That despite King Mike Bloomberg's assertions, we have a brutal police force in NYC. All Bloomberg turned out to be was a Giuliani with a human face. Now we're faced with the prospect of Ray Kelly running for mayor and 4 more years of this crap. Ever since the the fiscal crisis of the 1970's the FIRE (Financial, Insurance & Real Estate) interests have slowly but surely privatized and corporatized this city to the point that unless you make over $50,000 a year, you can't live here. And even that much is pretty dicey. You've got people who pay $1000 per month or more for 300 square feet or less to live in; commercial rents are so high, long time businesses have gone out of business because they can't afford the ever increasing rents. It's $7.00 to cross the RFK, Throggs Neck, Whitestone and Verrazano bridges and the tunnels to the other boroughs, and God help you if you have to go to New Jersey. These bridges and tunnels were supposed to be paid off decades ago. Just a few years ago Bloomberg floated a plan to put tolls on the remaining bridges linking the Bronx to Manhattan, with London as his model; for "relieving congestion" he said. Mind you, this was the same guy who wanted to build a football stadium on the west side of Manhattan. Now if you're familiar with NYC, you know how difficult it is to get around when the Knicks or the Rangers are at the Garden, which holds about, 17,000-imagine 75,000 people after a football game; it would have been a traffic nightmare. Between the gentrification, the police brutality, the high unemployment, somethings going to give and you may have one of those "long, hot summers" that plagued cities in the 1960's. You can't have this kind of disparity of wealth and not expect something to give. And I'm predicting that NYC will find itself in another fiscal crisis when Bloomberg leaves office because I believe he's papering over the financial shenanigans in the budget and the next mayor, God help him, will have a problem on his hands.
= new reply since forum marked as read