NYC Educator: What If New York Had Not Been Enough for Boss Tweed?

NYC Educator: What If New York Had Not Been Enough for Boss Tweed?

What If New York Had Not Been Enough for Boss Tweed?

I'm watching a Mike Bloomberg commercial. Bloomberg runs them all day, on all channels, in English and Spanish. Michael Bloomberg doesn't need any stinking debates. He doesn't qualify for them because no one contributes to his campaign. He is literally out there trying to buy the presidency of the United States.

Right now he doesn't seem to figure in many polls. He says he isn't running in the first few states. You may recall that strategy did not pan out for Rudy Giuliani as he capitalized on presiding over one of the worst disasters in the history of New York City. However, Rudy Giuliani did not have virtually unlimited personal capital at his disposal

You may also recall that Michael Bloomberg did get a lot of things done. He closed scores of schools. He turned a whole lot of teachers into ATRs, a problem that still lingers now. He achieved mayoral control, effectively shutting the public out of decision making over their own communities. I don't even remember how many meetings I went to in which parents, teachers, students, politicians and clergy went to plead for schools, only to see them closed anyway, even if data was entirely wrong.

Those were the good old days at the Panel for Educational Policy. Michael Bloomberg had the majority of appointees, and fired anyone who contemplated voting his or her conscience. Michael Bloomberg had to have absolute control and could not tolerate any dissension. Does this remind anyone of an orange-skinned, orange-haired figure we read about in the news every now and then?

As for getting it done, Bloomberg was adept at that. Loathsome and reptilian though he is, he was a lot smarter than Rudy Giuliani, who was always suing everyone over, oh, the right to have his mistress come to the home he was sharing with his wife and young children, or excrement-splattered paintings, or other things that did not much affect the CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: What If New York Had Not Been Enough for Boss Tweed?