Blog: October 2005

This is taking the "broken windows" theory to a crazy extreme. Just keep your head down, go to work, go out to eat, go home - the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Don't protest, or try to ride your bike (only crazy anarchists ride bikes), or display art, or poster for an art show.

To a police officer, chaos - protests, marches, posters where they shouldn't be, etc. - means crime, and cover for subversives or anarchists, and all things that need to be controlled. Even if that means putting some people in jail for postering.

Later, federal officials said that the threat was of "dubious credibility." Would Bloomberg choose to elevate a warning, perhaps one commonly received by the NYPD, about a low likelihood threat, simply because it was politically expedient? After all, the Bush administration did just that during 2005. On Thursday, I said no, I doubt Bloomberg would do it. Unlike Bloomberg, Bush is not actually interested in governing. He doesn't believe in the federal government as a force for good, just as an opportunity to dole out favors to his friends. He is uninterested in actually governing, hence his copious vacations and seeinly baffling inability to respond quickly or compassionately to Hurricane Katrina. Mike Bloomberg, on the other hand, really is trying to be a good mayor. I disagree with his priorities, many of his policies, and his hostility toward the First Amendment, but I certainly don't think he is trying to let New York City wither and decay the way Bush is trying to do with our federal government.

However, I've started to wonder. At the New York Connection, K exposes the way a few Democrats, now working for Bloomberg, have decided to take the worst from Karl Rove's tactics and repeat lies, made by the Republican Noise Machine against recent Democratic presidential candidates, in an attempt to tar Ferrer. Jordan Barowitz, former Democratic operative, has started accusing Ferrer of exaggerating facts, and commented, "What's next? The Internet?" He is taking a vicious, false smear against Al Gore which was injected into the public consciousness by Rove, and actually perpetuating it, referring to it as if it were true, to score political points against another Democrat. Someone else in the Bloomberg campaign decided to call Ferrer a "flip-flopper," a totally unjustified attack when used against John Kerry last year and equally unjustified when applied to Freddy Ferrer.

We know, therefore, that there are some former Democrats inside the Bloomberg campaign who have no qualms about copying the dirtiest tricks Republicans used against them in the past. So what if one of these same operatives remembered Bush's abuse of terror alerts and, under pressure to solve the debate problem, suggested that the most recent advisory from the Feds be publicized? Could Bloomberg have gone along with that? It's not like he was making something up, just choosing to be more cautious than usual, perhaps. Given the way his campaign has been behaving recently, I'm not so sure Bloomberg, egged on by Barowitz and his ilk, would resist the temptation.

As long as we live, they too will live:
For they are now a part of us,
As we remember them.

—Rabbis Sylvan Kamens and Jack Riemer

Update: correct attribution found and added thanks to a commenter.