Hizzoner Deserves Some Honors

As I'm sure you know, these pages have been rather merciless when it comes to attacking Michael Bloomberg, and for good reason. But the editors of DoG are not a closed-minded bunch. So I feel it would be irresponsible if I did not laud Bloomberg for his new proposal for a "greener, greater New York."

The one thing about this guy is that when he has an idea, a vision even, he goes for it full bore, unlike this president of ours who always tries to do things on the cheap, and with as little political damage as possible. In this case, Bloomberg has 127 different proposals to make New York more energy efficient and a cleaner, happier place. The best of the bunch is an $8 commuter tax on people who drive into the City. As much as I normally hate him, I love to see a man who has the balls to propose raising taxes in order to fix a problem as opposed to, again, our president who uses Enron bookkeeping to make it seem more palatable when in fact, he's just shuffling the costs to the next administration and/or generation.

He proposes to charge anyone driving south of 86th Street in Manhattan an $8 fee. Lots of people drive, and no one likes paying fees, so this stands to hurt him politically. But as he put it: "The question is not whether we want to pay but how do we want to pay. With an increased asthma rate? With more greenhouse gases? Wasted time? Lost business? And higher prices? Or, do we charge a modest fee to encourage more people to take mass transit?" Sounds like a man with vision, does it not?

Already there are faux-populist politicians trying to bring him and his plan down. Anthony Weiner, former Democratic candidate for Mayor was referring to this as another tax on the poor and middle class. No. You seem like a decent fellow, but this is not a tax on the poor like the cigarette tax or the lottery, which I'm sure you support. This is a tax on rich fucks who can actually afford $3/gallon for gas and absurd Manhattan parking costs. If you can't afford the $8 to go downtown, then you have the pleasure of taking one of the best mass transit systems in the world, like millions of us do every day. You can even drive your car that you love so much to a subway station in Brooklyn or Queens and leave your car there for the day. Don't worry, we'll watch it while you're gone.

As much as it pains me to say - in this one instance, Bloomberg fucking hit it out of the park. And he's the kind of dickhead mayor who just will not give a shit what people say and ram this proposal into law. And for that, I applaud him.

Now about that smoking ban, Adolph...