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Author Topic: The Mayor of Everything... Except the Potholes  (Read 89 times)

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Offline Luis Gonzalez

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The Mayor of Everything... Except the Potholes
« on: Today at 07:13 am »
The Mayor of Everything... Except the Potholes
Zohran Mamdani arrives at City Hall prepared to diagnose the moral defects of capitalism, redesign the machinery of modern society, and perhaps offer civilization a corrective course. New York, with its customary lack of reverence, would also like the garbage collected and the pavement repaired

The Last Wire


The city is on fire, the rent costs more than a respectable felony, the subway runs on prayer and deferred maintenance, and somewhere in City Hall a man is preparing to explain the moral failures of capitalism to a pothole.

The pothole, unmoved by theory, remains undefeated.

This is the peculiar disease of modern politics: every generation produces another visionary determined to rewrite civilization before proving he can keep the trash collected on Tuesday. The speeches get longer. The craters get deeper.

New York doesn't need another philosopher-king with a podcast in his head. It needs somebody who understands that history can wait another afternoon, but the guy replacing a blown tire on the FDR can't.

My latest at *The Last Wire* is an unapologetically satirical look at what happens when grand ideology collides with gravity, asphalt, budgets, and reality.

Read The Mayor of Everything... Except the Potholes at The Last Wire




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“Perhaps we’ll have some answers, at least, before the end. I always dreamed of dying well-informed.” ― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

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Offline andy58-in-nh

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Re: The Mayor of Everything... Except the Potholes
« Reply #1 on: Today at 08:18 am »
New York City has had its share of mayors with great ambitions and a flair for the dramatic, such as Fiorello LaGuardia, Ed Koch, and Rudy Guiliani.

But they possessed qualities that Mamdami so clearly lacks.

Practical knowledge of the real world. An understanding of the mayor's role and of its boundaries - but also, and necessarily: of their own limitations.   

The Pothole is a perfect metaphor for the daily realities of city life.

Good mayors fix things that are broken and respect the people and city they serve.

Great mayors improve upon things that were broken and love the people and city they serve.

Bad mayors ignore problems, blame villains, crave attention and lack any true attachment to the city and to the citizens they are are using to further their ambitions.   
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"If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people."    -Calvin Coolidge

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Re: The Mayor of Everything... Except the Potholes
« Reply #2 on: Today at 08:19 am »
Every time I read about New York City, a piece of me inside dies.
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Offline DefiantMassRINO

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Re: The Mayor of Everything... Except the Potholes
« Reply #3 on: Today at 09:31 am »
Wait until he has to deal with snow removal ... did Eric Aadams get the rat infestation under control?
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