Maybe if we can get the cops to stop issuing lame parking tickets they’ll start to crack down on some real assholes.

That there are coyotes on Long Island now, where they haven’t been seen before (”Coyotes are firmly established throughout all New York counties except Long Island and New York City”), is freaky enough without seeing them within city limits:

Animal control officers set a trap at Rochdale Village after a coyote or similar creature was spotted prowling around a parking lot in the sprawling south Queens cooperative housing complex.

A buffalo wing riot in Brooklyn last week (”Councilwoman Letitia James [. . .] pointed the finger at the management of the sports bar for recklessly promoting its 50-cent ‘Wing Tuesdays’ to students”), and now video game characters jacking cabbies:

The cabbie beat up by thugs dressed as Super Mario Brothers spoke out about his ordeal Sunday and demanded tougher laws against assaults on taxi drivers.

“I was really scared. . . . At the time, I really think I’m going to die,” said Ndiaye Serigne, 48, of Harlem, who was robbed and pummeled by four men dressed as Mario, Luigi and other characters at a gas station.

Apparently the mayor’s ambitious GreeNYC plan — the initiative that, among other things, encourages office workers to be more environmentally aware by “re-purposing used sheets into scrap paper” or “shredding it to serve as packing material” — the initiative so efficient that it actually uses fewer “Ns”! — was just window dressing, as thousands of pounds of recycling is set to be discarded on Broadway:

For seven years, legal secretary Joanie Kissell has been collecting hole punchings at her job at Kenyon & Kenyon along the Canyon of Heroes.

The 58-year-old from Queens began gathering the little bits of paper even before she scored a job at a firm on the parade route.

Co-workers thought she was crazy. She says she was optimistic.

“They think I’m nuts,” Kissell said. “I’d say to them, ‘Wait! Don’t throw that out!’”

They’ll be grateful today when they can all look to her jar labeled “New York Yankees. 2009″ to join in showering paper onto the Yankees to celebrate their 27th world championship.

. . .

At the Downtown Alliance’s transportation division, sanitation workers were busy yesterday bagging up a half-ton of shredded paper donated by a Red Hook recycling facility.

They planned to drop off about 400 bags of the stuff at buildings along Broadway between 4a.m. and 5 a.m. on Friday.

Bloomberg’s grand campaign promise to install Coca-Cola in the city’s drinking fountains meets reality, and the newly minted third termer reverts to vague pledges to use “technology” in some shape or form to fix stuff:

A day after winning reelection, Mayor Bloomberg on Thursday seemed to step back from a campaign proposal to have free crosstown bus service.

The “real issue” at the core of the no-fare proposal was speeding bus travel by reducing time spent boarding passengers, Bloomberg noted.

That goal might be achieved through technology, Bloomberg said after touring the city’s 311 call center with MTA Chairman Jay Walder.

It will cost $1 billion to replace the Kosciuszko Bridge:

The pricetag for a state plan to replace the crumbling Kosciuszko Bridge by 2017 has ballooned to more than a billion bucks to accommodate the eight-year inflation expected during the long-awaited and long-needed replacement.

For that price, we might get something truly stunning — a concrete cable-stayed straight out of a science fiction movie (or the downtowns of many other cities). In layman’s terms, the futuristic bridge resembles two space-turkey wishbones standing upright with diagonal connection cables.

Last month, the Kosciuszko Bridge Stakeholders Advisory Council — a Department of Transportation-appointed panel of local activists — chose three final designs for the new 1.1-mile span.

In addition to the front-runner [. . .] were a simple box girder design and a crescent arch similar to the Bayonne Bridge.

They would all cost a lot, but Adam Levine, spokesman of the state Department of Transportation, said the cost was expected.

“For a bridge that is a mile long in New York City, $1 billion is the going rate,” he said.

Nice to see John Liu settling into his old ways of vacuous grandstanding after the fact:

Signs of an altered landscape quickly emerged as Mr. Bloomberg, never known for his humility, made an elaborate show of deference. His staff hastily arranged a highly visible meeting, at a Manhattan restaurant, with the city’s public advocate-elect, Bill de Blasio, a Democrat. Just a few weeks ago, the mayor said the citywide office was “a waste of everyone’s money,” and called for its abolition.

But tellingly, when the mayor tried to meet with John C. Liu, the Democratic comptroller-elect, Mr. Liu said he could not find time on his schedule, a highly unusual slight.

Later, Mr. Liu told a reporter: “A long time ago, the people of New York decided there would be no king nor a monarch in New York City.”

It wasn’t just the media who were fundamentally incurious about the polls but also the Democratic Party itself:

As the cheering dies down over at William C. Thompson Jr.’s headquarters, where close almost passed for victory on Tuesday evening, New York’s Democrats are left to consider a colder reality:

This was a race most Democrats now believe they could have won. Numbering among the co-conspirators in the Democrats’ defeat, in the view of some party leaders and activists, are Democratic grandees, from President Obama — who did not campaign for Mr. Thompson — to the City Council speaker, whose support could not have been softer, to two powerful labor unions that remained studiously neutral.

. . .

Barbara Fife, a deputy mayor under David N. Dinkins, acknowledged many ills, from an honorable but lackluster candidate to a too-quick willingness of many prominent Democrats to write off Mr. Thompson’s campaign as stillborn.

But she wondered at a Democratic president who could barely bring himself to utter the mayoral candidate’s name, much less to make a swing through New York. “He made people feel this was not winnable; Bill got lumped in with Paterson in many minds,” Ms. Fife said. “Obama had lists he could have given, and support. But he never said boo.”

And back in that first article there’s an important lesson to take away — specifically, feel free not to fall for campaign bullshit, because they’re probably just making it all up:

Behind the scenes, the close margin had set off second-guessing and soul-searching among some of the aides, who privately questioned the heavily negative advertising efforts.

As the city’s political establishment tried to understand the huge gulf between the cocksure rhetoric of the mayor’s campaign and his showing at the polls, Bloomberg aides said that they had relentlessly promoted the mayor as invulnerable in the race when they knew differently, saying it was the only way they for them to keep the Democratic establishment from rallying behind Mr. Thompson.

Said one top Bloomberg campaign adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect internal discussions: “If a poll had come out showing that the race was within five points, Barack Obama would have swung into town, the United Federation of Teachers would break for Thompson and Mike Bloomberg would not be mayor today.”

On Election Day, this adviser said, “everybody woke up and saw what we saw. We are lucky to have seen it first.”

And here’s where it leaves you:

Mark Radichio, 42, who owns a landscaping company, said that he has been a lifelong Democrat, but that he voted for Mr. Bloomberg in 2001 and 2005.

“I liked his style, his independence, and I’ve always liked the fact that he doesn’t take campaign money from anyone,” Mr. Radichio said.

Then two things happened that made him change his mind about the mayor. “First, it was term limits. The guy just wants to be mayor for life, and I don’t like that,” said Mr. Radichio, who lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. “Then, it was all this money he spent on his campaign. People are unemployed, they’re losing their homes, and you’re spending tens of millions of dollars on a political campaign? There’s something wrong with this picture.”

Mr. Radichio thought it over and decided he would vote for Mr. Thompson, whom he confessed knowing little about, but who he thought would be a better choice, given Mr. Bloomberg’s “baggage,” as he put it.

“I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t vote,” Mr. Radichio said. “I just assumed Bloomberg was going to crush the other guy. I’ll tell you, I’m never going to sit out an election again.”

Speaking of people not showing up when it counts, an e-mailer passes along this conversation that took place this morning in a Midtown office building:

Girl in Yankees shirt in coffee room at [Midtown office]: Yeah!

Guy in business casual: Awesome, I know!

Girl: Did you watch the game?

Guy: Nah, I knew they were going to win. I went out with my boys instead, and they’re Mets fans, so . . .

Girl: Yeah, I only watched the one game. So awesome!

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

And that’s part of why living in New York becomes annoying:

Long after the game had ended and the fans had left, the giant scoreboard in center field of the new Yankee Stadium glowed with an image of the golden World Series trophy. A message below it read, “Boss, this is for you.”

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

Here’s a figure for you all — Bloomberg probably spent $100 million to win a third term with about 550,000 votes (about 200,000 fewer than he received in 2005). That’s somewhere around $180 a vote. There’s your mandate.

The Bloomberg victory speech was horrifying in several ways, not least of which being that the mayor conflated his “squeaker” with talk of a Yankees ticker tape parade. Talk about wishing bad luck on oneself:

Thank you. Gracias. What a week this is turning out to be. Tonight, a hard-fought victory in a very difficult year, and — who knows? — maybe in a few days, the biggest victory parade that Broadway has ever seen.

Thank you, Jimmy Fallon, that was maybe the nicest thing a Red Sox fan ever said about a Yankees fan, and I appreciate it.

. . .

Will the Yankees win Game 6? You better believe it.

The problem here of course being that Jimmy Fallon only became a Red Sox fan after running around like an idiot for that one movie, and his true allegiance is basically disputed. No matter — baseball, like politics, is full of bandwagoning idiots.

But Jimmy Fallon aside, the mayor really needs to purge Howard Wolfson from his mental space (I need to purge Howard Wolfson from my mental space) — the spin of this being “a very difficult year,” which Wolfson also tried using last night, is especially specious. The mayor’s narrow victory wasn’t because the economy sucks, it was because he overturned the will of the voters without a referendum and poured $100 million into a campaign. Be upfront about this. Quit bullshitting. The election is over.

Speaking of the narrow victory, I also think the media is to blame for making this out to be a landslide from day one:

Still, the margin seemed to startle Mr. Bloomberg’s aides and the city’s political establishment, which had predicted a blowout. Published polls in the days leading up to the election suggested that the mayor would win by as many as 18 percentage points; four years ago, he cruised to re-election with a 20 percent margin.

How no outlet could have honestly reported the closeness of the race in the weeks leading up to it seems particularly egregious. Here’s one example of bullshit spin from October 30:

The Thompson campaign keeps insisting that momentum is on their side in the closing days of the mayoral campaign. But a poll released Friday by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion suggests otherwise.

The survey, like other recent polls, shows Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg with a commanding double-digit lead over his Democratic opponent, William C. Thompson Jr., the city comptroller.

. . .

On Thursday afternoon, the Thompson campaign released the results of an internal poll that portrayed the race as much closer, with Mr. Bloomberg leading Mr. Thompson by just 8 percentage points. But internal polls are notoriously suspect.

In a news release on Friday, Howard Wolfson, a Bloomberg campaign spokesman, dismissed Mr. Thompson’s poll, saying that it “gives new meaning to the term margin of error” and that every other reliable public poll done over the past month confirms Mr. Bloomberg’s comfortable lead.

There are so, so many other examples that it’s hard to pick just one. But a prime example of conventional wisdom appeared in the election day Times op-ed from Joyce Purnick. Purnick is someone who is very up on Bloomberg’s machinations, having just written a book about the mayor, and her tone — like the tone of nearly every piece written about the election — was that the result was always a foregone conclusion:

Memo to the 108th mayor of New York, Michael R. Bloomberg: You didn’t have to do it. You didn’t need to set a new national campaign spending record. You didn’t have to become a one-man stimulus program, employing costly campaign consultants, ad producers and all those “volunteers.” You didn’t need that barrage of television ads, those wasteful glossy mailings or maddening robocalls.

None of it. You are the incumbent. You are in and destined to stay in after today’s mayoral election because — unless unduly provoked — New York voters don’t reject their incumbent. They’re pragmatic, even complacent, when their city is not in anguish. You could have spent more on your philanthropy and less on yourself and still be leading your Democratic competitor, City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr., in the polls.

Even columnists unfriendly to Bloomberg bought into the inevitability — again, pick any, but here are two I remember: Patrice O’Shaughnessy in the Daily News and Clyde Haberman, who while continuing to go after the ridiculousness of the Bloomberg machine, did it in a way that telegraphed a depressing inevitability.

All of which brings me back to the Phillies’ Game 4 meltdown in the ninth inning, after the team tied the Yankees in the eighth, and Brad Lidge self-destructed, giving up three runs and ensuring that Rivera would close out the win; yes, the game was only tied, but the momentum was there for Philadelphia. The series was so close to being evened at two games a piece, and was especially painful for Phillies fans to watch. So was this election. Thompson lost by about 50,000 votes with somewhere around 1.1 million cast. What if things went a little differently?

What if, for example, Cory Booker wasn’t bought off by Bloomberg? What if Obama hadn’t been such a pussy? (And all that Corzine support got him exactly nothing in the end.) And most importantly, what if the media had been a little less incurious about polls and not actively worked to dissuade voters from actually participating? It’s true that this would have cut both ways — I’m sure many voters supportive of Bloomberg were apathetic about voting in a landslide — but the inevitability of a Bloomberg reelection was overpowering to watch day after day, and had to have had an impact.

Going back to that disgusting Times article about the campaign that they only published last night hammers home two big points:

Mr. Tusk, extremely self-confident and forceful, talked about “taking the oxygen out of the room”: hiring so many staff members, rolling out so many endorsements, and tossing up so many television ads that opposition seemed futile.

A sky-is-the-limit ethos, unfettered by spending limits, infused the effort. Mr. Tusk told his outreach coordinator for Asian voters, Oliver Tan, to find him a Bollywood star to endorse the mayor. After weeks of transcontinental phone calls, he did.

“It was selling inevitability,” a campaign adviser said.

Selling inevitability — and everyone — everyone! — bought it. Maybe we need to look at ourselves a little bit, too. The other part, the oxygen sucking, is well illustrated with the Cory Booker quid pro quo. Thompson just couldn’t get a break with any free airtime of the kind that Bloomberg got over and over again. It wasn’t so much the endorsement that Cory Booker gave Bloomberg as it perhaps was Booker actually shepherding the mayor around to black churches in Queens on the Sunday before the election — that of course became a big story for Bloomberg. If Booker had simply sat this out — and not crossed party lines to endorse a Republican — this story doesn’t exist, and oxygen remains intact. But Booker going as far as actually campaigning in Southeast Queens with the mayor was just one of many non money-related examples of Thompson’s huge, huge disadvantage over the course of this race.

The whole experience — from the furtive talk about running for president through to the City Council overturning term limits to the obscene spending and consolidation of power during the campaign — was profoundly discouraging. But you know what really got my goat? That insipid fucking new Black Eyed Peas song “I Gotta Feeling,” which was played before Bloomberg came out to speak; it’s lazy songwriting, tailor made for opening montages of televised sports events and, now we know, campaign appearances.

The other day I bemoaned the deleterious effects of this campaign on younger people. On our way out of the polling place last night, a cheerful high school student handed us one of the glossy pieces of Bloomberg campaign literature that this morning are littering the sidewalks of our neighborhood. The student insisted she wasn’t getting paid, though she did admit that a pizza party (Bloomberg spent thousands on pizza this campaign) was in the cards. I’m sure she was also angling for a letter of recommendation of some sort as well because, ultimately, everyone is in it for something. And that’s the real legacy of this dispiriting campaign.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

So nice to see this article burning a hole in the Times’ pocket. Too bad they decided to publish it just as they called the election for him:

The White House switchboard lit up with calls from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s emissaries several weeks ago with a message that was polite but firm: The mayor is going to win re-election, they said. We think the president should stay out of the race.

Members of Mr. Bloomberg’s inner circle were especially worried because they knew President Obama planned to visit the region to campaign with Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey, and he would face pressure to support the Democratic candidate, William C. Thompson Jr., the city’s first black comptroller.

At the request of the mayor’s aides, Geoffrey Canada, chief executive of the Harlem Children’s Zone, telephoned Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to the president.

“I know she is close to the president and has his ear,” said Mr. Canada, whose nonprofit group has received $600,000 in personal donations from Mr. Bloomberg.

A close adviser to the mayor, who stayed neutral in the presidential race, described the campaign’s pitch to the White House this way: “He didn’t pick sides in your race. Don’t pick sides in his.”

The president’s office agreed, and in early October alerted Bloomberg aides that it would offer only a halfhearted Friday afternoon endorsement for Mr. Thompson, and Mr. Obama did not campaign with him.

In the race for mayor of New York City, there was one campaign on the surface. But there was a more dramatic effort, unfolding behind the scenes, that really mattered: ensuring, through money and muscle, that Mr. Bloomberg faced no serious obstacle to winning a third term.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

If nothing else, Cliff Lee’s no-earned-run complete-game mastery and brilliant fielding last night during Game One of the World Series between the Phillies and Yankees will be useful in that it may actually shut up the New York Post, which has been stupidly and relentlessly on Philadelphia’s case for some reason or other since the Yankees finally clinched the pennant.

You know the type of stories the paper is running — the ones where it takes like six reporters to go out and interview yahoos who will say stuff about how Philadelphia is “a nothing city” (I often wonder whether people outside of New York actually care about New York as much as people in New York want to believe people outside of New York care about New York) or that the Phanatic mascot isn’t even as cool as the “retarded” Mr. Met mascot (classy, printing that quote). I almost want the Yankees to lose just to chasten the Post.

As Lee continued to shut down the Yankees’ offense over the course of the game — while the Phillies’ Chase “WFC” Utley hit not one but two home runs against Yankees ace C.C. Sabathia — it was tough to resist that time-worn cliche of “that’s why they play the game.” And sometime last night — probably after Lee struck out A-Rod for the third time — it occurred to me that a Yankees World Series loss would lessen the sting of a Bloomberg victory: The Yankees could be the sacrificial lambs for the sins of Michael Bloomberg.

If Bill Thompson can’t fulfill the role of underdog, then maybe the Phillies can. It will prove that maybe you can’t just spend hundreds of millions to win. It will put the elite in their place. It will shut up the Post! And should this all transpire, I want to believe that Bloomberg sycophantically hanging around the Yankees clubhouse on Sunday night and pandering to fans in Times Square on Wednesday will be the curse that catalyzed the team’s World Series failure.

. . . .

Speaking of the Post, let’s keep picking on the Post. The paper’s noxious endorsement of the mayor hinged on three areas — education, crime and the city’s finances.

On education, the Post’s editorial board argues that “Mike Bloomberg will be remembered as the mayor who brought accountability to the system. Supervisors, principals, teachers, students — all are now expected to show results. And they have, often spectacularly.” Let’s put it into perspective. Bloomberg put the board of education under the control of the mayor, which allows voters to punish a mayor for an under-performing system. That’s nice if you’re a lazy voter, and can’t be bothered to pay attention to the machinations of the school system, much less figure out which board members to vote for when school board elections come up. But I question whether this mayor — or any mayor — can really take credit for success in the school system. Bloomberg knows this, which is why they’ve been puffing up the test scores, this despite questionable results (and I’m assuming there’s a perfectly good reason why the NAEP scores for New York City are going to be delayed two weeks). Bloomberg shouldn’t oversell mayoral control, and he shouldn’t go after Thompson for an under-performing school system during Thompson’s tenure as board president when the truth is much more complicated than that. Look at it this way — is it Bloomberg’s fault that the Department of Buildings was apparently infiltrated by the mafia? Hey, now that I think about it, maybe Bloomberg should be held accountable — goose, gander, etc. At least Board of Education incompetence didn’t cause actual deaths . . .

On crime, the Post writes “Bloomberg and Commissioner Ray Kelly took a crime rate that already was declining dramatically and drove it to levels not seen since the ’60s. And they did so even while deploying significant resources into counterterrorism — helping to keep New York safe from another 9/11.” You don’t even have to read that closely — “a crime rate that was already declining.” Do you really think a mayor has much control over the crime rate? If so, then you’re much more idealistic than I am, though I’m guessing you probably also haven’t watched all that much of The Wire either. As for counterterrorism — well, for argument’s sake, let’s say the mayor actually does get out there, Jack Bauer-like, to keep us all safe. Actually, no, let’s not, because that is another absurd argument (though are you really impressed by the NYPD’s spurious sting operations and bungled investigations?). What’s more, it’s offensive to the many municipal and federal law enforcement officials who actually do their best to keep us safe to act like the mayor is somehow responsible for our safety. Giuliani’s recent Giuliani-like boasting about Bloomberg’s terror-fighting prowess was the quintessence of this asinine argument.

On finances, the Post writes “Eight years ago, Bloomberg took a city driven deep into recession by 9/11 and helped bring it back. Last June, he delivered a budget that cut spending by $1.5 billion — even as Albany’s budget grew by 10 percent” before acknowledging that the mayor’s deals with the unions may bankrupt the city (in so many words). I don’t buy that the city was “driven deep into recession” after September 11, 2001 because — especially compared with the current recession — the one following 9/11 wasn’t all that deep. And — let’s be crystal clear — mayors don’t fix the economy. Mayors may fix potholes and sanitation schedules, but they sure don’t do much for a worldwide economy. Even really smart businessmen like Michael Bloomberg. As for the second claim — that Bloomberg delivered a budget that cut spending — well, OK, maybe he cut spending a little. But A) I’m not convinced the budget savings weren’t merely the result of illusory accounting, since it’s easy to squirrel away or otherwise conceal $1.5 billion of a nearly $60 billion budget — and we’ll see how he manages a budget in 2010, should he make it that far; and B) you’re really comparing the city to what they do in Albany? Sounds like a backhanded compliment to me . . .

But you have to like an endorsement that starts out saying “It can be hard to warm to Bloomberg’s governing style, and we have little patience for his often arrogant nanny-state meddling in New Yorkers’ private lives.” Nice.

The Times’ Bloomberg endorsement — hidden in the Saturday paper, by the way — works similar debate-club style gymnastics to come to a conclusion. Their lede is absurdly fawning: “The real test of any mayor is how well the city works. In his eight years in office, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has managed to make the unpredictable city of New York work astonishingly well.” Wow — “astonishingly”? Were you at any point “astonished” by how well the city ran during Bloomberg’s tenure?

Second paragraph: “Mr. Bloomberg has been a first-rate steady hand during unsteady times. He guided the city out of the post-9/11 recession, then tucked away money during the boom years that followed.” “Guided the city out of the post-9/11 recession” sounds familiar to what the Post wrote. Is this taken from bullet points or something? We’ll see just how much money has been “tucked away” — I question whether it will be anywhere near what is supposed to be needed to plug a 2011 budget gap — but it is interesting to note that candidate Thompson spoke out last year for an actual rainy day fund, and not just raiding random accounts.

And check out this important point: “He has run the $60 billion government with a keen attention to accountability and efficiency. He has chosen some of the best people in the country to work for him, and he has mostly let them do their jobs. As a result, many city services operate better than they have for years. The garbage mostly disappears on time.”

The garbage “mostly disappears on time.” Again — wow. If that’s the case, why not go for a fourth term? What else here . . . oh, “Public education is better over all” (no real data or argument to back that up) and “Crime is down under Raymond Kelly, the police commissioner” — at least they didn’t try to say that Bloomberg actually “drove crime levels down,” like the Post wrote.

Both editorials feel the need to admonish Bloomberg’s churlishness. That’s not insignificant. The Times writes, “Finally, like others who have not always agreed with the mayor, we worry about his difficulty brooking dissent.” I think they are talking about mayor’s leadership qualities, especially vis a vis building consensus, which Bloomberg is not good at and which is one of the few traits that actually matters in an executive. Take his West Side Stadium defeat and failed congestion pricing proposal — two initiatives that would have been cornerstones of his development/job creation and environmental record. Those failures can’t all be due to a recalcitrant state legislature (or even Sheldon Silver). There’s a pattern there, and that pattern shouldn’t be relegated to near the end of a lukewarm endorsement.

. . . .

You want to read something funny? Compare the Observer’s endorsement with the Times’ endorsement. First the Observer (emphasis added):

The mayor’s record speaks for itself. Critics complain that voters are being brainwashed by the mayor’s free-spending campaign, but Mr. Bloomberg’s popularity has more to do with his accomplishments than with the quality of his television commercials. His place in history was ensured the moment he took office, because on January 1, 2002, the city still was recovering from the attacks of 9/11. The city was on edge, emotionally and fiscally, on that January morning. Mr. Bloomberg helped lead the city from its despair with a combination of reassurance, compassion and financial acumen.

In the years since, Mr. Bloomberg has defied conventional wisdom, as he and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly continued to drive down crime even after the historic decreases under Rudolph Giuliani. He told us to hold him accountable for the performance of the city’s public schools, and he is now reaping the benefits of a school system that no longer is dysfunctional, unaccountable and unsafe. He returned the city to its rightful place as a leader in public health through his campaigns against smoking and trans-fats. He recruited capable deputies and let them do their jobs.

Then the Times (again, emphasis added):

What makes the mayor stand out is not his political skill, although he has come a long way since his first clumsy days in office. He has run the $60 billion government with a keen attention to accountability and efficiency. He has chosen some of the best people in the country to work for him, and he has mostly let them do their jobs. As a result, many city services operate better than they have for years. The garbage mostly disappears on time. The police and fire departments respond quickly. Mr. Bloomberg’s 311 phone line allows New Yorkers to complain to a live human being. Often, they even see tangible results.

Public education is better over all — although parents still need more access to their children’s teachers and schools. The mayor’s new complaint line for parents should help, as will other changes imposed by the Legislature. But in a third term, the mayor and his team should still work harder to listen to those who hand over their children each morning to his educators.

Crime is down under Raymond Kelly, the police commissioner, although there is concern again about stop-and-frisk actions, which seem to focus too heavily on Hispanics and African-Americans. Mr. Bloomberg also has been a national leader in gun control.

The mayor’s environmental efforts — stalled in Albany — show admirable concern about the city’s future. And he has worked hard to improve the city’s health — most effectively with the smoking ban.

The Post endorsement actually sounds even more similar to the Observer’s language on crime: “Bloomberg and Commissioner Ray Kelly took a crime rate that already was declining dramatically and drove it to levels not seen since the ’60s.” The “accountability” portions in the Post and Observer endorsements sound similar as well. All three endorsements sort of lob up there the same hackneyed reasons to vote for the mayor. All three sound like stupid bullet points. None seem serious.

The largest issue for most voters is the third term nonsense — another “not insignificant” concern, but the Post brushes it off: “No doubt, some New Yorkers are angry about how Mayor Mike used his considerable resources to having them set aside to allow him to run again. It was a characteristic display of Bloombergian hubris, and we suspect that it will cost him on Election Day.” The Times doesn’t mind that the term limit issue went down the way it did because the editorial board happens to agree with the outcome (I recall similar arguments during the Iraq War and subsequent failure to uncover WMD). Instead, the Times somehow believes that allowing every city councilmember, borough president, the public advocate, comptroller and mayor to run again somehow offers voters “more choices” — and they’re right; after all is said and done, voters will get precisely one more choice. It’s Orwellian logic. The Daily News makes the same argument in its endorsement.

. . . .

But let’s move to real talk. The real problem with the third term isn’t that Bloomberg either bought off or wielded power to influence the elite — the editorial boards, the power players — to accept the proposal to ignore term limits. The most egregious thing is that Bloomberg poisoned the democratic well for those of us who aren’t in roles of power, and that will have a much longer effect on the city. When voter apathy is low everywhere, but especially in sclerotic New York (cf. eight percent turnout for last month’s runoff, a vote that actually had a significant outcome), it sends a bad message. And it doesn’t just send a bad message to educated, older voters who will participate anyway (and continue to vote in years to come) but rather to those who don’t see a reason to participate in the first place. How many youths — even people into their 30s — have come of age politically during Bloomberg’s tenure, and developed their ideas about democratic participation while he steamrolled through $200 million-plus to get himself elected? How will this third-term charade affect their ideas about democracy? Bloomberg and his supporters (Bono! Shilpa! Cherry!) haven’t answered for this or even acknowledged it. We deserve better.

. . . .

But what if the unthinkable happens? Is a Bloomberg victory really a foregone conclusion? Remember the Phillies. For one bright, shining moment last night, the Phillies reminded Yankees fans “that’s why they play the game.”

And if somehow both the Yankees and Bloomberg lose, then that would be epic. New York Magazine will craft a trend piece on the end of New York. Spike Lee could make a film about it, just like he did with 1977. Howard Wolfson will walk away looking like a huge dick. And maybe, just maybe, the rest of the country will breathe a huge sigh of relief knowing that New Yorkers are not nearly as vapid as they appear! It will be a victory for all. So go vote Tuesday. You know what to do.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Just when we start to root for street fighting Newark mayor Cory Booker, he disappoints us with this:

On April 17, Mr. Booker, a Democrat, crossed party and state lines by endorsing Mr. Bloomberg, an independent running as a Republican, in Harlem. About a month later, Mr. Bloomberg’s longtime accountant contributed $26,000 — the maximum allowed — to Mr. Booker’s re-election committee, according to campaign finance records.

Technically, the contribution to Mr. Booker’s 10-member slate, which includes 9 Municipal Council candidates, was made by Martin J. Geller, Mr. Bloomberg’s accountant. But Mr. Geller has long had a habit of contributing money to candidates or committees that the mayor supports, with a total of $100,000 in 2007 to Senate Republicans in Albany being one notable example.

The Booker contribution is only the second one that Mr. Geller has made to anyone in New Jersey politics. In 2005, he gave $2,000 to the campaign efforts of the Assembly Republicans in Trenton. At that time, Mr. Bloomberg was still registered as a Republican.

. . .

Never was Mr. Booker more effusive than on Sunday when he traveled with Mr. Bloomberg to black churches in Queens.

“My big brother mayor,” Mr. Booker said in describing Mr. Bloomberg, during a rousing address at the Rev. Floyd H. Flake’s Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral in Jamaica, Queens.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Tom Robbins notes what you may have missed regarding Bloomberg’s tenure now that the media has moved away from producing investigative journalism including NYC-TV, Stuyvesant Town and Mayoral Control. And then there’s this:

Actually, the joke’s on us. Even as newspaper fortunes sank in recent years, Bloomberg diligently courted media barons like Zuckerman, Murdoch, and Sulzberger, who he understood could make his life difficult if they so chose. Minus their support, as Joyce Purnick’s new Bloomberg biography proves, he would have never risked his end run around term limits. But he knew he had little to fear. As Purnick’s book also tells us, even his weekend disappearing act to go to his mansion in Bermuda has gone unchallenged.

“He does his radio show Friday morning,” a former aide told her. “At 11:05, the latest, he’s in his car. At 11:30 he is at the airport. His plane is in the air at 11:40, he’s in Bermuda at 2:10. He’s on the golf course by 2:30. . . . Almost every weekend, spring and fall.”

There’s a photo op that’s been even more closely guarded than military caskets arriving at Dover Air Force Base: Mayor Mike, golf bags over his shoulder, striding across the tarmac toward Air Bloomberg.

But of course all that golfing had a purpose — like puff pieces about the mayor’s golf score. And then there are the I [heart] NY golf balls. And of course the mayor’s own vision of immigration reform . . .

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Since the beginning, the mayor and his editorial board lackeys argued that allowing the mayor to buy a third term constituted “more choices” or “more democracy”. Apparently that won’t also translate to more voters:

And a number of political analysts say that a predicted record-low turnout next Tuesday may jeopardize Mr. Bloomberg’s projected double-digit victory margin and even deliver him a third term with the lowest total vote received by a New York City mayor in nearly a century.

. . .

Mr. Bloomberg won in 2001 with 744,000 votes. He won a second term four years later with 753,000 of the 1.3 million cast. If as few as 20 percent of eligible voters turn out and Mr. Bloomberg wins even by a 10-percentage-point landslide, he would be re-elected with fewer than 500,000 votes — the lowest total since John F. Hylan’s in 1917.

That, by the way, was before women were allowed to vote and when the city’s population was smaller by nearly three million.

Which is all funny, in a ha-ha funny kind of way, as Clyde Haberman reports:

Buoyed by the polls and his own astonishing campaign spending, Mr. Bloomberg seems confident that four more years at City Hall are in the bag for him. Monday morning, he spoke about the New York that he envisioned in 2013, when his third term would end. This was in a speech to students attending New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service.

He was pleased, he told them, to speak at a school named for “a distinguished three-term mayor.”

That produced thin laughter. Maybe the students had the Monday morning blahs. Or maybe they simply didn’t think it was funny.

“I thought I’d get a better laugh than that,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “It’s not easy to do three-term jokes, folks.”

There’s a reason for that.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

It’s bad enough that your crappy ads are on every half inning, but this, too? Let’s get this horrible campaign over with already:

Following the Yankees’ clinching win over the Los Angeles Angels, the Fox cameras were trained on the podium, as various presentations were made and interviews conducted. And just to the right, Mayor Bloomberg held his position on the podium, so long that it almost seemed awkward.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

If this doesn’t make you finally want to leave the city, I don’t know what will:

According to a 2005 NYC Housing and Vacancy survey, 40 percent of Big Apple citizens live in one-bedrooms or studios. While there’s no breakdown of how many of those dwellings house kids, anecdotal evidence indicates that a lot of families are making do — and making whoopee — in uncomfortably close quarters.

Will the mayoral race in New York look anything like the one in Albuquerque? Tonight’s the night:

The Thompson campaign seems to think [the term limit extension issue is salient for voters], and they’re looking at the recent mayor’s race in Albuquerque, where the mayor, Martin Chavez, was defeated after he successfully sued to throw out the law barring him from seeking another term.

. . .

Three days after Chavez’s defeat, a reporter asked Bloomberg if he was afraid the same thing would happen to him. Bloomberg, standing in his campaign headquarters with the term-limited mayor of Miami, Manny Diaz, said he wasn’t, because “the politics there are different than the politics here.”

Some differences:

In Albuquerque, there were three candidates.

In Albuquerque, the third candidate in the race was a Democrat, like the incumbent. One siphoned votes from the other while the Republican candidate, Berry, consolidated his base. Also, both Berry and the other challenger, Romero, focused their attacks on Chavez.

In Albuquerque, the election was nonpartisan.

And most notably, in Albuquerque, all the candidates participated in a public financing program that capped their spending.

That last difference — spending — explains the absurdity of Bloomberg arguing that it “costs a lot of money to get a message out” — this despite the fact that he has had eight years to craft said message, and that he has the best name recognition of any other mayor in America.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Six paragraphs into the Post story about a lawsuit filed against Steiner Sports, the entity responsible for reselling collectibles from Old Yankee Stadium, for allegedly selling seats not as advertised, this detail sticks out in particular:

Back in May, when the sale of seats was announced, Steiner and the Yankees made no secret of the fact that all the original paint would have to be stripped because of lead. A new color, resembling the faded blue, was used to simulate their original appearance.

The Yankees really do want to kill you.

Location Scout: Old Yankee Stadium.

. . . when it comes to the shocking rise in Santeria sacrifices in the city over the past year. It seems everyone is resorting to whatever means necessary to rid the city of this tremendous curse:

An emaciated goat wandering Pelham Bay Park. A pig’s head placed on a desolate street near the Green-Wood Cemetery. A dead rooster lying near a tree in Forest Park in Queens.

These bizarre discoveries have popped up with shocking frequency this year, making Big Apple parks look like makeshift sacrificial altars and grazing grounds for livestock left over from religious rituals.

In the last few months, four goats have been found in public places in The Bronx. And a total of six were found in the city in the last year, according to Animal Care and Control. That’s on top of 19 reported incidents of animal remains found in parkland, according to the Parks Department.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

More do-it-yourself editorial board. The Times bemoans Bloomberg’s obscene spending:

New York City’s campaign finance system is one of the best in the country. He does everyone a disservice by not complying with the system’s limits on spending.

Elsewhere on the opinion page, Bob Herbert calls the mayor’s race baiting a sign of vulnerability:

That the mayor is now willing to lock his principles in a safe deposit box and start riding the broomstick of ethnic politics suggests that he’s worried about the outcome of his race against Mr. Thompson . . .

*Everyone except El Diario, that is. And the Amsterdam News. Good for them. Also, do you wonder why the Times chose to run this endorsement on Saturday?

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

For a public figure, the prospect of earning a third opportunity to perform the second-toughest job in America brings with it a spine-stiffening sense of honor and the narcotic-like thrill of self-sacrifice. But this is not to say that spending more money than Ross Perot to accomplish that feat in any way betrays signs of weakness:

Michael R. Bloomberg, the Wall Street mogul whose fortune catapulted him into New York’s City Hall, has set another staggering financial record: He has now spent more of his own money than any other individual in United States history in the pursuit of public office.

Newly released campaign records show the mayor, as of Friday, had spent $85 million on his latest re-election campaign, and is on pace to spend between $110 million and $140 million before the election on Nov. 3.

That means Mr. Bloomberg, in his three bids for mayor, will have easily burned through more than $250 million — the equivalent of what Warner Brothers spent on the latest Harry Potter movie.

The sum easily surpasses what other titans of business have spent to seek state or federal office. New Jersey’s Jon S. Corzine has plunked down a total of $130 million in two races for governor and one for United States Senate. Steve Forbes poured $114 million into his two bids for president. And Ross Perot spent $65 million in his quest for the White House in 1992 and $10 million four years later.

. . .

He has spent at least 14 times what his Democratic rival in the race, William C. Thompson Jr., has: $6 million.

The heady display of overwhelming force also provokes adulation from supporters and admirers:

The Sanitation Department reported yesterday that Thompson’s campaign is facing a hefty $125,775 bill for plastering city property with 1,677 illegal campaign posters.

. . .

In contrast to Thompson, Bloomberg’s campaign has been cited for 70 violations.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

“Cracks Emerge in Ramps at New Yankee Stadium”:

The concrete pedestrian ramps at the brand-new $1.5 billion city-subsidized Yankee Stadium have been troubled by cracks, and the team is seeking to determine whether the problems were caused by the installation, the design, the concrete or other factors, according to several people briefed on the problems.

The ramps were built by a company accused of having links to the mob, and the concrete mix was designed and tested by a company under indictment on charges that it failed to perform some tests and falsified the results of others. But it is unclear whether work performed by either firm contributed to the deteriorating conditions of the ramps.

. . .

One person with knowledge of the matter said the cracks and deterioration were unusual.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

And don’t think he doesn’t make every effort to get to all five boroughs:

On Oct. 11, Bloomberg parachuted (not literally) into Morris Park for a brief march in the annual Columbus Day Parade. Thompson didn’t make it. Before the mayor jumped back into his black SUV, he was heckled by about a dozen protesters (and one dog) upset with the city’s opening (without community notification) of several new homeless shelters in the borough, according to reporter David Greene.

John Bonizio, of the Westchester Square Merchants Association, called Bloomberg a “traitor,” adding, “His coming up to this middle class neighborhood to march in a parade for votes is disrespecting us, with what he’s getting ready to do to this neighborhood.”

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Deep down, we are all that 7-year-old Staten Island girl:

After the press conference, Bloomberg attempted to give a high-five to a 7-year-old girl — but was rebuffed. “She left him hanging,” laughs an eyewitness.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

The Times’ Clyde Haberman* notes the selective quoting from certain endorsements for certain mayoral candidates:

Take an endorsement of the mayor issued this week by Citizens Union, often described as a good-government group, as if there were bad-government groups. (Hang on, there is one. We almost forgot about Albany.)

A news release from the Bloomberg campaign announcing the endorsement cited its praise of mayoral actions on crime, education, public health and technological innovation.

Somehow, it omitted other noteworthy points. Like the group’s disapproval of the billionaire mayor’s rewriting of the term limits law to turn himself into Bloomberg L.P.: Long Playing. Like the displeasure with his “excessive” — an adjective that some others have used is “obscene” — campaign spending.

The cherry-picking would do a Broadway press agent proud.

Which made me think — all of us should selectively quote from those Soviet-like editorial endorsements that have been rolling out lately. Today, for example, there’s the Post:

No doubt, some New Yorkers are angry about how Mayor Mike used his considerable resources to having them set aside to allow him to run again. It was a characteristic display of Bloombergian hubris, and we suspect that it will cost him on Election Day.

It’s all much better this way! Now we can make believe that there’s still sanity left at the editorial boards across the city.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

*Don’t not click through to his column; there’s a provocative claim of racial coding on the part of Bloomberg with his recent Detroit warning.

It won’t be such a spectacular upset if the editorial boards of every newspaper in town don’t endorse him. Thankfully, here are two more: The Observer, which absurdly argues that being the mayor of New York City is the second-toughest job in America, and the Advance, which slyly notes that “perfection in this life, and especially in this city, is impossible.”

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Inasmuch as the mayor has attempted to craft the narrative of his tenure as a triumph over politics of the past vis a vis mayoral control of schools — the results of which relying on tenuous claims of test score success — it makes sense to focus on Bill Thompson’s position as school board president. But after the Times actually investigated that role, a fool’s errand as much as anything, Thompson doesn’t come off so badly:

His was a long tenure, and Mr. Bloomberg and his aides heap scorn on it. “A true warrior speaks out and fights for mayoral control,” said Christopher Cerf, a deputy schools chancellor now working for the Bloomberg campaign. “Bill Thompson did none of that.”

Legislators suggest this criticism is not apt; they were not going to hand over control of the schools until Mr. Giuliani exited. And Mr. Thompson’s epitaph lists accomplishments, including test scores that rose for four years.

“To bring calm to the circus mattered,” said David C. Bloomfield, the Board of Education’s former general counsel. “To the degree that it was Bill’s job to be a political operative, it was to keep a lid on, and to make sure that the chancellor was able to do his job.”

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

“If Mike Bloomberg is going to stick around until 2014, he wants to have all possible power at his disposal. How he uses that power can’t completely efface the fact of how he gained it.”:

Even if the cause was unseemly, the execution of the political strategy to rewrite the law was staggeringly impressive, enlisting Bloomberg’s moneyed friends and the friends he’s made with his money and displaying an impressive eye for detail. An ethnically diverse cast of average citizens appeared in the front row at the council hearings, clutching preprinted signs reading democrats for choices. Bloomberg campaign aides like Patrick Brennan were suddenly “volunteering” their time to round up supporters to pass the needed City Council bill extending term limits. When Linda Gibbs, the mayor’s head of Health and Human Services, lobbied an official at a social-services group to make calls to council members, there didn’t seem to be much choice. The mayor’s operatives coaxed a wide range of recipients of his charitable donations to testify, but most were smart enough that they didn’t need an invitation. The Public Art Fund has received at least $500,000 from Bloomberg; its head, Susan Freedman, spoke enthusiastically on the mayor’s behalf — and, she says, with a clear conscience because of Bloomberg’s belief in the importance of the arts. “Do you think you would need to twist my arm to have me want this kind of leadership continue?” she said afterward.

The parade of witnesses included Mario Cuomo, the former governor, who is now of counsel to Willkie Farr & Gallagher, the firm that is defending Bloomberg L.P. against sexual-discrimination lawsuits and that has as one of its top partners Richard DeScherer, Bloomberg’s lawyer. Geoffrey Canada, who runs the Harlem Children’s Zone, spoke of his worry for New York’s most vulnerable during the downturn. He didn’t mention that his organization has city contracts worth millions of dollars and has received more than $500,000 in private money from Bloomberg.

“It’s a legitimate question, to ask about people being compromised,” Canada says. “But everybody knows we get money from the city! We have since the seventies. I wouldn’t turn down money from anyone who wants to support our programs. But is my vote for sale? Absolutely not. I’m very comfortable with the real reasons I’m supporting Bloomberg — his attention to education, the reduction in crime without the rancor of the Giuliani years, and his fairness in spreading the budget pain.”

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Just as he did for Bush in 2004*, Rudy Giuliani argues that only Michael Bloomberg can save us from the post-9/11 specter of international terrorism:

Former mayor Rudy Giuliani warned Sunday that crime rates could soar to 1990s levels and the city could again be a victim of terrorism if Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t win reelection.

Giuliani’s dire predictions came during a tag-team campaign swing – the first time Bloomberg has tapped the one-time GOP star for help on the stump this election season.

“This city could very easily be taken back in a very different direction,” Giuliani told a crowd of ultra-Orthodox Jews at a breakfast sponsored by Brooklyn’s Borough Park Jewish Community Council. “It could very easily be taken back to the way it was with the wrong political leadership. Politics is important. It’s important toour safety. It’s important to our security.”

Bloomberg said that New York could become another Detroit.

“We all know that cities have gone through great boom times and then turned around and collapsed. Take a look at Detroit,” he said. “It went from a great city with lots of good-paying jobs to a city that’s basically holding on for dear life. All of our gains are always in danger of being turned around.”

*(”The former mayor said he believed that Mr. Bush was in the better position to protect the country from further terrorist attacks. ”One of the reasons the world is safer now is that we are going out and trying to find our enemies and demobilizing them,” he said. ”I was sitting there in Congress the night Bush announced the Bush doctrine. And I remember leaving that night feeling better that the president of the United States had reversed 20 or 30 years playing defense” against potential enemies, he said.”)

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

You’d think that garaging your Porsche in Manhattan was a fairly inelastic expenditure. Not these days:

Garage managers in the swanky 10021 ZIP code say the recession has driven away customers, and it’s little wonder with monthly fees hitting $800 or more. An extra $100 is often tacked on for exotic cars.

Rolls-Royce owner Jonathan Martin said he’s fed up with paying about $500 a month for the privilege of parking and recently started searching for free spaces with the masses.

“The garage rates keep going up around here,” he said.