NEWARK
BLUES
HUFFINGTON
08.05.12
A man arrested for holding a gun in his home is hauled into the back of a squad car by Newark police officers.
dential standard-bearer, enthusiastically embraces this philosophy. In
a speech in Iowa in June, Romney
mocked Obama’s public safety and
education stimulus proposal as yet another wasteful government handout.
“He wants another stimulus. He
wants to hire more government workers,” Romney said. “He says we need
more firemen, more policemen, more
teachers. Did he not get the message of
Wisconsin? The American people did.
It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”
For Cory Booker, the mayor of
Newark, this viewpoint is deeply out
of touch with the realities of governing in urban America. Booker has
close ties to Wall Street, and clashed
with Obama advisors in May after he
criticized the campaign’s attacks on
Romney’s career at Bain Capital, a
private equity firm, as unseemly. But
like many big-city mayors, he agrees
with the Democratic president about
the need for more fiscal stimulus, and
calls Romney’s worldview wrongheaded and deeply troubling.
“That is a reflection of a dangerous
view of government, that views government as the problem, that there’s no