Ranters' Network - Revealing the wrongs of the world and insulting those responsible for them.

I can't complain too much about Bloomberg, as we get to the beginning of his re-election campaign. I mean, he's a turncoat Democrat who went Republican so he could come out against Mark Green, who at the time was showing the ugliest face the Democratic Party had to offer with mindless pandering and posturing - he pulled the race card against Fernando Ferrer, former Bronx Borough President, which did nothing to raise the level of discourse and everything to make latinos hate him. With that kind of guy representing the Dems (and he's a Cornellian, natch), even I'd almost consider switching sides... almost.

Speaking of Ferrer, he's got a great shot (I'd vote for him) this time around if he keeps the damned flip-flopping down to a minimum, like this damned Diallo fiasco.

But back to Bloomberg. He basically skirted the campaign finance issue by, essentially, paying for the whole campaign out of pocket. Which is nice, I suppose. Didn't do much for his image as a rich fuck. Likewise, to do nothing for his image as just a slight bit out of touch, he's had a fair number of gaffs that are just embarrassing at best and inexcusable at worst - things like the constant fights with police, teachers' and transit workers' unions, thinking that replacing the top 15 people in the Board of Education and renaming it the Department of Education would actually do anything to the quality of education (Hey, fool! Build more schools! Pay teachers more!), and buying a $3,000 bicycle as a suggestion for beating the threatened transit strike - and then giving it to a Harlem kid.

Notice I said I couldn't complain too much; I never said I couldn't complain. I can always complain. For instance, in addition to his own personal billionaire hubris was his odd urge to copy Giuliani, and copying Giuliani is Generally a Bad Thing, at least in my book. Things like his picking up with Rudy's vendetta against street vendors (Fer chrissakes, they don't block the sidewalk; Tourists do!) just irked me terribly, and his obsession with building a stadium - any stadium, there are three proposals! - was and is turning the corner to ridiculousness.

Bloomberg did ride the subway to work at least half the time, which is not a small feat for a billionaire, and far better than Rudy's track record, that Staten Islander-pandering motherfucker... but I digress. 'Course, the other half was in a big, black Suburban, which... ain't as good. Bloomberg allowed liqour stores to open on Sundays, and banned smoking in bars, which I have to commend as proof of definite aplomb, pointed in the right direction.

He kept order during the blackout and the convention, which is also no small feat. Aside from the faux pas of penning in the first anti-Iraq War protest (and denying anti-conventioners Central Park, which is bad but not as bad as allowing Garth Brooks the same), the rest of the protests went off rather safely. In comparison to all the accounts of police excess under Giuliani, the police presence was far more constrained and courteous under Bloomberg, especially in large events.

Bloomberg, however, did not actually manage to use his party affiliation to get the feds or the state to give us any more money, though I really can't blame him for that. We have the most profitable large transit system, which is also the least subsidized large transit system, and that's not so much Bloomberg's fault as it is Pataki's (fucker!). We didn't get nearly enough federal emergency funds to finance bereaved families, police and fire wages and reconstruction as we should have, but that's Shrub's fault (evil fucker!).

Crime went down, land value went up, The city hasn't imploded. For a Republican, Bloomberg wasn't as evil as his predecessor (who seemed to be going on a crusade against the poor), or as much as he could be. For a Democrat, he's too rich to have taken part in the bitter pitbull infighting like the others. I'm still hoping for Ferrer, though.