and if we put our trust in him, we'll be as screwed as we were for the last eight years.
From The Neighborhood Retail Alliance:
The basic fact is, Bloomberg's wealth has been created by Wall Street and Wall Street, as we have clearly seen, is broken. He spent recklessly like stockbrokers have and now he, as they, want the public to pay the price. He does this with cuts to crucial public sectors for the least amongst us and higher taxes for the middle class. If anything, we need the opposite of our current Mayor, not more of the same.
Take a look at the numbers and you'll see that the Bloombergistas have been spending money like drunken stockbrokers-and now we're tapped out: "From 2002 to today, city spending rose nearly 29 percent after inflation. All that kept us from drowning was an even more reckless Wall Street, whose tax revenues (temporarily) let the city indulge in booming Medicaid outlays and ever-costlier benefits for city workers. Now tax revenues are dropping at just as torrid a pace. They're on track to drop 13.5 percent between last year and the next fiscal year, which starts in July. Personal-income taxes will fall by 35 percent. Since 1971, when the city started keeping good records, New York has never seen a drop-off like this one. The money is gone."
The reason that we're in this situation goes straight to the mayor's inabilities-a complete lack of knowledge of government when he arrived, compounded by a personal philosophy that saw government expansion as good for its citizens. In effect, his nanny-like policies for calorie posting and trans fat elimination-and here comes the salt attack-are emblematic of his positive view of an interventionist government. For Mike Bloomberg, more and bigger government is better, because it has a bigger and better chance to intervene to help the folks.
This warped world view-as bankrupt as the Wall Street firms that Bloomberg identifies with-has had a withering effect on the city's small businesses and homeowners; and his budget continues to reflect this: "Second, there's Bloomberg's proposal to hike sales taxes by nearly $1 billion. This hike would push the rate up to where it was after the tech bubble burst. But that hike was proposed as temporary; this one isn't. Ending the tax exemption for clothes, as the mayor also proposes, would kill already suffering retailers...It's telling, anyway, that the mayor wants retailers to give back nearly twice as much as he's asking from his union workforce."
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