NBC New York’s Gabe Pressman notes that Mayor Bloomberg’s short-tempered remark to Observer reporter Azi Paybarah yesterday is just part of a history of bristling at the media. This from the man who created a media company. He writes:

On a recent day a television reporter was blocked by the Mayor’s security detail from getting close enough to ask a question. At another meeting with the press, the Mayor denounced a question about his spending as “ridiculous.” He called a question about a political opponent a “waste.” He blasted a reporter who uses a wheelchair for dropping his tape recorder, which kicked on and interrupted a news conference…

…Maybe the Mayor needs a course in New York history. I’m sure the reporters at City Hall would be happy to chip in to finance it. Or, if he doesn’t want that, perhaps he just needs therapy. He is getting very testy lately and it may be time for him to air his grievances against the Fourth Estate to a good therapist.

Read the rest of the story here: NBC New York News

What do you get when you ask Mayor Michael Bloomberg a legitimate question at a news conference that includes the words “term limits?” You get an angry mayor looking you in the face and calling you a disgrace.

Michael Barbaro, from the Times’s City Room reports:

At a press conference in Queens on Thursday, Mr. Bloomberg was asked if an economic turnaround would undermine his initial reasoning for rewriting the city’s term limits law and seeking a third term, which was that a city in financial turmoil needed his steady hand and business background.

Mr. Bloomberg interrupted the question, from the New York Observer reporter Azi Paybarah, having deemed it unworthy of his time, and even called the reporter “a disgrace.”

Here’s how the exchange began:

Mr. Paybarah: If the economy is turning around, as you said, does that mean the rationale for changing term limits—-

Mr. Bloomberg: I don’t know why … if we have a serious question…

At this point, Mr. Paybarah tried to finish his question, but he was cut off by the mayor.

Mr. Bloomberg: The rationale for extending term limits is that the City Council passed it and the voters will have a chance on Nov. 3 to say what they want. I don’t think we have to keep coming back to it. … If you have a serious question about the economy I will be happy to answer it.

With that, the mayor concluded his press conference, looked directly at Mr. Paybarah and said, “You are a disgrace.”

Video of the exchange with Paybarah:

(Source: The New York Times)

I think that the Mayor in spending $20 million this early is trying to create a distorted sense of reality. He is trying to let you believe that he can’t be beat. The truth is talk to New Yorkers they want somebody new. – Rep. Anthony Weiner

If you have a good message people are going to be responsive. If you have a bad message, if you have done a bad job or don’t offer hope for the future no amount of money is going to make a difference. – Mayor Michael Bloomberg

(Source: WNYC)

Mayor Mike hasn’t been able to buy out all his critics. In a rare excoriation of Bloomberg from the mainstream media, Errol Louis, a political columnist for the Daily News, has this to say:

Bloomberg has already spent $18.6 million on flacks, hacks, pollsters and preachers. The sum includes more than $15 million spent in the last two months alone on TV, radio and direct mail advertising.

That over-the-top rate of spending is about twice the amount Bloomberg had shelled out by May of 2005, when he launched a re-election campaign that ended up costing a record-breaking $80 million.

Even President Obama has taken notice of Bloomy’s big-bucks binge and seemingly inevitable fall victory. At the recent White House Correspondents Association dinner, Obama drew hearty laughs from the nation’s political and press elites by vowing to meet with “a leader who rules over millions with an iron first, who owns the airwaves and uses his power to crush all who would challenge his authority at the ballot box … it’s good to see you, Mayor Bloomberg.”

But don’t start the coronation just yet. Several key indicators suggest that the race remains close and could get much closer before November…

…”The electorate now divides over whether Mayor Michael Bloomberg deserves to be re-elected,” Marist pollster Lee Miringoff said in a written summary of his findings. “Forty-seven percent say that he should receive a third term while 48% say, ‘No.’”

Read the rest of the column here: The Daily News

In an op-ed piece in The New York Times today, Rep. Anthony Weiner announced that he will not be running for mayor this year, in part because he wants to continue to work with Washington at a time when there’s a “potential for greater movement” and “ideas matter.” The other reason? Bloomberg’s enormous campaign spending will prevent a fair debate from occurring. Weiner writes:

The mayor is expected to spend $80 million of his own money in the race, more than 10 times what candidates who have not opted out of the city’s public campaign finance program, as Mr. Bloomberg has, can spend in a primary.

With spending like that, regular debates about real issues will probably take a back seat to advertising. As a native of Brooklyn, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t savor a good scrap. But I’m disappointed because I’m increasingly convinced a substantive debate simply isn’t likely right now.

The sad truth for a political candidate without deep pockets is that while money isn’t the only thing, it does matter. Campaign finance laws are vital, not just to keep special interests from dominating campaigns, but also because in this case they could help prevent vast disparities in spending.

When a candidate like Weiner exits an election because it’s already been bought by Bloomberg, that’s not democracy, it’s just opening a wallet.

(Source: The New York Times)

According to a recent Marist Poll, only half of the city’s electorate thinks Bloomberg is a mayor who cares about the average New Yorker. The other half? Well, they might have heard the awkward remark Mayor Bloomberg made a day after the city suffered it’s second swine flu death:

“In some senses, if you have H1N1 [virus], you should consider yourself lucky because it so far seems to be a milder flu than the garden variety,” Bloomberg said Monday.

The mayor quickly explained that he wasn’t downplaying the deaths.

“It’s very sad that those that we’ve lost are gone, but the good news is that so far it does seem to be a relatively mild flu.”

Bonnie Weiner, whose husband died last week from the flu, objected to the mayor’s remark.

“I’m not feeling very lucky,” she told the Daily News. “I’m sorry I can’t agree with that.”

(Source: The Daily News)

Just a few weeks after the Bloomberg administration quietly began charging rent to homeless families who live in shelters but have an income from jobs, The New York Times has reported that the administration has temporarily suspended the rent program due to mismanagement and the threat of a lawsuit.

Regarding some of the mismanagement, Michael Hayes, a spokesman for the State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, said that there were some “technical glitches.”

Of the roughly 500 homeless families who were meant to receive notices advising them to begin paying rent, about 190 received notices with errors, including miscalculations in the amount of rent due, Mr. Hayes said. He said the Human Resources Administration, the city’s welfare agency, was responsible for some of the errors, largely for some notices not getting out.

Shelter providers are also infuriated by a message from Anne Heller, a deputy commissioner at the Department of Homeless Services, who asked them to “give the Department of Homeless Services examples of families who are working full time and successfully paying rent — so the department could “put a positive spin” on the rent program.”

Here’s hoping the temporarily suspended program becomes permanently shut down.

(Source: The New York Times)

The Times’s Clyde Haberman wrote a humorous column a few days ago, commenting on the many millions of dollars Bloomberg has already spent on his re-election campaign.

Haberman points out that Howard L. Wolfson, a longtime Democratic operative who, in 2005, protested Bloomberg’s over-the-top spending, is now readily working for for the billionaire:

Hang on — can this critic of elephant-size spending be the same Howard Wolfson who is now helping guide the 2009 Bloomberg effort (for what is no doubt a lopsided amount of money)? Yes, it is. Mr. Bloomberg, elected twice as a Republican, has similarly purchased the services — and, by extension, the silence — of other political professionals who normally work only for Democrats.

Why not? What’s the point of having $16 billion if you can’t use a thick slab of it to drop on anyone who would oppose you?

(Source: The New York Times)

Bradley Tusk, a former deputy governor to Rod Blagojevich, is now running Bloomberg's re-election campaign.

Back in March, The Village Voice’s Wayne Barrett wrote an eye-opening investigation about Bradley Tusk, the 35-year-old former top aide to disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich who Mayor Bloomberg hired to be his campaign manager for his $80 million re-election effort.

When asked about his decision, Bloomberg told The New York Times that Tusk was “an honest, hard-working, competent guy,” who, he added, “never had anything to do with parts of that administration.”

Barrett’s investigation says otherwise:

Since Bloomberg’s assertion in early December, however, the impeachment report formally charged Blagojevich with running two Tusk-conceived-and-directed programs—the flu vaccine and the importation of Canadian drugs—that “violated” numerous federal and state laws and, in the case of the importation effort, “exposed” participants “to federal criminal sanctions.” The report names Tusk, concluding that the vaccine program, which it said was executed in “utter disregard” of the law, “implicates the highest-ranking officials in the Governor’s Office, including the Deputy Governor.”

Read the rest of the story here: The Village Voice