As winter approaches many are seeking to avert its discontent thinking instead of spring the season of rebirth. And with spring comes St. Patrick’s Day and with that the New York parade honoring this saint. Yet the marchers still prohibit Irish gays from marching as their own in the grand procession.
Category: News and Opinion
The Gateway (The “Is It Because I’m Black?” Edition)
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Pick hit of the week:
Pataki: Conservative Light
|The New York Times reports that former New York governor George Pataki is considering a run for the Republican nomination for president. Mr. Pataki would be a formidable candidate in the GOP primary carrying with him moderate appeal and conservative credentials.
Trivial Pursuits (A Drosh on the Jewish vote)
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As Latke Gravas once observed, senseless and meaningless rituals are all that separate us from the animals. And though sometimes resembling a zoo more than a salon, the Gatemouth Family has a few senseless rituals of our own.
We break Passover over Liberty Ale at the Waterfront Alehouse; on the Sabbath, Domestic Partner doesn’t eat pork or shellfish, or commit adultery; and every two years I write a piece analyzing the votes of the 2% of Americans who consider themselves Jews.
SOME POST-ELECTION MUSINGS: Including Bloomberg and Barron (again).
|Some wise-ass political thinker once said that “we get the government we deserve”. Another went even further when he said that “we get the exact government we voted for”. And on most elections nights you would hear commentators saying things like: “the people have spoken”; or that “the voice of the people is the voice of God”; or that “these results are the people's will”. But are these cliches correct in terms of their deeper messages?
The Gateway (Half-heimer’s Edition)
|Had only one new item and wasn’t gonna post a column tonite, and then discovered I somehow accidentally forgot to use five items from this week I’d previously posted on my Facebook page.
Sadly enough none had gone really stale
Long Island Needs ESA And Doesn’t Need ARC
|If there is one group of people who should be pleased with New Jersey Governor Christie's cancellation of the ARC Tunnel, it is Long Island homeowners and businesses. New Jersey Transit's ridership to Manhattan has been soaring and now, according to the Wall Street Journal, more people are riding MetroNorth in the Northern Suburbs than are riding the Long Island Railroad, as LIRR ridership falls. The article implies that poor LIRR service is to blame, and Long Islanders are choosing other ways to commute to Manhattan, while reverse ridership has boosted MetroNorth. But based on anecdotal evidence I suggest something different: those who hold high-wage jobs in Manhattan, which has the largest concentration of high wage jobs in the country, and want to live in the suburbs, are not choosing to live on Long Island. In fact, they are not even considering living on Long Island, unless they are from there. And the importance of this can be explained with a question: do people on Long Island want to sell their homes to those who are about as well off as they were at the same point in their life, someone better off, or someone worse off who can’t afford someplace better?
The Gateway (Gatemouth is Still Coasting and Avoiding Writing a Real Column Edition)
|Sharpton needed to attack the transition team for lack of diversity before it was even announced, so he could take credit for the diversity when he was proven wrong.
Long Term Care Insurance: As I Was Saying
|As I said in detail in a prior post, long term care insurance is not a solution for the custodial care of the aging. Giving a large share of your money to a private entity over 20 or 30 years, expecting in every case it will meet your needs that many years later, is a good way to pay and get nothing.
Today, according to Bloomberg News, MetLife announced it will halt the sale of long term care insurance. Fortunately for its long term care customers, it is a big company and long term care is a small part of their business, so profits elsewhere might allow claims to eventually be paid. Not so for a company for which long term care insurance accounts for a larger share of the business. By using optimistic assumptions, such a company can divert a large share of premium payments to executive pay and bonuses, then run out of money 20 or 30 years later as its customers age. Imagine you are 80 years old, you've paid in $600,000 to a company, if you stop paying you get nothing, but it will likely be unable to honor its claims? At least Metlife pulled the plug early.
As The New Governor Prepares To Take Office
|The latest Current Employment Survey release from the New York State Department of Labor shows that local elementary and secondary school employment in the portion of New York State outside New York City increased by 11,400 future pension recipients from September 2009 to September 2010. Public school spending, staffing and pay has been off the charts in the rest of the state for decades.
In the past that has been at the expense of New York City, where local elementary and secondary school employment fell by 100 in the most recent September to September period. But now NYC school funding is higher, if lower than in the rest of the state — but with most of the added funding going to the retired. So local government employment in the rest of the state excluding the public schools is being slashed instead, by 32,600 in the most recent September to September period. In New York City, it fell by 5,800. State agencies are being gutted too. So what else happened in New York City?