The Mayor, City Council President and numerous other public figures went through verbal contortions explaining why the term limits legislation they had previously backed was suddenly in need of amendment. Bloomberg had earlier said any attempt to circumvent the limits, which had been backed by citywide referendums in both 1993 and 1996, would be "disgusting." Quinn had opposed the idea of changing the rules as recently as last December. Significantly, neither Bloomberg nor his allies are proposing a new referendum to achieve their aim.
The rationale for overturning the law to accommodate Bloomberg's desire for a third term is that only a billionaire like him is prepared to guide the city through the deepening crisis that has been unleashed by the meltdown of the US and global financial system centered in Wall Street. The Bloomberg administration had already announced $1.5 billion in budget cuts, even before the wave of failures, bailouts and buyouts transformed Wall Street's landscape. [...]
In New York, the term limits crusade was spearheaded by another billionaire, cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, an arch right-winger who ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary in 1989 and was soon eclipsed by the far more effective right-wing politician Rudy Giuliani. Having failed miserably in his first bid for public office, Lauder sought influence behind the scenes, bankrolling, to the tune of millions of dollars, the successful referendum for term limits in 1993. [...]
Lauder has surfaced once again, having suddenly changed his mind on the issue. A month ago he announced an expensive new advertising campaign to defend term limits against criticism. Now, however, after some behind the scenes meetings with his fellow billionaire Bloomberg, he has at least partly switched sides.
Mr. Lauder is clearly worried over the political and social consequences of this crisis. He wants to reinforce the rule of plutocracy--government of the rich, and not merely for the rich. He wants someone who can be implicitly trusted to understand the needs of the top one-tenth of one percent of the population.
And Lauder speaks for his class. On the same day the Times printed an advertisement in the form of "An Open Letter" signed by 30 New York-based CEOs and their advisors, some of the very same names we have seen presiding over the financial collapse, including Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, James Dimon of JP Morgan Chase and John Mack of Morgan Stanley. Calling for "continuity of leadership," these billionaires and multi-millionaires write that "today, all we have achieved is at risk ... we call upon the New York City Council to extend term limits in order to give New Yorkers the opportunity to vote for whomever they think can do the best job during these tough economic times, including our current Mayor." [...]
n order to see how the Mayor has become, despite his own protestations, "indispensable" for the ruling elite, it is necessary to examine the role and record of his administration. Bloomberg, the eighth richest individual in the United States, with a fortune of some $20 billion, was elected to succeed Rudolph Giuliani after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. He was called upon to continue the same fundamental policies that had produced a new Gilded Age of unprecedented social polarization in New York and throughout the country.
Bloomberg's task was to execute a shift in style if not in substance. His Wall Street credentials as the founder of the Bloomberg News empire, as well as his mild-mannered moderate persona, following the reactionary provocations of Giuliani, was credited with producing a new era of stability in the city. The ruling elite now convinced itself that it had achieved the best of both worlds--the continuing transfer of wealth to the plutocrats and their milieu, and political calm along with it. [...]
Even so, Bloomberg's years in office have seen no improvement in homelessness and no decline in poverty. Low wage jobs have continued to multiply. The rate of health care coverage for the uninsured and the entire working class has worsened, and the ballyhooed mayoral control of the public schools has produced little except for the testing frenzy and the arbitrary and misleading grading of schools and teachers. At the same time, most prominently, but by no means solely in connection with the mass arrests at the time of the 2004 Republican Convention in New York, the Bloomberg administration has continued Giuliani's attacks on civil rights and liberties, even if a bit less noisily.
Even before the world-changing events of recent weeks, the establishment had been forced to call a halt to even the tiniest of concessions. Bloomberg's own net wealth has reportedly increased by $8.5 billion in the last year, but last January he called for budget cuts totaling nearly $1.5 billion over the next two years, including across-the-board cut of 5 percent for all city departments, while anticipating future budget deficits of more than $5 billion beginning in 2011.
