Distorted Priorities

I don’t like NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Period. I object to the way he manipulated his City Council stooges to circumvent the term limits law. And I also object to many of the issues he has wasted his energies on the past eight years, such as eliminating trans-fats from restaurants, posting calories in fast-food restaurants, and creating a pedestrian walkway in Times Square. He should instead be focusing on issues like the one addressed in yesterday’s New York Daily News.

Tanesha Jones is a single mother of two daughters—a nine-year-old and a one-year-old. Jones was recently relocated into a Bushwick apartment as part of “Work Advantage”—a NYC Department of Homeless Services program that moves families out of homeless shelters. The Bushwick apartment contained a broken kitchen window, a missing front door knob, and a disconnected kitchen sink. It also contained lead paint and provided no heat. Just several days after Jones and her two daughters moved in, a rat ran out of the bathroom. One month later the building’s owner was arrested for allegedly sexually abusing Jones’ nine-year-old daughter. (The city did pay for the lead removal and for a new bathroom window. They also pay all of Ms. Jones’ monthly rent).

Explanations by bureaucrats that Ms. Jones’ problems are the exception and not the rule have been proven wrong by a New York Daily News investigation, which exposed the following:

“The city has paid for families to live in foreclosed homes, illegally converted apartments and dangerous flats. In some cases, landlords have shaken down tenants for extra rent.”

It is a disgrace that there are families who fear putting their children to bed at night because of rats. It is unacceptable that people must beg and plead to receive heat during sub-freezing temperatures. Why isn’t Mayor Bloomberg attacking this problem with the vehemence that he went after public smoking?

Where are you, Mike?

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Sinking Ship?

You have to wonder whether the adage about rats leaving a sinking ship applies to Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd and North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan. Both have announced that they will not seek re-election. Have these men just had enough of Washington or do they see the writing on the wall with respect to the damage President Obama is doing to the Democratic Party?

Many Americans have expressed their displeasure with the universal healthcare bill and with the secretive process with which it was drafted. According to The Washington Times, “in at least seven states -- Connecticut, Nevada, Ohio, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, North Dakota and Colorado -- the Democratic candidate for Senate trails the Republican in the most recent polls. In those states, Mr. Obama's popularity has dropped below the percentage of votes he drew in 2008, and opposition to the health-care-reform bill is deep and wide.”

The President has earned a reputation as someone who cannot be trusted, someone who speaks with a forked tongue. House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi said as much Tuesday when grilled by reporters about the healthcare reform bill’s closed-door negotiations. When reminded by the media that candidate Obama said all negotiations should be open to C-Span, Pelosi replied, ““There are a number of things he was for on the campaign trail.” Ouch. In other words, even our President’s own party doesn’t know which way he is blowing daily.

Congressional Democrats fear that the President views them as nothing more than vassals, subject to his whims and fancies. And they recognize that come November it will be they who must face the voters’ wrath. Don’t be surprised if there are others in the Democratic Party who choose to follow Dodd and Dorgan and ride off into the sunset when their terms expire.
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Need a PR Specialist? Perhaps my 13 years of PR experience can satisfy those needs. Contact Donald Tremblay (The Rain Maker) at 718-664-3405 or at dtremblay@earthlink.net. For more info about me visit my LinkedIn Profile.