New York Deserves Eric Adams

This blog is going to post a few redundant posts this year. This is because we’re acknowledging a common theme: Americans don’t give a shit. They don’t care. That's how this empire dies. No one cared to protect it and put smart people in charge.

New Yorkers, who see themselves as special and above all other Americans, also don’t care.

How else to explain the next mayor, Eric Adams?

We know he’s a lunatic. We don’t care. We know he has no real policy ideas. We know he’s not even a Democrat. We don’t care. We know he doesn’t even live here. We don’t care. We know he sides with landlords and real estate developers, and has the audacity to blame young arrivals from Iowa and Ohio for gentrification. And we will never care.

So of course, New York City, confused by two progressives in the race for mayor, tripped, fell and let Eric Adams walk on through by less than 20,000 votes, thanks to very low turnout and a big case of not really giving a shit.

Enjoy your victory lap, Mister Adams. No, you are not the face of the Democratic party. No, you are not a rallying cry that moderates will prevail. No, you are not evidence of some sleeping giant of black power. Not the black power I prefer anyway. What utter horseshit. Fuck Errol Lewis.

Know why it’s all horseshit? Just look at how right wingers are reacting to Adams. They are already trashing him as a ‘corrupt,’ big city politician (read: black). They are trashing him using the same terms they use to trash Joe Biden, another moderate Democrat. See, the Democrats will never learn. You can declare yourself a moderate all you want, you are still going to get trashed by the same Republicans, at the same intensity, over the same non-issues. Democrats who are sincerely moderate in this era are living their dreams to be a popular 1980s Republican. Enjoy it while it lasts. Because it won’t. This republic will soon collapse.

Adams cannot wait to take over from Bill de Blasio in January 2022. He’s going to let the NYPD trample on peoples’ rights, let the real estate developers continue their profit-making run, and keep his voters happy by trashing people like me who live in Manhattan.

Trash Manhattan at your peril, asshole. And Fuck Brooklyn.®

So liberal, progressive town this is not. Look at Buffalo. What a triumph for India Walton and the DSA! Meanwhile we're heading into a dark four years of scandals, insane tirades and incomprehensible speeches. Warren Wilhelm made promises he couldn't keep, was corrupt, made his wife a city employee with a bloated staff and budget, and generally made every press conference an exercise in excuses and squirming about "unfair questions." Adams is going to take incompetence and Trump-like zaniness to a new level. Anyone unfamiliar with the history of the office being a dead-end is going to see it in action. No contemporary NYC mayor ever goes on to be congressman, senator, governor or president.

Mayor de Blasio's Lack Of Courage And Vision Failed His CIty

Mayor de Blasio is an excellent portrait of political cowardice!

Why there's such fear of the police unions remains a mystery to me. I've belonged to a union for 52 years, and I believe unions are one of the keys to empowering workers and redistributing the wealth that labor creates. But police unions are qualitatively different from all other labor organizations. In addition to the usual efforts to increase salaries and benefits, police unions pursue, and nearly always acquire, virtual immunity from either criminal or civil sanctions for their members' atrocious behaviour. Especially with respect to black men, the police have acted with impunity, assured that even murder will never bring the punishment of the law upon them. Until it's clear that the officers of the law are subject to its penalties, American police will kill unarmed black men, brutalize anyone who antagonizes them, and laugh at attempts to restrain them or hold them to account.

Which brings us back to politicians, and white voters. Since 1993, New York city has had three mayors. Rudy, a crackpot fascist, defended every atrocity committed by the police, including cold blooded murder and sexual assault with a broom. His successor, a billionaire, bought three terms in city hall, and massively violated the constitutional protections guaranteed to all residents by pushing "stop and frisk". In other words the voters in America's largest city, put known violators of constitutional rights in power for 20 consecutive years!

And then came DeBlasio. He ran as a liberal and promised an end to the abuses of the police. But, when push came to shove, he displayed a yellow streak in the face of the police unions . Why, I don't know. Maybe, after the gruesome murder of George Floyd, real change may be possible. I've been waiting for racial justice, waiting for white politicians, and above all, waiting for white voters to do the right thing.

Cowardice, denial, indifference-whatever the reason- the result has been dismal.

All Local Governments Are Broke

Back in 1975, New York City almost went broke. Quite a few people, myself included, thought it did. But actually, New York was able to narrowly avoid a city bankruptcy in a famous 11th hour move that is still studied by urban scholars today.

However now, in 2020, as we reel from the first wave of the global SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, we find that the vast majority of city and state governments across the United States are running out of cash. As I see it, it’s not a matter of if municipalities and states declare bankruptcies, but how soon. Once in a while. Democrats remember this looming crisis. and ask for bailouts. But just like the looming collapse of the US Postal Service, it is quickly forgotten.

The COVID-19 crisis is only beginning. Most of us escaped death in the first round. Nearly 40% of us lost their jobs. Some of us are on the brink of a mental breakdown. Now our governments are running out of cash as a second wave of the pandemic creeps closer.

We’re in a world of hurt, and the pain is going to get worse. And very few outlets are reporting it.

New York City Doesn't Need A Mayor

Mayor Warren Wilhelm’s dismal, embarrassing presidential campaign taught me something: New York City has too many elected positions. We got on just fine without a mayor for four months. We don’t need a mayor. We also don’t need borough presidents, who are basically cheerleaders for their respective boroughs. All we really need is the City Council, the CCRB and the City Comptroller. Maybe the Council can appoint a city manager -a de-facto mayor- that they can hire and fire at will. But the Council has the power. The Mayor is just a public face and figurehead. The mayor of New York has always been a dead end job. But now I realize it is an unnecessary job. Let’s revise the city charter and get rid of the office.

An interesting footnote to de Blasio’s four-month vacation, er, I mean campaign, is that he was tailed and harassed by the PBA and the NYPD. The police decided to do a little work slowdown in response to the firing of one of their own who murdered a low-level offender on the street. And what happened? New Yorkers had a slightly better summer as a result. Up until to the UN General Assembly, I saw fewer cops, and I felt no less safe.

So thank you for the work slowdown, NYPD! Our hearts are breaking for the poor, unappreciated NYPD rank and file. To my knowledge, the police have never been held accountable for their behavior. They have been groomed to expect that incompetence and even murderous misbehavior will-and should-be dismissed, with no ill consequences for the police. If that really begins to change, it will constitute a revolutionary moment in police/community relations.

Imagine a New York with fewer cops and no mayor. One can dream. I dream of just that, in federalized city known as the District of Gotham.

New York Gives Away Too Much, Again

Last November, New York announced that it was going to take from its residents and give billions to Amazon.

If Amazon was going to open a large office in New York anyway to support its original programs ("streaming content"), then New York should never have offered incentives or tax breaks aside from the lease of city land. New York offered Amazon far too much. And we’ll be reading articles supporting that in the years ahead.

And that’s if this deal sticks. Perhaps it won’t.

New York attracts smart, energetic people to live there, just as it called me in 1995, when I was just 22. They know what New York has to offer. Pity Amazon didn’t see any value in my city without corporate welfare and publicly-financed handouts. Or maybe, New York isn’t as great as it thinks it is. Maybe having some of the best museums, parks, bars and cultural institutions in the US is not a draw at all. We don’t have the best hospitals and universities in the US. That’s Boston. We don’t have the best mix of dominant professional sports teams in the US either. That’s also Boston. Maybe New York doesn’t realize that it’s not number one in anything aside from population and local taxes. It’s just another desperate city begging corporations to rent space. That’s what this process revealed.

This is classic welfare for billionaires. States and cities should stop giving taxpayer money to the richest corporations and individuals on Earth, and spend it on public projects for the benefit of the people. Wouldn't that be a radical idea. Having a contest between cities intensified the madness and showed the intelligent among us how destructive it is..

This isn’t the first time that New York State has thrown taxpayer money away in trying to attract new companies. The Start Up New York program blew a big budget ad campaign and tax breaks to net either just over or under 1,000 new jobs, depending on which report you choose to believe.

Considering how much Albany was willing to give, one has to wonder if New York’s economy is not as strong as Albany tries to make it appear. Upstate unemployment is a Mississippi-like 11%. The city is now made up of luxury towers full of millionaire families and absentee billionaires built over crumbling infrastructure. New York is not well. And I think Albany showed its hand and its future economic forecast in this deal.

There is strong resistance to this deal. It has already exceeded exceptions in that it has forced Amazon to reconsider leasing land in Queens. And the resistance has proven that the Democratic base in New York has shifted to the left. Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blaso are not progressives, and the base knows it.

And as a footnote to this ordeal, I hope that Mayor de Blasio has killed one of the worst buzzwords of corporate America in the last 20 years: synergy. When he and Cuomo did their rare joint press conference to announce the Amazon deal, de Blasio was asked wouldn’t it be awkward for Amazon to build a corporate campus next to a public housing complex. He answered that having the rich and poor next to each other on the Long Island City waterfront would produce extraordinary “synergy.” In other words, both sides would benefit from each other. Bullshit. Get out of here with that word. That buzzword is now dead. And hopefully, so is the Amazon tax break and subsidy from Albany. Amazon can reconsider Virginia or North Carolina now.