[lbo-talk] Rudy's braintrust

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Fri Sep 14 08:50:26 PDT 2007


On Sep 14, 2007, at 11:32 AM, Michael Smith wrote:


> On Fri, 2007-09-14 at 11:22 -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> It is. I don't think anyone who didn't live through the Rudy years in
>> NYC understands how awful he is.
>
> Agreed. Serious, non-rhetorical question, though -- do you feel
> that the Bloomberg years have been much of an improvement?

Yes. Not so much in budget, land use, labor relations, and other material policies - but a Dem mayor would have been little different on those things anyway, given the power of the FIRE establishment and the ever-looming threat of a Financial Control Board takeover. But on tone, yes, absolutely. There's none of that repressive snarl, none of the racial bigotry. After that JFK "terrorism" incident, Bloomberg said something like, "Get a life. You're more likely to die of a heart attack than a terrorist attack." Could you imagine Rudy - or any other American politician - saying that? And on a day-to-day level, the city government has never been so efficient and non- corrupt; stuff actually works, and no one's been hauled off to jail.

Doug



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