Friday, February 1, 2013

Rest in Peace Mayor Koch

Wow, how are we going to get along without Ed Koch? New York has lost one of its greatest friends.


10 comments:

  1. Koch saved Forest Hills. Back in the 70s, Mayor Lindsay wanted to drop a bunch of housing projects here, but Koch stopped him and the projects became more like co-ops instead. Koch, a Bronx boy, didn't want to see middle class Forest Hills suffer the same fate as the Bronx. All hail Koch!

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  2. Best mayor NYC ever had. Larger than life. I met him once and could not believe how tall he was! Such a giant! It was a sad day when he lost the primary to David Dinkins, who did nothing but play tennis. Then came that idiot Rudy Giuliani whose popularity was at an all-time low when 9/11 suddenly elevated him to sainthood. Now we have Nanny Mike. I don't have much confidence that Mike's successor will be any better. There will never be another Ed Koch!! Not since LaGuardia did we have such a personality to run the city.

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  3. He was a good guy. He had his faults, but he loved NYC and its people.

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  4. He was an awful egomaniac. He couldn't accept the fact that Rudy Giuliani cleaned up this town and took credit for it too. God forbid someone was praised other than Koch. He did nothing for race relations and lost to Dinkins because he became so egocentric that he couldn't reach out to minorities and try to reconcile divisions in the city. How about all the times he asked people "how am I doing" and they said "terrible". He ignored those voices too.

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    1. Giuliani, like many other politicians at the time, was just in the city at the right time. Imagine you are mayor as the economy in the country is booming, and drugs are on the out fueling a drop in crime. Much of what Giuliani took credit for was not his doing. Dinkins, who I was not a fan of mind you, is the one who orchestrated the appeal to the Feds to get ten thousand additional cops on the street just as Giuliani entered office. In fact, Dinkins, not Giuliani, hired Commissioner Kelly, not Giuliani, and it is Kelly who deserved the credit for the revolutionary use of technology to reduce crime. The rise of Business improvement districts improved Manhattan. The Central Park Conservancy is what fixed Central Park, the Times Square Development corporation is what fixed up Times Square fueling changes. The MTA is what started finally fixing the subway system, and that is not a city agency. And Giuliani was ready to use the cities money to build the Yankees a stadium in Manhattan just cause he wanted to have lifetime box seats to games. Giuliani was not a terrible mayor (although for race relations he sucked), but not great, and as someone pointed out only got this sainthood out of 9/11 which he exploited and continued to exploit as recently in his presidential bid. He was a great prosecute, I will give him that much credit, and only that.

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    2. Do you remember a certain Commissioner Bratton? It was Bratton, not Ray Kelly, who presided over the decrease in crime. Seems like you're wrong on your facts and of course opinion.

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  5. Koch did endorse Republican candidates and stopped the housing projects in Forest Hills, but that is as much as I've agreed with him.

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  6. The “scatter-site” legislation was passed allowing the project proposed originally, to be built. However, raucous public hearings prompted the developers to compromise by building three towers of 12 stories each (instead of 24), 40% of which were to house seniors.

    So he didn't actually get the projects removed, just scaled down.

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  7. Since Koch another city housing project has gone up on the tracks by Austin Street. Fortunately it is not accessible by going down the main part of Austin Street and while it is city affordable housing you still need decent income to move in. I don't know what kinds of people it is attracting.

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  8. I'm sure Elenor Bumpurs was waiting for Koch as soon as he passed to the other side and probably wacked him upside the head.

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