"The city’s going after families who have pigs as companions."

"Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s daughter has a pig in Gracie Mansion and no one mentions it’s illegal."

The powerful think the rules don't apply to them. But that's not an argument in favor of pigs in the city. No pigs in the city!

"What gives the mayor the right to decide, without adequate notice, to give our children drugs that will impact their bodies and their psyches?"

The drug is Plan B (the "morning-after pill") and the mayor is Bloomberg.

About 40 separate “school-based health centers” doled out 12,721 doses of Plan B in 2011-12, up from 10,720 in 2010-11 and 5,039 in 2009-10....
The city says about 6,300 NYC girls had unplanned pregnancies last year, and more than half had abortions. Of those who give birth, the city says, about 70 percent drop out of school, making their futures bleak.

"We need more harlequins, fewer ticktockmen."

Said Icepick in last night's thread about Boston banning drinking games in bars. He began:

I recently read "The Scouring of the Shire" chapter from Return of the King. It was disturbing how much the Shire under (ultimately) Saruman's direction sounded like modern America. The country is being run by over-officious jerks, and the American people are putting up with it. Land of the free no more....

And then:

We need more harlequins, fewer ticktockmen.

A link goes to the Harlan Ellison story "Repent Harlequin!' Said The Ticktockman." 

Icepick advises:

Professor, I believe you need some more tags. One for over-officiousness, and perhaps tags for harlequins (see Swartz, for example) and for ticktockmen (anything with Bloomberg).

Ellison begins his story with a quote from Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience":

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purposes as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

Ellison introduces that quote with: "There are always those who ask, what is it all about? For those who need to ask, for those who need points sharply made, who need to know 'where it's at,' this...."

That story was published in 1965, when the phrase "where it's at" was quite the thing. 

ADDED: I just bought "Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the 20th Century," which contains "Repent Harlequin!"

"See? You can be messy on the inside, and no one knows."

Step inside a 400-square-foot apartment space, transformed by elaborate built-ins:



The quote I've used for the post title appears about midway and marks the spot where my mood began to shift from delight to despair. What do we think of this man, who is promoting what seems to be a simplified, de-cluttered way of life, but who is, himself, in a business, promoting expensive merchandise, the machinery of compression. Do we want to be compressed thusly? It's one thing to live like this on board a cruise ship, but permanently? For a certain type of person — perhaps this man, or the man he pretends to be — it's a fine, joyful existence. Would he ever really have a dinner party for 10 in this space, as we see enacted at the end? It's not a real party, because it's an on-camera demonstration of the space. Watch closely and notice how the women are responding. There is something they do not love, and it is visible even in this crisply edited production. I felt empathy with these women and resistance to the man's sales pitch. And I remembered the gutted space shown at the beginning of the video, and thought that I could be happy, living in SoHo, in that 400-square-foot space as it looks right then. Just do the kitchen and the bathroom, nice and modern and constrained into a modest space, and let me put in some normal furniture — a good-sized table near the window for my work and eating space (that can be cleared off if anyone needs to come over for dinner) and I'll order a sleeper sofa from Design Within Reach. Spare me all those insane, ever-encroaching built-ins, and those crazy pop-up extra beds for guests. Guests to the city can get a hotel room or sleep on the floor or I'll add sleeper chair. By the end of the video, I felt paranoid that the government had a plan to shift us into smaller and smaller pods with evil corporations getting rich fitting them out with soul crushing storage bins. Mayor Bloomberg! Who fixed your ducts? Huh? Fixed your ducts, all right. I told you before - they fixed themselves. Oh, yeah? Then where did this come from, eh? Out of your nostril? Eh? Nostrils, eh? Central Services. They don't take kindly to sabotage. Sabotage, huh? Jesus, this place is in a terrible state. Just a minute! You're not gonna leave it like this, are you? Why not? All you gotta do is blow your nose and it's fixed, innit?

Mayor Bloomberg: "Well, I don’t know that-- you keep saying control. I think that’s a-- a bad word. What about regulations?"

Funny the way the word "control" troubles the proponents of gun control!

That was on "Meet the Press" this morning, where I also notice this remark by David Brooks:

Can-- can I just say one thing about the-- the debate we need to have?  This has become-- one of the problems for this debate is it’s become a values war.  It’s perceived as urban versus rural... And frankly, it’s perceived as an attack on the lifestyle of rural people by urban people.  And I admire Mayor Bloomberg enormously--there’s probably no politician I agree with more but it’s counterproductive to have him as the spokesperson for the gun law movement.  There has to be more respect and more people frankly from rural and Red America who are-- who are participants in this.

"When you talk about 8.4 million people in New York City living three years longer than they did 10 years ago..."

"... it is just one of the great improvements in life expectancy ever found on the face of the Earth," says Mayor Bloomberg, who is apparently one of the greatest benefactors of humankind ever to emerge in the history of time.

Dr. Tom Farley, the city health commissioner, pointed to declining death rates from heart disease and cancer as primary reasons longevity is increasing.

“The risk factors for those are things we’ve been working on: smoking, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity,” said Farley. “That says that something we’re doing is working.”

See? The nannying worked. Now, shut up. I mean, really, shut up. That's not me saying that, it Mayor Bloomberg, quoted at the link: "People who complain die early, I’ve always thought." So shut up, sip that small soda, skip the doughnuts, and walk briskly and progressively into the new future.

"For some reason, the uplifting value of the New York City Marathon, however, is so off the charts in Bloomberg World..."

"... that nothing trumps diverting countless police and sanitation resources to marathon duty, even when parts of the metropolitan area lie in ruins and the city is mired in transportation hell."

AND: "They should make all of these runners bring food and water to people's houses who need it. They should bring all of these generators to buildings where old people live and give them power." 

UPDATE: Bloomberg caves to criticism, cancels the Marathon.

NY Mayor Bloomberg endorses Massachusetts Senator Brown — over his Democratic challenger, Elizabeth Warren.

Questions:

1. Wait. I forget... Is Bloomberg a Democrat or a Republican? He's an "independent" now. He was a lifelong Democrat, until he ran for mayor (in 2001) as a Republican. He came out as an independent in 2007.

2. What does the mayor of New York have to do with Massachusetts? He was born in Massachusetts, grew up there, and went business school there.

3. Why did he pick Brown over Warren?

[T]he mayor had chosen to support Mr. Brown... for opposing a “national concealed-carry reciprocity amendment,” which would have required states to honor concealed-weapons permits issued by other states.

Concealed-carry reciprocity "would let people with gun permits from rural states like Arkansas and Kentucky carry hidden handguns in New York City," according to the mayor's spokesman.

It's not as though Warren opposes gun control, but when you "take a tough stand and buck party orthodoxy that helps the city of New York, the mayor would like to support you."

Interesting. By the way, why specify "rural states like Arkansas and Kentucky"? That has a bigot-y feeling to it. I suppose they might mean that in a system of decentralized gun regulation, what's right for a rural state is different from what a place like NYC needs/prefers. Federally imposed reciprocity undercuts the federalism values inherent in letting the states decide for themselves. But "rural states like Arkansas and Kentucky" — to my ear — sounds more like disgust for hillbillies.

Mayor Bloomberg, stimulating the development of micro-units.

For single folk, in New York City. Here's a useful graphic:

 

I love the picture of the diminutive mayor, standing in a life-size floor plan of the imagined apartment, alongside the Commissioner of City Planning, Amanda Burden, who has this ineffable we-know-what's-good-for-the-little-people look on her face.

Who is Amanda Burden?

Born Amanda Jay Mortimer, she is the daughter of socialite Babe Paley (1915–1978) and her first husband, Stanley Grafton Mortimer, Jr. (1913–1999), an heir to the Standard Oil fortune. She is a descendant of the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Jay, and a granddaughter of Dr. Harvey Cushing, the "Father of American Neurosurgery" and Pulitzer Prize winning author.... In 1947, her mother married William S. Paley, the son of a successful immigrant entrepreneur who built a family acquisition into CBS. Her stepmother, Kathleen Mortimer (born 1917), was a daughter of railroad heir and United States ambassador Averell Harriman.

Wow. So...  that's how you get a look like that for your face as you let people know about how micro a living space can properly be. I thought she looked really elite, but I was still floored by that bio.

Who should be doing a city's planning, I wonder?

Michael Bloomberg gives a speech and then mutters "Who Wrote This Shit?"

It's fine with me, but why is he presiding over a hot-dog-eating contest? Of all politicians, he's the one I most associate with control over what people eat.

"New York City is not about wringing your hands; it’s about doing something."

"I think that’s what the public wants the mayor to do."

Elsewhere, "all over the United States," they "are wringing their hands saying, ‘Oh, this is terrible,’” but not in New York. In New York, they are doing something.

Do something — what a wonderful concept, often heard in the old cry for help: "Don't just stand there; do something."

It's the the motto of the liberal. The corresponding motto of the conservative is: First, do no harm. Or to put it in the form that I thought up (in another context) and have adopted as a kind of a personal motto: Better than nothing is a high standard.

Bloomberg's ridiculous photographic bias.

Reporting on yesterday's Wisconsin recall primary, Bloomberg runs this photograph of Tom Barrett...



... which comes straight from Barrett's mayoral office. That is, it's Barrett's own propaganda.

And this picture of Scott Walker...



... taken by a photographer who has a job in the Bloomberg organization either in spite of his inability to shoot a decently lit image or because of his ability to make selected targets look as bad as possible.

The text of the article is equally slanted, largely a collection of quotes from Barrett said from UW-Milwaukee professor Mordecai Lee. Lee is the guy who told us 95% of Republicans would cross over and vote in the Democratic primary, but Walker got 626,538 votes even though he had only nominal opposition in the Republican primary, and the 4 Democrats combined only got  665,436 votes. How many of those 665,436 were Republicans? Anyway, now Lee is feeding Bloomberg crapola like:

“In the 1950s there was a saying, ‘He’s a nice Catholic boy... That’s Tom Barrett. He believes the world is good... He believes in doing good. He believes that in a moral universe, right always wins out.”

And:

“In his view, the November 2010 election was simply an error and he welcomes the opportunity to right the wrong."

It's a moral universe thing. Walker beat Barrett in the regular election, a fair election, a democratic election. But somehow that was a wrong, and the nice Catholic boy is all about righting wrongs in the moral universe. Holy lord, what nonsense. That's the Milwaukee professor's assertion about the candidate's quest to get his hands on power: For the world to be good, I must rule.

"You want to get arrested? We'll accommodate you."

Mayor Bloomberg waxing sarcastic about the scourge of Occupy.

"New York City is the city where you can come and express yourself. What was happening in Zuccotti Park was not that."

Said Mayor Bloomberg, defending his decision to oust the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti park.

Mr. Bloomberg said the city had planned to reopen the park on Tuesday morning after the protesters’ tents and tarps had been removed and the stone steps had been cleaned. He said the police had already let about 50 protesters back in when officials received word of a temporary restraining order sought by lawyers for the protesters. He said the police had closed the park again until lawyers for the city could appear at a court hearing later in the morning.

It's a legal matter, baby, a legal matter from now on.

Bloomberg's point is that the occupiers prevent other people from using the park. They're hogging the whole park. I sympathize with that position, having seen how the Wisconsin protesters last winter occupied the Capitol rotunda in a way that kept other people out. Now, the rotunda is a prime attraction in Wisconsin. Visitors to Madison continually wander into the space and, on normal days, gaze up into the dome. Children typically lie on the marble floor for the purpose of staring contemplatively upward.

Zuccotti Park, on the other hand — who'd even heard of it before? In fact, it's the Occupy Wall Street protesters who've made it famous, and if it's a tourist attraction, it's because of the OWS branding. And yet New York City parks are not mostly about attracting tourists. The people who live and work near a park are the ones with the most interest in access.

And now that the protesters have lawyered up and gone to court in an attempt to nail down legal rights to occupy the space, it changes the character of the interaction with the mayor, and it's quite understandable that he would take a hardcore stance in response.

ADDED: The description of the battle against the police is tucked further down in the linked NYT article. Snippets:

The protesters rallied around an area known as the kitchen, near the middle of the park, and began putting up makeshift barricades with tables and pieces of scrap wood....

[As the police entered the park], dozens of protesters linked arms and shouted “No retreat, no surrender,” “This is our home” and “Barricade!”

It's turning into "Les Miserables"... Now we pledge ourselves to hold this barricade/Let them come in their legions/And they will be met/Have faith in yourselves/And don't be afraid/Let's give 'em a screwing/That they'll never forget!

ADDED: A reader emails:

I just finished playing a high school production of Les Miserables... and I was informed that the director of the musical (an alumnus of the high school) had specifically used Zuccotti Park and the OWS movement as a rallying point for the show. He was basically telling the kids that the OWS struggle, and the struggle leading up to the June Uprising, were one and the same.

Krugman's swipe at Bloomberg's rhetoric about Occupy Wall Street.

Paul Krugman has a column about how various "plutocrats" are "panicking" about the Occupy Wall Street movement, and I want to focus on the 4th paragraph:

Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.

So the "actual goals" — presumably, something along the lines of a better world for everyone — should divert us from noticing the actual effects people are actually causing? Imagine that as a general principle: We should to back off from criticizing people who have good intentions, even when they adopt means that cause collateral damage, even when those means aren't likely to get us to the pretty goals they have in mind.

These are exactly the people we need to expose and criticize!

Now, Bloomberg did kind of ask for it, because of his use of the word "trying":

"What [the protesters are] trying to do is take the jobs away from people working in this city... They're trying to take away the tax base we have because none of this is good for tourism....

"If the jobs they are trying to get rid of in this city — the people that work in finance, which is a big part of our economy — we're not going to have any money to pay our municipal employees or clean the blocks or anything else."

Bloomberg's rhetoric assigns to the protesters the intent to achieve the natural consequences of their actions. Obviously, this rhetoric invites the Krugman response. But I think it's a good rhetorical device. It rips away the vanity of dreamers and demands that we look at real, concrete facts.

"So, is Bloomberg’s story titled 'The Secret Sins of General Electric'?"

"Or, in the online version, 'General Electric Flouts Law With Secret Iran Sales?' Of course not. G.E. is generally identified with the Democratic Party. Does anyone seriously doubt that Bloomberg wanted to do a hit piece on Koch Industries solely because that company’s owners are prominent conservatives? Of course not."

"We’re not France... Mr. Bloomberg is pretending we’re a secular society, and we are not."

Complaints about Mayor Bloomberg's exclusion of clergy from NYC's 9/11 ceremony.

It's the old controversy of causing controversy through the effort of avoiding controversy. It's important to observe that the controversy you see is the one you got from the effort at controversy avoidance. You have to envision what the avoided controversy would have looked like. Religious people are good at envisioning the unseen, are they not?

Also, the exclusion of clergy is not the exclusion of religion. It is only the exclusion of individuals whose métier is the purveyance of religion. There is good and bad in that, but consider that silences, in which people do pray, are better than a cast of characters whom some will undoubtedly consider hucksters, getting attention, and maybe saying something offputting or incendiary.

And no, I don't think the bogus mystification of doing something Native American is the right solution.

"Power could be shut off in Lower Manhattan, hitting Wall Street, a precaution against storm surges as Hurricane Irene strikes..."

Reports the Wall Street Journal.

"The most important thing is to make sure their facilities aren't damaged, which would take a long time to repair. If saltwater gets into the underground cables and those cables are carrying electricity, there is a real chance of damage to those lines," [said Mayor Michael Bloomberg.] "There is a lot less chance of damage to the lines if those power cables are not carrying power."

"President Barack Obama is likely to propose a new public works program in a post-Labor Day speech."

Say the Bloomberg editors.

... It makes economic sense. The president should think big -- upward of $100 billion a year for at least two years...

Unfortunately, a major public works program doesn’t make political sense right now. Republicans have served notice that they intend to stand pat against new federal spending...

The editors recommend a deal:

Obama should temporarily suspend Davis-Bacon, then ask Congress to repeal the act and let the market decide wage rates, as it does for every other industry....

Such a deal would stretch federal money, resulting in more jobs, especially for less-skilled workers who have been out of work for more than six months. And it would finally allow Obama to have a Works Progress Administration-style program that’s been missing from his recovery plans.

I can't picture the Republicans accepting this. And does the public actually want a Works Progress Administration-style program?

Feds reject Bloomberg's anti-obesity experiment.

Not because it's too much nannyism. It's just too much trouble.

Federal officials on Friday rejected Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s proposal to bar New York City’s food stamp users from buying soda and other sugary drinks with their benefits....

But in a letter Friday, an administrator of the food stamp program in Washington said the city’s proposed experiment would have been “too large and complex” to implement and evaluate.