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Who needs to run for president when you’ve got your own army and state department right here in the Big Apple?
Mayor Bloomberg got a bit carried away trying to describe the enormous scope of the city’s sprawling government, calling the NYPD “my own army” and claiming Washington is jealous that New York has so much clout with the diplomatic community since the United Nations is here.
“I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh-largest army in the world,” the mayor boasted.
“I have my own state department, much to Foggy Bottom’s annoyance,” he said in a reference to the US State Department’s location in the capital.
It was Bloomberg unbound during a speech to a conference Tuesday at MIT in Cambridge, Mass.
Clearly on friendly terrain, the mayor offered the type of provocative opinions he has learned over his 10 years in office to largely keep to himself within the boundaries of the five boroughs.
Bloomberg, often seen in recent years as a prospective presidential candidate, relished his role as mayor of the nation’s biggest city.
“I don’t listen to Washington very much, which is something they’re not thrilled about,” he told the college audience.
On at least one point, the mayor’s numbers were way off.
Including civilians, the NYPD is 50,000 strong. That would make it the 46th-largest army in the world, comfortably ahead of Portugal’s 44,900-person force, according to GlobalFirepower.com.
Stu Loeser, the mayor’s spokesman, insisted that Bloomberg wasn’t saying anything new.
“The point he was making is that New York has its own foreign policy. All mayors have an outspoken voice [on international issues],” said Loeser, pointing to City Hall’s pro-Israel stance as an example.
Bloomberg also offered up some of his own visions for improving education.
The United States is losing ground to other countries that hire teachers from the top 10 or 20 percent of the best schools, Bloomberg said. “In America, they come from the bottom 20 percent and not the best schools.”
His prescription for fixing the educational system: get rid of half of the city’s teachers — a position he described as theoretical — and double the pay for the most qualified teachers left behind to teach much larger classes.
That idea left the city’s teachers union howling.
“Double class size in a system that already has some of the largest classes in the state? Sounds like the mayor was having a Cathie Black moment,” said union president Mike Mulgrew, getting in a zinger at the mayor’s failed appointee to the chancellor’s job.
The billionaire mayor, one of the richest men in the nation, left the crowd with advice about not overlooking the value of raising a family or choosing a career such as teaching that might not pay much.
“I think we too much measure success in terms of dollars earned,” he said.
Bloomberg didn’t stop there. He offered up a range of opinions on government and politics:
* Beyond the municipal level, he asserted, elected officials simply do not measure up.
“Unfortunately, people at the federal level or the state level spend their whole lives in politics, and they’ve never been an executive and it shows.”
* One reason to ban smartphones in schools: “Because the lawsuits over the pornography the kids would be watching is just something we couldn’t stand.”