Tuesday, September 20, 2005

"City Not For Sale"

These are the responses to my September 20 article, "City Not For Sale." Thanks to all, please continue to provide us with your feedback.

12 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:16 PM

    If we are hit with another give away as was done by the governor ,that cost will have to be passed on to somebody.It's nice to say that we will be doing something for the low end workers,but society in general pays that cost.Since NYC is the highest taxed jurisdiction in the US, increasing the taxes further will be ruinous to this economy(NYC) Ruining the NY economy will put more low end people out of work .Thus benefitting one low end group will be at the expense of another low end group

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  2. Anonymous4:16 PM

    Why is the example of the difficulty of removing incompetent or pervert teachers used whenever the question of government employees arises?

    Why not use the example of any profession that is required to be government-licensed or regulated? How many licensed incompetent physicians remain? They receive a slap or several slaps, but retain their licenses. How many lawyers are guilty of offenses that violate their state regulations? How many are disbarred? What does it take to get rid of these incompetent or perverted individuals

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  3. Anonymous4:17 PM

    Good column. Only thought is that 1199's move is completely transparent--and Ferrer is openly buying votes on the taxpayer's bank account. Bloomberg should use that to his advantage.

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  4. Anonymous4:17 PM

    Good to see your cogent comments on Rivera's aim to sucker the City again. At last the Mayor showed he "won't take it no more."

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  5. Anonymous4:17 PM

    Good job

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  6. Anonymous4:18 PM

    it doesn't really matter WHOSE payroll homecare workers are on.
    what matters is who's willing to pay.
    and also who's making money on the homecare worker's backs.

    there are good arguments on both sides of the public vs. not-for-profit (or even for-profit) debate,
    but until there's some agreement as to what m'care/m'caid will or will not cover,
    the point is really moot.

    b/t/w i'm not speaking theoretically.
    i'm speaking from a decade of experience of managing my grandparents eldercare.
    most of which was NOT covered by gov't entitlement pgms.
    we had some good workers, and some bad ones;
    some good agencies, and some not-so-good ones;
    some good gov't bureaucrats and insurance types,
    but mostly dense ones, irrespective of jurisdiction.

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  7. Anonymous10:00 PM

    In the Empire Blue Cross conversion debacle, Pataki, Bruno, Silver, and Spitzer were complicit with Local 1199 and the hospitals in diverting more than $1 billion into the pockets of the union that should have gone for health care for poor New Yorkers.

    I'm glad Bloomberg finally has drawn a "line in the sand" on this one, but he's very, very late to the game of standing up to the unions, having spent most of his first term brown-nosing them.

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  8. Anonymous9:05 AM

    Bravo. Another way of looking at it is that Rivera wants to "deprivatize" the home heath-care system.
    All my work on privatization--recognizing that government employees need competition because the public-employee unions were exercising and exploiting monopoly power -- started from my experiences in NYC government when you and I were in the Lindsay Administration.

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  9. Anonymous9:20 AM

    Right you are (as usual). We need to lose 100,000 city workers. I can't
    wait to see Ferrer come out and endorse this one. It's the reason I'm glad
    to see Pataki pack it in. After that Rivera deal, I wouldn't vote for him
    if he paid me.

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  10. Anonymous9:38 AM

    Corporations do make successful demands of government: q.v. Goldman Sachs new headquarters at Ground Zero. Why shouldn't 1199?

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  11. Anonymous12:53 PM

    My reaction to this kind of tolerated union blackmail is anything but tempered. It's broad acceptance is yet more evidence of the poorly informed and non-participatory nature of the American electorate in general, and the inexplicable success of union self-marketing

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  12. Anonymous12:54 PM

    I find it interesting that there are so many New Yorkers adamantly opposed to the stock-transfer tax who vigorously support or at least meekly accept the universal ban on indoor smoking. Both are examples of capricious unrestrained government intervention into areas best left to the forces of the marketplace and the exercise of personal responsibility, with questionable, and ultimately unproved, benefits to the community in general.

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