Angry New Yorker

Semi-Daily Rants from New York City's Angry Man

"As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly." - Dr. Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Life of Johnson, Sept. 1783

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Thursday, December 29, 2005
 
As 2006 gets off to a good start, here's hoping we can get back into the swing of things. Frankly, there has been so many things to comment on since we went on hiatus -- of necessity -- that it's been difficult to know where to dig in again. From the NY City Council of Dunces, to Bloomberg's increasingly liberal bloviating, to the governor whose become an embarrassment after squandering 12 year in office, to a State Assembly leader who's monotone knee-jerk dronings are a veritable caricature, to a Junior U.S. Senator who is a greasy partisan hack of the highest order, to members of the NY Congressional delegation who are basically unemployable elsewhere, well, I think you start to see the dilemma posed by a surfeit of targets to skewer. But into the breach again we go this week....

posted by anonymous at 1:31 PM

Friday, October 14, 2005
 
We're working on several detailed posts concerning the upcomng election resolutions -- in short, vote no on the transportation bond issue, and we're digesting the other resolution.

In the meantime, what's next from Mexico? It gets more nuts all the time down there. Frankly what about the "human rights" of the U.S. citizens forced to pay for the 11 million illegal aliens now believed to be in the U.S.? To whit:

Mexicans fear US border control will lead to human rights violations
at 2:32 PM ET

[JURIST] The Mexican
government [official website] is concerned that Texas Gov. Rick Perry's
"Operation Linebacker," a pledge of $9.7 million to beef up security along the US-Mexico border, will lead to human rights violations. In a statement released
late Wednesday, Mexican officials said that their government remains committed
to combating crime on both sides of the border, but fears that militarizing the
border will lead to violations of humanitarian law [ICRC backgrounder]. Perry's "Operation Linebacker" [overview; press release] will provide the Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition with $3 million to hire additional deputies, $3 million for overtime pay and $3.7 million for other initiatives. Mexico also called for the US to establish new mechanisms that would allow legal migration that respects human rights."


posted by anonymous at 2:37 PM

Thursday, September 01, 2005
 
We pray for you after Hurricane Katrina

Now, two days later, its clear the near miss wasn't. Rather, the glancing blow spread the devastation far, far beyond New Orleans. Our hearts break and we're trying to learn all the lessons we can for future reference.

One troubling development is the apparently rampant looting and criminality ongoing in New Orleans. We hoped it was merely driven by urgent need for food, water and medicines, but it rapidly became clear utter lawlessness and larceny was the order of the day in areas. So, we found the LA Governor and CNN's misguided claim that the "police need to focus on rescuing people now not property loss" coming home to roost. Sorry, folks, but without order your rescues are going nowhere.

And so now the Mayor of NO has, as we expected, ordered all the police off rescue and to restoring order. Didn't we learn with the looting in Iraq after the fall, or did we hope/expect that Americans under stress would be different? So, regretfully, though politically unpalatable in our age of umbrage, the order should have gone out to shoot looters on sight. After the first rounds of looters gunned down order would have returned virtually instantly. Instead now we have reports of looters trying to break into Children's hospitals. Yet, I have heard absolutely no mention of shooting looters. Why are we so afraid to put order at the top of the list?

posted by anonymous at 12:04 AM

Saturday, July 30, 2005
 
We're back!

So much has happened since our hiatus that we wanted to comment on. But there'll be no shortage of material to cover going forward. Why? Because things are just starting to heat up. Thanks for revisting. We're now back on the job.

posted by anonymous at 5:31 PM

Thursday, May 26, 2005
 
Angry New Yorker will be on hiatus until July 28, 2005, unless there's simply some news or development that we can't resist commenting upon. Sorry for the break, but we trust you'll use the time wisely. ;-)

posted by anonymous at 11:58 PM

Thursday, May 19, 2005
 
Full nuclear power ahead

Given the democrats' blatant spin, deceptive by design rhetoric and outright bald-faced lies lately, they frankly deserve to have the "nuclear" option rammed down their throats. This very second we're watching Senator Bill Nelson of Florida on C-SPAN, who if he isn't a liar, is an idiot, because he just said he likes every senator in the senate.

That's facially a crock, because I've yet to meet anyone who likes everyone in a group larger than 20 people. With statements like that he's simply not to be trusted. And his spin at this moment on C-SPAN is straight on the Reid-Pelosi-MoveOn.Org party line.

Hey, have it Senator Nelson. We don't like you, we don't like Reid, Pelosi, Krazy Ted Kennedy, Boom Boom Biden, Chuckee Schumer, and Hillary Clinton either, and we're not ashamed to not only admit it, but state it plainly.

posted by anonymous at 5:52 PM

Wednesday, May 18, 2005
 
The Myth of the Uncontrollables

Mayor Bloomberg, and many others in state and city politics, often point to the state and city's fixed expenses - health insurance, Medicaid, debt service - primarily in explaining away why spending can't be curbed. But the Citizens Budget Commission in a report release last week, Four Ways New York City Can Take Control of Its Financial Future and Save $2.5 Billion per Year, available here [PDF], that there are actions the mayor and city council can take to reduce these fixed "non-discretionary spending" expenses. The CBC's four proposals are:
  1. Reduce Pension Costs - by bringing pension contributions more in line with the private sector and requiring employees to contribute something. Its already been noted many times that New York's government pensions are exceeding generous by any measure.

  2. Reduce Health Insurance Costs - which would save $1.2 billion a year by sharing "the cost of health insurance premiums with workers by requiring 10 percent for individual policies and 20 percent for family policies. Retirees should be required to pay 50 percent of their health insurancepremiums, and the City should stop paying for their Medicare Part B premiums."

  3. Reduce Medicaid Costs - Soaring Medicaid expenses are the 800 pound gorilla in New York politics, yet little has been done to date, other than appointing commissions to figure out what can be done. As the CBC notes "[i]n fiscal year 2005 New York City’s local share of Medicaid will cost an astounding $4.8 billion and consume 14 percent of locally-raised revenues. Based on State policies, the City projects that its Medicaid costs will grow to $5.3 billion by fiscal year 2009" and it suggests that the city limit eligibility loopholes, pay only competitive costs to hospitals and nursing homes, introduce more managed care participation, and limit excessive personal care services.

  4. Reduce Debt Service - by 1) refinancing to convert high-interest debt to low-interest debt; 2) by reducing capital spending or building more efficiently; 3) by paying off debt already issued, thus eliminating future repayments. The recent surprising, and somewhat inexplicable, higher bond rating granted by S&P earlier thi week should help in these efforts. But the issuance of debt to pay operating expenses should immediately end.
The CBC report concludes:
These four proposals would yield the following annual savings in fiscal year 2009:

 Pension Reform $549 million
 Health Insurance Reforms $1,197 million
 Medicaid Cost Containment $454 million
 Debt Service Reduction $290 million

 Total Savings $2,490 million

The total savings of nearly $2.5 billion would leave the City with a much
smaller budget gap or permit investments in other needs. (See Table 4.)
Confronting the myth of “uncontrollable” budget items head-on is vital to
the City’s financial future.

posted by anonymous at 10:05 AM

Tuesday, May 17, 2005
 
More Multi-Cultural Madness

What a crock this will turn out to be. In addition to enabling parents to continue to avoid learning basic English, it adds an untold new city contractors and union employees at an unknown cost, and further panders to the non-English crowd. Translations of all "important" school documents into eight languages? What qualifies as an important document? How many more languages will be steadily added to this initial batch -- because you can rest assured that every language group will start the petition to add them to the initial eight. City provided interpreters at all parent-teacher conferences? Here's a question: why can't parents assume the responsibility to find someone in their own family circle who speaks English and bring them to a parent-teacher conference?

We at Angry New Yorker continue to again throw up our hands over this entire issue because it, like many social programs, ratchets only one way -- expanding constantly. From today's NY1.com:

Council Weighs Bill Requiring Translation Of School Documents
May 17, 2005

City lawmakers will hear from non-English speaking parents of city school kids both inside and outside City Hall Tuesday as the City Council's education committee weighs a bill requiring that all important school documents be translated when necessary.

Some immigrant parents say they have a hard time keeping track of their children's educations, because they can't understand the materials sent home with students, including report cards and notices.

Parents will rally again on the City Hall steps Tuesday to urge passage of the Education Equity Act. The act was introduced last year and calls for translation of all important school documents as well as interpreters at parent-teacher conferences.

Parents, immigrant advocates and Department of Education officials are expected to testify at a hearing about the bill Tuesday.

The DOE created a new translation and interpretation unit this year and says it's planning to do more.

posted by anonymous at 1:24 PM

Tuesday, May 10, 2005
 
McMahon on Bloomberg's Budget - $4.4 Billion in the Red in 2007

McMahon sees the real picture when it comes to NYC spending. In his editorial, Two Faces of Mike, in today's New York Post, available here, he notes:

TWO FACES OF MIKE
By E.J. MCMAHON

May 6, 2005 -- LISTENING to Michael Bloomberg present the fourth budget of his mayoralty yesterday was like listening to a man having an argument with himself.

The former CEO in the mayor's office made a strong case for doing more — much more — to downsize the city's exceedingly vast array of costly public services.

But the candidate for re-election didn't seem to get the message.

Bloomberg the pol naturally wants to highlight the good news about life in today's New York. And so the Fiscal 2006 edition of his annual Executive Budget slide show put plenty of emphasis on the city's record tourism activity and rising hotel-occupancy rates, declining office vacancies and low unemployment — not to mention the continuing drop in crime and the apparent resumption of the downward trend in welfare rolls.

But Bloomberg the no-nonsense CEO is congenitally incapable of blurring the bottom line. And so the mayor also matter-of-factly volunteered that "this city spends more money than it takes in, in an average year." Some $3.7 billion more next year, to be exact, once you adjust for all the gimmickry and lucky breaks the city has depended on to balance its budgets over the past few years.

The underlying structural imbalance in the city's financial plan has gotten $3 billion worse since Fiscal 2001 — as helpfully detailed by Bloomberg the media mogul in a Powerpoint slide that Bloomberg the pol would probably just as soon gloss over.

* * *

Bloomberg the candidate was happy to trumpet the revelation that revenues for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends June 30, are now expected to come in a whopping $1.3 billion above the estimate of just four months ago. This enabled him to roll a bigger cash-flow surplus from the current year into the coming year — plugging a $1 billion gap and leaving a little extra for spending restorations and token tax cuts.

But in almost the same breath, Bloomberg the businessman pointed out that the revenue surge includes an unusual billion-dollar burst in transaction taxes generated by a super-heated real-estate market. New mortgage underwriting activity in the city is even now tailing off, he noted, and those taxes can be expected to subside to more normal levels over the next few years.

* * *

Indeed, despite this year's revenue growth, the projected budget shortfall for Fiscal 2007, the first year of the next mayoral term, has grown to $4.4 billion — New York City's largest projected "out-year" gap ever, at this stage in the budget process. The claim that such gap projections are meaningless "is not true," CEO Bloomberg said; the hole is real, and will have to be filled when the time comes.

Unfortunately, the businessman mayor isn't always so tough-minded. Unwilling to challenge City Hall's big-government status quo, CEO Bloomberg is all too willing to parrot the politician's alibi that most city spending is beyond his direct control and due to the "non-discretionary" costs of pensions, Medicaid and debt service.

But this is only partly true. While pension benefits are dictated by state law, they also reflect the number of employees the mayor chooses to hire and the amount he agrees to pay them. And while the Legislature in Albany shapes Medicaid programs, Bloomberg's own bureaucrats are the gatekeepers to the city Medicaid rolls, and his administration is proudly maintaining a massive public hospital system that is also the city's leading Medicaid provider. As for debt service, it ultimately is a factor of the city's capital budget, which Bloomberg the politician is pushing up to record levels.

With a tax base heavily dependent on personal and business tax revenues generated by the volatile financial sector, New York City is especially vulnerable to economic downturns and unpredictable disasters, man-made or natural, affecting financial markets.

* * *

E.J. McMahon is the director of the Manhattan Institute's Empire Center for New York State Policy.

posted by anonymous at 9:35 AM

Monday, May 09, 2005
 
We like it! And agree fully with Deroy Murdock, NRO Contributing Editor, here,
that it's past time to scrap the "Freedom Tower" as well as its designer, Daniel Lebiskind,
in favor of:

Twin Towers II Design
by Kenneth Gardner and Herbert Belton • www.TwinTowersII.com • www.MakeNYNYagain.com •



posted by anonymous at 10:36 PM

 
The Mayor's Budget of Creamy Goodness For All

As we noted, posting between now and July 29th is going to be sporadic. Trust us -- between what we have to do and posting here -- we'd much rather be posting here. But life is what it is, and there's no use whining about it. Here's something to actually whine about:

Photo of Mayor Bloomberg
 Mayor Bloomberg Presented FY '06 Executive Budget
Thursday, May 5, 2005
arrowRead the press release
arrowRead the presentation (ppt)
arrowRead budget publications
arrowWatch the presentation in dial-up or broadband

posted by anonymous at 10:22 PM

Friday, May 06, 2005
 
A friend writes in...
"More Pandering Pieces of Political Pulchritude From the NYC Council

Dear City Council,

I recently read Intro No. 628, Voting By Non-Citizen Residents. Intro 628 available here

Non-citizens should not be granted a right to vote period. End of story.

The arguments for: that they pay taxes, they have a stake, etc. are puffery. That historically non-citizens were, at times and places, granted the right to vote in certain local elections is neither support for, nor evidence that, non-citizens in 2005 should be allowed to vote in NYC elections where their tremendous numbers would no doubt sway issues and elections and dilute the votes of permanent U.S. citizens.

I and millions of others in this city as U.S. citizens are increasingly tired of the "immigrants rights" movement and their vocal supporters -- who view everything as a right, everything in opposition to their goals as "rascist," and brook no reasonable discussion.

Both my two parents and my wife's mother and father emigrated to the U.S. in the 50's and 60's LEGALLY, and became naturalized citizens shortly thereafter. All four went on to be extremely productive members of society without bilingual education and the raft of services and programs today's immigrants expect and demand (such as city services in 109 languages and ballots printed in 10 languages). I've asked all four of them for their view of Intro No. 628, and all four view non-citizen voting proposals as sheer madness.

I strongly concur, and will do everything possible to fight the passing of this pandering piece of political pulchritude."

posted by anonymous at 6:38 PM

Tuesday, May 03, 2005
 
More Empiral Evidence that Bloomberg is Wrong About NYC's Population

... when he says that people continue to flow into NYC from other parts of the country. We were just putting together a guest list of family members for a little party we're organizing this summer, and noted that of the 35+ siblings, cousins and close friends we're inviting, who all lived in New York city as children, only three still live within the five boroughs. The rest have relocated to the 'burbs or moved out of New York state entirely. Now why would this be Mr. Bloomberg? And we recently learned two more will be moving to Crestwood in Westchester from Forest Hills shortly. The future did once happen here, to quote the title of an excellent book on cities. It no longer does, and won't as long as politicans like Bloomberg et al. spout their nonsense.

posted by anonymous at 2:41 PM

Monday, May 02, 2005
 
Tamar Jacoby & The Wall Street Journal Are Completely Wrong About Immigration

We're not sure why Ms. Jacoby is at the Manhattan Institute. Seriously. We agree with 99% of the Manhattan Institute's views as written about in City Journal, but we've disagreed with Ms. Jacoby on virtually everything she's had to say about immigration in the past five years. With columns like hers in today's NY Daily News, "They Should All Be Legal," available here, she reveals why we think she's a card-carrying member of the "open the borders now" crowd.

She writes, for example, that illegals can hold a job here and do other things,
"[b]ut try to get a driver's license or enroll your kid in college or bargain with your boss or even just take a vacation in your home country - all things that most of the rest of us take for granted - and you will suddenly be reminded: Though Americans are happy to look the other way while you work hard to help grow our economy, we also are determined to punish you for entering the country illegally. "
Excuse me, Ms. Jacoby, but your logic is fatally flawed. Increasingly angry and vocal Americans throughout the country are demanding federal and state governments stop looking the other way, and that the lax border enforcement that's grown up due to liberal hand-wringing and pandering by politicians who can't even bring themselves to verbally separate illegal aliens from "immigrants" come to an end. (See, e.g., Janon Fisher, Killing Leaves Suburbanites Wary of Immigrant Workers, N.Y. Times, May 5, 2005, available here (noting in story about recent rape and murder of Rockland county mother by a suspect described as a "Guatemalan immigrant," that "[t]he crews who ride the trucks and do the work are largely immigrant, some legal and some not" -- leaving one to speculate regarding how many of that "some not" contingent are illegal, a word not found once in the article itself)).

Jacoby goes on to say:
"But it hardly makes sense to deport 11 million people. Just imagine the dragnets and roundups and forced family breakups. It would also devastate the economy, both locally and nationwide. As poll after poll shows, what Americans want is control: a secure, orderly, legal immigration system. But we can't build that new, sound structure on a rotten foundation - so we've got to do something about the illegal immigrants already here."
Here again, Jacoby conflates one goal with another. We certainly want a secure, orderly, legal immigration system. And no one disputes the impossibility of deporting 11 million people -- though frankly a few dragnets and televised dragging of illegals out of apartments wouldn't hurt; however, the need is to send the message to those illegals here and those planning to come here via illegal methods that we're sincere, active and determined to prevent illegals from establishing a U.S. beachhead, or remaining. And you would only need to deport a tiny fraction of that 11 million to forcefully send that message.

Further, we fundamentally disagree with Jacoby that enforcing immigration laws would "devastate the economy" either locally or nationwide, and we've yet to see any empirical evidence from Ms. Jacoby to the contrary. The WSJ's been a constant proponent of open borders and guest worker programs (see Editorial, Immigration Reality Check - The economy intrudes on the restrictionists, Wall St. J., May 3, 2005, available here). Since the majority of illegals cluster in three states - NY, CA, and Texas, are we to believe that the economies of the other 47 have been devastated by the fact that they aren't brimming with illegal aliens? (See previous post, here, arguing "illegal aliens have had a destructive effect on pay levels and our work ethic because they've swept entire job areas into jobs that then become self-defined as jobs that 'only illegal aliens do.'") And even if our economy would be devastated, a point we again strongly dispute, shouldn't that decision be up to the American people?

UPDATE: The suspect in the murder mentioned above, turns out to not be Dennis Herrera, 39? Why? Because the suspect arrested carried a stolen id, and is actually a 29-year old illegal alien. Surprise. He remains the main suspect. More details as they become available. But if we seriously policed, caught and deported illegals would that murdered Rockland county woman be alive today? Albeit purely speculative, but we think it's more likely than not that she'd be alive today if rounding up illegals in Rockland was addressed with the same seriousness that other matters in New York are treated; say, oh, Bloomberg's fetish with smoke-free bars and other politicians' obsession with DWI crackdowns.

posted by anonymous at 2:08 PM

Sunday, May 01, 2005
 
The Give Peace a Chance Contingent Meets Again In Manhattan

The group United for Unrealistic Idealism, also known as United for Peace and Justice, "took to the streets" this weekend in manhattan to "protest the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq and on nuclear weapons proliferation," according to NY1. Hey, have it.

posted by anonymous at 4:02 PM

Saturday, April 30, 2005
 
We're shocked, shocked to find New York paying too much to government worker union pensions! Shocked!

From NY1.com

Report Finds New York State Pension Payouts Are Excessive
April 30, 2005

A new report shows New York taxpayers are funding fat pension payouts for government retirees.

The report by the Citizens Budget Commission concluded that retirement packages offered to New York City and state employees are more generous than those provided by other governments or the private sector.

The CBC says that by 2008 pension contributions are projected to grow to more than $$4.5 billion and health-insurance payments will increase to more than $$3.4 billion.

Cutting pension benefits for current employees would require an amendment to the state constitution, action by two successive Legislatures, and a voter referendum.

posted by anonymous at 12:02 PM

Friday, April 29, 2005
 
You Don't Think We Have An Illegal Alien Problem? Mira!

What about this billboard for KRCA-TV Channel 62 that Gov. Schwarzenegger railed against yesterday in a radio interview, here, as promoting illegal immigration. The billboard clearly crossed out CA and instead has Los Angeles, Mexico on it instead, in apparent support of the "reconquista."













In response a California radio station posted a billboard that says:



And latest update is some patriots took the situation into hand and modified the LA, Mexico billhoard per below:



posted by anonymous at 6:49 PM

Thursday, April 28, 2005
 
And this guy almost became president? The fact he was thwarted may actually be proof God does exist. ;-)

From LittleGreenFootballs.com:

Gore Leads the Way

In a speech to the wacko-leftist group MoveOn.org, Al Gore showed that the Democratic party has moved on from those primitive “Bush=Hitler” talking points, and now believes the best way to appeal to the base is by portraying “right-wing religious zealots” as a monolithic threat, far more dangerous than Islamic radicalism (what’s that? huh?): Gore Blasts GOP Bid to Block Filibusters.

“What makes it so dangerous for our country is their willingness to do serious damage to our American democracy in order to satisfy their lust for one-party domination of all three branches of government,” Gore said of the GOP in a speech. “They seek nothing less than absolute power.” ...

“This aggressive new strain of right-wing religious zealotry is actually a throwback to the intolerance that led to the creation of America in the first place,” Gore said as many in the audience stood and applauded. The speech was sponsored by the liberal group MoveOn’s political action committee.


posted by anonymous at 8:43 PM

 
Asian Long-Horned Beetle Alert!

We're nearly fanatical tree-lovers (not to be confused with tree huggers). As a result, the report that the devastating asian long-horned beetle was found again in Central Park today (having already caused much damage in Queens and Brooklyn over the past years) was not good news. Stay tuned.



posted by anonymous at 5:27 PM

 
An update and some other thoughts...

First, we wanted to let our readership know that posting between now and July 28th will be somewhat fitful. We have some other business-related committments that will require more of our time than usual, and business comes first (well after God, family, and country, of course. ;-)

However, there are two items we wanted to highlight now.

First, it drives us nuts when pundits spout the dribble that illegal aliens come here and do jobs that "Americans won't do." Oh, really? We don't buy it. In fact, rather than benefitting Americans and our culture, these illegal aliens have had a destructive effect on pay levels and our work ethic because they've swept entire job areas into jobs that then become self-defined as jobs that "only illegal aliens do."

Case in point is one of our neighbors. No they're not illegal aliens, but they live in a small plot house, as do several of us here, and their front "yard" is roughly 25 feet x 15 feet -- certainly no more. One of their three kids is a strapping young lad; athletic and more than capable of physical work. Yet, this family has a lawn service come by weekly. A truck pulls up; several Spanish-speaking men disembark with their blowers, mowers and rakes and in a few minutes they've handled the front "lawn" without breaking a sweat. Beyond letting their now slothful son get away with no external chores, what sort of example lesson is this setting for our youth and their work ethic development? That only illegals cut lawns anymore? That their is some work that is beneath one?

At the risk of dredging up a hoary "when I was a lad" tale, I handled the lawn work (and the snow shoveling in winter) at my childhood homes until I finished college, and even then I continued to cut the lawn (and shovel the snow) for several years at the four-family house where I rented an apartment (at market rates) from my parents after moving. And the four-family house was a large corner house with a front lawn of about 80 x 25 feet. I certainly didn't feel the work was either too much, or beneath me. I felt it was my duty. Are we breeding a sense of duty out of our kids these days?

Second, Mayor Bloomberg and company continue to spout the nonsense that people are "coming back to New York in droves." First, demographically it's simply not true -- except for a very small segment of people, centered in a very small area of Manhattan. And as one of Bloomberg News' own columnists notes in an essay today, Sprawl and "Slurbs" Are the Wave of the Future, available here, the theory posited by Richard Florida of "the creative class" as cities' salvation is empty; the theory does not hold water I believe, despite its embrace by those on the left who envision themselves as "creative", because, as urbanologist Joel Kotin notes "[y]ou can't build a long-term civic culture around transient populations.'' Kotin's statement is so fundamentally concrete that arguments against border on irrational. But the reaity that urban centers are NOT gaining force is a fact that does not bode well for NYC's long-term health, and the quicker we face the reality, the quicker we can adapt. Read the whole thing:


 Sprawl and `Slurbs' Are the Wave of the Future: Andrew Ferguson

April 26 (Bloomberg) -- When author and historian Joel Kotkin travels around the U.S. in his role as a consultant to city planners, he hears his clients repeat the same misconceptions again and again. He calls them urban legends.

``The one you hear most often is, `Cities are on the rebound! People are moving back to the cities!''' he says. ``It takes different forms. The latest one I'm hearing is: `Empty nesters are flocking back to the cities!'''

There's a problem with legends, of course. They're not true. And so it is with the urban legends Kotkin keeps hearing.

Consider those empty nesters -- parents whose children have grown up and moved out. No matter how much civic boosters may wish it to be true, this affluent and highly desirable demographic is not returning to live in U.S. downtowns.

``If anything, the data show just the opposite,'' Kotkin says. ``If empty nesters decide to sell the family house in the suburbs, they move to a condo -- in the suburbs. Or they move to the Sun Belt -- to a suburb.''

The same goes for one urban legend after another, those little fairy tales that urban planners tell to convince themselves that cities are making a comeback.

Urbs versus Burbs

  • Is it true, for example, that gentrification is inspiring companies to put their headquarters in cities?

  • Is it true that cities can cultivate a vibrant and viable civic culture without middle-class families?

  • Is it true that most companies require an urban setting to do business in?

The answers, says Kotkin, are: No, no, and probably not.

An urban setting, he concedes, just might help you do business, depending on what business you're in.

``I suppose some kind of companies need to be in a city,'' he says. ``Bail bondsmen need to be near the courthouse. But that's about it.''

You can understand why city managers, urban planners and ``metropolitan elites'' repeat the urban legends, mostly to one another. They're deflecting an uncomfortable truth.

And the truth is that in the great struggle between cities and suburbs, raging now for a century or more, the verdict is finally in: Cities lost. The vast majority of people prefer the ``burbs.'' The long-predicted comeback of the traditional city isn't in the cards.

`Dream World'

For those of us who love cities, it's hard to believe that the future of civilized life lies in the suburbs. You call that civilized?

``Metropolitan elites live in a dream world,'' Kotkin says. ``If 1,000 people move into lower downtown Denver in the last year, the elites think it's a trend: stories in the newspaper, panel discussions, general celebration. Meanwhile, 10,000 people leave the city for the suburbs, and the elites ignore it.''

Traditional U.S. cities stopped growing 50 years ago and are now shrinking. Since 1950, almost all the growth in U.S. metropolitan areas has been beyond the city limits, in suburbs -- sprawl, in a word.

And the trend seems to be accelerating. Census data released earlier this month show that during the 1990s, one city after another lost population, even as the counties surrounding them grew. In Ohio, for example, Cincinnati's Hamilton County shrunk by 2.4 percent. Neighboring Boone County, in Kentucky, grew 49.3 percent. Even further out from the city, Grant County, Kentucky, grew by 42.2 percent.

From Washington to Cleveland to Denver, the trend was the same.

Hip and Cool

There are lots of obvious reasons for the cities' decline -- the decentralizing effects of telecommunications, the loss of manufacturing jobs, the inconveniences of public transit -- but Kotkin is more appalled by the steps urban planners take in hopes of reversing the decline.

``They think they can revive their cities if they make them `hip and cool,''' he says, referring to the street festivals, cafes, arts fairs, high-end boutiques and other yuppie delights that attract the young and single, the childless and rich.

``But that's not how cities last,'' he says. ``You can't build a long-term civic culture around transient populations.''

What any healthy city requires is a stable base of middle- class families. But the conditions necessary for attracting and keeping families are precisely what city planners ignore.

``They've forgotten the basics,'' Kotkin says. ``Are the schools good? Are the streets clean and safe? It's a lot easier to satisfy the yuppies with no kids than to fix the schools.''

And so city life, once the backbone of civilized social arrangements, devolves into just another ``niche lifestyle.''

Mixed Evidence

But can suburbs perform the essential functions of acculturation and community-building that cities once did? It's a question Kotkin explores in his latest book, ``The City: A Global History,'' [ed. note - published this month, April, 2005, by Modern Library Press] and he says the evidence for now is mixed.

Kotkin calls most of suburbia ``slurbs,'' vast stretches of undistinguished space choked with traffic and lined with commercial strips lacking character, charm, or -- most important of all -- a sense of civic identity that can bind their residents together.

On the other hand, some suburbs now reflect the influence of the new urbanists, planners who favor suburbs with walkable downtowns, open space and accessible cultural institutions.

`Not in the Cities'

Even so, for many of us, the suburbs will require a lot of getting used to. What's to happen to those ``hip and cool'' city- lovers who, over the next generation, may be pulled to the suburbs by professional necessity, as the social and economic center of gravity continues to shift?

At Southern California Institute of Architecture where Kotkin teaches, he says, ``I hear my students talk about all the great projects they're going to do in cities after they graduate. And I have to tell them: Wait a minute. You're architects and designers and urban planners. Where do you think you're going to be working in the 21st century? Sorry, but it's not in the cities.''

He says they look at him, disbelieving and horrified. They have seen the future. And it's the suburbs.

As for Kotkin, he was born in New York City and now lives in a suburb of Los Angeles.

PrintPrint

posted by anonymous at 4:23 PM

Monday, April 25, 2005
 
Some Good News For A Change

We tend to highlight the many, many things wrong in New York State politics, culture and financial matters, but when good news comes along we're the first to happily trumpet it. So, when we heard that New York City's murder rate is approaching a 40-year low, that's certainly good news in the midst of a culture that's still defining defiancy down.

From today's NY1.com, here:

City's Murder Rate On Track For New 40-Year Low
April 25, 2005

A dramatic drop in the number of homicides in some of the most dangerous precincts is putting the city on track for the fewest homicides in decades.

With almost a third of the year already past, the number of homicides in the city is on pace to be about 450 for the year – the lowest number in at least 40 years. That’s a drop of 12 percent from last year.

Helping the trend, some notoriously dangerous precincts, like East New York's 75th and East Flatbush's 67th, have seen far fewer homicides so far this year. Police credit programs like Operation Impact, which floods high-crime areas with rookie officers.

However, one borough is bucking the trend, according to Newsday. So far this year, the Bronx has seen a 50 percent increase in homicides over the same period last year. The Bronx district attorney's office attributes the rise, in part, to an increase in gang-related killings.


posted by anonymous at 3:31 PM

Sunday, April 24, 2005
 
A Few Brief Points And Then We're Off...
  • Newsweek's Eleanor Clift is an amazing idiot. If's even more amazing that she has a high-level job at a national "news" magazine.
  • Senator Biden has become such a crank nutcase he should be voted out by the people of Delaware.
  • The left's attacks on Pope Benedict XVI are both inane and unworthy of comment. Don't like the Catholic church's positions? There are plenty of other religions for you -- from those gentle wacky Wiccans to the self-combusting Islamists.
    • Aside: Why is that the Catholic Church is the only faith that is constantly admonished to "reach out" and be "inclusive?"
  • An interesting tidbit we came across yesterday is that in the 2004 election Congressional District 9, once Chuck Schumer's district and now Anthony Weiner's district, who's just as if not even further left than Schumer, had the largest swing toward the republicans in percentage change in voters of any district. We believe he's vulnerable to a strong republican challenge now that he's clearly more interested in running for mayor than staying in congress.
    • "[t]he 'single biggest pro-Bush swing' anywhere in the U.S. came in the Brooklyn-Queens CD of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) -- a 25 point swing. In '00, Al Gore won the CD by 37 points, while in '04, John Kerry won by just 12 points."
      (National Briefing Bush: They Might Call It "Ground Zero of the '04 Election?", American Political Network, The Hotline, Vol. 10, No. 9 (Apr. 22, 2005)).
  • The best political advice we ever received was from one of our criminal procedure professors, who advised us to "always expect ingratitude."

  • Report: Water Bills Could Rise 40% By 2009, April 24, 2005

    New Yorkers’ water bills reportedly could be as much as 40 percent higher within four years. According to the New York Post, the city's Water Board is projecting steep increases in rates over the next few years. The board has proposed a 3 percent hike this year, but that's nothing compared to the estimated future costs.

    The paper says the board projects another 5.6 percent hike in 2006, followed by 8.7 percent increases in each of the following three years.

    The proposed hikes would be the largest in 15 years. The board tells the paper the increases will help offset the $14 billion in debt carried by the city Department of Environmental Protection and pay for the agency's $10 billion five-year capital plan.

    Public hearings on water rate hikes will begin May 2.


posted by anonymous at 12:23 PM

Thursday, April 21, 2005
 
Dem Babies Continue to Bash Bolton

We're really at a loss at to what the issue is here regarding the accusation that John Bolton, nominee for U.S.'s U.N. Ambassador, was "verbally abusive" and chased a woman staffer around a hotel throwing things at her. First of all, at the risk of being undiplomatic, we don't care. In New York verbal abuse is almost the state pastime. So if some wallflower ten years ago was traumatized and couldn't take a dressing down -- deserved or not -- without quivering in her Legg's we're most definitely not getting teary-eyed about it.

Granted, no one enjoys working for a jerk -- and there's no shortage of those in either New York City or in the broader work world. But we've also worked with plenty of idiots, incompetents and deadwood, and there are times when lighting a bonfire under someone's lazy ass is just what the doctor ordered.

posted by anonymous at 4:17 PM

Wednesday, April 20, 2005
 

HABEMVS PAPAM - BENEDICTVM XVI


We've long been a fan of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (bio here). His intelligence, his doctrinal faithfulness, and his close relation to John Paul II all weighed in our hope the college of cardinals would select him to follow in the footsteps of John Paul II. (Watch interview by Raymond Arroyo with then Cardinal Ratzinger here). We were not disappointed, and the caterwauling of the left in response only brings a broader smile to our face as we greet the new Pope.

posted by anonymous at 11:51 AM

 
The Dems Keep On Taxing...

People ask us why we're so angry here. After all life in New York and New York City is "pretty good" compared to life in other countries and cities, right? That depends what your frame of reference is. That is are you comparing your new life here in NYC to the life you had in Columbia, or the life in New York City you have now compared to the life you had a kid growing up here or somewhere else in the U.S.?

If a neoconservative is a liberal that's been mugged, we're former democrats who were mugged by how the democrats and the left have acted since 1999, and most notably post 9-11. It was the 9-11 attack that provided a final tipping jolt to jog us into a top-to-bottom review of the democrats' positions and beliefs and what we learned repelled us, because in having minds apparently so "open their brains fell out", the left revealed itself as both morally bankrupt and a threat to the actual values they professed to hold -- a dangerous twosome. And today's standard bearers of the democrat party - Pelosi, Kennedy, Biden, Schumer, Rangel, Reid, the list goes on - are so often so over the top, and so distorting on average, that even when they're speaking a rare truthful tidbit it's impossible to take them seriously.

Which brings us to the recent NYC democrat mayoral debate, which was a real carnival of clowns, with Ferrer offering a shocking new stock transfer tax that would guarantee an exodus of the exchanges to New Jersey, and Weiner offering to slap higher taxes on everyone above the "middle class", which he has never and continues to refuse to define, but which basically in his lexicon means anyone earning more than $150,000. Everyone living in NY knows $150K is by no means "rich" for a family with a few kids and mortgage in a city where even a basic house can cost $450,000 while still needing eighty-thousand dollars of work to whip into shape.

So a little bit of advice to Weiner and his fellow tax-o-crats: keep on taxing if you want to drive us all out.

posted by anonymous at 10:39 AM

Monday, April 18, 2005
 
Another Carpetbagger As Our Salvation?

What is it with recent arrivals to New York? They're here for a few years, or in some cases, not even, and suddenly they have the answers to save New York. First there was Robert Kennedy back when, then Hillary, Bloomberg, and now the oily former democrat Senator from Nebraska, Bob Kerrey, is making noise about running for mayor. Hey, Bob? Can we call you Bob? What about your home state of Nebraska? Tired of having been the governor and senator from the great plains?

We have to admire the cajones on Kerrey for thinking we'd vote for him. But it once again highlights the upper westside liberal echo chamber as the cacophony booms forth from their small liberal fishbowl. Good luck, Mr. Kerrey. May you have as much success in your mayoral bid as that other detestable senator with the homophone last name had recently in his quest for higher office.

posted by anonymous at 9:18 AM

Tuesday, April 05, 2005
 
The Unbearable Buffoonery of Being Thomas L. Friedman

Remember the saying "better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than speak and have all doubt removed"? Whenever we hear this epigram the prolix pundit Thomas L. Friedman comes to mind. After reading his breathless book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, back in 2000 we realized "here's a man smart enough to be able to read the map, but not smart enough to realize his map is often upsidedown." That's a very dangerous combination.

And apropos of nothing we were killing a few minutes this evening when we spotted the ever energetic Mr. Friedman regaling Charlie Rose with his bullet-point world view presentation. [ed. note - you'd think with a guy this tight with the intelligentsia someone would sign him up for presentation lessons by now, because while chewing the cud with Charlie he was hopping in his seat and flailing his arms like an overly-caffeinated palsy sufferer. ]

But we digress. Here's a tip for spotting a blowhard pundit: eventually they all come around to the conclusion "we aren't graduating enough people in engineering and science." As corollaries to this earth-shaking theorem, the windbag spouting this inevitably isn't in engineering or science; doesn't work with engineers or scientists; and doesn't realize that, hey, we don't really need 50 million engineers and scientists in a country of 295 million to keep the lights on, computers humming and to come up with a few dozen good ideas each week.

Then, as surely as electrons repulse each other what happens is once we climb on the "won't someone churn out more engineers" train the next boom cycle derails and suddenly untold legions of unemployed and unemployable programmers, physicists, engineers and bushels of other scientists are standing on street corners.

In the spirit of global sharing, we have a tip for good Mr. Friedman: "what we need, Thom, are more people with good business ideas and business models so we can keep the engineers, chemists, biologists, researchers, physicists and other scientists we have happily and productively employed." However, to drop a dime in your krazy kitty we'd be more than happy to send you back to school to get an engineering degree. We'll even give you a choice of CalTech or MIT; that's - Calcutta Technical Institute and Mitrandishia Institute of Technomics. Just let us know which you'd prefer and, then, say hello to the rest of the Class of 2007!!

posted by anonymous at 11:52 PM

Sunday, April 03, 2005
 
Steadily Putting Us in the Poorhouse

Our illustrious state legislature, never one to leave a dime unspent, has just finished patting itself on the back for passing the first ontime budget in 21 years. (See Assembly Completes Passage Of Fair, Balanced, On-Time Budget, NY State Assembly, Press Release, Mar. 31, 2005, available at http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/Press/20050331b/). Let that sink in for a minute : an entire generation passed before NY State had an on time budget.

Does this mark a rebirth of The Empire State? Hardly. This $105- to $106,000,000,000 (that's BILLION with a B) dollar budget includes various increases at three-times the inflation rate -- not exactly penny pinching -- and raises a wide variety of "fees." (See E.J. McMahon, Budget Hoax, N.Y. Post, Mar. 30, 2005, available here (detailing fiscal machinations in current budget process)).

If New York State and New York City continue spending on their current trend we predict there will be many more people like Mrs. Helming of Long Island, below, who has thrown in the towel and called it quits. Her letter was printed in the Mar. 21, 2005, issue of Newsday, here, and recently read on the floor of the NYS Assembly during the budget process last week. It certainly speaks to the experience of many people in New York who are screaming "enough!" Not a week goes by without us wondering here at Angry New Yorker if NYS is the best place for our children to work and live when they're grown, and its increasingly difficult each year to convince ourselves it is.

We hope Mrs. Helming doesn't mind if we reprint her letter here, too.

Sad to go, but so long to the cost of LI living,
BY JODI HELMING
Jodi Helming lives in Holtsville.

March 21, 2005

Dear Long Island:

We are leaving you. It is sad, but true. First of all, we cannot afford to live here anymore.

My husband and I both work full-time and have two young children. We purchased a three-bedroom home, much in need of a number of renovations, for almost half a million dollars. Our property taxes are so high that our monthly payment has become a financial burden we can no longer manage.

What has cost us half a million dollars here on Long Island will cost less than half of that in other parts of this country. So we must ask ourselves the difficult question: Why should we stay on Long Island when housing is simply unaffordable? [ed. note - this is a question every member of the state legislature in the New York City area should ask themselves daily.]

In addition, the recreational activities in which we'd like to participate all have a cost attached. As we venture out on a Saturday morning, looking for a free or low-cost activity, we notice one thing - fees, fees, fees. Fees to ride the carousel in the mall ($2 per child, two children, at least two rides around = $8). Fees to visit a children's museum ($8 per person = $32 for our family). Fees to go to a petting zoo ($12 for adults, $10 for children = $44). Fees to park our vehicle in a lot to go to the beach or a park ($8, unless you can make it there before 8 a.m. in the summer).

So it is not just about affordable housing. It is about affordable living. [ed. note - another mantra the state legislature should sear into their Albany desktops.]

Life here then too often is fraught with complications and therefore becomes a constant struggle. Our weekdays are already complicated. Since it was nearly impossible to find affordable housing close to where we work, we have a long commute (80 miles round-trip) to work each day. [ed. note - See Americans Spend More Than 100 Hours Commuting to Work Each Year, Census Bureau Reports, Press Release, Mar. 30, 2005, available here (noting "[o]f the 231 counties with populations of 250,000 or more covered by the ACS, Queens (41.7 minutes), Richmond (41.3 minutes), Bronx (40.8 minutes) and Kings (39.7 minutes) – four of the five counties that comprise New York City – experienced the longest average commute-to-work times."); Patrick McGeehan, The Long and Winding Road, to Work: Many Travel 90 Minutes or More, One Way, N.Y. Times, Mar. 31, 2005, available at here (detailing recent Census report's findings that "six of the seven counties in America with the highest concentration of extreme commuters [with one-way commutes of 90 minutes or more] were in New York" and that "[a]mong residents of big cities, New Yorkers had the longest average commutes, clocking in at 38.3 minutes.")]. Since we must both work to manage the financial burden of our monthly mortgage payment, we take our two young children to a day-care center. And so we want our weekends to be simple.

Yet, they are just as complicated as we work to try to find ways to combat the cost of recreation on Long Island (not to mention the traffic).

In many other parts of the country, the living situation is different - much more affordable, much simpler, much less of a daily struggle. Families (who have purchased a home that is most likely much more reasonably priced than one on Long Island) can visit museums, brand new parks with well-maintained, updated, safe playground equipment, clean and new picnic facilities and beautiful gardens - all for free. [ed. note -- again, are you listening Governor, Assembly, Senate?]

We are looking for a better and a simpler life for us and for our children. We think we have found it. So do hundreds of other families whose moving trucks are lined up in back of ours, set to leave Long Island. Give us reasons to stay here, and we will turn our moving trucks around.

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.



posted by anonymous at 7:19 PM

Wednesday, March 30, 2005
 
New York Shoots Itself In the Foot Again

We'll have more on this tomorrow:
New York State Telecommuter Ruling May Have Wide Implications
Associated Press
March 29, 2005 1:04 p.m.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- A telecommuter who lives out of state while working by computer for a New York employer must pay New York tax on his full income, the state's highest court ruled Tuesday in a case that could have wide implications in the growing practice.

The Court of Appeals ruled that computer programmer Thomas Huckaby who lives in Nashville, Tenn., owed New York income tax for his full salary, not just the time he spent working at the New York offices of the union for which he worked.

Mr. Huckaby paid tax on about 25% of his income over two years for the time he spent working in New York state. But the court upheld a state tax department ruling that all his income should be taxed. That amounts to $4,387 plus interest. However, the ruling could lead to much greater income for the state as it is applied to the growing field of telecommuting.
The decision in question the Matter of Thomas L. Huckaby v. New York
State Division of Tax Appeals, Tax Appeals Tribunal, et al., is
available here:
http://www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/decisions/mar05/8opn05.pdf

posted by anonymous at 2:44 AM

Sunday, March 27, 2005
 
The Nanny State Marches On - Booster Seats for All!!

Most of us here at Angry New Yorker are of sufficient age that we can remember when the first seat belt laws came into effect. Even back then we recognized these laws as the first push at the top of the slippery slope toward a final nanny state where insurance companies ruled everything by proscribing what we can do. [Ed. note - while we're at it, can we please stop naming laws after people? E.g., Kendra's Law, Megan's Law, Sarbanes-Oxley, etc. It's both tiresome, unnecessary, and frankly distressing, as it's much easier to pass a law billed as "cute little young tragically dead child's law" than the same law under it's descriptive title. Back to our topic already in progress....]
It isn't that wearing seat belts or helmets aren't a good idea -- we know enough physics to understand it's the change in momentum impulse when you decelerate that kills you unless a seat belt or air bag operates to stretch out that delta t by a few life-saving milliseconds to lower the peak applied forces. So it isn't that we don't know the science. But when the state gets into the business of mandating all things good and fine for your health, then there is truly no natural stopping point; or if there is we haven't seen it yet.

Flash forward to 2005 where we're well on the way to the creation of the dreaded great nanny state. For as we last noted back in Nov. 2004, here, after our sterling NYS legislature passed a law requiring kids under 14 to wear a helmet when skateboarding, the present trend means one day in the future it's not farfetched that our hand-wringing legislature would pass "a law requiring everyone just walking down the street to wear a helmet . . . ." Laugh if you will... we do in fact hope the joke is not on us, however.

In service of the great and holy cause of "protecting our children" the New York State legislature -- that self-same legislative body which is currently seeking to add billions of expenditures to Gov. Pataki's already bloated $105+ billion dollar budget, that hasn't passed a budget on time in 21 years, that can't tame out-of-control Medicare spending bankrupting counties and throttling our competitiveness, that can't accomplish anything of meaningful progress in Albany apparently, except adding more zeroes to the payouts given to unions -- still has found time to care about our children in passing S.217 to amend "subdivision 5 of section 1229-c of the vehicle and traffic law" [NY VTL 1229-C - Operation of vehicles with safety seats and safety belts] to mandate that children over four and up to seven years of age, unless over 4'9" in height or over 80 pounds, must be in a specialy designed "booster" seat [while children less than four are still required to be in child safety seats].

I don't know about most kids at age 7, but I know it would have been very difficult to keep me in a "booster seat" at seven. At that age I'd frequently sit on phone books, while seat belted in the front seat, and read maps as our navigator on family trips -- but today I couldn't even do thatin states that prevent kids from sitting in the front.

As justification for this law the NYS sponsors note:
Information from the National Highway Traffic Safety Adminstration reports that in 2002, one-half of children ages 14 years and younger fatally injured in traffic accidents were completely unrestrained. In addition to this problem, children also face greater risk of serious injury when restrained in safety belts designed for larger persons rather than appropriate child safety seats. To address these concerns, New York has enacted Chapter 509 of the Laws of 2004 which will require, starting March 27, 2005, that children age four or older, but less than seven years of age, be placed in an appropriate child restraint system (booster seat). Under this new law any such child who is 4' 9" in height may instead be secured with the vehicle's safety belt, recognizing that their size makes use of the regular safety belt appropriate.

How severe is this "greater risk of serious injury"? The NHTSA notes in a Traffic Tech memo, Number 253, Aug. 2001, available here, that "the occupant fatality rate for children between the ages of 5 and 9 has declined 10.6 percent in the last twenty years" and in 1999 "272 . . . fatally injured children were unrestrained . . . ."
Increasing Booster Seat Use for 4- to 8-Year-Old Children - October 2002 - Cover
So, would using a booster seat mean those 272 deaths could have been prevented? No. And let's remember that in 2002, the NHTSA states that 43,005 people were killed in car accidents in 2002. meaning that any way you slice it, child deaths from car accidents are a very small slice of total car fatalities. Further, the NHTSA's 2002 report "A National Strategy: Increasing Booster Seat Use for
4-to8-Year-Old Children," October 2002, available here, recognizes in its Executive Summary, that:

Under Section 14(i) of the Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability, and Documentation (TREAD) Act, the Secretary of Transportation is required to, "…develop [a] 5 year strategic plan to reduce deaths and injuries caused by failure to use the appropriate booster seat in the 4 to 8 year old age group by 25 percent." While this is a highly desirable goal, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) research shows that a 25 percent reduction in deaths and injuries would not be attainable through the implementation of a program designed solely to increase proper use of belt-positioning booster seats. This view is borne out by the following data:

  • Virtually 100 percent restraint use by booster seat age children would be necessary to achieve a 25 percent reduction in total fatalities for this age group; and,
  • Only about 21 percent of 4- to 8-year-old children are reported as unrestrained in non-fatal crashes. Therefore, the number of unrestrained children is insufficient to produce a 25 percent reduction in the number of injured children, even if all were restrained.

The Agency's research also shows that the lack of any restraint use in a motor vehicle is the greatest risk to 4- to 8-year-old passengers. In 2000, almost half of the 4- to 8-year-old passengers killed in crashes were reported as totally unrestrained. In addition to the high number of fatalities, thousands of children were seriously injured in crashes because they were unrestrained.

Look, seat belts are a good idea for everyone; and smaller kids should be in child safety seats; but what kills the overwhelming majority of adults and kids alike in accidents is not having any restraint system. And the final question is how far does the state step into to mandate certain practices and "safety" equipment for either children or adults?

I wear my seltbelt everyday. But I don't do it because there's a law requiring me to do it. I snap in because the laws of physics will kill you in a crash in 1/10 of a second. Maybe if more people understood the fundamental Newtonian formula of F=MA, or more relevant to a car accident, the formula's reformulation as:
Force * (change in time) = Mass & (change in velocity)
In layman's terms, in an accident your change in velocity is extreme (from x mph to zero) in a very small amount of time. Your mass stays constant during this period, so what has to be huge to balance the equation is the force applied to stop your body in the extremely short time where you impact the steering wheel or dashboard. Add a nylon seat belt to the equation and the belt's stretching force increases the length in time by two orders of magnitude of more, which translates into much lower force applied over that time to bring your body to rest. See? Physics is not only fun, it can save your life.

posted by anonymous at 11:23 PM

Tuesday, March 22, 2005
 
Ending Gerrymandering

The brain trust at Angry New Yorker views gerrymandering, as widely used to carve out "safe" districts for one party or the other, to be perhaps the single most destructive device to democracy known. While we're strongly republican/conservative, we believe every election should be fiercely contested. Yet, in the last election nearly fully 25% of state-wide elections listed only one person on the ballot. That's not an election in our book.

To address this electoral abomination, New York State Assemblyman Michael Gianaris recently introduced a bill, which if enacted, would enable a committee of 8 people (4 chosen by the 4 legislative leaders, and 4 chosen by the Chief Judge, AG, and Comptroller) to select a pool of 40 individuals with geographic distributional requirements and requirements that certain numbers of Democrats, Republicans, and non-major party/independent voters be included. The Brennan Center for Justice described the proposal, thus:
From that pool, each of the 4 legislative leaders selects 2 members of a reapportionment commission. Those 8 members then select 3 members from the original pool. No more than 4 members can be enrolled in any one party. That reapportionment commission then draws the district lines for both state and congressional offices. The bill provides several specific criteria to be followed in that drafting process, including a preference for competitive districts.
The legislature must vote on the plan that is produced, and if it does not pass, the commission can do another version. If the third plan drawn by the commission does not pass, the Legislature can pass its own plan. But the Legislature's plan must serve the bill's criteria. If the plan ends up in court (which the bill virtually guarantees), then the bill instructs the Court of Appeals to select that plan which best serves the stated criteria.
In sum, this bill is not perfect, but it would be a tremendous step forward in bringing a measure of independence and rationality to the reapportionment process. It does by legislation what really should be done by constitutional amendment, but the chances of its passage are thus much greater. While it preserves significant control for the Legislature, it also would likely produce a Court of Appeals decision that would select one of the commission's plans over that drawn by the Legislature itself. For these reasons, the Brennan Center and several other good government organizations, including the Citizens Union, strongly support the bill.
We likewise support the bill as a first step to bring elections back to the intended goals -- not to provide a rubber-stamp on sinecures for partisans, but as direct referendums to decide our representatives.

Write your Assembly person and tell them to support the bill. Don't know who your assembly representative is? Don't worry. Even policy wonks like us often forget. Look your's up here.

posted by anonymous at 9:13 AM

Sunday, March 20, 2005
 
Even The Left Starts Second-Guessing Its Own

We didn't comment on the ridiculous imolation ongoing within Harvard's faculty, because, well, others have dissected the Summers brou-haha with more depth, aplomb and perspicacity than we can muster on the topic, which basically boils down to a parody of those reality "when animals go bad and attack" tv shows, only here under the marketing slogan of "When Leftists Attack and Eat Their Own."

But when Dave Winer, noted technologist, former Harvard fellow, and ultra-democrat supporter, with whom members of the Angry New Yorker Brain Trust crossed swords during the last election season, suddenly realizes that, hey, white males aren't all evil and should be supported against the acid dripping destructiveness of uber-feminist commandos, well, it's indicative something is definitely rotten in the Leftist state of Denmark -- to mangle metaphors. He noted on his scripting.com blog Friday that:
Yesterday I picked up a funny graphic from Jonathon Delacour's site, with a picture of Alfred E Neuman, next to a slogan "White, male and damn proud of it!" I like to laugh at myself, so why not laugh at my gender too. Almost anything with the What Me Worry kid is funny. Let's have a good laugh, then settle down, and do some positive PR for our gender and our race. Sure, lots of terrible people were white and male, but so were a lot of great people, heroes, martyrs. People who cured diseases, and stood up to tyrants. Artists, teachers, comedians, people who served as role models for boys and men, even some sons of feminist women (like me, for example). I know some women are offended by this, I've heard from them, but this isn't about you, it's about us. So I'm going to start running an occasional positive image of white maleness on Scripting News, for no other reason that to help white men, like myself, feel like we have permission to do good things and serve as role models for young men, and for ourselves.
Gee, what a concept; that "white men . . . have permission to do good things and serve as role models for young men. . . ." That it's come to this demonstrates more effectively how insanely off track the radical feminist train has traveled than anything else we can think of now.

posted by anonymous at 9:15 PM

Saturday, March 19, 2005
 
The Moonbat Contingent Speaks Up

Harsh title? Well, those folks who took to the streets this weekend to protest the second anniversary of the Iraq war are certainly entitled -- after all it's their First Amendment free speech right. Right? Up to a point, absolutely.
However, over the past few years we've been frankly amazed at how many people have utterly no idea -- other than a weak, diluted, populist "it's a free country" understanding of what the First Amendment speech clause protects, what it means, and what "rights" it provides against governmental action. More commonly you'll find people saying "I have a right to say such & such", or "XYZ is being punishing for speaking out", or crying "censorship!" when the underlying issue has no bearing on areas the first amendment covers.

As a result, we hope to do a very preliminary "first amendment" primer compilation here soon, in an effort to educate those New Yorkers who the public school system has failed.


posted by anonymous at 5:40 PM

Wednesday, March 16, 2005
 
In New York Temporary Means Virtually Permanent; and Taxes Means Give Me All of It

In New York we've learned from painful experience that whenever anything is labeled "termporary" there's a better than 90% chance it will be temporary only in the sense that the universe itself is "temporary" -- that is there's some finite period to its existence. I remember driving by Queens College for upwards of 25 years, and noticing the "temporary" classrooms set up in the '70's using Quonsehut-like barrick buildings. They only came down a perhaps five years ago.
And now, as E.J. McMahon notes, our sterling state Legislature is likely going to make a variety of "temporary taxes" embedded fixtures in the fiscal landscape. Let these *!)@#* know that this kind of nonsense is not why they're in Albany.
N.Y.'s Road to Ruin
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/42626.htm

March 16, 2005 -- ONCE the Legislature adopted a "temporary" personal-income-tax increase in 2003, it was only a matter of time before someone in Albany moved to make the tax hike permanent.

Sure enough, the heavy-spending budget resolution approved by the state Assembly this week includes an open-ended extension of the state's 7.7 percent flat rate on taxpayers with incomes over $500,000. The proposal will now be on the table in budget negotiations between Assembly Democrats and Senate Republicans — who have their own big spending appetites, and who supported the temporary rate hike just two years ago.

If enacted, this would be New York's first permanent increase in the income-tax rate in more than 30 years. And it would send a troubling signal to investors and business decision-makers that the era of pro-growth tax reduction is over in the Empire State.

* * *

Not so long ago, the relationship between taxes and economic growth was better understood by Democrats as well as Republicans in Albany. In fact, over the past quarter-century, the greatest reductions in state income-tax rates have been signed into law by Democratic governors.

Hugh Carey cut the top rate from 15 percent to 10 percent during his last term in office. And Mario Cuomo saw the top rate decline further, to 7.875 percent. (Cuomo reneged on further, scheduled cuts.)

Pataki's 1995 tax-cut package brought the top rate down to 6.85 percent — lowest since the '50s. But even at that level, the vast majority of middle- and upper-income New Yorkers were subject to the heaviest state income-tax burden in the region.

And for New York City residents, the combined state and local income tax rate now tops out at over 12 percent — highest in the country.

Because many small, closely held firms and partnerships are subject to the state personal income tax rather than the corporate tax, what the Assembly is proposing is not just a higher permanent rate on individuals but a tax hike for employers.

The deductibility of state and local taxes on federal returns is often cited as an argument in favor of raising New York's income tax. But deductibility isn't what it used to be.

Thirty years ago, when the Empire State's top rate was 15 percent, the top federal rate was 70 percent. This meant the effective state-tax bite on the highest-earning households was only 4.5 percent. Today, with the federal top rate set at 35 percent, the post-deductibility cost of a 7.7 percent state rate is 5 percent.

Plus, many high-income New Yorkers are subject either to the Alternative Minimum Tax, which doesn't permit deductions, or to a cap on itemized deductions. Either way, the deduction is worth the least to those who send the most to Albany. (And deductibility itself may not survive the next round of tax reform in Washington.)

And it's not as if some of New York's wealthiest taxpayers lack any other reasons to leave. The phase-out of the federal estate tax is having the effect of making New York's state "death tax" exceptionally high. Lawyers and financial planners are already advising their New York clients to move to states such as Florida and South Carolina, which have no estate tax at all.

Even putting aside the economic considerations, the Empire State is dangerously over-reliant on its personal income from high-income households. In 2001, for example, state residents with incomes above $500,000 represented barely 1 percent of taxpayers but paid more than 30 percent of the taxes.

The downside of depending so heavily on such a small number of taxpayers should be obvious: It means that when the wealthiest New Yorkers have a bad year, the entire state suffers inordinate fiscal stress. This is precisely what happened between tax years 2000 and 2002 — when all of the decline in state income-tax revenues was concentrated in high-income households.

Financing popular programs with higher taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers may be smart politics. But shifting even more of New York's steadily rising public sector burden to roughly 65,000 footloose tax filers with volatile incomes would make for truly dumb policy.

I think that about says it all, no?

posted by anonymous at 2:25 PM

Tuesday, March 15, 2005
 
Justice Scalia Speaks On His Originalist View of Constitutional Interpretation

I'm a big fan of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. In fact, he's my favorite Supreme Court Justice, because his view of constitutional interpretation via "originalism" is very flexible - as it leaves the political process to run its course whenever possible, rather than freezing issues by "constitutionalizing" wide areas. Despite the fact that many legal minds and most law school students I've run into view Scalia as an extremist on the right-wing, I dissent with their view.

Watch a recent speech by Justice Scalia detailing his view of constitutional interpretation here in a 58 minute speech - as RealMedia.



posted by anonymous at 2:32 AM

Monday, March 14, 2005
 
Always More Money to Move Around NYC

New, and of course higher, tolls went into affect today on the cities bridges and tunnels. The anger is palpable, for as the New York Times notes "[t]hey unleashed a tirade of complaints: higher tolls (the second increase in two years), exorbitant insurance (among the highest in the nation), expensive parking (as much as $30 a day), and rising gas prices ($2 and up). The squeeze, they said, just never seems to stop."

Indeed, it never does stop. The MTA should be immediately taken over and investigated from top to bottom. It's painfully clear it is both unaccountable and unaccounted. In fact, the MTA was created primarily for both these purposes by Robert Moses to provide him with a source of revenue and the means of ramming through projects. The MTA webpage say, here, it is:

"A public-benefit corporation chartered by New York State in 1965, the MTA is governed by a 17-person Board. Members are nominated by the Governor, with some recommended by New York City's mayor and the county executives of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Dutchess, Orange, Rockland, and Putnam counties, with the members representing the latter four casting one collective vote. The Board also has six rotating non-voting seats held by representatives of organized labor and the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee (PCAC), which serves as a voice for users of MTA transit and commuter facilities. All Board members are confirmed by the New York State Senate."
Well doesn't this just inspire confidence. Six non-voting seats serve "as a voice for the users of MTA transit and commuter facilities" -- in other words "sit there, listen and shut up because we're not interested in what you say, because YOU HAVE NO VOTE in what we do." Nice.

The New York Times details today's price increases, ranging from a 50 cent hike for the Throgs Neck Bridge, the Midtown Tunnel, and the Whitestone Bridge, bringing a one-way toll on these crossings to $4.50. And the Verranzo-Narrows Bridge popped from $8 to $9 (one-way). That's a stiff nut.

I've also thought it was unconscionable to have no free crossing between boros of the same city. There's no way to cross directly from Staten Island to Brooklyn without paying; no way to cross from Queens to the Bronx without paying; and if there was some way for the MTA to slap a toll on people driving between Brooklyn and Queens, which are adjacent to each other, you can be sure they would.

We're angry alright.

posted by anonymous at 9:27 PM

Tuesday, March 08, 2005
 
Partying like it's 1999... spending like it's ....

A solid look at the fiscal situation New York State finds itself in -- due to the near malfeasance of our spineless elected officials.

“EXCELSIOR” OR BUST?
FISCALWATCH MEMO March 7, 2005

Governor George E. Pataki says the last four years have been “the worst … since the Great Depression”[1] for New York’s finances.

You wouldn’t know it from looking at the state budget, though. Since the end of the 2001 fiscal year[2], state funds[3] spending has risen 18 percent. That’s a growth rate of one and a half times inflation – despite the fiscal fallout from a national recession, a nasty Wall Street bear market and the destruction of the World Trade Center.

In fact, as explained below, New York State has exerted somewhat less fiscal discipline in the 2001-05 boom-and-bust cycle than during a comparable period in the early 1990s.

Recent state spending trends underscore the high stakes in Albany’s fiscal 2006 budget negotiations. Despite the widespread media focus on “cuts,” especially in health care, Pataki’s proposal calls for net state funds spending growth of 5.5 percent – twice the rate of inflation. If the Legislature is allowed to make significant additions and restorations to the Governor’s budget, New York will be hobbled by state budget shortfalls for years to come.

Déjà vu all over again

Notwithstanding the governor’s frequent allusions to the 1930s, the state’s latest economic and fiscal travails aren’t completely unprecedented. Indeed, there are striking similarities between the early 2000s and the early 1990s. During both periods:

  • New York experienced an economic recession more severe than the national average.
  • Medicaid costs skyrocketed.
  • New York’s budget gaps were closed in large part with tax hikes, increased borrowing and fiscal gimmicks.
  • The Legislature set new records for tardiness in adopting a state budget.

No two economic cycles are exactly alike, of course. For example, the state lost more private sector jobs during the early 1990s, while the revenue losses were much greater after the 2001 recession.

Read the entire article here.



posted by anonymous at 12:27 PM

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