Money can't buy self respect

To the editor (Queens Tribune):

I received in the mail, as I am sure many of your readers did, a self-serving Bloomberg brochure in which he claims he knows "helping small businesses is key to helping the middle class stay and thrive in New York City." This will come as a surprise to the hundreds of small businesses and their thousand employees in Willets Point that Bloomberg and his fat cat real estate friends have consigned to the unemployed trash heap.

If Mayor Bloomberg thought he should be entitled to a third term notwithstanding two public referendums supporting term limits, he was free to seek a third referendum. Fearful a term limits would again be approved, he orchestrated a cabal with 21 term-limited council members to enact legislation permitting them to seek a third term.

Such indifference to the will of the public; his push-polling in the case of Representative Anthony Weiner, his exclusion of Garry Esposito, the manager of Brooklyn Community Board 1, from a public meeting because he claimed Mr. Esposito would be a threat to order without Esposito having uttered a word, and his outrageous spending of vast sums of money to buy a third term indicates the Times editorial was correct in suggested Bloomberg's maneuvers "lend a thuggish cast to Mr. Bloomberg's Park Avenue style campaign."

Michael Bloomberg may, with his enormous personal wealth, be able to buy a third term, but he does not have enough money to buy self-respect and the electorate should keep this in mind before giving him a third term.

Benjamin M. Haber
Flushing