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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Wednesday, March 31, 2004
 
It could have been New Yorkers.. it could have been my sister.

I can't tell you how angry I am at the Iraqi residents in Falluja today. (See
4 From U.S. Killed in Brutal Assault by a Mob of Iraqis, N.Y. Times, Mar. 31, 2004, at A1 available at http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html).

Frankly, and my anger may be getting the best of me a bit, but it's a good thing I'm not in charge of any serious military ordinance in Falluha, Iraq area today, because tomorrow the city would be obliterated in the old Roman-verus-the-Carthaginian-style of raising to the ground and then salting the earth so that the name "Fallujah" would forever be known as the barren, empty place where the wrath of the U.S. landed on barbarians who view it as proper "resistance" to burn alive dying civilians, dismember them with shovels, encourage 10-year old boys to stomp on the blackened heads, and drag the bodies for a miles to hang the desecrated charred remains from a local bridge.

That bridge would be gone, the guy swinging that shovel in the press pictures - gone; everyone appearing in the footage - rounded up; the people of Fallujah within a ten block area of the atrocity - dispersed, their houses raised, and capped by concrete. At least one message driven home would be "You say this is the fate of the infidels', to which we respond, would you rather see America at work helping you? Because do this, and this will be your fate." Admittedly this is a strategy born of anger, and cooler heads argue a broader-picture response - e.g. U.S.S. Clueless, here.

But I've about had it with the touchy-feely "hearts and minds" campaign. That's fine, but when it's time to kick some serious ass, it's time to do so swiftly and hard. And I'm glad to see that Gen. Kimmitt agrees. In his briefing on April 1, 2004, in response to the question of "[w]hat kind of response might we see out in Fallujah" he answered "we will respond. We are not going to do a pell-mell rush into the city. It's going to be deliberate, it will be precise and it will be overwhelming. We will not rush in to make things worse. We will plan our way through this and we will reestablish control of that city and we will pacify that city. . . We will be back in Fallujah. It will be at the time and the place of our choosing. We will hunt down the criminals. We will kill them or we will capture them. And we will pacify Fallujah." That's what the American people want to hear. And when one reporter said "I was in Fallujah today and people were saying, 'Yeah, the Americans were scared to come back in.' Does that not send out a bad message of tolerance of violence?" General Kimmitt's response was short and sweet: "Ask them after the Americans have come back in."

posted by anonymous at 11:45 PM

Tuesday, March 30, 2004
 
[Ed. note -- So let me get this straight, by the time my future kids are ready to start thinking about buying a home in NYC, the entry price, extrapolating from the figures below, will be $1,700,000? Give me a break. Of course, by then, a person living in New York won't actually "take home" much thanks to NYS's insatiable tax appetite. I can't see this ending well for anyone.]

SOARING COSTS, SMALLER PADS
By ANNE BECKER
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/22105.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 30, 2004 -- Manhattan apartment hunters are spending a lot more for a lot less.
Apartment prices in Manhattan have nearly doubled in price, but shrank in size by a fifth in the past 10 years, said a new report released yesterday.

The comprehensive Manhattan Market Report 1994-2003 showed the average price for a Gotham apartment was a staggering $872,160 last year - up 93.8 percent from the 1994 average of $450,084.

The average price per square foot jumped even more during the same time - 146.7 percent from $278 to a record high of $686 per square foot.

The survey found that studios, one-bedrooms, two-bedrooms and three-bedrooms all set price-per-square-foot records last year - jumping about an average of 15 percent over the previous year. Setting an even higher record were four-bedroom apartments, which jumped 28.7 percent in price-per-square-foot.

[full article here]

posted by anonymous at 2:22 PM

 
[Ed. note - here it comes again. Does the NYS legislature know any phrase beyond "higher taxes"?]

THE PRICE OF BETTER SCHOOLS: BUT WHO PAYS THE PIPER?
By E.J. McMAHON
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/22061.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 30, 2004 -- HOW many billions of dollars more in state spending will it take to satisfy the constitutional mandate of a "sound basic education" for all public school students in New York?
With yesterday's report [available here as PDF] ]by Gov. Pataki's Commission on Education Reform (chaired by financier Frank Zarb), we now have at least three sets of answers to that question:

* The Zarb Commission said a range of $2.5 billion to $5.6 billion per year ought to suffice.

* The Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE), whose successful court challenge to the school aid formula for New York City brought this issue to a head, claims the increase should be more like $10 billion.

* The Board of Regents, the state's educational policymaking body, has proposed a $6 billion hike in state school aid.

The average of all these figures is roughly $6.2 billion a year - with only the Zarb report attempting to tie more money to improved results. All of this begs another big question that the victorious CFE plaintiffs and their cheerleaders in the state Legislature have so far refused to face:

Where in the world is the money supposed to come from?

It's not as if New Yorkers aren't already digging deep for their schools. We spent $11,515 per public-school pupil in 2002-03 - tops in the nation and 47 percent above the U.S. average. Moreover, state school aid has risen at twice the rate of inflation over the past decade. This is a big reason why New York's combined state and local tax burden is second highest in America.

Yet even with last year's record (and supposedly temporary) tax increase, Albany is barely making ends meet. The governor projects a budget gap of $2.9 billion for fiscal 2005-06, growing to $4.3 billion for 2006-07. And once the Legislature gets done adding more spending to Pataki's proposals for next year, these future gaps will only grow larger.

[rest of article here]

posted by anonymous at 1:18 PM

Monday, March 08, 2004
 
Briefly moving from the local NYC scene to the national, AngryNYker reiterates its endorsement of President Bush in the coming election. And here's another look why . . .

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/07/main/index.html

"If Kerry had been president, [Senator Ted] Kennedy said, "we never would have gone to war. We would have mobilized the international community. We would have isolated and contained Saddam Hussein."


And this is clearly preferable in Kennedy's and Kerry's view. That 25 million people be ruled by a blood-thirsty dictator, who was increasingly out-of-touch with reality, surrounded by corruption and serving as a petri dish and rest-stop for terrorist elements from surrounding countries. Hey, if that's the "leadership" you think best serves this country, then by all means exercise your right to vote for Kerry. We certainly will not.

posted by anonymous at 12:08 AM

Thursday, March 04, 2004
 
Bloomberg finally shoots from the hip. Bravo Mayor for not only telling it the way it is, but for standing up for the law.

"I think that people who want to change the marriage laws should go to Albany,” Bloomberg said Wednesday.
“That’s where laws are made. For those that want to grandstand and recommend that we break the law [by issuing gay marriage licenses], their time would be much better spent in trying to actually effect the change that they say they want rather than just go out there for political purposes.”

posted by anonymous at 4:28 PM

 
Green is Gray

From NY1.com:

"Green Decides Not To Run For Mayor Again
MARCH 04TH, 2004

The field of potential candidates for mayor next year has narrowed.

Former Public Advocate Mark Green, who lost to Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the last election, says we will not run again in 2005. Instead, the Democrat says he is considering running for state attorney general in 2006, if Eliot Spitzer runs for governor, as expected. "

Our commentary... Green realized that he's about as viable a NYC mayoral candidate as the ex-President of Haiti -- in short, zero chance. Of course Spitzer is a dangerous black horse in the governor's race, but I think he displayed his true aim in waffling on the gay marriage issue. Look, you can wail and protest, and stamp your feet for equal treatment, but a gay "marriage" just isn't a marriage by historical, cultural and present standards. Sorry, but that's the fact. And all the "civil disobedience", which is really simple law-breaking here, in the world isn't going to change that fact, or turn this into a "civil rights" issue. It isn't, and not everything is a civilr rights issue. The sky isn't going to suddenly turn green because these groups keep chanting "the sky is green, the sky is green." Newsflash: it's blue.

posted by anonymous at 4:25 PM

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