Bloomberg was busy working on privatization; didn’t notice snow

Not exactly. But pretty damn close. In today’s Daily News, Juan Gonzalez hints that it was ideology, not just incompetence, that left so many residential neighborhoods snowed in for three days.

The piece – Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith and his flaky ideas doom New York during storm – reveals that the deputy mayor came to New York via Indianapolis, where he had been a brash privatizer and darling of the corporate world. His agenda here included finding ways to spin off parts of the Department of Sanitation and a plan to demote a hundred supervisors (nice morale booster). It did not include actually remaining in New York during a crisis (Mayor says the Deputy was in regular e-mail contact).

In the school system we have seen a decade of something similar.  When Bloomberg and his supporters wanted to shut a school (often to benefit private companies):

• Bloomberg’s Chancellor would have OSEPO overload the school with the neediest kids with attendance and discipline problems (and who needed remedial help that the DoE forbade high schools from providing).
• Bloomberg’s Chancellor would starve the school of funds.
• Bloomberg’s Chancellor would starve giving away space, squeezing those remained into nearly impossible conditions.In other words, when Bloomberg’s Chancellor wanted to shut a school, he would begin by manufacturing an out of control situation.