August 30, 2005
The Times endorses Morgenthau's opponent Leslie Crocker Snyder for Manhattan DA, and one wonders: is it ageism? Morgenthau continues to be a legendary prosecutor, but truth be told, he is 86 and has been at it over 30 years. So Ben Smith of the Observer's Politicker and WNYC's Brian Lehrer are discussing this topic on Lehrer's call-in show this morning. It seems others agree: 30 years is enough, regardless of how incredibly competent and capable Morgenthau has been. Well folks, in New York State, life tenure is quite frequently a perk of office. Just ask the state Assembly and Senate, where turnover generally occurs due to retirement.
Tags:
district attorney, morgenthau
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Posted on 8/30/2005
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August 30, 2005
Critics say starting pay is creating a problem. Creating a problem??? It is the problem! We have critical threat national-security issues to deal with in this city, and the starting salary we are offering our cops is a joke. No wonder so many of these new recruits can't pass a written test. They haven't got the education or the skills to even have this job. No offense is meant to the recruits; our city just has the wrong priorities. Money is always an issue, but I am willing to wager the amount of money Bloomberg is spending on his campaign could easily give every new recruit a $20,000 cash bonus for signing up with the NYPD.
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nypd, recruit, salary
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Posted on 8/30/2005
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August 29, 2005
William Weld wants a listening tour Upstate. Sound familiar? The ex-governor of Massachusetts, a declared candidate for next year's gubernatorial election, has decided to ape Hillary Clinton's 2000 listening tour Upstate. The AP's Mark Humbert got a stunning quote, truly from the mondo bizarro: The millionaire lawyer and private equity investment company partner said "my hope is to be able to tie up enough of the business loose ends so my bride and I can hop in a car and tour some of the upstate counties after that _ meet a few people, pick a few apples, let my bride chop down a few trees."
Uh, sure Governor Weld...have your wife chop down those trees...hopefully you'll do better listening than George Pataki or Tom Golisano have done in recent years. What you'll find are legions of fed-up, seething Republicans who are tired of the ossified way of doing business in this state, of the enormous tax burden and little bang for the buck returned to the towns and cities by Albany. In fact, Governor Weld, you'll likely meet legions of angry citizens who are even worse off than their counterparts in rural Massachusetts. So will it be a familiar landscape? Just don't forget: in 2002, Golisano spent $75 million of his own money and finished a distant third. That's a lot of dough. Golisano was a conservative and got the blessing of the state's Conservative Party. Your record on social issues seems to underscore you've got a snowball's chance in hell of getting that endorsement. Frankly, Eliot Spitzer has a massive war chest, and only one person in U.S. history has been governor of two states: Sam Houston, of Tennessee from 1827 to 1829 and Texas from 1859 to 1861. Maybe you ought to join your bride in chopping down trees; it's good practice for all the sweat you'll work up in the next 15 months.
Tags:
albany, eliot spitzer, governor, listening tour, upstate, william weld
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Posted on 8/29/2005
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August 29, 2005
Rich kid Gifford Miller won't say where his kids will go to school, and that's too bad. As City Council president, and would-be mayor who is hell-bent on improving our city's public schools, he's in a bind. With two kids, ages 3 and 4, he was asked on KISS-FM's "Open Line" program yesterday why he won't commit his own children to NYC's public schools. As reported in Newsday, Gif just shrugged off the question with: "My kids are more important to me than my campaign. I'm not going to make it a campaign issue or a campaign promise," Miller said. For which a host rightly criticized him as a hypocrite. What rich guy from the Upper East Side would send his kid to NYC's public schools? Hopefully one who wants to be mayor....
Tags:
education, election, gifford miller, mayor
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Posted on 8/29/2005
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August 27, 2005
Fresh visualized his own death years ago, and realized he'd either be flattened by an oncoming subway train, M20 bus, or truck, while blithely crossing illegally in Manhattan. But when an elderly Holocaust survivor is crushed to death, it's just frightful. As the 10-wheeler turned east onto West 14th Street from Sixth Avenue, he did not see her: Tests conducted by police after the fatal 11:23 a.m. accident showed that anyone below 5 feet tall would be invisible from the driver's seat of McMullen's truck. Zimmerman stood 4 feet 9 inches tall, police said. And even more depressing: A Holocaust survivor who hailed from the former Czechoslovakia, Zimmerman was a translator who spoke five languages. We all know that intersection is horribly dangerous, compounded by the sheer recklessness so many drivers and truckers exhibit due to frequent bottlenecks made worse by the stretcccchh buses clogging the roadway. Just sickening.
Tags:
14th street, accident, crushed, truck
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Posted on 8/27/2005
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August 26, 2005
Public education has taken the back burner in the mayoral election, and some interesting theories as to why are posited in today's lead Times Metro Section. Democrats have not leveraged this issue to their advantage, largely because Bloomberg's modest successes are a direct result of reforms he made to change the former Board of Education to the new Education Department. While test scores have risen and the number of faceless bureaucracts has decreased, other quantifiable results are indeed dubious. Certainly Ferrer has rightfully underscored that low graduation rates are evidence that further reform is needed. Gif says class sizes are too large. Wiener and Fields have modest proposals of their own. Yet Merryl Tisch of the State Board of Regents seems to get the final and definitive word here:
For a mayorlty that has staked its entire being on fixing the schools, it would seem to me that someone would want to talk about the schools.
Still, Bloomberg's reforms of this morbid and ossified bureaucracy, though modest, are extraordinary in comparison with the glacial pace of reform accomplished by his predecesssors.
Tags:
bloomberg, education, election, ferrer, gifford miller, mayor
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Posted on 8/26/2005
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August 22, 2005
Fresh got a phone call at 9:30 pm Friday evening. Would he have a minute (actually it turned out to be 19 minutes) to participate in a political survey about the mayoral election?Well, your blogger was curious what would be asked. It became immediately clear this was no survey; it was a room full of very well-spoken telemarketers (also fluent in Spanish) who asked pointed questions phrased to smear Freddy Ferrer. Now Fresh is no fan of Ferrer, but some of the questions had extremely negative overtones about the Bronx, the nature of corrupt politics in the Bronx, and the nature of corrupt politicians from the Bronx. So Fresh cleverly asked questions now and then of his telemarketer, who admitted she was Fresh's age and indeed from the Bronx. She was being totally honest, not least since she was being paid the lousy sum of $7.50 per hour on a Friday night! Fresh told her she's the most articulate political survey caller he ever spoke to (despite that this wasn't a survey by any means) and she ought to get a nice cozy job with Verizon customer service. But back to the point: Bloomberg spent nearly $100 per vote in the last election, and this type of phone call made it clear he will use information technology to his advantage to win the election. What's more, at the end of the call, the telemarketer then asked demographic information about religion, income, etc. (which Fresh always refuses to answer), and then said to Fresh: "And just to confirm, your number is 212-XXX-YYYY?" Fresh was totally shocked: of course, you fool, they are compiling all this data about you you you. Fresh denied that was his phone number, and said some weird phone forwarding must have put that number on her screen. For the record, this was his office and he'd be fired if his boss knew he was answering such questions. So she kindly deleted the phone number from her database. That's our Bloomberg: the man who became a billionaire from harnessing the power of information technology.
Tags:
bloomberg, election, mayor, political survey
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Posted on 8/22/2005
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August 15, 2005
Leona Helmsley's Park Lane hotel is No. 6 on the top 10 list of delinquent water accounts according to the Department of Environmental Protection. Officials say the 46-story hotel owes $714,835 — $641,669 of which is past due. Of course, Helmsley's mouthpiece, Howard Rubenstein, who's made a career out of making every monster look saintly, claims the Park Lane will pay all legitimate charges, but the DEP's figures are wrong.
Don't bite the hand that feeds you! Leona's dog Trouble was recently the subject of a new lawsuit by an employee, who was forced to feed Trouble dinners of chef-prepared smoked salmon, chicken, and carrots with sour cream by hand. Apparently Trouble won't eat from a plate. Stay tuned.
New Yorkers of a certain age will remember how frequently Spy magazine used to pillory Leona, not least because she was such an easy target. They reported long ago that this famous hotelier, when swimming laps in her private pool, had a servant bearing a can of tuna fish at the end of the pool in case Leona should swim up and demand: "Feed the fishy!"
Honestly, you can't make this stuff up.....
Tags:
helmsley, park lane, water
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Posted on 8/15/2005
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August 09, 2005
Need a six-pack on a hot August night. Investigate Eckerd chain drug store, just curious how much Bass ale costs there. Shockingly, it's the cheapest price in Manhattan ($7.29). The clerk asks for ID. Fresh replies: "You have to be kidding, I'm over 30!" Clerk responds: "No joke, but my co-worker got fired this morning because the regional manager sent in an underage kid to test the cashiers."
Manhattan really is changing...Fresh was asked for ID at multiple bars in recent weeks, and frankly hasn't been asked for ID this frequently in Manhattan since he was 17--half a lifetime ago.
The clerk was funny though; the dude behind Fresh was wearing a "Jesus is my homeboy" t-shirt from Urban Outfitters, and the clerk just rolled her eyes and said, "Jesus is my homeboy, huh? Wassup with that? Oh, I should keep my mouth shut...I need my job."
Gotta love it....
Tags:
beer, fresh, obey, slammer
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Posted on 8/9/2005
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August 06, 2005
When big unions give their endorsements this early, you know that "The defection of Democrats makes Bloomberg look viable," said a top Democratic strategist, requesting anonymity, as reported today in Newsday. "Bloomberg just isn't the ogre Giuliani was. And it tells people in the unions that it's OK to stick their heads in the sand when it comes to endorsements." You've heard it here before, but Bloomberg still seems to be the best Democrat in the race; the little giants can't find an issue to tackle him on. Babyface Gifford Miller is trying hard; one of the charming young ladies retained by his campaign rang Fresh's doorbell this past week, eager beaver to tell Fresh about her candidate. Fresh was too busy blogging, and besides, he was pissed off that Miller decided to keep those campaign checks from two of NYC's worst landlords. Babyface's spokesman then told the press he had an unparalleled record in protecting tenant rights, and therefore would keep the money. Gee, that really smacks of hypocrisy, don't it? If Gif needs the money so bad, would he also accept if the hookers' union gave him $50,000? Because he's got an unparalleled record in protecting hookers? Sorry, Fresh spoon-fed you a false premise: the hookers haven't got a union. And if they did, they too would probably line up (cough cough) behind Bloomberg.
Tags:
bloomberg, election, gifford miller, mayor, union
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Posted on 8/6/2005
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August 01, 2005
All it takes is a dollar and a dream, so New Yorkers are increasingly jumping to the multi-state Mega Millions game, where a fatter jackpot lures lottery-ticket buyers. As today's New York Post reports, Lotto sales totaled $157.4 million, down dramatically from the $201.7 million taken in through this time in 2004, according to the state Lottery. Mega Millions sales are down too, but scratch-off ticket sales are up. Nothing like instant gratification! Now if only this poor state didn't require so much gambling revenue in order to make ends meet. Did someone say robbing Peter to pay Paul?
Tags:
albany, lotto, mega millions
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Posted on 8/1/2005
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