New York City has a new mayor who cares about the poor

A mayor is the leader of a city.  For the past 12 years New York City had Michael Bloomberg as mayor. Bloomberg was a billionaire businessman.  That means that he had over $1,000,000,000 in money.  In fact, he seems to currently have over 15 or 20 billion dollars. Unfortunately, this billionaire mayor did not care about the poor or homeless, and the numbers of poor and homeless people in New York City grew. New York City started to become a city for the wealthy/rich.

Now the new mayor is Bill De Blasio.  Here is a little article about him. As you can see by the picture above, ex-president Bill Clinton performed the ceremony to officially make De Blasio the mayor. As you can see from the photo, De Blasio is white and his wife is black.  Their children are of mixed race.

There is a lot of suffering and poverty (poorness) in this city. Now that there is a person in power who also sees the suffering, maybe things will begin to change in this city. Unfortunately, I am a bit pessimistic (I don't think something good will happen).  De Blasio has no real plan for job creation or economic development in poor areas.  His only plan seems to be to raise taxes on 'the rich.'  He wants to establish 'pre-k' programs (schools for children who are 4 years old) and 'after-school programs.' This is not a solution to poverty.

So I think De Blasio sees that there is a problem, but he doesn't have a solution for it.  I hope I am wrong.

Another problem is that the people of New York do not even seem to care any more. Only 26% of New York citizens voted in this last mayoral election.


http://gothamist.com/2014/01/01/clinton_swears_in_de_blasio_who_pro.php#photo-1

Vocabulary to help you understand the article:

to swear someone in - this means to perform a ceremony to make someone something officially.  Barack Obama was sworn in as president in January of 2009.  De Blasio was sworn in as mayor of NY on January 1st 2014.  So he officially became the mayor on January 1, 2014.

inaugural speech - first speech as an elected official.  When a person is sworn in, it can also be said he was inaugurated.

to strive - to work hard to do something

the inequality gap - the inequality difference; some people in New York City are very very rich while some are very very poor

seemingly widened - apparently became bigger and bigger

to commend someone - to say good things about him; so Clinton said good things about Bloomberg, but he had to - it wouldn't have been appropriate to say anything negative.  

regime - administration, the De Blasio government organization 

to endorse something - to say that you approve of something or support something

his core campaign commitment - core means central; campaign refers to the time when De Blasio was running for mayor.  His commitment when he was running was to promise that he would help poor people gain more wealth and power.

prosperity - when things go well

to bedevil - to cause a problem for; so inequality causes problems for the entire USA

he wasted no time - he quickly did something

that colored most of his campaign - most of his campaign was about this

to take dead aim at - to really focus on something as if you were aiming or pointing a gun at it

The Tale of Two Cities - this was a book by Charles Dickens about the very rich and very poor; De Blasio is saying New York City is a city of two extremes.

all that we can muster - all we can bring together or create to change things

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Yes, I created the scandal in Asia in 2010:

https://extrakorea.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/jyp-entertainment-admits-that-wonder-girls-health-insurance-expired/