Finally, the mayoral race is about something big. Thanks to Joe Lhota’s sounding the alarm about Bill de Blasio’s off-the-wall plans, voters now face a clear choice.
Here it is, dear New Yorker: Looking at the last 20 years, do you mostly believe the city made enormous progress? Or do you mostly believe the Giuliani-Bloomberg era was a giant mistake?
The choice is as stark as the candidates’ appeals. Throw in their formative experiences — de Blasio cut his teeth under David Dinkins while Lhota came of age working for Rudy Giuliani — and it’s obvious we’re having a referendum on the last two decades.
In terms Ronald Reagan made famous, the question becomes: Is New York better off now than it was 20 years ago?
My answer is an absolute yes. Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg pursued policies that blossomed into a Golden Age. The litmus test is not whether you agree with everything they did — I certainly don’t. The test is whether their policies improved the city in visible and measurable ways, and whether most people benefited.
On the critical issues, there is no debate. Those who lived here before the Giuliani-Bloomberg era could not imagine today’s public-safety miracle.
Murder is down 83 percent, rape down 55 percent, burglary down 83 percent and car theft down 94 percent. Changes of that magnitude do not happen by accident.
This was a revolution in policing that saved thousands of lives and turned around a city that was becoming unlivable.
Tackling crime was a necessary start, but it wasn’t enough. Because a job is the best social program, Giuliani and Bloomberg, though they differed on particulars, saw regulations, taxes and incentives through the prism of whether they would create jobs.
Again, the results are clear. There were 2.7 million private-sector jobs in 1993. Now there are 3.4 million — a gain of nearly 30 percent.
During the same period, the number of people on welfare fell from 1.1 million to under 400,000.
From Times Square to the corners of the boroughs, much of the city gleams with investment, prosperity and growth. People from around the world buy homes, open businesses and visit because New York is a safe land of opportunity. Very few people felt that way 20 years ago.
Schools are better, too, though the quality of education for most students lags the overall quality of life. There is much work to do.
Indeed, the revolution isn’t complete. Crime remains a problem in many neighborhoods, where the heart-rending wail of mothers who lost children to gunfire still is heard.
Unemployment is double the city average in some places, so more jobs are needed for more people to share the American dream.
A long list of needs reflects a balanced view of the progress and problems. But only Lhota acknowledges both sides. He staunchly defends the gains, but doesn’t pretend everything is fine. He wants to fix what is still broken and help more people climb the ladder of success.
That is not de Blasio’s vision, which holds that the last 20 years were mostly a bust. That wrong-headed view leads to plans that have never worked anywhere and would turn back the clock here.
His attacks on the NYPD would force it into a defensive crouch instead of preventing crime. On job creators, he adopts the rallying cry of Occupy Wall Street that success must be punished with higher taxes and regulations.
His education ideas are destructive. With charter schools an oasis, he would squeeze them with a special tax to pay off the unions.
He claims he will get more “affordable” housing by forcing it from developers, which means he will get less housing — and jobs — of all kinds.
New York tried his path, and, because it failed, switched course 20 years ago. Nine days from now, voters must decide again which way to go — forward or backward.
Triple whammy for the taxman
Even for the boobs at the IRS, last week was a banner week. Three reports found staggering amounts of waste, fraud and incompetence by the taxman.
The trifecta of trouble started with an audit finding that over $110 billion in earned income tax credits were improperly awarded during the last decade; as much as 25 percent of the 2012 payouts went to people who didn’t deserve them.
Next came the bombshell that the agency sent $4.2 billion in child-credit checks to illegal immigrants. A published report said investigators found that 23,994 checks worth $46 million were sent to a single address in Atlanta.
The third report could explain the first two: About 700 contract employees owe $5.4 million in back taxes, the inspector general said.
Alone among federal agencies, the IRS requires employees to pay their taxes as a condition of employment.
Well, that’s what the rules say, but remember what Leona Helmsley said: Only the little people pay taxes.
She was on to something.
O’s disease is revealed
Thanks to the ObamaCare debacle, Americans are getting a close-up of the rot at the core of the Obama administration.
“The majority of people calling for me to resign I would say are people who I don’t work for,” health czar Kathleen Sebelius says.
Press secretary Jay Carney dismisses all those complaining about the screw-ups as “willfully ignorant” and “partisan.”
The refusal to see any criticism as legitimate helps explain why Obama is a failed president. He rammed ObamaCare through Congress without GOP votes, so it is bizarre to claim now that Republicans permanently forfeited all right to complain. His us-against-them mentality restricts input to those who agree with him.
The same dynamic is playing out in foreign policy. Israel, Saudi Arabia, France and Germany have lost confidence in our policies on Syria, Iran and surveillance. They, too, have been shut out because his way is the only way.
Meanwhile, our enemies have his ear. Their complaints alone are taken seriously.
That’s who he is.
So what else is new, Mahmoud?
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is warning of violence unless he gets a peace deal with Israel.
No news there. Violence against Israel is Palestinian Plan A and always has been.
That’s why both sides resisted the talks being pushed by Secretary of State John Kerry. They knew failure would put pressure on some Arabs to demonstrate their fury by killing Jews. That’s how Mideast wars begin.
The talks are supposed to last six more months. If past is prologue, the shooting begins soon after that.
One ‘bridge’ too far
Block that metaphor:
Celebrity chef Sandra Lee, who lives with Gov. Cuomo, just signed a magazine deal with OpenGate Media. Asked what would happen if Cuomo runs for president and Lee campaigns with him, a company official told The Post, “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”