Category: News and Opinion

On Erev Yom Kippur, when Jews around the world are busy forsaking the worldly to the extent of giving up food, which, not being for free, is far more precious to us than air, I topped off my Kol Nidre service with an episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher”.

The evening’s first interview featured a testy exchange between Maher and Michael Scheuer, author of “Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq”. Finishing the interview, Maher introduced his panel, and began with this question:

BILL MAHER: Okay. So, did anything Mr. Scheuer said upset anybody as much as the comments on Israel upset me?

Bloomberg (the company not the Mayor) reports that under the new agreement between General Motors and the United Auto Workers, costs will be cut primarily through lower pay and benefits for newly hired workers. General Motors is going down the tubes because the union successfully demanded too much compensation for too little work — retirees vastly outnumber workers — while the "who you know not what you know" managers that followed those who built the company paid themselves royally while failing to innovate and running the company into the ground. So sacrifices had to be made. But they were not made equally. Like our elected officials and public employee unions, GM and the UAW decided to preserve existing perks and privileges for those who have them, while ensuring the next generation will be worse off even as they must do a better job.

I saw a surprising piece of data in a New York Sun article on rising health insurance costs recently http://www.nysun.com/article/63341. It seems the cost of health insurance in the city will be rising 8.7% this year, according to well known employee compensation firm Hewitt Associates, to $8,719 per employee. The national average is also rising 8.7%, to $8,676. That means that privately financed health insurance costs less than one percent more in New York City than the national average, despite the fact that health care is a labor-intensive industry and, as readers of my prior posts are aware, the average worker in Downstate New York (excluding the high-paid financial sector) earned one-third more than the national average. And, in fact, when I contacted Hewitt Associates years ago to get comparable information for this report http://urban.nyu.edu/research/littlefield/index.html, I found that in 1997 private health insurance in fact cost one-third more than the national average here, what I would have expected. And relying on the same wage data I use, federal Medicare also pays about one-third more in New York City than the national average (which is why by act of Congress for Medicare payment purposes Ulster County is now a part of New York City). So is private health insurance in New York City a bargain? Or are New Yorkers paying for it in some other way?

At the request of Daily Gotham’s Mole333, I’ve come out of retirement for the rare cause on which we both agree.

The race between Noach Dear and Karen Yellen in Brooklyn’s 5th Municipal Court District is the most unambiguous choice available in this year's Brooklyn judicial elections, and it has been ignored for far too long in favor of a forest of dead trees written about the far more ambiguous Surrogate's race (I’m voting for Simpson, but to explain why would require more of my time than the race merits). Residents of Bay Ridge, Kensington, Sunset Park, Windsor Terrace, Dyker Heights, Borough Park and portions of adjoining communities should run, not walk, and vote early and often for Karen Yellen.

The U.S. Census Bureau released the second set of 2006 American Community Survey (ACS) data last week, and thus far I have had time to look over some of the housing data (see attached spreadsheet). There are plenty of interesting tidbits there, but one statistic jumped out at me. The median gross rent as a share of household income, meaning half of the households paid more of their income in rent and half less, was 30.5% in New York City, 30.5% in the New York metro area as a whole, and an almost identical 29.9% for the entire United States. The median gross rent (rent, plus the estimated average monthly cost of fuel and utilities) is 23.9% higher than the U.S. average in New York City, 29.1% higher in the New York Metro as a whole; the median contract rent is 35.2% and 40.6% higher than average respectively. Yet it appears that the higher median rents in the New York area are offset almost entirely by the higher median incomes, even for renters. Looking the larger metro areas around the country one finds little variation, with percentages above 33% and below 28% virtually absent (South Florida and the Inland Empire of California are slightly more expensive than that). From a public policy perspective, 30% of income is the share recipients of housing benefits under Section 8 and Public Housing must pay, and that appears to be the national average. Looking at the total rent/income ratio, one wonders how expensive is New York City?

But of course, this is not the whole story.

Next week Tuesday is my birthday (09-18), and it coincides with a primary election in Brooklyn. I am really not vested in the many judicial races, so I don’t expect to be breaking out the bubbly at midnight, in celebration of some victory or the other. If I break out the bubbly at all, it will be to celebrate another year of life and that’s it. I am thankful; I am humbled; I truly am. Still, I will make two endorsements in the upcoming judicial races for whatever they are worth, and then I will fill you guys in on some of the conversations making the rounds in the grapevines, pumpkin vines, cocoa, banana and coconut vines. By the way, do you know what Beethoven’s favorite fruit was?

The answer: ba-na-na-na. Okay, so my secret is out: I am a wannabee comedian.

To me, that’s what the Tribute in Light is. Since I lack standing as an art critic or even frequent visitor to art museums, perhaps I should say that it is the one I find most meaningful. Certainly if the purpose of art is a deeper, more abstract means of communication, then its enormity cannot be denied. Everyone can grasp many of the meanings of those two beams. That it was conceived and implemented so quickly makes it all the more amazing. I have no idea who did this, but those who did have my thanks.

No memorial that will ever be conceived will convey as much as having those two beams of light cast to the sky each year on this date. Nothing could do as much to help people remember 10, 20, 50, or 100 years from now. I agree with an early Bloomberg comment that the city should not be a cemetary, and wish the city had healed around the wound already. But I hope that into the far off future the ghost of the towers will continue to rise as a memorial to what happened that day and those lost.

Referring to Coney Island, the NY Post reported today that Kansas Fried Chicken king Horace Bullard said "the city has waited far too long to rezone the district – putting boardwalk property owners such as himself at risk as they face a declining economy, and potentially setting back future redevelopment many years." The city is stalling because, for good reasons, it does not want to accept mega-developer and current primary property owner Joseph Sitt's plan for yet more condos in a high-traffic entertainment area served by eight subway tracks. But this begs the question — if the city knows what it wants, why doesn't the current C7 zoning, mapped there and nowhere else, already reflect this? Why wasn’t this the case years ago, so that any prospective property buyer would have known what they were getting into up front, and could have just gone ahead and built?

File this one under: “Predictions from the Rock”. Watch it blow up and then come back to me later. You see, this is the month that Diane Gordon goes on trial over her alleged bribery caper. Remember the video tapes, where we saw Ms. Gordon seemingly attempt to bribe a developer into building her a dream house in some gated community in Queens; well unless they postpone the trial she will be soon getting her day in court. So what are my predictions?

Firstly; I predict that Diane will be going to jail, not passing go, and not collecting the 200 dollars from passing (monopoly). This of course opens up her assembly seat in a special election. And cousins, this is where it gets sexy (politically speaking, that is).

I read today that the State Comptroller is cutting the pension contributions required of local governments outside New York City. Can more pension enhancements be far behind? It’s like 2000 all over again. Does anyone remember what happened next? More importantly, has the Comptroler been reading the financial press about what is happening now? It’s scarier than anything I can remember — all the crap that happened over time, rather than blowing up over time, seems to be blowing up at once.