Maybe the third time will be the charm: on Tuesday, New York City voters approved, again overwhelmingly, term limits for City elected officials.

The vote became necessary after not one but two prior referenda - in 1993 and 1996 - had been overturned by a vote of the City Council, goaded along by gentle prodding from the mayor's office. Conveniently enough, the law was changed just in time to allow said mayor to run for a third term.

It really was as if the political class had said to the voters 'yes, we know you wanted that thing, but are you sure you still want that thing?'

So, just to be clear: yes, we do want that thing.

I want to go on record that both NYC charter amendments are bunk put out by Michael Bloomberg simply for his own personal reasons. Some aspects of the amendments are outright useless because they are superseded by state law and therefore would be knocked down in any lawsuit. Other aspects are pure hypocrisy on Bloomberg's part.

To quote reform Assemblyman Jim Brennan regarding the flawed and corrupt charter amendment process:

James Brennan, Assemblymember, Brooklyn
In January good government groups, recognizing the Mayor would create a Charter Commission, wrote him asking that any commission “be given sufficient time to do its important work…“ I also wrote the Mayor asking, “Will the Charter Commission be taking a serious look at the City government?”

Borough President Scott Stringer urged the Commission to put its questions on the ballot in 2011, and the New York Times urged the Commission to postpone placing questions on the ballot until 2012. The hope was for broad public engagement.  read more »

Vie The New York Times:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sought federal permission on Wednesday to bar New York City’s 1.7 million recipients of food stamps from using them to buy soda or other sugared drinks.

The request, made to the United States Department of Agriculture, which finances and sets the rules for the food-stamp program, is part of an aggressive anti-obesity push by the mayor that has also included advertisements, stricter rules on food sold in schools and an unsuccessful attempt to have the state impose a tax on the sugared drinks.

In Mayor Bloomberg's New York, you can no longer smoke in restaurants or bars or within a given distance of a healthcare facility. Restaurants now inform you of the caloric content of their offerings, and trans-fats are right out. Broad stretches of the City's avenues and thoroughfares have become concrete-littered plazas with feeble specks of green. The Limelight, grievously, has become a mall. Schools can no longer hold bake sales with a view to limiting food choices in public education to a pre-approved roster of items; the side effect is that parents and student groups can no longer use the bake sales, a bedrock American tradition literally like mom and apple pie, to raise funds for extra-curricular activities.

The mayor's vision of the City of the future is astounding for its sheer Prussian efficiency and reach.

What comes next? Once you tell the poor - a growing demographic these days - that their food choices are subject to the Great White Father in City Hall, what's left?

People have a right to make their own decisions. To be meaningful, that must encompass the right to make objectively bad choices.  read more »

Look at what Marty Markowitz, Bruce Ratner, Bill de Blasio, Michael Bloomberg and Bertha Lewis, to name a few, have brought to Brooklyn. Atlantic Yards seems to be bringing some real sleaze to our city, though not much in the way of real, long-term jobs or affordable housing.

Barclay's, the company that bought naming rights to Bruce Ratner's arena, has just been fined for more than a decade of illegally doing business with the likes of Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma. From BBC News:

Barclays Bank is to pay $298m (£190m) to settle criminal charges that it violated US sanctions in dealings with Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma.

The bank was charged with breaching the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act in dealings between 1995 and 2006...

Barclays has agreed to pay $149m to the US government and a separate $149m in a deferred prosecution agreement with the district attorney in New York.  read more »

There has apparently been some craziness over the fact that Mayor Bloomberg wasn't at the site of the Staten Island ferry crash this past weekend. He has been getting insistent questions from, among others I'm sure, Josh Robin at NY1 (details reported by the DN's Celeste Katz).

Those who have read this blog for some time know that I'm perfectly willing to take Mayor Bloomberg to task for what I believe he's doing absolutely wrong (education and term limits come to mind quickly). But this is ridiculous!

Michael Bloomberg neither is nor claims to be an expert on the operation of the Staten Island ferry. There is no reason for him to be at the site. Furthermore, we're in the 21st century -- we have all kinds of technology that allows people to be informed fully even if they are thousands of miles away from what's going on, especially if they don't have the particular expertise needed to extract knowledge from being on the spot. If the mayor doesn't want to rush to Staten Island in order to give the phony, hypocritical appearance that he's "on the job," he should be allowed to make that decision. Frankly, he should be applauded for trying to put a stop to that nonsense.

Memo to the mainstream media -- get a clue.