By Catherine Bonjukian Patten.
Talk about being “out of touch”! The people who voted for Mayor in NYC and for Governor in NJ are completely loony OR should I write the people who DIDN’T VOTE.
This is what happened basically in a nutshell. In NYC the two candidates were vastly different. One, Joe Lhota is the REPUBLICAN coming from a rich background like Bloomberg, who sat for 12 years ruling over NYC like Boss Tweed driving all the middle class in NY to the outer boroughs and NJ, was the head of the failed NYC subway system. All he did during his short reign there was raise the fares when he was supposed to LOWER them. His DEMOCRATIC contender was City Advocate, the very liberal and “progressive” Bill DiBlasio who relied on his multicultural family to appeal to the minorities and poor, gay and other cultures outside of white America to win the competition. DiBlasio sold the farm which he never owned and is now the WINNA and new MAYOR OF NYC.
DiBlasio’s win is a huge LOOSE for NYC because much like Dinkins before him promises change but only in his own pocket. DiBlasio was City Advocate in which he served 4 years and won very few issues in that time. Green who was Advocate before him and who also ran for Mayor and lost was a better Advocate and helped shape the city’s policies that are still evident today. These are the things Bill DiBlasio did or TRIED to do as City Advocate: http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/politics/2013/08/8532685/training-days-what-kind-public-advocate-was-bill-de-blasio
The powers of the office are indeed unprecedentedly meager, in terms of its ability to shape policy.
But though it isn’t made explicit in the city charter, the public advocate’s office serves another purpose: its occupant may use it to establish a public profile and a record in citywide office that forms the basis of a run for mayor. (NOTE: THIS IS WHY DiBLASIO RAN FOR PUBLIC OFFICE IN THE FIRST PLACE. HE WANTED TO BECOME MAYOR)
During his time as public advocate, de Blasio campaigned against the Citizens United Supreme Court decision and released a report (that got him some cable-network time) ranking corporations on their disclosure of political spending. He used the report to pressure some financial firms to declare that they would not engage in direct spending on political ads.
He urged the city to do a lot of things that it never ended up doing, like responding to freedom of information law requests in an appropriately transparent and timely fashion, ditching its outer borough taxi plan, apologizing for not disclosing the reasons for former deputy mayor Stephen Goldsmith’s departure, reducing its reliance on small-business fines, and instituting a moratorium on school closings.
In a similarly futile vein, he called on Nissan, the manufacturer of the city’s Taxi of Tomorrow,to divest from Iran.
De Blasio did succeed in some cases in using his bully pulpit to underscore his liberal credentials, and sometimes to bring public pressure to bear on the city.
After some equivocation, he supported the Occupy Wall Street protestors. He (belatedly) supported living wage, and helped corner Council Speaker Christine Quinn on paid sick leave. In recent months, he’s been the most outspoken elected official against the closure of Long Island College Hospital in brownstone Brooklyn, highlighted by a protest at which he got himself arrested. And he’s been an unconditional supporter of two police oversight bills the current administration is trying mightily to stop.
That the public advocate controls an office with few constitutional powers, a small budget and a certain obsolescence wrought by 311 is not de Blasio’s fault. And if, in its current form, the office is little more than bully pulpit, it’s also not his fault that his efforts to be the gadfly-in-chief have been hampered by an unhelpfully unsensational mayor.
“[Mark] Green had the perfect foil in Giuliani, because Giuliani was a polarizing figure,” said Ken Fisher, a former councilman who brokered an agreement between Green and Giuliani that helped remove the mob from the carting industry. “By standing up to Giuliani, he elevated himself and the office. It’s much harder to fight with Mike Bloomberg, because he so rarely fights back.”
But still, De Blasio, a political operative-turned-politician who knows very well how to promote other people, has oftentimes seemed less at home using his perch to promote himself.
“He seems to lack the instinct for vulgarity that gets you the most attention,” said Ken Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College. “What my colleagues would call performativity.”
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In January 2014 when DiBlasio takes office people will see who and what they hired, crime will soar, illegal immigrants will come out of the shadows and organize without recrimination (they also voted for him illegally) and NYC will descend into the war zone it was when Dinkins was Mayor for a second. I’m pretty sure DiBlasio will do nothing in office and then try to run for POTUS in 2016 just like his buddy across the river, NJ Gov Chris Christie plans to do in just two short years time.
In the NJ race for Gov no one in the democratic party wanted to run against loud mouth bully and obnoxious fathead, Chris Christie. Christie for his part in all this needed to be re elected to NJ State house because no one would have voted for THE FORMER GOV OF NJ…he HAD to be the SEATED Gov and that is what happened.
Palms were greased, promises were made in the back halls and alleyways of Trenton at the expense of taxpayers all over the state the Democrats pushed their candidate, a female Senator named BARBARA BUONO, who had the gall to run against the scary fat guy and her own party threw her under the table. It’s so obvious that all the NJ Democrats were in on it. The entire NJ Democratic party gave Buono only $5,000 dollars to run her campaign, POTUS OBAMA lent his support to Democrat DiBlasio in NYC run for Mayor but he couldn’t cross the river for fellow Democrat Barbara Buono? http://www.salon.com/2013/11/06/barbara_buono_alleges_democratic_betrayal_in_campaign_against_christie/
NJ, and I’ve lived here for a good 8 years, has many men in office throughout the state. They are knuckle dragging Neanderthals who believe that women’s place is in the bedroom making the pasta by hand, having babies and shutting up when the men eat at the table. These men, mostly Italian and Irish, come from a mob like background called MAFIA which actually means in Italian “our thing”. Funny, eh? These men outwardly hate women and because BARBARA BUONO was considered a “Corzine Democrat” and a WOMAN (E-GADS two strikes against her!) both the media and the state of NJ ignored her campaign efforts and she failed to impress at the polls.
Secondly, the polls in NJ are open from 6am to 8pm – in NYC they are opened to 9pm but in NJ there are many people who work in NYC and are unable to vote during these times they are commuting to work. So the NJ voters are really apathetic towards voting in general. Then there are the people who voted but who’s votes were not counted. I feel as if the majority of people who voted against Christie – their votes were thrown out. It was not a good feeling voting against him as the people in our town are staunch Republicans whom I am dying to get away from. I’d love to move but at the moment that is not feasible but in the near future it may well be.
Please remember that politics in NJ is not like it is in NY State. Deals are made in homes of rich people who give money to public officials who went into office poor and retire billionaires. You gotta ask yourself how this could happen?
In summation, both of these contests between NY and NJ were not covered by the media like they cover Kim Kardashian and her family because had they been people would be more aware of who was running and why. In NYC people voted for Robin Hood and in NJ people voted in the SHERIFF OF NOTTINGHAM.
