For Michael Bloomberg, a funny thing happened on the way to making history. He came to City Hall vowing to be the “Education Mayor,” saying he wanted to improve readin’ and writin’ the way Rudy Giuliani improved public safety.
It hasn’t worked out that way, but something else has: When he leaves office in January, Bloomberg will have earned his stripes as the Health Mayor.
While the ruling that canned his ban on large sugary drinks plays out in the courts, it is already certain that Bloomberg holds a unique position at the intersection of government and public health. From his battle against trans fats, his demand for menu calorie counts, his push to reduce salt consumption, his green-carts program to spread fruits and veggies, and his focus on preventing diabetes and obesity, Bloomberg has forcefully changed Gotham’s eating habits.
His campaign against guns and murder has saved thousands of lives, infant mortality and TB cases are at historic lows, HIV rates and deaths from heart attacks are down and life expectancy is up. His latest efforts—warning about hearing damage caused by loud music on MP3 players and urging teens not to have children before marriage — show the range of his reach.
Mayor Moneybags also uses his personal vault, making a $50 million contribution to stop coal-fired power plants in one of many gifts that show his commitment isn’t bound by city limits.
It all started with smoking. Soon after taking office in 2002, Bloomberg pushed through a ban in bars and restaurants. To say it was controversial then is to laugh now; most New Yorkers love it and supported the no-smoking extension to parks, beaches and other public spaces.
Although the city wasn’t the first to act, passage here created a worldwide domino effect. When Ireland followed suit in 2004, banning smoking in workplaces, including pubs, there was no turning back.
The copycat phenomenon and the test of time illustrate how Bloomberg expanded and redefined government’s public-health footprint. Most of his changes are here to stay.
The candidates seeking to replace him routinely pick apart his other policies, especially on education. But it is impossible to imagine any of them backing smoking in bars again, removing calorie counts from menus or eliminating restaurant grades.
For sure, the jury is still out on some Bloomy initiatives, and others failed. His bicycle mania, part of the “green” agenda, succeeded only in making traffic congestion worse.
Beyond the policies, however, the most disputed part of Bloomberg’s legacy is his use of executive power to get his way. Whether he is in nanny or autocrat mode, the mayor always likes to act without compromise.
Marshaling a blizzard of statistics, he announces his plans as if the numbers make his case unassailable. His aggressive public-relations team then trumpets supporters to create a sense of momentum and suggest that resistance is futile.
He did all that with his sugary- drink ban, and remains confident it will win in the courts.
“If we are serious about fighting obesity, we have to be honest about what causes it — and we have to have the courage to tackle it head-on,” he said after Monday’s ruling.
Obviously, the state judge on the case didn’t see it that way. Blasting the ban as “arbitrary and capricious,” Judge Milton Tingling (who could lose a few pounds!) said the ban had too many exemptions to be fair and that only the City Council had the power to create a ban.
Perhaps Tingling hasn’t paid attention to Bloomberg’s way. Or maybe he’s never been to the mayor’s office. There, a visitor recalled, Bloomy had a sofa pillow embroidered with a warning: “Don’t start with me. I always win.”
Not always, but often enough to have made a difference.
Better reduce Our Wa$te Size
It could have been the $325,000 robotic squirrel, or the $300,000 spent to market caviar. Or NASA’s spending $1 million for a Mars menu every year, even though no manned Mars mission is planned.
Maybe it was President Obama’s decision to close the White House to the public — while claiming sequester cuts would cause Doomsday and Armageddon rolled into one.
Whatever the cause, Americans are realizing that Washington is running amok and that Obama won’t stop it. Public insight may be approaching a tipping point.
A McClatchy-Marist poll finds that voters trust Republicans in Congress to curb spending more than Obama. The split is narrow — 44 percent to 42 percent — but the findings show why Obama softened his harsh tone and started talking about bipartisanship.
Coming so soon after Obama won four more years with 51 percent of the vote, the survey also finds only 45 percent approve of the way he’s doing his job, while 48 percent disapprove. He’s also lost 5 points of personal popularity, and those who have an unfavorable view of him now match those who are favorable, at 48 percent each.
The waste reports, most coming from Oklahoma’s Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, reflect a nation in a $16 trillion hole. Among his findings are the $1.4 million spent every month to keep 2,000 dead people on food stamps, a $350,000 National Science Foundation grant to help golfers, and $445,000 spent on a play about climate change.
Coburn also found Washington spent $10,000 on talking urinal cakes in Michigan, $25,000 for the Alabama Watermelon Queen and nearly $50,000 for Smokey Bear hot-air balloon rides.
Alone, none of these is fatal. But the relentless accumulation reflects an entitlement culture that expects Uncle Sap to pay for everything.
It has to stop, and it will. Either before or after the crash.
Falkland follies
Here’s the good news for the United Kingdom. Residents of the Falkland Islands strongly confirmed their desire to remain an overseas territory, with 99 percent voting yes in a referendum. Only three of 1,600 eligible voters said they’d like to be part of nearby Argentina.
The vote is also the bad news. In a recent history of the British empire, author Piers Brendon quotes visitors who have been to the Falklands. “With frighteningly few exceptions,” wrote one, the population is “a drunken, decadent, immoral and indolent collection of dropouts.”
Another was less kind. Despite a “vision of romantic solitude,” island life is “an unending diet of mutton, beer and rum, with entertainment restricted to drunkenness and adultery, spiced with occasional incest.”
The Brits ought to demand a recount!
Austrian poll is creating a fuhrer
No, this is not from The Onion.
On the 75th anniversary of Hitler’s annexation of their country, 42 percent of Austrians insist “not everything was bad” under the monster. Wait, it gets worse.
A majority, 54 percent, tell pollsters that neo-Nazi political groups would find success in elections if they weren’t banned.
Charming.
Poop on scoop
A headline, “ABC News lands Obama interview,” acts like it’s a scoop. Actually, it’s the opposite. Getting an “exclusive” interview is proof Obama regards ABC as a lapdog guaranteed to kiss his ring.