The problem is the policy implications of the broken window story. At an elemental level, the idea that stopping crime stops crime is maddeningly obvious. But in practice the city has to make choices. Busting on the squeegee guys is very manpower-intensive. While we are assigning cops on the street to dealing with “quality if life” issues, many communities are still achingly underserved. Of course, the authoritarian NYC solution is to militarize the police, but this is not universally popular.
The questions are, how many cops do we really need, what crimes do we really want to stop, and what communities within NYC are really the priority? As you might guess, there are a lot of points of view on this.
The policy implications are important, but I don’t get the impression that Democrats are having a serious policy discussion about the best way to fight crime, but rather are letting politics drive the discussion instead. Thus my contention that they are likely to return to the way things were. A lot of the tactics that may have helped reduce crime so much are unpopular in some quarters and Democrats are beholden to those interest groups.
Well, we’re going to find out. I’m not predicting that crime will rise for sure under a Democratic administration, but if it does, even as crime in the rest of the country declines, that will tell us a lot.
You keep getting it backwards. Many people here who identify as Democrats do not necessarily oppose invasive policing. The candidates don’t precisely because they are beholden to their constituencies. So there may be a little softening or at least better PR, but for the most part, policing is not going to change much. There is no serious opposition of stop & frisk by any candidate with any chance of winning.
Well, I just saw this today about a nutty lady in support of stop & frisk for Manhattan and nowhere else. She is supposedly very active in “liberal politics,” but let’s just say her views are not entirely consistent.
I want to think that NY1 just got trolled really, really hard. But then again, only the really crazy types ever bother calling in the first place, so one never really knows.
Interestingly, the New Yorker just published a long Bloomberg profile where he expresses a lot of the same concerns about his probable successor that I do. Will they be too beholden to the interest groups that got them elected to govern effectively?
And I wonder what effect it would have on the race if he endorses the Republican?
Which Republican is he going to endorse? The one who thinks he’s an idiot, or the one that thinks you should vote for him because he didn’t forget where he came from; he’s “not a Mike Bloomberg billionaire”?
The article does mention that he’s not on Bloomberg’s favorite person list, but it is possible he might endorse him. The one that called him an idiot.
What comes first is the good of the city, and the Democrats are too beholden to the very groups who want to blow up the city budget that Giuliani and Bloomberg took such care to keep solvent.
Based on things I’ve read posted by NYDopers in this thread so far about Bloomberg and his current image and popularity-level, that would be very bad for the Republican.
This board is overwhelmingly Democratic. New York hasn’t lacked a Democratic mayor for 20 years because Dopers used to like Republicans and independents and now suddenly don’t.
Maeglin has made good arguments that little will really change if a Democrat is elected based on their campaign promises. But the idea that things will change back to the bad old days is not something that I just hold in my little noggin alone. It’s a common theme throughout the reporting on this race and I have to think that whoever the GOP nominee is will make that the center of his argument. Especially if the Dem nominee is not Quinn.
Exactly. Only noble plutocrats can rise above this sort of thing. They may let the wealthy and banks get away with anything they want, but they’re not beholden to them- they’re just being friendly.
Given that the big knock on Quinn is that she’s too close to Bloomberg, I’m not sure it would help very much.
Then you didn’t read either of my links. Bloomberg himself has that fear, and many New Yorkers in the previous link have that fear.
And while I wouldn’t want every politician to have “f— you” money, it does have its advantages. Especially when we’re talking about a government that is normally captured by special interests, as the NYC government has been in the past. Which is why NYC was ungovernable.
Bloomberg is bullshitting about his own legacy, and there’s no reason to treat that seriously. I admit I skimmed the piece a bit, but the only person I saw who came close to expressing that fear is Joel Klein, who used to run the schools for Bloomberg. You’ll pardon me if I don’t consider him representative of the average man on the street since he’s not exactly neutral in this discussion. You are the only person I have encountered - and the only one I think I will ever encounter - who thinks New York in 2013 might end up looking like New York in the '70s or '80s if a Democrat becomes mayor. Somehow crack will come back, unemployment will skyrocket, the major corporations that dot the city will run away, and violent crime will sextuple. How will the mayor make all that happen? Who knows. By being a Democrat, I guess. “Something… special interests!” This is a fantasy. The fact that you think it’s plausible reflects the fact that you don’t know what is going on here and reflexively dislike Democrats.
And aren’t there special interests on Wall Street? For some reason I keep hearing that we need to resist special interests like teachers’ unions and public employees’ unions, but I think it’s an issue if the mayor of a city is more interested in the high finance community than in poor people (homelessness is way up - guess what’s happening to services!) or the school system.
Yes, it does. For example your critics might stay a little quieter because they don’t want your charity to cut them off.
Wall Street doesn’t hoover up tax dollars. Public employee unions do. New York weathered the recession well because Bloomberg said “no” a lot. Will De Blasio be able to say no?
Of course not. They gamble with the economy and we live off their munificence. We should be grateful they feel like partially paying for our transportation and schools and shouldn’t ask for anything more for dare of offending them.
That’s not within the scope of the NYC mayor’s office. Handling city services is. And in that respect, Bloomberg may be the best big city mayor in the country.
Yes. You’ll notice where I’ve posted a couple of times about the state of the schools and the shelter system. Those are services. The issue here is priorities: you’re suggesting the city will fall apart if it’s insufficiently friendly to rich people, pays too much attention to unions, and stops searching nonwhite males at random, and I’m saying there needs to be a balance between making the city fun for people with money (which it is - that’s in no danger of changing) and making sure it’s functional for everybody else.