As if Michael Bloomberg didn't spend enough of his own money trying to win re-election as mayor of New York City, IBM's ad budget seems to have given him a further boost. This new spot in IBM's "Smarter Planet" series opens with a voice saying that "crime in New York City has dropped 27 percent since 2001." Viewers who vote in that city who saw the ad in recent weeks might have assumed at first that it was yet another Bloomberg commercial. As it becomes clear that this encomium to the city's declining crime rate is coming from a disinterested source, it's probably all the more potent as a seeming endorsement of the mayor's stewardship, at least where crime rates are concerned. One more reason to think Bloomberg's opponent in the election, William Thompson, just hasn't caught a break.
—Posted by Mark Dolliver