Does anyone here have an opinion on Tuesday's mayoral debate between Michael Bloomberg and William Thompson?

Mayoral Race Nostalgia: What's Christopher X. Brodeur doing these days? 

People have questioned what a borough president's power is; David Casavis (R-Manhattan) is running to eliminate the borough president position. We know that a president of the United States, for example, can fire the head of General Motors.

A borough president's powers now seemingly involve the wages and benefits of anyone who works in Manhattan:

Union Workers Rally Outside Tavern on the Green

WNYC Newsroom

NEW YORK, NY September 25, 2009 —Hundreds of union workers are demanding that the new management of Tavern on the Green keep their jobs, benefits and wages intact.

Blogs have now discovered that Brooklyn has an "ACORN High School for Social Justice" and an "ACORN Community High School."

Why?

Why not a Working Families Party High School (WFP=ACORN), or a Democrat Party High School, or a Republican Party High School, or a Weather Underground High School? Why not an SEIU High School, or a TWU High School, or a Local 32BJ High School?

Why not a Goldman Sachs High School, or a Bloomberg High School, or a Bovis High School, or a Disney High School, or a Subway Eat Fresh High School?

What's so wrong about an ACORN high school that supports underage El Salvadoran sex workers? (I kid!)

"Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, ACORN's Working Families Party and the unions would dominate, writing a Constitution to suit their own needs, not those of the taxpayers."

--George Marlin, "The Con-Con con," New York Post, September 21, 2009.

I understand George Marlin's objections to a State Constitutional Convention, but I respectfully disagree. George, those parties control things now!

Doing nothing is not an option. Elections are a joke.

Identify the problems. Establish principles. Find solutions. Do a Constitutional Convention. Get the media behind it. Add lots of sunlight all around.

Is Hillary Clinton running for governor of New York?

This is all the buzz on several blogs today. Everyone knows that David Paterson is gone. It's widely assumed that Andrew Cuomo will be running.

I don't see Hillary fighting a primary against Cuomo. I don't see any way that Cuomo doesn't run.

In other words, I don't see Hillary Clinton running for NY governor.

LINKS:

http://hillbuzz.org/2009/09/09/is-hillary-clinton-running-for-governor-of-new-york/

"When Mr. Bloomberg learned of the $16 million project during his first term as mayor, he offered to make a large enough donation to name the building, which will be the Patricia E. Harris Center for Business, Government and Public Policy. "

--New York Times, "A Mayor Prizing Loyalty Pays Costly Tribute to His Top Aide" by Michael Barbaro, September 2. 2009.

Patricia Harris?

THE Patricia Harris?

Ask any New Yorker who you know. Does anyone know who Patricia Harris is? Can anyone tell you one thing that she's done? They're naming a school after her?

The New York Times has endorsed Bill de Blasio for a position that no one's sure should even exist. It's a position so embarrassing that it can only be released in a lightly read Saturday newspaper.

My opinion (shared by many) is that the Public Advocate position should not exist.

My "public advocate moment of zen" happened way back in the 1990s, when I was championing appreciation for model Audrey Munson. Miss Munson had posed for the statue "Civic Fame" on top of the Municipal Building (and just a few floors above the Public Advocate's office). I discovered that Miss Munson had also posed for "Miss Manhattan" for the Manhattan Bridge (now at the Brooklyn Museum), Miss Munson was the lady in the Plaza Hotel Fountain, and she was very much else. Munson was the first person to pose nude in film (re-creating her famous poses), but had fallen into obscurity and had lived that last 60 years of her life (she died at age 104 in 1996) in a mental institution. The New York Times had just written a Munson piece about my research for its City section.

Like most of their Democratic Senate colleagues, New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand avoided town halls in favor of what they say are more representative events.
--POLITICO, August 24, 2009.
 
Memo to New York's legislators: You work for the people of New York! Talk to them!
 
This is really all about President Obama taking a vacation to Martha's Vineyard and dropping the bomb that, oh yeah, we were two trillion off in some estimates and the federal deficit will go from seven trillion to nine trillion. The deficit this year will be $1.6 trillion. My healthcare proposals won't add to that deficit, but the Congressional Budget Office's conservative estimates say that it will add $1-2 trillion. Don't worry about it--we'll tax the rich!
 

New York State has been broken for a very long time. I've called for a Constitutional Convention for a very long time.

Doing nothing is hardly an option at this point. Change can hardly be bad. The moment the NY Times recently ran a story about legislators "double-dipping" with salary and pension, I had to turn away and cry "TERM LIMITS!"

Is the New York Times on board for a Constitutional Convention? Do both Democrats and Republicans agree on something?

LINK:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/nyregion/24convention.html?ref=nyregion

FOR Steve Feinberg, the onetime owner of Chrysler, the past year has been a crawl toward defeat. He lost billions of dollars. He lost prestige. He lost his privacy. And he ended up a ward and supplicant of the federal government. But, even now, Mr. Feinberg, a man who can play a decent game of chess while blindfolded, is hard-pressed to pinpoint many mistakes.

-- Sunday NY Times, business section lead story, "For Private Equity, a Very Public Disaster."

The Obama administration, in response to FOIA requests, dumped some documents this Friday. It appears that the White House was in direct contact with the mayor's office.

As you recall, Mayor Bloomberg was "furious" that he he hadn't been told anything at all about the flyover. The deputy mayors--well, we don't know what they knew. Apparently, the only person who knew anything was a low-level employee named Marc Mugnos.

Mugnos hasn't spoken publicly about the incident, nor has the City Council bothered to investigate the matter. NOTIFY NYC failed that day, planes flew over lower Manhattan, and the City Council just doesn't question a thing?

It's New York City's symbol--of neglect, apparently.

In November 2006, I shared with Room Eight an e-mail I had received. A Popeye's fried chicken restaurant was being built on the corner of 135th Street and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard in Harlem. The iconic sign of the 'Big Apple" jazz club that had been there since 1934 was going to be destroyed, but this person had saved it and asked me how much it was worth. He put it up for sale on eBay.

I just shook my head.

No one preserved it? The Popeye's owner wasn't the least bit curious to simply Google and find my website and contact me? The Harlem Community Board gave the OK to simply tear the "Big Apple" down? Don't these people live there and know a damn thing about where they live?

The New York Post's Albany man, Fred U. Dicker, has been on the job since 1977 and has seen it all. His Sunday column is titled: "Albany, I Give Up."

I told everybody to get out of New York, that the collapse was coming.

Even Fred Dicker is embarrassed to report it!

LINK:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07052009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/albany__i_give_up_177689.htm

ALBANY, I GIVE UP

STATE GOVERNMENT HAS NEVER BEEN SO CLOWNISH, SO EVIL, SO IRRELEVANT

By FREDRIC U. DICKER

Posted: 2:42 am
July 5, 2009

Darlene Mealy must go.

Yes, this was said after she changed her vote and supported Bloomberg on term limits. Then there was the issue of an alleged $25,000 of pork to her sister's nonprofit.

But giving $5,000 to a crank for "etymology" is just insane, even if New York City was overflowing with tax dollars.

Many years ago, within the pages of a publication called COMMENTS ON ETYMOLOGY, Professor Gerald Cohen and I solved why New York City is called "the Big Apple." No one gave us ONE PENNY. Heck, no elected official would even respond to us. No one gave us a "thank you"--and that's free.

Check out Tom Golisano's comments in Wednesday's NY Post. The NY Times has yet to even cover the story.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05202009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/adios__new_york_170074.htm?page=2

ADIOS, NEW YORK

TAXED OUT OF THE STATE

By TOM GOLISANO

I LOVE New York. But how much should it cost to call New York home? Decades of out-of-control budgets, spending hikes and relentless borrowing have made New York simply too expensive.

(...)