June 30, 2005
Coney Island decayed for decades, and now the Village Voice decries the very forces working to stop the downward spiral of crime and decay, which is akin to decrying the lot of the poor newsstand owner from India who after toiling for decades in a ramshackle heap of metal will lose his livelihood. Sure, we all love true grit, but sometimes change (i.e. "development") is a force for the better:
Last Saturday, the 23rd annual Mermaid Parade drew record throngs to Coney Island for Brooklyn's yearly celebration of homemade spangle and semi-nudity. With Corona-swigging hipsters commingling with the polychromatic crowds that populate the beach on most summer weekends, the parade has become the defining feature of a Coney Island that is beginning to reclaim its throne as the city's locus of low-budget populist entertainment.
But Coney Island's success, some fear, may prove to be its undoing. Both a city redevelopment agency and a private developer are sniffing around the suddenly hot amusement district, and the result could be a makeover that leaves the home of the Cyclone dramatically altered.
"To be nostalgic for the Coney Island we have known the past 20 or 30 years, which is an emaciated shell of its former self, is wrong—you want things to be built in Coney Island," says Coney Island USA director Dick Zigun, founder of both the Mermaid Parade and Sideshows by the Seashore. His worry, he says, is that because of the direction the process is heading, "the people who have put their hearts and souls in, the smaller operators in this amusement park, are going to get screwed."
Anyone who has visited Coney Island in the past 30 years can't help but note that 87% of it is a fucking world-class dump, 6% is a thrilling roller coaster, and 7% shows signs of being able to exist without life support. It's a temple of kitsch, one of the greatest wrecks of the 20th century in one of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods. Perhaps the Voice correspondent should take up residence for six months in one of the nearby housing projects and conduct further research. RIngelmatz hasn't heard of a single neighborhood resident who's upset with the gorgeous new subway station or the encroaching 21st century springing up from the ruins and weeds.
Tags:
coney island, mermaid parade, ramshackle
© All rights reserved.
Posted on 6/30/2005
(
Permanent Link
)
 Send to Friend
|
June 25, 2005
Pataki warns 2 groups for Ground Zero Museum
This headline makes you wonder: did freedom of expression also die on September 11? Are the widows holding everything and everyone hostage? It's really tough to figure this all out. Bloomberg as usual has the most apt quotation, obviously comprehends the arts far deeper than glib Pataki ever could, again proving Pataki is on his way out of Albany and Bloomy is the best democrat in the mayoral race:
Gov. George E. Pataki delivered an ultimatum to two important cultural players at ground zero yesterday, demanding "an absolute guarantee" that they would not mount exhibitions that could offend 9/11 families and pilgrims to a proposed memorial nearby.
Treading warily into the nexus of art and politics, the First Amendment and the symbolism of the twin towers site, Mr. Pataki made the demand after learning that one of the groups, the Drawing Center, has featured some politically themed and controversial artwork in its shows. A current display at its SoHo gallery, for instance, appears to make light of President Bush's description of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the Axis of Evil.
While saying that he respected artistic expression, Mr. Pataki invoked the solemnity of past battlegrounds in promising to preserve the hallowed ground in Lower Manhattan and ensure that no one will come away feeling offended by the reborn site.
"I view that memorial site as sacred grounds, akin to the beaches of Normandy or Pearl Harbor, and we will not tolerate anything on that site that denigrates America, denigrates New York or freedom, or denigrates the sacrifice or courage that the heroes showed on Sept. 11," Mr. Pataki told reporters in Albany.
Referring to the two cultural groups, he continued, "They have to do that, or they will not be at the memorial site - to the extent that I have the ability to do that." As governor, Mr. Pataki appoints members to oversight boards for ground zero's redevelopment, and after more than a decade in office, he almost certainly has the allies and the clout to change course and block cultural institutions from the site.
Mr. Pataki's demand, which was denounced by several arts groups and Democrats as a violation of free speech, is the latest episode in a series of public disputes and flash points for the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan. Last month Mr. Pataki ordered a redesign of the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower to address security concerns that New York City police officials said had at first been ignored. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that there would be an announcement next week about the redesign.
At the same time, several relatives of Sept. 11 victims have complained increasingly about the location at the memorial site of the proposed cultural center for the two groups, the Drawing Center and the nonprofit International Freedom Center. Commentary in some New York City newspapers has also been warning that both organizations may mount exhibitions that could be seen as anti-American, and yesterday The Daily News published a front-page headline, "Draw the Line, Now!" about incendiary artwork at the Drawing Center.
In a quickly drafted response to Mr. Pataki's remarks later yesterday, the Drawing Center acknowledged the "inevitable tensions" between the state's goals of remembrance and cultural activity at the site, and promised to try to resolve them.
A spokesman for the governor, David Catalfamo, said Mr. Pataki was "horrified" by The News's examples of Drawing Center artwork that seemed to mock President Bush and depict torture at the Abu Ghraib prison; at least one example, however, predated Sept. 11.
"The Drawing Center is only tentatively selected, and they don't have any contractual rights," Mr. Catalfamo said of the center's claims on space at ground zero. "But I hope they make the effort to figure this thing out."
Mr. Pataki's ultimatum drew criticism from some arts groups and Democrats, who called it a violation of free speech. "It's extremely inappropriate and wrong to have any censorship of what a cultural institution that's there would provide," said Tom Healy, president of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, an advocacy organization. "That's just anti-American."
Several relatives of those who died in the terrorist attacks were contemptuous of the governor's strategy, saying they did not trust the cultural groups and were skeptical that state officials could act as artistic arbiters in the victims' interests.
"This kind of ploy completely undermines our confidence in the governor's ability to do the right thing, or even know what the right thing is," said Debra Burlingame, a member of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, whose brother, Charles F. Burlingame III, was a pilot of the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.
"The Freedom Center personnel have already assured us they will be respectful while they are making plans to be disrespectful," she added.
Ms. Burlingame said she was mistrustful of Freedom Center executives because "they claim they met with family members, and that we were part of the process, but we've been stonewalled," she said. "We were told this was going to be a Sept. 11 museum, and then we learned it's going to be a freedom museum," with human rights advocates and academics included as advisers.
In a June 8 opinion column in The Wall Street Journal, Ms. Burlingame wrote that "the I.F.C. is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty," while the memorial center "will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground."
In the column she accused some organizers and consultants at the Freedom Center of a blame-America bias, igniting a movement to remove the proposed cultural building altogether. About 200 relatives of victims attended a protest rally at ground zero on Monday, and thousands of signatories have lodged complaints on takebackthememorial.com, a Web site.
Aides to Mr. Pataki said he was upset with officials at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for not vetting the Drawing Center's history of exhibitions more closely. Yet the fact that officials appeared caught unawares reflects the difficulty of policing artwork and judging its potential to offend untold sensibilities and psyches.
The governor's aide, Mr. Catalfamo, said the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation would conduct talks "rather expeditiously" to gain compliance from the two cultural groups. A spokeswoman for the corporation, Joanna Rose, declined comment other than to say that officials would work to carry out the governor's directive.
At his own news conference yesterday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appeared to wrestle with his own sense of obligation to the site, to the governor and to First Amendment principles.
"The problem is, of course, that you can probably not find any reputable cultural institution any place in the world where some of what they display or do would be appropriate there, but not appropriate at this site," he said. "And so the balance has got to be, and the challenge for the curators is going to be: given the context of where these cultural institutions are, what's appropriate here?"
(NYT)
Tags:
freedom, museum, speech
© All rights reserved.
Posted on 6/25/2005
(
Permanent Link
)
Send to Friend
|
June 21, 2005
Addressing the elder Mr. Rigas, Judge Leonard B. Sand of Federal District Court in Manhattan, said, "Even to this moment, you say you did nothing wrong; that's what is unacceptable."
He further said to Mr. Rigas's lawyers: "If your effort is at this point to convince me that there was not blatant fraud, you're going to have a very hard sell."
Each man potentially faced up to three decades in prison just for bank fraud, the most serious in a list of convictions that also included securities fraud and conspiracy. The sentencing is one of the largest in a corporate crime case since the Supreme Court ruled last January that judges did not have to adhere to federal guidelines when issuing sentences.
The elder Mr. Rigas spoke hoarsely and hunched over as he pleaded for leniency, and his family wept quietly as he was sentenced. "To my stockholders, I apologize - this whole thing has happened to all of us," he said. "There are many things that I wish I had done differently."
His son, in his speech asking for leniency, said, "Our intentions were good; the results were not so" - to which Judge Sand replied, "I think your intentions were to deceive the market."
Tags:
adelphia, federal court, jail sentence, judge, rigas
© All rights reserved.
Posted on 6/21/2005
(
Permanent Link
)
Send to Friend
|
June 15, 2005
Ben Smith writes in The Observer: Now, the specter of an alliance between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Murdoch—two of the most powerful and guarded figures in the world—is beginning to whet the appetites of the chattering classes....Other evidence is still a bit lean. Lunch has been taken at News Corp.’s midtown headquarters, friendly noises have emanated from the New York Post’s editorial page, and Mr. Murdoch has retained a key advisor to Mrs. Clinton, Howard Wolfson...."It makes perfect sense," said Nicholas Wapshott, the long-time New York bureau chief for Mr. Murdoch’s Times of London, of the notion of an alliance between the two. "Although Rupert is widely assumed to be an ideological creature solely of the right, the fact is that he’s a businessman before he is an ideologist, and he likes to be with a winner."
Tags:
clinton, hillary, murdoch, observer
© All rights reserved.
Posted on 6/15/2005
(
Permanent Link
)
Send to Friend
|
June 10, 2005
Sales Tax Changes Confuse Merchants Around the State
By BRUCE LAMBERT
GARDEN CITY, June 9 - New sales tax rates went into effect June 1 across New York State, but many retailers appear confused. A sample of Long Island merchants shows 36 percent imposing incorrect taxes - half of them overtaxing and the other half undertaxing.
Elsewhere, other merchants have complained of short notice and sought clarification, according to the Retail Council of New York State, representing 5,000 stores. The Business Council of New York State raised similar concerns the last time the rate changed, in 2003.
The sales tax varies across the state, ranging from 7 to 9.5 percent. It combines a 4 percent state tax with local city or county taxes, and those rates differ. In addition, shoppers in New York City and seven surrounding counties pay a 0.375 percent levy to aid mass transit.
The big change on June 1 was the expiration of a 0.25 percent statewide surcharge. Adding to the confusion, the State Legislature also raised the transit tax 0.125 percent, for a net reduction of 0.125 in New York City and Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam and Dutchess. Then the city dropped its tax 0.125 percent for a total cut there of 0.25 percent.
Nassau's new rate is 8.625 percent. Yet inspectors found stores variously charging the old higher rate of 8.75, New York City's new 8.375 rate, 8.5 or even 8.58 - apparently misreading the new 8 5/8 percent rate.
"We found no intent by any of these retailers to cheat the public," Mr. Weitzman said, especially since half the mistaken merchants were shortchanging themselves. Inspectors said the retailers were eager to correct the mistakes.
Tags:
albany, rates, sales tax
© All rights reserved.
Posted on 6/10/2005
(
Permanent Link
)
Send to Friend
|
June 02, 2005
Jarrett Murphy writes in the Village Voice:
It's accepted wisdom that New York State gets shortchanged by federal homeland security funding programs—that the residents of such terror targets as Wyoming, the Dakotas, and yes, Montana, get more cash per capita than the Empire State.
"We all know high-need areas should get this money if it's not going to be just pork," Senator Chuck Schumer complained last year to former security czar Tom Ridge. Welcoming delegates to the Republican convention in September, Mayor Michael Bloomberg told them, "We all must recognize that homeland security funds should be allocated by threat and no other reason." At campaign events, however, Bloomberg's Democratic rivals accuse the mayor of failing to press his Republican allies in Washington hard enough for the security money the Big Apple deserves.
But some of the money New York City wants is being held up not in D.C. but in Albany. Last fiscal year, New York City was awarded $208 million under the federal Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI). But the city only got $166 million off the bat, because all those funds first pass through the state government, which can take a 20 percent cut.
The state claims that much of its share eventually ends up protecting the city anyway. Local officials, however, aren't sure where it all goes.
According to a recent letter from James McMahon, director of the state Office of Homeland Security, the state's UASI share amounted to $42 million. About $3 million went back to the city. Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties received $2 million each, and Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, White Plains, and Yonkers were granted a combined $1.25 million. But all that adds up to only a quarter of the state's share. In fiscal 2004, the state distributed all its share to New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, and the Port Authority.
Even when the state claims its money helps New York City, the impact is fuzzy. In fiscal 2003, the state Office of Homeland Security said it spent $6.25 million of its $25 million take on "State Police and National Guard Orange Alert costs associated with the protection of critical infrastructure in New York City and the adjacent urban area." What those duties included, however, is something of a mystery to city officials.
At a City Council committee hearing last week, the city's Office of Emergency Management commissioner, Joseph Bruno, said, "State assets are helpful to us in the event of a serious emergency." But when asked what work the state police and National Guard were doing, he replied, "They came in during the Republican National Convention. I can't recall another emergency they've come in for." Some of the money might have been for drills, Bruno said, but the state's drills tended to be outside the five boroughs. The money for the MTA and Port Authority—did Bruno know what that involved? "No, I don't know what they are. But certainly anything they did to help the MTA, and particularly New York City Transit, it'd be helpful for the city." Ask NYPD head Kelly about the MTA end, Bruno suggested. He'd know more.
"You would think so, but [Kelly] was in the dark also," said Queens councilman and public safety committee chairman Peter Vallone Jr. "The people in charge of protecting us—who are doing a good job—are not fully aware of the projects that [the state does]."
Police spokesman Paul Browne diplomatically notes that the state's spending "isn't for me to document." While it's typical for the state to take a bite out of any federal grant to the city, Browne says, "our preference, obviously, is for as much as possible federal aid to come directly to the police in New York."
The reason is simple: manpower. All those impressive-sounding anti-terror tactics the NYPD employs (with names like Cobra, Sampson, Archangel, Hammer, and Hercules) push up overtime costs. Kelly recently told the City Council that next year's budget includes $260 million for overtime, but he predicted that actual costs would exceed that amount. "We're mainly looking for the federal government to help us pay for the costs of diverting police to counter-terrorism duties. And obviously, the more that comes directly, the better."
Tags:
chuck, funds, homeland security, rnc, schumer
© All rights reserved.
Posted on 6/2/2005
(
Permanent Link
)
Send to Friend
|
