He and I have had a lot ups and downs over the years. I really didn't like him after the snow storms with his attitude of "So you're buried in snow and the city didn't help you. Deal with it!" Basically let em eat cake. I had never been a huge fan of his but then lately I was impressed by his support of gay marriage and then I saw one of his mayoral addresses and was impressed by a few different things. For one thing he is a well spoken guy. He also spoke in Spanish which sounded to me pretty fluent-of course I don't speak Spanish.
When he made that off the cuff comment 3 weeks ago about how there will be riots if Congress doesn't get its act together I thought that was cool-and prophetic as it turns out as Occupy Wall Street started that very week. I had almost forgotten why I didn't like him. Then he reminded me with a story in today's Wall Street Journal (Wednesday October 4, pg. A21.
Bloomberg has ordered $2 billion dollars in budget cuts and a hiring freeze for the "indefinite future." This on top of $1.6 billion in cuts last year. The $2 billion cuts planned now would add $500 million cuts to this year's budget and 1.5 billion next year.
To achieve this goal he has directed every city agency to submit plans to reduce spending by 2% for the remainder of this fiscal year, and another 6% for the following year. So he worries about riots and this is his budget?
The one thing you can say in his defense-it is considerable point too-is that there is no help at the state or federal level. But no matter what I can't believe this is the best we can do, NY.
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