Michael Bloomberg’s Wealth? As It Allows Non-Democrat Bloomberg To Buy The “Democratic” Party, And That Wealth Buys A Lack of Scrutiny, It Is Time To Look Again At Its Suspect Origins

Overlaid charts from Noticing New York 2014 article, reshaped to show how Bloomberg's increasing annual wealth at the time makes the increasing annual average wealth of the rest of the "Forbes 400" look virtually flat by comparison- Anything suspect about this?  Read the 2014 article.

 While Michael Bloomberg was New York city mayor, Noticing New York had cause to cover him extensively, including how he used money to control and censor information about himself.

As Bloomberg’s wealth is now being used to buy the “Democratic” party from its corporatist leaders, thus only reiterating how those leaders are actually non-Democrat Duopolists, it is time to go back and look at the suspect origins of the money flows Michael Bloomberg controls.  Now, as when Bloomberg was mayor, that money is being used to buy a lack of scrutiny and a lot of false myth making about Bloomberg. .  So that’s another reason to go back and look at how money flowed into Bloomberg’s hands after he announced his intent to hold political office.

I will be writing a lot more about this soon in Noticing New York to bring things up to date, but for the meantime it is important to know where Noticing New York’s articles left off, with this last article in 2014 about Bloomberg’s wealth increases.

One Last Check As Mayor Leaves Office- Bloomberg’s Increasing Annual Wealth: 1996 to 2013, Plus Updates On His Annual “Charitable” Giving,  January 18, 2014.

When Bloomberg first announced his interest in running in this race for the Democratic nomination, I tweeted in October:

Emoluments Clause violations Round 2: Michael Bloomberg, who threatens to step in to replace departing Biden, did with his terminals what Trump does with his hotels, amassing inexplicable wealth as NYC mayor.

A Giant Leap Forward Into Tiny Benefits: Bloomberg Micro-Apartment Initiative Shrinkage Grows Under de Blasio

The architectural question in a nutshell: With good design, how much space do people really need to live well?

It’s big news about the value that can be crammed into the what’s small.  Saying that good things can come in small packages is a teeny-weeny, really shrunken-down understatement when good creative design is unleashed to run rampant in terms of what it can accomplish.

Coverage of shrinking Micro-Units and their future from Curbed

Bold new design concepts the de Blasio administration is endorsing for adoption via new NYC Department of City Planning regulatory changes will, as a furthering step, grow the micro-apartment initiative launched by the Bloomberg administration that started back in 2013.  Many will remember how good tiny (“squeezy living”) apartment design was being studied by the Bloomberg administration when Mayor Bloomberg, vying with global warming champion David Koch for the title of wealthiest New Yorker, paced off, with uber-wealthy city planning commissioner Amanda Burden, the smallest space that economically challenged New Yorkers looking to be thrifty could live in.

Why wealthy City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden and mega-billionaire Mayor Michal Bloomberg even have room for company as they searchingly examine to consider the tiniest apartment size fellow New Yorkers might live in.

A design competition held by Bloomberg’s administration led to micro-apartments that have already been built (Monadnock Development’s “Carmel Place”) to receive rave reviews by real estate industry press.   Special permission was given to have apartments of just 275 to 300 square feet ignore what were obviously outmoded tenement-banishing city rules that previously required new apartments built to exceed 400 square feet.  While that was first a trial exception its has been formalized as a new standard.

But shrinking apartments down to 275 or 300 square feet was obviously wasting space when good design can make apartments that are far smaller great fun to occupy while showing off one’s inventiveness.  Having started by thinking of small apartments that were 275 or 300 square feet as the new frontier, officials in the de Blasio administration were profoundly embarrassed to be confronted by the startling elegance of a Paris apartment that was garnering social media attention. That apartment was 8 square meters. . . or, converting from the metric system, it was, in square foot terms, an 86 square foot apartment, not even a third the size of what the Bloomberg set as its goal for what would be a supposedly “micro-apartment.” 

From the viral video of the Paris apartment.  Click if you want to try to enlarge.  It has captions- "Several ways to use the space are possible depending on different needs." "Easy to access"  for the bed in the top cupboard. "Proof that a small space doesn't have to necessarily mean a poor space."

That Paris apartment showed how versatility and good organization can ensure that space that could seem cramped seems humongous instead.  Another advantage: New Yorkers living modern lives and looking to frugally save their money have found that a smart crafty move in many respects is to own less "stuff."

When good design gets unleashed everything with respect to size is relative.  As Shakespear’s Hamlet once told companions Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space.”  Just as the superb ingenuity of the Paris apartment enlarged and made the Paris apartment hugely magnified and spacious, distilled inventiveness the de Blasio administration is fostering is making it possible to make even less space than that seem and and actually be utilized as if it as bigger.

The de Blasio administration decided to advance the achievements of the micro-unit program after the warm reception and good press coverage it got for its continuation of Bloomberg’s shrink-and-sink program for reducing the size of New York City libraries.  That program lets real estate developers willing to work with the de Blasio administration get the benefits of owning most of the real estate previously entrusted to the city for public library use.

Once upon a time, candidate de Blasio running for the office of mayor decried these Bloomberg administration sell offs saying: “once again we see, lurking right behind the curtain, real estate developers who are very anxious to get their hands on these valuable properties.”  More recently, de Blasio has been amplifying his thoughts expressed then saying: “When you think `curtains,' you think theater.  The city is an expectant audience.  What we are doing is raising the curtain dramatically so that the real estate industry can take center stage for us and deliver benefits the way that only the real estate industry can!” 

While these new "minimus-micro-units" will be slightly less expensive than larger apartments, they will, on a square foot basis, charge much higher rents than the higher rents per square foot rents that are being charged for the first micro-units constructed in the city, just as those pioneering small units, charged far higher rents, on a per square foot basis, than for typical larger apartments.  That's partly because the units are, on a square foot basis, more expensive to construct since the reduced general living space, means there is a proportionately higher amount of expensive building infrastructure; HVAC, piping, heating, etc.  However, on the flip side, there will be additional simultaneously costs-saving amenities: Tenants will all have easy access to sumptuous and exquisitely furnished common areas including bathrooms and kitchens with multiple hotplates and microwave ovens.

Fred Astaire in "Royal Wedding"- You get the idea: The trick was that the room rotated, which meant that the cealing and walls became more dance floor space for him for his talented footsteps to multiple over.

There is every reason for renters of the new minimus-micro-units to feel “royal” as they occupy them.  The break through enabling their leap forward in fitting people into space came from an architect working at the Marvel Architects firm, Isadore Doonaut Squrlay.  Until recently, working at SHoP Architects, another firm getting a lot of city project related business, Mr. Squrlay signs his correspondence and memos “Izzy,” but is generally referred to around the office as “I.D.”  “I call it my `Royal” idea” said Mr. Squrlay, “because I got my idea from Fred Astaire, more specifically Fred Astaire in `Royal Wedding.’  Probably everybody remembers the famous scene where Fred Astaire dances around a room, first up the walls and then on the ceiling.  Well I was watching that scene and I realized how every which way it flipped the rooms seemed like a different rooms with a whole lot more space we usually don’t think of using.  And I thought: `Why not do this for real? People could be climbing the walls for real!’”

Either Rosencrantz or Guildenstern could come visit Hamlet.

The round rooms unlock and rotate as desired, shifting based on a person’s weight, rolling on ball bearings, “brass balls,” says Mr. Squrlay, “you really have to have brass balls to do something like this.”

Allowing the units this 360 degree flexibility allows for a incredible versatility.  A ceiling becomes a bed, a few angles over it it's a recliner or props you up to read in bed.  If the rotation is left unlocked occupants can get far more (maximus, maximus) exercise walking miles and miles without stopping, never even needing to change the direction of their tread, although that's possible too; you can tread these miles in either direction.  When walking these miles the storage seats become steps like in a step class making the walk a little like the step classes normally available in ritzy gyms.

With the two storage units that also serve as chairs, the denizens of these units can also have visitors although if Hamlet wanted his school chums Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to visit it would probably be best if they came one at a time.  
 

The units will be prefab and easy to produce.  Like the units in the first micro-apartment building launched under Bloomberg those prefab units will be built in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and then stacked by crane at the site.   The round design of the units makes this exceptionally easy, the exact opposite of the problems encountered by Forest City Ratner stacking prefab units to build what was to be its first building at Atlantic Yards (now going by its new alias of “Pacific Park”) where alignment difficulties caused huge problems, interminable construction delays and huge cost overruns.

Because the units are round they can just be dropped into place and then they naturally align taking on a natural hexagonal formation much like a beehive.  “Humans have a lot to learn from nature and the way the insects like bees have organized their living arrangements,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio adding, “It’s no accident that we admiringly refer these as `social insects’.”

Natural hexagonal pattern- Seen in beehive at the right

The units are all required to be precision crafted to uniform size to achieve this perfect hexagonal alignment intended by nature.  That means that different units won't be different sizes for different people, something that has been under discussion as an additional space saver.  In the future different size units could used on an building by building basis, with buildings customized to house differing populations sorted based on the differing stature of individuals in the population.

Units configure an align themselves in a natural pattern

Purnima Kapur, Executive Director of the Department of City Planning, said that the new design presented an intriguing question about calculating the FAR (Floor To Area Ratio) that ordinarily limits building in New York City.  Because the circularity of the units mean that the units technically have no true floor (everything that might be considered floor is also wall and ceiling too) her City Planning department will be able to interpret the regulations that none of these new units need to be counted as using up any of the permitted FAR that normally puts a maximum cap on development although Ms. Kapur did avow that after a period of experiment the department will come up with some restrictions on the maximum size of buildings than can be built containing these units.  Ms. Kapur said that the department’s regulation that the units don’t count against permitted FAR will be a “circular reasoning” regulation.  By the same reasoning, no new laws will be required to launch the program because any laws subjecting units to measurement restrictions don't apply to units that can't be measured (except perhaps by reference to pi- A sort of "pi in the sky program"?).

The city is launching the program with the building of the units in a long list of buildings destined to replace the city’s libraries in all five boroughs. The city’s issuance of Request For Proposals from developers, with specs all detailed by I.D. Squrlay, was issued today, April 1, 2017.

Donald Trump (Whose Son-In-Law Was In on Donnell Library Sale) Puts Library-Selling Stephen Schwarzman In Charge of Economic Policy

It’s like those Frankenstein meets the Wolfman horror movie mash ups that came out of the Universal Studios in the days of yore: Donald Trump, the self-styled `real estate mogul’ whose son-in-law was a principal financial beneficiary of the sudden and secretive sale of the Donnell Library for a pittance meets up with library-destroying Stephen A. Schwarzman, head of Blackstone, the world’s largest real estate investment firm (among other things), the NYPL trustee who helped push the Donnell real estate deal out the door to Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and was even rumored to be personally involved in the deal through his own companies beforehand.

CNBC has reported that president-elect Trump has announced who he will be meeting with frequently as president.   Blackstone CEO Schwarzman (of all people) is to chair a strategic and policy forum for Trump that will be comprised of “heads of some of the largest financial, industrial and media companies in the United States,” selected by Schwarzman.  See: MSNBC- Trump to meet 'frequently' with Blackstone's Schwarzman, other business titans to discuss policy, by Jacob Pramuk, Friday, 2 Dec 2016.
  
One can understand why appointing Schwarzman to such a position and meeting with him frequently would seem juicy in terms of opportunity to Trump given that, as just mentioned,  Schwarzman is the head of the world’s largest real estate investment company.  Think how resplendent and limitless that makes the business possibilities, although that’s not why Trump is supposed to be meeting with people as president.

The fact that Schwarzamn is involved in all or nearly all of the following seven lines of business should have significant attractions to Trump from a business point of view:

    •    private equity
    •    hedge fund
    •    real estate
    •    a large credit business that does highly leveraged credit,
    •    a mergers and acquisition group
    •    a troubled company restructuring business
    •    Raising money for other people in the alternative asset classes from institutional investors

When has the situation even been so ripe for turning a position in government into a money-making profit center?

There is a theory everyone is talking about concerning how we are not supposed to be “normalizing” all of the Trump excesses and the current far-ranging departures from precedent and what was previously viewed as good behavior and proper lawful comportment.  So you have to wonder when the New York Times, looking ahead to the Trump administration, writes an article finding possible precedent for what they foresee in the mega-conflict-of-interest scandals of the eight years that businessman Silvio Berlusconi was prime minister of Italy. . . And, it’s not just business; in the case of each man there have been legal proceedings to deal with charges of their illegally having sex with underage women.  (See: Trump's Potential Conflicts Have a Precedent: Berlusconi's Italy, by James B. Stewart, December 1, 2016.)

In what is possibly a somewhat “normalizing” comparison, the Times article says that Mr. Berlusconi's conflicts were “more blatant than Mr. Trump's potential conflicts, because he owned so much of the Italian media,” while neglecting to point out that there has already been talk about Trump starting his own television network.  Are we sure that’s no longer being thought about, because it’s certainly something that Trump’s campaign advisor, Roger Ailes, exiled from Fox News for sexual harassment, and Trump’s chief White House strategist, Steve Bannon, out of Breitbart News, would probably both love.  (Ailes and Trump were both in the news simultaneously for respective reports of sexual harassment, even as they worked together on the campaign.)

Unfortunately, a great deal of the “precedent” the Times challenged itself to go abroad to find in Italy with Mr. Berlusconi had already had groundbreaking precedent laid for Mr. Trump by Michael Bloomberg as mayor in New York City.  Some years ago Noticing New York wrote about the similarities between Bloomberg and Berlusconi, including the fact that they had neighboring homes in Bermuda.  Both Bloomberg and Berlusconi significantly repositioned where they stood on the charts of financial recognition while they held political office, racking up significant extra billions to inflate their wealth.  Bloomberg, like Berlusconi also had some media muscle to flex, including Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Radio on a local radio station he acquired, and Bloomberg cable television (even as the New York City was regulating cable companies).

The Donnell and other library-shrinking sell-offs were initiated in New York City under Bloomberg as mayor (although de Blasio, breaching the promises of his campaign, has continued pursuing them.)

During the campaign, several variations of a gimmick used by Trump emerged.  It cropped up with Trump’s side-stepping of federal income tax payments and his quid-pro-quo payments of elected officials (“When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do”): He asserted that because he had participated so heavily and successfully in a “rigged system” he was the one who knew best and was the best choice to “fix it,” including telling potential voters that  "Our campaign is about breaking up the special interest monopoly.”

There is actually some precedent in the way we recount history that might make such promises sound less absurd: When Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Joseph Kennedy as the first head of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934 there were gasps about the fox guarding the henhouse, as Kennedy was known for sharp deals taking advantage of insider trading and market manipulation.  Kennedy “knew all the fraudulent, questionable backroom ways of stuffing the pockets of finance’s fattest fat cats.”  Nevertheless, it is generally credited that Kennedy, because he knew so well how the system could be abused, knew how best to root out its problems and reform it and actually did exactly that.

There is hardly any reason to now believe that is where we are headed with Trump. Where is Trump headed? . .

. .   Because Trump, routinely self-contradictory and perpetually caught in lies, can’t be depended on to actually tell us where he is headed, we are supposed to now cultivate a talent for listening through his “cacophony of lies. . [and] nonsense” to hear what he is actually, bigger picture, saying, which according to Masha Gessen, among other things involves the message that he is powerful enough to lie without consequence, something our previous politicians pushing the envelope of false political promise have never before been so immoderate about.

Firmer ground to fall back to is the “pay attention to what I do, not what I say” rule, but that inevitably leaves one playing catch-up.

While it may be that rooting problems out of the system could involve at least a certain amount of stealth (to avoid being too obvious about too soon?), it doesn’t look from any of Trump’s appointments that he is surrounding himself with any allies who would assist in pursuing any kind of reform.

Trump may once have spoken about “draining the swamp” when he was elected while excoriating Goldman Sachs (and Hillary’s Goldman $peechs), but now people perceive that he’s actually `filling the swamp with alligators,’ including multiple Goldman appointments, even to the extent that it might even start causing succession problems back at Goldman.

Trump biographer Pulitzer Prize-wining David Cay Johnston is something of a self-proclaimed expert on Trump, having reported about Trump since the early 1980s.  If you believe Johnston, Trump’s specialty is ensuring he makes a personal profit no matter what does (even making money just campaigning for president) and very typically leaving other people worse off, short-changed as he exits, for instance through bankruptcy.  According to Johnston (better audio if you go to WBAI):

what Donald is a master at is finding a way to extract money from something, make a deal, get an enterprise, pull all the money he can out of it.  This is not a man who creates wealth.  This is not a man with a long-term viewpoint.  He is simply someone who, like a leach, sucks the lifeblood out of a business for himself, and then moves on.

With a huge dossier of back-up files, Johnston says that Donald “has for his entire life embraced con artists, swindlers, violent felons” with the very troublesome involvement of organized crime figures to boot.   David Cay Johnston has been writing for a while about increasing wealth inequality with books like “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)” (2008) and says that government policy now (and this was before it was known that Trump was headed to the White House) is “to take from the many to further enrich the few.”

Ergo, with what the corporations have been doing to us, extracting from the many to further enrich the few, it is perfect that Trump is teaming up with Stephen Schwarzman to chair a group of business leaders to set national policy that can proliferate such approaches throughout the economy.  That is Stephen Schwarzman, who, with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner participating, extracted value from the many for the few with the sale of the Donnell Library.  It is already worried by those looking ahead at these things that when it comes to all the publicly-owned assets of the nation’s infrastructure Trump’s plans will be a “full-on privatization assault,” a “privatization fire sale” ensuring “that private, not common, interests determine where funding is focused.”

The whole situation is rife with possibilities for crony capitalism: Before even assuming office Trump and Vice-President Elect Mike Pence just gave tons of tax-payer money and exemptions from regulatory protections for the public to Carrier, a company that is moving 1,300 jobs from Indiana to Mexico (while, supposedly in return for that government `generosity' keeping just 800 jobs here- another 300 jobs weren't ever possibly going to be moved), while, at the same time, other companies all around Carrier are also moving jobs to Mexico.

No, the signs are terrible.  The fossil fuel extraction industry that profits when it destroys the environment that the rest of us depend on to live will have a climate change denier presiding at the head of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency.  And since climate change destroys the entire planet there is no place to move.

In fact, another reason we need to stay here in this country to fix things, deal with these devils we are getting to know here, is that similar things are happening around the world.

Just as the invaluable Donnell Library was plundered in a shrink-and-sink sale so that a luxury hotel and condominium tower could be built on its site (with Trump’s son-in-law a principal financial beneficiary), so too is the Sheffield Library in England threatened with sale so it can be turned into a luxury “five-star hotel.”   The luxury hotel at the site of the former Donnell was sold to Chinese investors for a record-setting amount (none of this money ever went NYC libraries).  The Sheffield Library is similarly proposed to be sold to Chinese investors.

One floor of the building now housing the Sheffield Library houses the Graves art gallery, an art museum opened by wealthy businessman man John George Graves in 1934 dedicated to ‘the service of knowledge and art.’  While the library would be moved away, the Graves art museum would remain in the building with the luxury hotel presumably enhancing the hotelier’s business prospects.  That sounds rather like what happened with Donnell which was, before it was banished, in a valuable location for a cultural library, across the street from the Museum of Modern Art.   Now it’s the patrons of the luxury Baccarat Hotel that benefit from such convenient access to the museum.

Coverage from the Guardian and the Sheffield Star

Sale of the Sheffield library is vehemently being opposed, by, among others, actor Michael Palin, of Monty Python’s Flying Circus fame, who “has described the proposals as an embarrassment for the city of his birth.”

In a letter to the Sheffield Star Palin wrote:

The Sheffield Central Library embodies the very best aspects of civic pride. It's a fine building, built to give education and literacy a prominent place at the very heart of the city.

That a building, seeking to improve the lot of all Sheffielders, should end up as a hotel for the rich and privileged, seems a sad reflection on how little the city cares for its public service legacy.

There is a quote from Palin on display on the first floor in the library:

There is no institution I value more in this country than libraries.

In its day, Monty Python with Mr. Palin contributing brilliantly, brought us far-fetched laughable conceptions such as the government’s “Ministry of Silly Walks.”  Unfortunately, we are succumbing to much more far-fetched tragedies.  It looks like under Trump we will, in essence, have a new department of the government, headed up by Mr. Schwarzman: “The Ministry of Silly Ideas To Sell off Valuable Public Properties.”

Disclosure: I am a co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries and on the board of the Committee to Save the New York Public Library.

NOTICE TO HUMMINGBIRDS!- How Sweet the Media’s Coverage of NYC Library Administrators Isn’t. . . What You Probably Don’t Know About a Queens Library “Scandal”

NOTICE TO HUMMINGBIRDS!

Mayor Bloomberg cautions
sugary drinks can be bad
for your health and cause
diabetes- Take SMALL SIPS
ONLY . . . No large takeaway
bottles!

But do you remember that BEFORE Mayor Bloomberg was AGAINST sugary drinks he was FOR THEM and he was PUSHING THEM on New York City residents and school children. . . and in New York City libraries?

Do I have your attention?  Would it intrigue you to know that this Bloomberg's pushing of sugary drinks relates to the way that New York City Libraries are being sold and shrunk, handed off to developers with an inside track as real estate deals?

There is a pretty good story here, but it is surprising how hard it can be to get the media to pick up on some pretty good scoops in this area and disconcerting how selectively the news media is choosing  to report certain news. . .

 . .  The Daily News has a Juan Gonzalez article up today reporting that Queens Library head Thomas Galante is likely to be dismissed from his position Thursday night by a newly reconstituted Queens Library board of trustees.  See:  Queens Library chief likely to be suspended in upcoming meeting- Close the book on this one. Thomas Galante, the library's $392,000-a-year president and CEO, who has held the post since 2003, will see his fate decided by a new board of trustees on Thursday night, according to board sources, September 10, 2014.

You may think that Juan Gonzalez is an investigative reporter who delves into things, one that’s going to give you the whole story, everything you need to know.  But do you know what Gonzalez hasn’t bothered to report yet?- What hasn’t been reported at all by the Daily News or the rest of the press as its focuses full bore on this story? . .

. . .  It’s not just that these news stories consistently skip over reporting that Galanate’s salary, the main source of contention in the scandal making abject claim on their focus, is lower than the salaries at the NYPL. .

Do you know that the Queens Library had a long history of standing up to Mayor Bloomberg?

Did you know that The Queens Library system has been expanding its libraries while the BPL and NYPL have been shrinking and selling libraries to hand off as real estate deals?

Did you know that just before Bloomberg left office there was a knock-down, drag-out fight concerning the Queens library board, about what real estate development oriented high-ranking aide the departing Bloomberg would leave as a trustee on the board in violation of the library’s bylaws? . .

. . .  That big board fight was immediately prior to the one now playing out. And the last time Albany stepped in to alter a library board via legislation, as was just done here, was to give Bloomberg greater control over the BPL board, clearing the way for those in Bloomberg’s inner circle who were readying to sell and shrink libraries, handing them off as real estate deals.

Did you know that the Queens Library has resisted efforts to merge operations of all three library systems resisting so-called "cost-saving": changes that might actually cost the public extra?

Read about the way the Queens Library stood up to Bloomberg repeatedly in different ways, starting with the "Snapple" fiasco (the sugary drink connection first mentioned) in Noticing New York: Sunday, August 31, 2014, Mostly In Plain Sight (A Few Conscious Removals Notwithstanding) Minutes Of Brooklyn Public Library Tell Shocking Details Of Strategies To Sell Brooklyn's Public Libraries.  You'll get a fuller and more complete understanding of what is likely going on at the Queens Library than just reading Juan Gonzalez's retransmission of the superficial story that several anonymous "board sources" are handing out as if it is, provocatively, the inside, insight-providing story it isn't.

That Noticing New York article is chock-full of scoops (highlighted here) about the mismanagement of our libraries, including how library administration officials seem to think that it is just fine and dandy to run libraries as if they were economic development agencies . . .  What’s even worse is that they also seem to think that “economic development” means handing off deals to connected developers in crony capitalism fashion.

One Last Check As Mayor Leaves Office- Bloomberg’s Increasing Annual Wealth: 1996 to 2013, Plus Updates On His Annual “Charitable” Giving

The media recently provided us with a mostly adulatory free-for-all summing up Michael Bloomberg's years as mayor.  Did all that coverage avoid placing appropriate focus on the major story that most deserved it, even when attention was paid to Bloomberg’s wealth?

Bloomberg left office as mayor December 31, 2013, and there was no end to the articles summing up what Mr. Bloomberg theoretically accomplished and had `bestowed' upon the city.  A few of these articles mentioned Bloomberg's wealth.  The New York Times article that likely did so most directly and with the most detail had some fun with its subject, engaging in some peculiar calculus, an estimation that over the past twelve years that Michael Bloomberg was mayor of New York City he spent about "$650 million" (an “undoubtedly low” estimate according to the article) on things associated with the way he ran his office.  Some of the expenditures sounded almost like gifts to the public, given that taxpayers theoretically didn't pay for them, . .  Things like about $62,400 to clean fish tanks Bloomberg installed in City Hall, noshes for his City hall Staff, private planes for his aides to travel.  See: Cost of Being Mayor? $650 Million, if He’s Rich, by Michael Barbaro and Kitty Bennett, December 29, 2013.

Clean fish tanks and bagels notwithstanding, what really boosted and comprised a substantial portion of the $650 million figure the Times reporters came up with are the huge sums Bloomberg invested to stay in office, retain and firm up his control of it: “He poured at least $268 million of his personal funds into three campaigns for mayor” and hundreds of millions of dollars “to New York arts, civic, health and cultural groups, personally and through his company, Bloomberg LP” (I won’t give the article’s figure for the charities  because if you look at the figures in the Times article and its links I think you will find the amounts grossly understated), and “$23 million” in campaign donations (again understated?).

Take a look at some of the figures and calculations in this 2009 Noticing New York article for more orientation on these sorts of expenditures: Sunday, November 1, 2009, Bloomberg vs. Thomson (54% to 29%?): It’s Not What You Think. (For Instance the “P” is Missing and What Might “P” Stand For?).

It appears the Times reporters used a mixture of research and access to generate the story:

To calculate Mr. Bloomberg’s spending, The Times relied on public documents, travel records, philanthropy databases, conversations with vendors and interviews with his government employees.

$650 million seems like a figure sufficient to arrest our attention and perhaps bemuse, but where was the summing up of the really much bigger numbers representing the really big picture?  Whatever Bloomberg might have been spending while in office, however many hundreds of millions that was, it is nothing compared to the wealth he was accruing at the same time.  Further, to inform the public that Bloomberg was a relatively rich man when he entered office and throughout his tenure isn't telling the most important part of the important story about his wealth even if people garner from the telling that Bloomberg left office a lot richer than he came in, which he absolutely did.  The real story is the phenomenal, unusual, rate at which his wealth increased while he was theoretically directing a significant amount of his attention to the job of running the city, and not supposedly to the elevation of his wealth.

People are utterly inured to the idea that rich men could be getting richer.  "The poor stay poor, the rich get rich" is, after all, a line of Leonard Cohen's song, "Everybody Knows" (1988), a song that also choruses that everybody also knows "the dice are loaded," but the axiomatic sentiment goes back eons in the popular culture, appearing similarly in the 1921 Tin Pan Ally hit by Richard Whiting, Raymond Egan and Gus Kahn', "Ain't We Got Fun": "There's nothing surer, The rich get rich and the poor get poorer."   "Everybody Knows" came out toward the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency.  "Ain't We Got Fun" was popular throughout the pre-Great Depression Roaring Twenties and for long afterwards.

Whatever was the case then when those sentiments were lyrically enshrined, wealth has since those times "become more concentrated in the hands (and bank accounts and houses) of the richest Americans." See:  July 10, 2012, Richer Rich, and Poorer Poor, by Catherine Rampell, New York Times.

The share of national income flowing to the rich is at a record high even surpassing 1929.  95% of the increase in American income since 2009 has gone to the top 1%.  This is because, in contradistinction to the aftermath of the Great Depression where income rebounded commensurately with losses across economic groups when the economy recovered, the benefits from the economy’s rebound since the last downturn, the Great Recession, has gone almost exclusively to the top 1%.  Incomes are actually shrinking for the “bottom 90% of earners.”  See: Daily chart- The rich get richer- Sep 12th 2013, by R.A., J.S. and L.P, the Economist.  (If you like the charts in this NNY article you’ll like the one on this Economist article.)

Although the economic the recession of 2008 brought about a brief dip in the income and wealth of the wealthiest, including Bloomberg, from which Bloomberg recovered, the widening gap between the wealthy and the rest of us is part of a long-term, escalating trend.  In his documentary, “Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream” about wealth disparity, and as particularly exemplified by the particularly wealthy and well-known set of individuals living in 740 Park Avenue, film maker Alex Gibney (at about 10 minutes in) presents a traveling scan of a chart showing the widening gap over the years between the average incomes of top 1% and everybody else, the bottom 99%.  It’s startling.  Below is a rough pasting together of the chart that streams by in the film.  Notice how the income of bottom 99% percent undergoes little perceptible escalation, but the income of the top 1%, especially recently, skyrockets, creating an ever more vast differential in status.   

Income of the 99% escalates almost imperceptibly, but income for the 1% mountains way up

Ergo, the overall all context is clearly established:  The wealthy are getting proportionality more wealthy than the rest of us and the growing gap is very significant.  Bloomberg is one of the wealthy, but when it come to wealth he isn't part of the overall pack. . . .  That's because he's way ahead of it.

Even many of the wealthiest are experiencing disparity between their wealth and the wealth of the even wealthier still, a widening one at that.  As we'll see, Bloomberg, with his unusual accelerating accumulation of more wealth is a disparity laid atop that disparity.  The chart above shows incomes.  Although accumulating a substantial income is perhaps the best avenue to wealth (Ben Franklin's advice about saving pennies, notwithstanding), income it isn't wealth.  The chart below is one that shows wealth: The average net worth of wealthiest the “Forbes 400" wealthiest individuals from 1982 to 2011, represented in billions of dollars.  See: Economic Policy Institute- The State of Working America.

Even within this very select “Forbes 400" group, one can differentiate in order to measure and track the relative status of different members of the elite club.  The chart below does that, with three lines, the middle of which shows the “average” income of that “Forbes 400" group over the years 1982 to 2009.  At first glance, the line tracking that average may be comfortably in the same neighborhood as the other two lines, the one that shows the entry-level price for admission to the “Forbes 400" group and the one that shows where the club tops out.  Actually, the lines, although on the same chart, are in very different and vastly spread.  See that $950 million entry-level qualification figure, the $3.2 billion figure for the average and the $50 million figure for the top wealth figure?: The top figures being tracked are more than 50 times the bottom figure!

The trick to reading and understanding the chart is to know that in order to have all these figures appear comfortably beside each other, the chart is a logarithmic: The bigger the numbers on the scale, the more they get contracted when depicted; big numbers go up as they increase, just not as much.  See: The State of Working America’s Wealth, 2011, Through volatility and turmoil, the gap widens, By Sylvia Allegretto, March 23, 2011.

Note the wealth amounts ascend logarithmically

How does the escalating wealth of Michael Bloomberg during these years stack up against this chart?  See the figure provided and the charts below.  Once upon a time, not so very long ago, his wealth was relatively close to the entry-level price of admission to the club.   It headed up when he got interested in politics and around the time he becomes mayor it crosses the line for the average member of the “Forbes 400" club.  While mayor, Bloomberg became the wealthiest New Yorker,* his wealth skyrocketing past that average.  Before he leaves office it gets into the neighborhood of those at the top of the “Forbes 400" list.

(*  Bloomberg was eventually overtaken in this specific regard by David H. Koch who, although he doesn't similarly hold an elected office himself. is very much involved in politics and influencing those that do.)

Noticing New York has previously provided detailed coverage on Bloomberg's annual increases in wealth and also tracked his "charitable" giving that has been associated with his exercise of political influence and control.  See: Wednesday, March 6, 2013, Bloomberg’s Increasing Annual Wealth: 1996 to 2013, Plus Updates On His Annual “Charitable” Giving.

Noticing New York reported on the last jump in Bloombergs's wealth to $31 billion here: Friday, September 20, 2013, Forest City Ratner As The Development Gatekeeper (And Profit taker) Getting The Benefit As Brooklyn Heights Public Library Is Sold.

It is appropriate to escort Mr. Bloomberg out of office with an update-to-date restatement of that information.

Here is that updated information with links below.  (Forbes publishes wealth figures twice a year):

1996 - $1 billion
1997 - $1.3 billion
1998 - $2 billion
1999- $2.5 billion
2000- $4 billion
2001- $4 billion
2002- $4.8 billion
2003- $4.9 Billion
2004- $5 Billion
2005- $5.1 Billion
2006- $5.3 Billion
2007- $11.5 billion
2008- $20 billion
2009- $16 billion (interim March figure)*
2009- $17.5 billion (A year of $105 million in direct campaign expenditures, plus. .)**
2010- $18.0 billion (Bloomberg surpassed by David H. Koch)***
2011- $19.5 billion
2012- $25 billion
2013- $27 billion
2013- $31 billion

* For more on how Bloomberg's wealth declined (because he didn't see the financial crisis coming?- And how the press missed it) see: Bloomberg Update: Fire and Ice (Sunday, April 12, 2009)

** Respecting this: Direct campaign expenditures were about $105 million. Bloomberg, in his three bids for mayor, easily burned through more than $250 million in direct campaign expenditures. Taking into account funds Bloomberg spent indirectly for political purposes you get into billion dollar figures.

*** Bloomberg was still reported to be New York City's richest New Yorker in March of 2010 but in September 2010 was surpassed by David H. Koch, one of the two equally wealthy brothers providing substantial funding to the Tea Party. It is to be observed with some interest that Bloomberg's accretion of wealth substantially accelerated when Bloomberg got involved in politics. In August of 2010 people began writing about how David Koch and his brother Charles were funding the Tea Party, which started to emerge in the beginning of 2009 (i.e. just weeks after Obama’s January 2009 inauguration.) Looks as if it can be very good for one’s financial status to get involved in politics! (Though to be fair the Kochs were involved in politics before the advent of the Tea Party.) The brothers' privately-owned Koch Industries is a diversified conglomerate that had its origins in crude oil refining and still has substantial investment in pipelines and refineries. Consequently, Koch Industries has a history of accidents, spills and pollution of the environment.

Noticing New York previously published and commented on running tallies of the mayor's escalating wealth.  See:  Sunday, October 16, 2011, Bloomberg’s Increasing Annual Wealth: 1996 to 2011, Tuesday, February 3, 2009, Bloomberg’s Increasing Annual Wealth: 1996 to 2008, and Friday, January 25, 2013, Bloomberg’s Increasing Annual Wealth: 1996 to 2012 Plus Updates On His Annual “Charitable” Giving.

As mentioned, Noticing New York has also reported on the history of the mayor's "charitable" giving, which is important because the mayor is at the very top of the list of such spenders in this country.  The last Noticing New York article noting the update available respecting Bloomberg's $350 million beginning-of-the-year donation Bloomberg gave to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, is: Wednesday, January 30, 2013, Latest (Early) Update On Bloomberg’s “Charitable” Giving- A Preview Of 2013? (Added to Info For Years 1997 to 2011).  With an infusion of that kind of money into New York City's libraries, the Bloomberg administration's pretextual rationale for selling libraries to real estate developers would disappear.

Below in chart form is updated information about Bloomberg’s level of giving and the years of associated Bloomberg political campaigns. 

$26.6 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 1997 (when he distributed to 433 groups). Handouts have increased every year since - Press mentions of Bloomberg philanthropy begin this year
$45 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 1998 - Year Bloomberg started talking publicly about running for mayor 
$47 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 1999 
$100.5 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 2000 (579 organizations)- Year before first mayoral election campaign 
$122.5 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 2001 (540 groups) Was elected mayor in November $130.9 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 2002 (655 groups) Became mayor 
$135.6 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 2003 (653 groups) $138/139.9 million*:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 2004 (843 groups) 
$143.9 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 2005 (987 groups)- Second campaign for mayor in connection with the 2005 election 
$165.3 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 2006. (1,077 groups) 
$205 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 2007.- The year he started to run for president.- The year he left the Republican party 
$235 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 2008 (1,221 recipient groups)- The year that Bloomberg started running for his third term as mayor and overthrew the city’s term limits restrictions.  
 $254 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 2009 (1,300 organizations).  2009 was the year that Bloomberg was elected in November to his third term as New York Mayor after spending approximately $105 million in acknowledged direct spending on his campaign (many multiples of what his challenger could raise from the public) and, in addition, Bloomberg's political aides (also holding public posts) get fabulously huge bonuses for campaign work. 
$279.18 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 2010 - Bloomberg ranked the #2 American "giver", "giving" to "arts, human services, public affairs, and other groups".  2010 was the year that Bloomberg shifted his charitable spending,which had always concentrated on New York City recipients, to focusing on recipients connected to issues of national significance. 
$311.3 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 2011 - Bloomberg ranked the #5 American "giver," "giving" to "1,185 arts, human-services, public-affairs, and other groups". 
 $370 million:- Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 2012 - According to information from Bloomberg's own website, in 2012 "$370 million was distributed by Bloomberg Philanthropies across its areas of focus" although that would apparently qualify Bloomberg to be listed amongst the top 50 givers list for 2012 put out by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, where for some reason he does not appear for this year.  The discrepancy is strange.  Was someone thinking as NNY has suggested that his "giving" doesn't actually qualify as such?
$350 million (and counting):-  Bloomberg’s charitable gifts in 2013.

* (difference between Times and Chronicle of Philanthropy figures)

(Figures for calendar years1997 through 2008 available from:

•     the Chronicle of Philanthropy
•     Mayor's $weet Charity, by David Seifman, January 27, 2009
•     Bloomberg’s Gifts to Charity Exceeded $165 Million in 2006, by Diane Cardwell, September 17, 2007
•     Nearly 1,000 Groups Gain From Bloomberg’s Largess, by Sewell Chan, October 18, 2006
•     2003 tax year? For Bloomberg, 'Rich' Is Just Too Weak an Adjective, By Leslie Eaton, July 3, 2004.
•     In 2002, Bloomberg Lost a Bit (for Him) and Gave a Lot, by David Johnston (Correction: David Cay Johnston), June 14, 2003)

The 1997 through 2008 figures were originally consolidated to go along with this Noticing New York article about Bloomberg's "charitable" giving: The Good News IS the Bad News: Thanks A lot for Mayor Bloomberg’s “Charity” (Monday, February 2, 2009). For more on what those numbers mean in context click to read the article.

Noticing New York has previously produced this annual wealth and charitable giving information in the form below.

The figures above for Bloomberg's increasing annual wealth also chart out this way.

That looks like it might possible overlay with the chart of average increasing wealth of the “Forbes 400" that appeared above (and for easy reference is repeated below). . . .

. . .  Until you realize that each of these two charts must be radically reshaped in order to be accurately overlaid with each other (see chart below) because even though the average wealth of the “Forbes 400" is going up it is doing so far more gradually, depicted on that chart over a far longer period.  That average is now far, far less than Bloomberg's wealth even though within the charted time frame Bloomberg's wealth started out at a low figure that was hardly at the entry level price of admission to be on the chart at all.

When adjustments are made to properly overlay the charts Bloomberg's terrifically escalating wealth almost makes the escalating wealth of the rest of the wealthy look like it has flat-lined.

The two previous charts, reshaped so that they can be overlaid, showing how Bloomberg's increasing annual wealth makes the increasing annual average wealth of the rest of the "Forbes 400" look virtually flat by comparison

It is important to keep track of Bloomberg's wealth and "charitable" spending because Bloomberg was a public official and the earning of his wealth is subject to many conflict-of-interest concerns.  At the same time, cycling around, that wealth was routinely deployed for political purposes that included the "charitable" spending above.  The charitable spending cited above does not reflect the non-tax-deductable augmenting amounts the Bloomberg donates to political campaigns and causes mentioned by the Times when it calculated its $650 million figure mentioned at the outset of this article.

It will be interesting to see in what direction Bloomberg’s wealth goes now that he is out of public office.  If his wealth was truly related to his personal business acumen we might expect his wealth to increase even more now as he has more time and attention to devote to his Bloomberg, L.P, business.  The New York Times has reported, just 18 days after Bloomberg’s departure from office, that he is diving into the affairs of his business empire in a very hands-on way.  See: After Leaving Office, Bloomberg Is More Hands-On at Old Company, by Nathaniel Popperjan, January 17, 2014.

On the other hand, what would it say if Bloomberg’s departure from city office resulted in a leveling off of his accumulation of wealth or even its decrease?  That same Times article notes that the financial fuel for Bloomberg L.P. came from its sale of “$20,000-a-year data terminals” (sold, we should add, to almost all the big companies with which the New York City did business), and that recently:

terminal sales have slowed and there has been a reorganization of the newsroom, leading to the departure of some of the company’s most respected journalists.

The article notes that although Bloomberg’s previous practice was to focus on the “much more lucrative data terminal business, and was not known for attending editorial meetings” he is now involving himself in the news side of the organization, sitting in with the TV operation and media group on the fifth floor of the Lexington Avenue Bloomberg tower.

The article notes a problem, reported last spring, that could affect sales of the financial terminals: abusing a conflict-of-interest access, “some reporters had used a function on the data terminals to monitor client activity.”  The article didn’t note that Bloomberg while mayor breached City Conflict of Interest Board proscriptions when he monitored the sale of his terminals to companies doing business with the city.

Yes, it will be interesting if Bloomberg's spectacular increases of wealth disappear with his departure from office and, if they do, what explanation is offered.

Another way of looking at the overlaid charts that doesn't quite restore the average "Forbes 400" wealth chart to "normal," which would be more like . . . . (see below)

. . .like this.  But not even this is tall enough!

Mayor's Prerogatives Such As They Are, No Island Should Stand Alone: Governors Island Is Headed To Manhattan

The power elite of Brooklyn Heights may be about to conclude that having prevailed in a very important battle they are about to lose a more critical, much bigger war.  Noticing New York has previously written about how, during the planning of the design for Brooklyn Bridge Park, it became a fundamental precept that views from the Brooklyn Heights promenade would consist of bucolic and green vistas* and that all the planned development associated with the park would be aggregated into concentrations of bulk and density to the immediate north and south.  This had the effect of preserving, undisturbed, the tranquility and breadth of the harbor views enjoyed by the expensive homes along the promenade.  This is what the influential Brooklyn Heights Association fought for, and perhaps, not by coincidence, it may be noted that many of those individuals connected with and having a powerful sway over that organization live in those homes.  (See: Monday, May 24, 2010, Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth? An Examination of Brooklyn Bridge Park in Terms of the Politics of Development, Part I and Part II.)

(* It should be noted that while these park areas will be sylvan and pristine to look at, the park design presents an unresolved problem about how noisy they will be for those strolling around in these stage sets replicating a natural setting because the highway noise from the BQE will be bounced directly into these closely adjacent areas.)

Now it turns out the views once thought to have been ensured by such careful negotiation by the Brooklyn Heights Association soon stand to be lost.  As one more of the many gifts Mayor Bloomberg intends to bestow upon the real estate industry before he leave office (which critics are referring to as a fire sale), Bloomberg and his administration are implementing a plan proposed by Vishaan Chakrabarti, the head of the Center for Urban Real Estate at Columbia University, to landfill and connect Governors Island to Lower Manhattan.  See: The Brian Lehrer Show, LoLo: Imagining New New York, Wednesday, December 14, 2011 and New York Times, Visions of a Development Rising From the Sea, by Julie Satow, November 22, 2011.

Click below to hear what is planned to be implemented discussed on the Brian Leher show.

Mr. Chakrabarti was well qualified to spearhead the Bloomberg initiative by making the proposal now being implemented: He is a former director of the Manhattan office for the Department of City Planning and before taking up his position at Columbia he was, according to the Times:

an executive vice president at the Related Companies, the large developer, where he helped oversee the Hudson Yards project and the redevelopment of Moynihan Station. He still serves as a consultant to the company and continues to advise on the projects.

He moved to the position at Columbia to finalize and release the proposal* because, according to Bloomberg spokesperson Marc La Vorgna, as an academic institution Columbia is above the fray and can be counted upon to exercise impartial good urban planning judgment since it is not connected to the “pull of real estate industry interests and the recognized attraction of the lucre that industry generates.”

(*  Chakrabarti trial-ballooned his idea in November 2011 roughly the same time that Brooklyn Public Library Head Linda Johnson similarly trial-ballooned her proposal in October to sell off libraries from the system with an accompanying shrinkage of the system and underfunding to justify the proposal.)

The Chakrabarti plan is viewed as a simple and logical extension of the New York City’s historic pattern of growth through landfill extensions of Manhattan.  However, for reasons Mr. La Vorgna went on to explain, this is not being viewed as an extension of Manhattan to include Governors Island, but instead an extension of Governors Island to include Manhattan.

From the New York Times coverage

Notwithstanding, the new real estate created will be called “LoLo” which stands for Lower Lower Manhattan which Mr. Chakrabarti said market tested with realtors very well, much better, he said, than “HiGo” or “GIGUp” which would be, respectively, “Higher Governors” or “Governors Island Go Up.”

The Municipal Arts Society, the group formed as watchdog for good urban design, is thoroughly on board with the proposal, one reason that Mayor Bloomberg felt confident about proceeding with it quickly.  Said Vin Cipolla, president of the Municipal Arts Society, as quoted in the Times:

“Vishaan is thinking globally. . . and is unabashed about looking at the kind of things that will move regions like ours forward.”

The trustees of the Brooklyn Heights Association, however, have announced that they are quite chagrined that the views from Brooklyn Heights and the famous promenade will now involve seeing much less of an expanse of water and that tall towers will soon be crowding inward as the East River is constricted down to narrow northern extension of what is known as Buttermilk Channel, the waterway that now flows between Brooklyn and Governors Island.

The zoning that will apply to the towers will be the new-stye, greater-density zoning being implementing around the city, similar to the Mid-town rezoning Bloomberg wants to put through, also before his term is out.  The Mid-town rezoing will permitted density in a swath around Grand Central Terminal that will be nearly double what is there now.  

The BHA trustees sad that they had been aware that the Bloomberg administration has been engineering a number of give-aways to the real estate industry on its way out, including the: sales and shrinkage of the library system’s assets, sale of schools to developers and, similarly, the sale of the public housing playgrounds as sites for luxury housing.  Nevertheless, their spokesman said while the BHA trustees were not opposing these things, not even the sale and shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights library with the underfunding of the entire library system as a prelude to that, they had not expected that Bloomberg would be taking any action in his give-aways that would affect anything that they actually cared about. This new move by Bloomberg, they said, was truly shocking.

In the fall of 2011 the Times said that the major impediment to the project was “there are strict regulations on building with landfill.”   That problem has been neatly sidestepped, obviated by clever engineering by Bloomberg officials during the waning days of Governor Paterson’s administration when, in a little-noticed maneuver, Bloomberg was handed exclusive jurisdiction over both Governors Island and Brooklyn Bridge Park, using a structure the interposes Bloomberg owned and controlled corporations created by the Empire State Development Corporation.  This gives Bloomberg the power to proceed without any involvement from the City Council.  It also invokes all of ESDC’s exemptions from zoning and any such troubling regulations.

It is for this reason that Bloomberg is proceeding with this project as an expansion of Governors Island and not Manhattan.  Bloomberg released a statement disclosing that he has a legal opinion joined in by both the City’s Corporate Counsel’s office and lawyers from Bloomberg, L.P. that any part of the expanded Governors Island will be under Bloomberg’s corporate control.  The opinion says that when landfill makes the final connecting link to Manhattan, so that the circumference of Governors Island can be described as including that island too, Bloomberg’s jurisdictional control can be considered to expand accordingly.  The opinion also indicates that the authority will be personal to Bloomberg rather than residing in the office of mayor.

Otherwise unprepared and unmobilized to fend off such a previously unenvisioned  eventuality, the coalition of Brooklyn community groups represented by Brooklyn Speaks and Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn ventured, ad hoc, to speak for Brooklyn residents on this matter as well, even though that was not the purpose for which their coalitions were originally formed.  “This is another arrogant land grab!” they said in a hastily prepared joint press release.

“This is no land grab,” huffed the mayor’s spokesperson, “this is a water grab!”

The proposal presents extreme engineering challenges but these have been thought through and anticipated by the Bloomberg administration.  The new land bridge would divert 11,375,177,142 gallons per hour from the shipping channel, about 11.4 billion gallons per hour diverted into the already 3 knot flow of Buttermilk Channel.  Before the land bridge was completed a sizable portion of that immense flow would be flowing through the current shipping channel that the land bridge would be in the process of damning up as it was filled.  In addition, an extension of subway service would have to flow to Governors Island and the new land with the new subway tunnel challenged by this immense fast flow.

If the fast-flowing waters washed away silt, unburying the subway tunnels there is danger the buoyant tunnels could float to the surface.  Things might be especially precarious in the event of another storm with strong tides like Superstorm Sandy.

Costa Concordia

Part of the inspired engineering answer is that Bloomberg administration is buying the salvaged hulk of the Costa Condordia, the Italian cruise ship that  ran aground at Isola del Giglio, Tuscany, on January 13, 2012.  New tunnels will be run through the ship’s body.  Meanwhile, a world-wide surplus of shipping tankers has tremendously reduced the cost of adding other ships to the chain.

Bloomberg says, however, he may be thinking bigger than that.  He noted that the recently built Oasis of the Seas is five times the size of the Titanic and that it was built to give its 6,300 passengers the opportunity of having “a Coney Island kind of experience” with a “boardwalk” neighborhood with an ice cream shop, a doughnut shop, a life-size carousel with horses and tigers and rabbits, all of which were hand-carved for the ship.  The Coney Island area of the large ship may actually be larger than the original Coney Island that the Bloomberg administration has shrunken down.

Oasis of the Seas

According to the Bloomberg press there could be great advantage to buying the Oasis of the Seas for incorporation into the land bridge in several respects.  Coney Island could be moved closer to Manhattan.  It would free up the land out at the old Coney Island for development.  It has always been a problem that the attraction of the outdoor amusements at Coney Island was seasonal so there would be an advantage to moving them inside a ship.  Lastly, buying the ship would clear up any dispute about who owns the licensing rights to Coney Island:  “Coney Island was never just land or a neighborhood, or a community,” said Bloomberg, “it’s a spirit that can be trademarked and licensed.  This helps us lock that license up.” 

Bloomberg also said that exclusively buying cruise ships for the linkages allowed for the possibility of maintaining and continuing over in the conduiting transit pipes the stratification features for different classes incorporated into the ships' design.  Said a spokesman, “We are alert for how any of this could work like a substitute for congestion pricing.”

The final thing noted in the press release was that almost all cruise ships have small libraries.  The Bloomberg administration might keep some of these libraries in place and functional as a replacement for the libraries it is selling throughout the city, including the Central Reference Library behind the lions Patience and Fortitude at 42nd Street in Manhattan where Bloomberg wants to rip out the research stacks this summer in furtherance of the planned sell-off of real estate to developer beneficiaries.

These ship libraries are very small, much smaller than people have been used to, but the libraries will all be along easy-to-get-to subway lines and libraries these days don’t have to be “anywhere as big as they were in that past,” says Bloomberg:

“. . .   because people don’t need to know as much as they used to.  Today we have press releases.  And the beautiful thing about press releases is that they can always be updated to tell people what they need to know today, instead of allowing them to get confused with what they might accidentally remember from yesterday.”

Given what things have come to in this city as we arrive at this first day of this spring month, what is truly extraordinary is that so much of what was once might have been presumed to be fanciful is actually absolutely true.  Check it out using the links supplied.