A "62-year lifelong resident of New York City" named Harry called into Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Friday morning radio show today and expressed his deep displeasure with the apparent breadth of corruption in politics.
"I've never been more depressed over the level of corruption and the failures of government at the state and federal level," Harry said. "What hope is there that this overwhelming mess will be cleaned up and not just completely overtake us?"
First, Bloomberg sought to put this week's mass arrests of elected officials in some sort of context.
"If you go back to the Boss Tweed days, New York City politics were probably worse and more corrupt than they are today," he said.
Then he got to the meat of it.
"I think the basic answer to your question is you have to have a revolution among the voters," said Bloomberg. "You cannot expect, at a state, federal or city level, the elected officials to go and to do something that will keep them from being able to feed their families. And this is a job for them. It's just not gonna happen. There's no chance whatsoever. So where you can have a referendum, that's where you have a chance of changing things."
Bloomberg said the recent phenomenon of voters passing state referenda in favor of gay marriage illustrated his point nicely.
Uh, wasn't there a referendum here in NYC that limited mayors to two terms?
Wait, I think there was!
And I think voters voted on that TWICE!
Why yes - yes, yes they did.
And then somebody wanted to break that limit, overturn the will of the people and become Mayor4Life.
That certain somebody, who has more money than God, threw some of that cash into getting those changes approved by buying off City Council members and ramming the changes through - but just for him!
Future mayors of NYC cannot be Mayor4Life the way our current Mayor4Life can.
And yet now Mayor4Life is talking up voter referendums as a way to break political gridlock.
As he well knows, if there's a politician with enough money, enough arrogance, and enough power, voter referendums can be ignored, watered down, or overturned.
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