Reply #48: The accident is symbolic [View All]

It seems to me that this accident is becoming a symbolic issue because NY and NJ are increasingly governed by billionaires. The rules don't apply to them, is the basic undercurrent.

As I mentioned up thread, I really didn't like Mayor Ed Koch, but he was this big doofy very New York kind of guy (who lived in a rent controlled apartment in the Village) you actually would run into on the street or the subway and you could say, "hey mista maya! You know they ain't picked up the gawbich on 112th Street in two weeks!" That was retail politics in the NY/NJ area. Dave Dinkins was a family lawyer from Harlem whose most important client was the widow and family of Malcolm X. Mayor Abe Beame was a tiny accountant for the city for years who worked his way up the ladder. Governor Mario Cuomo was an Italian guy who grew up over a grocery store in South Jamaica (the Harlem of Queens) and became a "Queens Boulevard lawyer" with a penchant for philosophy -- a guy who mediated housing disputes between black and white neighborhoods before he went into politics.

It seems there will be no more Beames, Koches, Dinkins, or Cuomos in NY/NJ politics.

As a perverse result of campaign finance laws, candidates can either take public money or finance themselves. As a result, the NY/NJ area government is becoming government by (and for) billionaires -- whether Democrat or Republican. Corzine is a quarter billionaire. Bloomberg is a billionaire. Spitzer is from a billionaire family. They cruise around in giant SUVs with blacked out windows, and they fly their private jets to the Caribbean on the weekends.

The accident -- caused by a super rich guy speeding and making everyone else on the highway get out of the way, the kind of guy, who, even though he has now entered "public life", you definitely won't run into on the subway or the Jersey Path train -- is symbolic of billionare arrogance. Initially trying to blame it on some poor schmuck in a pick-up truck didn't help.

I wish him well, but he endagered many, many middle class lives. You can just tell from the tone of his own comments that he now "gets" it.


NB: This was a response to a sub, sub, sub thread on this thread that I resposted here because I think it explains why this story has gotten traction in the local press.