One of the reasons I'm taking my personal time to research posts and blog here is that I generally don't find what I know, and what I think, presented anywhere else. But today I had the rare pleasure of having one of my recent posts echoed far more eloquently by one of the smartest people in the country, superstar bond manager Bill Gross, in his August newsletter here. The wealthy, Gross says, are taking too much for anyone's long term interest, as thoughtful rich people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates understand and other rich people do not. In addition, due to the housing bubble, the credit bubble and their aftermath, hard times are coming. I suggest reading Gross's post.

There is a reason why advertisers target the young, and why they are willing to pay more for media that attracts a young audience. It isn’t that they young have more money; they have less today and, as a result of public policies, their own spending habits, and the decisions of prior generations in the marketplace, today’s young people may also have less throughout their lives. Despite this, advertisers target the young, and opinion leaders among the young, because there are apparently very few people with open minds. Most people, it seems, do and think what people around them do and think, rather than deciding how they are to live and what they will believe. And once they have been shaped in a particular way, this tends to get locked in. The general unwillingness to be open to new ideas has implications both for politics and public policy, including transportation policy.

Thursday was the deadline for candidates to submit designating petitions to run for public and party office this year. This year is an “off-year” in New York City with very few electoral contests.

Here is a list of what contests there are with some commentary about who is who.

Note that this list is subject to change as a result of candidates withdrawing or being removed from the ballot.

Queens

There are no Democratic, Independence, Conservative or Working Families Primaries.

The non-farm employment numbers from the New York State Department of Labor are out for June. From June 2006 to June 2007, government employment in New York State rose by 4,500, while government employment in New York City fell by 2,400. Which means that government employment in the portion of the state outside New York City rose by 6,900 year-over-year. Again. No wonder the seniors outside New York City want more and more tax breaks. Of course, the rest of the state could point out that they suffered from the decline in government employment in New York City, since those outside New York City also hold a large share of the government jobs in it, and drive in to work. So NYC cutbacks had to made it up somewhere else.

Based on the congestion pricing debate, it looks like Bruno and Silver are looking for someone to blame for the transportation-related consequences of the debts and pension enhancements they enacted from 1990 to 2006 in order to pander to interests, hand out benefits, and make themselves popular, all the expense of a future no one cared about. Having apparently turned down Bloomberg's political gift, a funding source that he would have taken the heat for, they seem to have decided on Eliot Spitzer, who is the one person now in office who was not involved. And if Spitzer decides to bury his head in the sand rather than making the pain felt in 2008, when the legislature is up for re-election and he is not, they will succeed.

In the wake of his defeat on the issue of congestion pricing, Mayor Bloomberg called Senator Malcolm Smith and some pols gutless "I heard a lot of talk about the politics of congestion pricing … and all I kept thinking about was — some people have guts and lead from the front and some don't,"

I’d like to remind everyone that Bloomberg did not support congestion pricing in 2001 when he first ran for Mayor or in 2005 when he ran for re-election. He is now term-limited and can’t run for re-election.

I could write scores of Marty Markowitz stories; but I won’t; at least not right now. It would be fun though; it really would be. For full disclosure, let me state upfront that for many years, I was one of quite a few in the Crown Heights/ Flatbush community, committed to taking Marty Markowitz out of his senate seat (20 SD). We failed.

Marty was in office for about 20 years or so, in a district where minorities made up about 80% of the residents-with more than half of them either born in the Caribbean, or of parents so born. Some called Marty a comedian, others snidely remarked that he was a clown; lore has it that one Easter Sunday, he even ran around the black community in a white Easter-bunny suit. Needless to say: many of the more militant-black types thought he was an embarrassment. Well; I am not sure that those comments can hold up any more folks; Marty has been and continues to be: a winner (politically speaking).

Today the Democratic members of the New York State Assembly will take mass transit to Lower Manhattan and discuss how, in lieu of congestion pricing and without sacrificing the future through additional borrowing, they will fully fund the ongoing operating and capital needs of the transportation system (including the 2010 to 2014 MTA Capital Plan) and how, without unfairness or favoritism and with limited economic damage, they will ration those driving to congested parts of New York City to the level of traffic the road network can support. Or they will drive there, using their permits to park in restricted free on-street parking areas, and they will grandstand, be publicly disingenuous, continue to promise something for nothing and the expense of the future, and privately discuss deals to reward their supporters. In honor of Silver, Brodsky, Brennan et. al, or in fear of the future they will leave us with, I have decided to forego our transit system (with its uncertain future) and bicycle to work. Or at least part of the way to work, because I was unable to identify anyplace to safely park my bike in the vicinity of my office in deepest, darkest, priciest Midtown. The only place I found bicycles locked was to small trees, not a good idea. So I’ll ride six miles from Windsor Terrace to the Lower East Side, and take the subway from there.

At my brother’s suggestion, I took a look at some financial tables at www.crestmontresearch.com, including one showing bull and bear stock markets since 1900. Looking at the dates, and comparing them with what I remember of American history, it seems that the long term bull and bear markets identified by Crestmont correspond with the level of trust and confidence in corporate management as agents of the public good (and the often opposite level of confidence in government), not just with cycles of the economy. The economy affects how much profit business may earn, but Crestmont bases the onsets of long-term bull and bear markets on highs and lows in the price-earnings ratio, or how much investors are willing to pay for each dollar of earnings. This depends not only on the level of inflation and the return on competing assets, but also on public perceptions of what those earnings mean for the future, and whom they will benefit. Will they ultimately be paid to stockholders, or will most of them be diverted to top executives and interlocking directors? Are the profits coming at the expense of workers and customers, and thus likely to disappear in the long run as these seek better deals elsewhere, or are customers and employees happy, creating the potential for more productivity and better sales? Are the profits even real? To me, the table is the history of business gaining and then squandering the public trust. And for the past decade, business has been doing the latter, with a reaction building that has only just begun.

Bruno spokesman Mark Hanson said his boss is so disgusted by the treatment he has been getting from Spitzer that he may never again use state-owned aircraft.