As someone with an interest in politics and gambling, I’ve closely following the media coverage of the proposed “racino” at Aqueduct Race Track.

The way mainstream media operates, you will usually find that  after the “big” story dies down -and after the flaming headlines have simmered- there is little follow up to the initial newsworthy event. So lately, you will hardly find coverage from the aftermath of the latest cataclysm to affect the Caribbean nation of Haiti. And yet for the millions of Haitians affected by the disastrous earthquake 12thJanuary, 2010, life must go on. And life for most Haitians continue to be challenging -even more so than it was before the earthquake hit. For Caribbean-Americans like me, it is really nice to see that many members of the New York city council are still finding ways to help the Haitian community at large.

Lately there has been some controversy swirling around the decisions of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein, relative to proposed school closings all over the city. If memory serves me right some players in this brouhaha have even gone to court to stop some (or all) of the proposed closings. I am told that the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) has opposed some (if not all) of these closings -at least in principle. But then the teachers union is usually an adversary of the chancellor’s office in an almost perfunctory manner, so this isn’t surprising. Now, let me preface this column by stating this: there are surely schools which should be closed -given years upon years of delivering poor quality education to its students; so I am not one trying to look over the shoulders of Department of Education (DOE) officials on the ground. Let’s be clear about that from Jump Street.

In this post.

GATEMOUTH (1/27/10): The proof of the intellectual bankruptcy of Wall Street is their inability to learn. Rescued in the thirties from the depths of their own self-created degradation, they spent the next decade cursing the President who’d rescued them, and possibly capitalism itself, as “that man in the White House.”

What Wall Street cursed FDR for was his temerity in insisting upon setting up some rules to ensure that Wall Street’s man-made disaster would never occur again, and that the third-party victims of their depravity were allowed the basic sustenance necessary for survival. The rules Wall Street so objected to save them from disaster for more than a half century, until they were rendered obsolete by new technology and more advanced and clever forms of self-destructive avarice…

As I noted last fall while sifting through the vat of offal known as the Comptroller’s race, Councilman (as he was then) David Weprin, never bunched my panties. He reminded me of Rupert Pupkin in “The King of Comedy;” and came off as a parochial outer-borough pol, utterly lacking in vision, who appeared poised to restore the model of Abe Beame.

PAUL MCCARTNEY: …Too Many Reaching For A Piece Of Cake
Too Many People Pulled And Pushed Around
Too Many Waiting For That Lucky Break
That Was Your First Mistake
You Took Your Lucky Break And Broke It In Two
Now What Can Be Done For You
You Broke It In Two

That Was Your Last Mistake
I Find My Love Awake And Waiting To Be
Now What Can Be Done For You
She's Waiting For Me”