Salon.com > Mike Bloomberg

Sorry, Bloomberg, NYC continues to supersize

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:44:00 +0000

Keep drinking, New York. On Monday, just one day before Mayor Bloomberg's controversial ban on supersize sugary drinks was to go into effect, a state Supreme Court judge struck it down.

You can imagine El Bloombito's disappointment. Mike Bloomberg has had stunning previous successes with his health-focused initiatives — a 2008 ban on trans fats in restaurants paved the way for significant changes in food preparation across the country, and led to a large reduction in the amount of a heart-disease-promoting ingredient in our foods. Two years ago, he restricted smoking in the city's parks, beaches and public spaces – and other cities have either followed suit or are now considering similar measures.

Heart Attack Grill delivers on its promise

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:08:00 +0000

There can be little doubt that John Alleman died in the manner he'd been preparing for all his life. The 52-year-old unofficial patron saint of the Las Vegas restaurant called Heart Attack Grill was taken off life support Monday after suffering a heart attack a few days earlier.

Alleman was a devoted patron of the restaurant, whose motto is "Taste Worth Dying For!" Restaurant owner Jon Basso, who opened the restaurant in October 2011, told the Las Vegas Sun this week that Alleman "never missed a day, even on Christmas … He lived, ate and breathed the Heart Attack Grill." And, as he spoke fondly of the 180-pound Alleman, he noted, "Heart attacks aren't a laughing matter. You don't have to be tremendously old or fat. You can be in your 30s and 40s and die of a heart attack." Yet Basso's entire establishment is built around the laughing matter notion that artery-clogging fare is just what the doctor ordered.

Michelle Rhee’s right turn

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Nov. 6 was a good day for Michelle Rhee. The former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor, through her organization StudentsFirst, poured money into state-level campaigns nationwide, winning 86 of 105 races and flipping a net 33 seats to advocates of so-called school reform, a movement that advocates expanding privately run public charter schools, weakening teachers' unions, increasing the weight of high-stakes standardized tests and, in some cases, using taxpayer dollars to fund private tuition through vouchers as the keys to improving public education.

Rhee makes a point of applauding “leaders in both parties and across the ideological spectrum” because her own political success -- and the success of school reform -- depends upon the bipartisan reputation she has fashioned. But 90 of the 105 candidates backed by StudentsFirst were Republicans, including Tea Party enthusiasts and staunch abortion opponents. And Rhee's above-the-fray bona fides have come under heavy fire as progressives and teachers unions increasingly cast the school reform movement, which has become virtually synonymous with Rhee's name, as politically conservative and corporate-funded.

Hurricane Sandy: Income inequality writ large

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 14:44:00 +0000

After an explosion at a power station cut off power to Lower Manhattan, photos showed a stark divide in Manhattan between lit-up uptown and downtown blanketed in darkness. The image was gripping, but when the inevitable posts went up declaring that "New York is now divided," I had to laugh. Because it's not the divisions we can see after a storm, but rather the city's giant unseen fissure which makes events like Sandy so threatening.

Witness this piece from Gothamist, in which a citizen sleuth checked out what was happening in parts of Downtown where the poorest residents live and wrote in with his findings:

Meet the woman behind “El Bloombito”

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 21:14:00 +0000

In the past few days, as New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg held forth at his numerous Hurricane Sandy–related press conferences, two surprisingly entertaining sideshows have emerged in the midst of disaster. There has been the lively, expressive work of the mayor's sign language interpreter Lydia Callis, whom New York magazine accurately praised as a "both lightning-fast and emotive" presence during Hizzoner's updates. And then there's been Mayor Mike Bloomberg's awkward, shambling attempts at "Spanish."

Delivered with all the Latin aplomb of a tone-deaf Tijuana tourist, Bloomberg's Spanish has been a hallmark of his administration. But it first became a full-blown meme during Hurricane Irene, in 2011, when Rachel Figueroa-Levin was watching the mayor's not-quite-Rosetta Stone-level attempts to communicate with his Spanish-speaking urban population in pre-hurricane amusement. "I was joking with people on Twitter," the Inwood resident says. Rather than "clutter" her own Twitter stream with her joking imitations of Bloomberg's stilted stabs at multiculturalism, she created a "speaky the Spanish" alter ego: Miguel Bloombito.

Why education reform may be doomed

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 12:44:00 +0000

This is a story about a story, of how a fiction about impoverished children and public schools corrupts our education policy.

The fiction is the autobiography of Joel Klein, the former chancellor of the New York City Department of Education. Appointed in 2002 by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Klein transformed the city’s public-school system by promoting privately managed charter schools to replace regular public schools, by increasing the consequences for principals and teachers of standardized tests, and by attacking union-sponsored due process and seniority provisions for teachers. From his perch as head of the nation’s largest school district, Klein wielded outsize influence, campaigning to persuade districts and states across the nation to adopt the testing and accountability policies he had established in New York. Deputies he trained when he was chancellor now lead school systems not only in New York but also in Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans, Newark, and elsewhere.