Dear Mayor Bloomberg: Thanks For Being NYC's Nanny-in-Chief, Now Good Riddance

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

It is with much sadness that I write you this thank you note. It’s been a great ride for all 12 years of your reign. I’ll be sad to see you leave City Hall and walk towards the 6 train on your last trip home from being the mayor. Your acumen for efficient management and drive for results has formed a city that is both safe from large sugary beverages and where you are stopped and frisked for your own protection. I wanted the opportunity to thank you in person. Instead, I decided to write you a thank you note so you could look over a list of the ways people are most likely to remember you based on your drive to put your own personal agenda on the people of New York, and use the media to voice it to America. 

I’ll never forget the day I tasted a trans-fat free french fry. It was way less crispy than a normal fry, but it tasted awesome because I knew that we were getting rid of these fake fats. It’s a good thing that you only attacked businesses that cook with trans fats instead of banning them all together. If you did that, lots of the food that people on food stamps could buy for subsistence would be banned! We don’t want them starving, do we? All the same, trans fat consumption is down, so we can mark this off as a success in your prowess as America’s greatest nanny. 

But thank goodness you didn’t stop there! There was another lingering threat at all restaurants and movie theaters: oversized sodas. The requirements for what constitutes too much were reasonable. After all, why worry about self-control if the state can just control it for you? I’m really glad that you exempted large corporations like Starbucks and 7-11 from participating, because if I was only allowed to have a 16-oz 6 pump vanilla whole milk latte instead of 20 oz, I would have marched down Broadway to your office and let you know. As I was prepping for the ban, that stupid thing called The Constitution got in the way! I can’t believe the Founding Fathers didn’t put the ability to set arbitrary measures of beverages in there. At least it seems that Speaker Quinn, your closest contemporary in the race, is fully supportive of using the legal power of the Board of Health to advance initiatives.

But my body’s internal safety is not the only thing that you’ve been concerned about. There are nights that I lay in bed, and listen to the gunshots outside my apartment in Brooklyn. I can rest easy knowing that you’ve made gun control a national priority of the NYC Mayoral’s office by sending your aide to lobby for gun control in Nevada. So what if you used NYC taxpayer money to fund it; without a national push, I wouldn’t feel as safe. Plus, taking guns away from legal gun owners most certainly increases safety. Combine this with stop-and-frisk, who needs the 2nd and 4th amendments when you have the 7th largest armed force in the world, the NYPD? 

I’m glad that you’ve stood your ground and and soldiered on against both food and crime. Not sure why you were quoted as having smoked marijuana and “enjoyed it,” yet your  unconstitutional stop-and-frisk policy disproportionally was enforced in minority neighborhoods, often arresting people for the enjoyable plant and ruining their lives for a non-violent crime. You’ve called medical marijuana the greatest hoax in the world, completely ignoring the science behind your dubious claim. You also combated smoking by raising the cigarette tax, which disproportionally affects poor smokers who are addicted. Things that go in your lungs are bad! Keep on fighting against e-cigarettes!

I know it’s been hard for you with all that constitutional red tape, but the thing I can’t leave out is the one thing you never got around to fixing: education. You promised it 12 years ago, and yet you didn’t deliver.

To be honest, if I was your boss, I’d probably have fired you for how poorly NYC schools are performing. Under your administration against Common Core standards, only 55.1% of students in grades three through eight met or exceeded the standards in English, and 64.8% in math. It’s even worse if you look at the African American rate: 46.1% passed math, and only 37.2% passed English. I know the Common Core is nothing more than a federal metric, but goshdarnit, why is it so bad? Is it the metric or the policies that we’ve had for more than a decade to blame? 

Whoever becomes the heir to your throne should pick up the mantle of education reformer. As of September 5, The teachers unions are endorsing Bill Thompson, currently in second place; but I’m sure they’d find a hero in first place, self-described “progressive candidate” for mayor, Bill de Blasio.

Looking forward to discussing your next political ventures, 

Christopher Blakeley