Based on what I read in the newspaper, I'll give credit to the Freelancers Union and Councilmember David Yassky for sticking up for one of New York's losers: self-employed freelancers and owners of their own small businesses. Many of the former are employees in all but name, but designated independent contractors so their employers do not have to pay social security and unemployment taxes, and can provide tax-free health insurance to the higher ups and those with seniority but not to new hires. Most of the victims of this shift in practice are the young, yet another two-tier contract with a worse-off following generation. And the City of New York adds injury to injury by taxing the income of freelancers twice, once through the local income tax and once through the unincorporated business tax.

The discussion of the New York State Budget appears to be just about over in the mainstream media. Tidbits have come out, given to favorable newspapers, and accusations have come out in unfavorable ones. I could talk about the budget based on what I have read, but I will defer doing so until the information I want comes out. Including STAR, the Son-of-STAR checks, and school aid that is called school aid (that is including all funds expended THIS YEAR in CASH (not permission to borrow) to pay for, or offset local taxes raised for, public elementary and secondary education), what is NYC's share, and what is the share for the rest of the state, this year, and what will they be next year?

Regular readers of my posts and comments on this blog know that I have been a consistent critic of Al Sharpton.

And I don’t back off any of them.

But this week, Rev. Al has been getting a bum rap.

After the Don Imus controversy and the exoneration of the Duke Lacrosse players, a bunch of commentators, including Imus himself, started yapping about how Al owed the Duke lacrosse players an apology for all that he said about them.

But guess what – apparently Al didn’t say much about them.

Ellis Henican in his column in Newsday reported that Al never went down to Durham, NC to vilify players.

Thanks to the deep mid-1970s recession, and its effect on my father’s employment situation, I spent my last two years of high school in the Southwest, where oil was booming and jobs were plentiful. That sojourn gave me the opportunity to experience Red State America first hand, and to evaluate its differences from the Tri-State area. At the time the Southwest couldn’t match the tolerance and diversity of the New York, where people from all kinds of cultural backgrounds live together in proximity. On the other hand, class differences were much smaller there, with people with different levels of education and in different occupations sharing membership in the same church, following the same sports teams, and living in the same general area. The New York area, in fact the whole Northeast, is far more segregated by class than most of America, with people from different economic strata living, for the most part, in different worlds. And frankly, the attitude of many with college degrees toward those without, and those working in occupations that do not require them, is less than respectful, a disrespect that is often returned. This has consequences.

When I did an article a few months ago about the possibility of a black borough president in Brooklyn’s near future, it was because I had observed a trend in Brooklyn’s politics over the past five years, whereby blacks and Hispanics were winning borough-wide races for civil and supreme courts, on a regular basis. It started in 2002, when both Delores Thomas and Margarita Lopez-Torres won county-wide races in the same year; something unfathomable to many an old-timer in Brooklyn. Then Chandrya Simpson did it the following year, and it was repeated subsequently in 2004, 2005 and 2006, with blacks and Hispanics making it look mundane, if not simple.

In two years time, Marty Markowitz, the current Brooklyn Borough President will be term-limited out of office; this throws up a vacancy, and it also offers a historic opportunity for a female, or a black, or a Hispanic-or a person other than someone male and Caucasian-to ascend to this office. So, in this the year of Barack Obama (2007), no black candidate has officially declared for the race as yet, but some have made very public statements of their intentions. This group includes the cerebral Chris Owens, Jamaican-born Assemblyman Nick Perry and the controversial NYC councilman Charles Barron. It has also been brought to my attention that over the years State Senator Velmanette Montgomery has openly admitted an interest in this race. Some folks are saying that she is definitely running this time around. Other blacks whose names have been bandied around for this race from time to time, include State Senator John Sampson, Assemblywoman Annette Robinson, NYC council-woman Tish James and Assemblyman Darryl Towns, however, for various reasons, all four seem not inclined to pursue this particular race at present- albeit that could change over the next year or so.

With Long Island and Westchester trading charges over who is more overtaxed, and reports blaming duplicative and inefficient government on Long Island for its loss of competitive advantage compared with places such as Fairfax County, Virginia, I thought I’d compile some public employment and payroll data to see how these places compare with Fairfax, similarly affluent suburban counties around the country, a few other affluent suburban counties in the region, and U.S. average. Based on this data, we find that though the counties differ from each other to some extent, Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties all have high taxes in large part due to an unusually large number of unusually well-paid public school and police employees. Public employment is also relatively high in amenities such as parks and recreation and libraries. It is also likely, however, that these counties suffer from the effects of being fully developed and aging communities, with current residents paying rising bills for Medicaid-financed senior services, and for debts, pensions and retiree health benefits inherited from the past. In other words, they are facing the same difficult transition that New York City did in the 1960s and 1970s.

While I’m not much of a beachcomber myself, it seems to me that in the New York area going to the beach isn’t the big deal today that it was in the 1960s when I was a child, let alone in our parents’ generation when just about everyone headed to Coney Island, Orchard Beach or the Rockaways on warm summer weekends. Part of this may be changing tastes, part of it is the decline of on-shore amusements in these areas, but part of it is public relations. Private transit companies were always trying to find ways to entice people to travel during the off-peak hours, weekends and holidays, when there is plenty of capacity and additional customers are pure profit. Many streetcar companies built amusement parks and picnic grounds at the end of the line, to convince city dwellers to go in the opposite direction for an outing. And, until the creation of New York City Transit in 1953, the subway system featured special trains to Coney Island. I suggest that the MTA bring that service, and other special summer services, back.

Sunday’s NY Post put on their front page the breaking news that an African-American doorman donated $25 to the first serious African-American candidate for President. The doorman did this despite the fact that he was so close to Hillary Clinton that he actually voted for her not once but twice!

I guess the Post will next put in the headlines New Yorkers who happen to be Mormons who gave money to Mitt Romney despite having voted for Rudy Giuliani!

Won’t it be ironic if there is no special election on April 24th in the 40th city council district? After all, many have accused Mathieu Eugene of wasting government money, with his refusal to be confirmed in a seat that he had won-given all his shenanigans after the election. Well, based on the buzz in the trenches, all the candidates that filed for the re-run were weak in their signatures. The speculation is rife that Eugene is in the driver’s seat and that he may well knock every opponent off the ballot. Won’t that be something?

When petitions were submitted, five candidates filed. They were namely; Mathieu Eugene (black/Haitian-American male), Wellington Sharpe (black Jamaican born male), Harry Schiffman (white/Jewish/male), Marie Gina Faustin (black Haitian-American female) and Darly Brutus (black Haitian-American male). Three of these ran first time around (Eugene/actual winner then, Sharpe and Schiffman); so it was a bit surprising to many, that the runner up in the last race (Jennifer James) didn’t show up in the re-run, given that Sharpe (3rd) and Schiffman (4th) did. Sensibly, the nine other also-rans stayed away from this race; thank God.

While doing research on the job, I came upon an article in San Francisco publication reporting, based on federal survey data, that the City by the Bay had the highest rate of illicit drug use in the United States. Naturally, this made me curious about New York City, so I followed the link back to the source and found out the following. About 8.13% of Americans had used an illicit drug including marijuana in the past month, compared with 9.16% in New York State, 9.13% in New York City, and 13.4% in Manhattan. New York treats those possessing small amounts of marijuana relatively gently. New York is also the home of the infamous Rockefeller Drug Laws. While 3.64% of all Americans had used an illicit drug other than marijuana in the past month, just 3.15% of New York State residents and 3.13% of New York City residents (but 4.04% of Manhattan residents) had. I’m not an expert on drug use and criminal justice, but does this mean we sort of got what we wanted? That is smoke pot if you must (but in NYC not tobacco) but don’t do something worse? And are the Rockefeller Drug Laws filling the jails with affluent people from Manhattan? Find the detailed data, which also shows very low hard drug use in Queens and has details for sub-state areas upstate, here.