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I admit I was never a smoker, but it’s hats off to Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council for the new law banning smoking in 43 square miles of parks, public plazas, beaches, and boardwalks in the city.
That means no smoking in Central Park, the pedestrian plaza even in Times Square, or again, at the beaches.
I guess I just can’t win without losing. Anytime I write anything about Barack Obama, the e-mails and phone calls come in trickles. Whether I write something good or bad doesn’t matter. The man has his sycophants and they are relentless.
In my last column I gave him credit for what I deemed a gutsy call on the Arab-Israeli impasse. Since then he has elaborated on his position(s) via three significant speeches, one intriguing press conference (with England’s PM) in London, and through a few communiqués to the press.
According to T.R. Reid in his book the United States of Europe the English writer Zoe Heller wrote Help I Am Turning into An American which inspired me to write something along a similar line only from a perspective of this side of the Atlantic. For simplicity’s sake I wrote this in list format. So here are the reasons I believe I am turning into a European:
I am against war.
The New York Times is reporting that New York City Transit's operating cost recovery ratio has reached 64.0%. I'll bet that recovery is far, far higher for the subway and lower for the bus; the separate MTA Bus Company (former private routes) only covers about 40.0%. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that bus ridership has been going down since 2005, as subway ridership has going up. Bus ridership had been going down long term, too, before the free transfers with Metrocard caused a short term turnaround.
A variety of explanations is given for the fall in bus ridership. One that isn't mentioned is the increase in bicycle transportation. Take it from me, almost no one who has actually tried getting around by bike would choose a bus instead, unless they were physically unable to ride. Bus trips tend to be shorter than subway trips, either to the subway or in directions the subway does not go. Bikes are faster, given you don't have to wait for them, and no less confortable in inclement weather, given that wait for the bus is outside. And with the fare increases, biking is a lot cheaper too.
Currently the United Nations is an organization devoted to bringing together nation states from around the world. However, the establishment of the European Union may signal a change to that formula.
The MTA website used to contain financial indicators that showed just how much of its operating costs, and its overall costs, were covered by fares. It also included performance and safety indicators.
In the new format, the performance and safety indicators are there. But the financial indicators are gone. A year and a half ago, when the MTA was slashing bus service, it showed extensive service usage and cost per rider information by bus line. I had hoped this would be expanded upon. Instead, information that was there is no longer there. Hopefully it is coming. I'll wait a couple of months before screaming bloody murder.
This piece ignores an important point, which is that most of the 54th AD has not been represented by Ed Towns since 1992, so a loss by his daughter will not necessarily be a sign a Towns’ weakness–she could win his part of the district and still lose the race.
One of the attempts to try to explain Kathy Hochul’s upset win appeared on theatlantic.com and was written by Chris Good, who is identified as an associate editor at The Atlantic, where he writes for the Politics channel and who previously reported and blogged for The Hill newspaper.
In 1970, a redistricting, and a potential race against a popular member of the local football team, led Richard “Max” McCarthy, a smart and plucky Congressman from the Buffalo suburbs (who'd won his already marginal seat in the 64 Johnson landsiide), to embark upon a kamikazee run for the US Senate.
During that race, during which, in order to dramatize our environmental problems (and attract some publicity), McCarthy went scuba-diving into the Hudson and took a balloon ride in Central Park.
The New York Times reports today that experts are baffled that index crimes remain low across the country despite dire economic times. They might also have been baffled that crime soared in the 1960s and early 1970s despite good economic times. The explanation is obvious — generational values. There was a crime generation just as there was a welfare generation, and a divorce and single parenthood generation. It’s the same generation. And now they are on to something else.
The crime index measure street crimes. These are disproportionately committed by young, poor men, often minority men. What the crime experts are forgetting is that as Generation Greed has aged, the surge in street crime by the poor has been replaced by a surge in white collar crime by the non-poor, and lesser victimizations that are not strictly illegal in a "beyond a reasonable doubt" sense but merely immoral. Most of the poor minority men of Generation Greed are getting too old to rob and rape and kill and burgle. The better off members of that Generation are now running our public and private institutions. Which is why we are rotting toward an institutional collapse. Because while we had a 30 year crackdown on street crimes, some would say an excessive crackdown, there is nothing of the sort going on with regard to our institutions. This is what happens when crime moves up the social ladder. A lot of it isn’t even illegal. No "broken windows" theory applied.
