Thursday, October 31, 2013

Light At The End Of The Tunnel For American Rail Systems


For decades, the Federal Railroad Administration had effectively banned modern European trains from American mainline rail networks. European and Asian manufacturers have been slimming down their rolling stock for years to improve performance — energy efficiency, braking and acceleration, even track and train maintenance — while U.S. transit agencies were stuck with bulked-up versions of sleek European cars, weighted down and otherwise modified to meet FRA regulations. The Acela, on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, was perhaps the most notorious victim of the old rules. David Gunn once called it a "high-velocity bank vault" for its bulky design, and many attributed its maintenance woes to its untested design, customized to meet U.S. safety regulations. But every commuter and intercity train has to comply with the rules, and most suffer, to one degree or another, from high costs and poor performance. But not for much longer. Beginning in 2015, regulators and manufacturers expect the FRA to allow modern European designs on tracks throughout the country, running side by side with heavy freight at all times of day. There will be no special signaling requirements for trains purchased under the new rules, although a separate requirement for more advancing anti-collision signaling, called positive train control, is set to kick in around the same time.
It's about time. Modern passenger rail in the US has been hamstrung by these outmoded regulations.
For decades, the Federal Railroad Administration had effectively banned modern European trains from American mainline rail networks. European and Asian manufacturers have been slimming down their rolling stock for years to improve performance — energy efficiency, braking and acceleration, even track and train maintenance — while U.S. transit agencies were stuck with bulked-up versions of sleek European cars, weighted down and otherwise modified to meet FRA regulations. The Acela, on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, was perhaps the most notorious victim of the old rules. David Gunn once called it a "high-velocity bank vault" for its bulky design, and many attributed its maintenance woes to its untested design, customized to meet U.S. safety regulations. But every commuter and intercity train has to comply with the rules, and most suffer, to one degree or another, from high costs and poor performance. But not for much longer. Beginning in 2015, regulators and manufacturers expect the FRA to allow modern European designs on tracks throughout the country, running side by side with heavy freight at all times of day. There will be no special signaling requirements for trains purchased under the new rules, although a separate requirement for more advancing anti-collision signaling, called positive train control, is set to kick in around the same time.


They do intercity rail much better in Europe.  

The Scandal of Racist Marijuana Arrests—and What To Do About It | The Nation


The insidious effects of marijuana criminalization.  Continuation of this policy in the face of all the facts and the damage done is evil. Full stop. 

It is long past time for the full legalization of marijuana.  End this wasteful, destructive and ultimately racist policy once and for all.  Regulate and tax it analogous to the far more harmful yet legal alcohol and tobacco categories.
 Most people arrested for marijuana possession were not smoking it: they typically had a small amount hidden in their clothing, vehicle or personal effects. The police found the marijuana by stopping and searching them (often illegally), or by tricking them into revealing it.Police departments concentrate their patrols only in certain neighborhoods, usually ones designated as "high crime." These are mainly places where low-income whites and people of color live. In these neighborhoods, police stop and search the most vehicles and individuals while looking for "contraband" of any type to make an arrest. The most common item that people in any neighborhood possess that will get them arrested—and the most common item that police find—is a small amount of marijuana.Police officers patrolling in middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods typically do not search the vehicles and pockets of white people, so most well-off whites enjoy a de facto legalization of marijuana possession. Free from the intense surveillance and frequent searches that occur in other neighborhoods, they have little reason to fear a humiliating arrest and incarceration. This produces patterns, as in Chicago, where whites constitute 45 percent of the population but only 5 percent of those arrested for possession. The result has been called "racism without racists." No individual officers need harbor racial animosity for the criminal justice system to produce jails and courts filled with black and brown faces. But the absence of hostile intent does not absolve policy-makers and law enforcement officials from responsibility or blame. As federal judge Shira Scheindlin recently determined in two prominent stop-and-frisk cases, New York City's top officials "adopted an attitude of willful blindness toward statistical evidence of racial disparities in stops and stop outcomes." She cited the legal doctrine of "deliberate indifference" to describe police and city officials who "willfully ignored overwhelming proof that the policy…is racially discriminatory and therefore violates the United States Constitution." 


Flying Gets A Little Less Intolerable

FAA Allows Portable Electronic Devices to Be Used During Entire Flight
But only a little.  Wake me up when I can bring a damn bottle of water and a yogurt in my carry-on and retain a modicum of dignity during the pointless, wasteful theater that passes for security screening.
The Federal Aviation Administration today made historic changes to its longstanding Portable Electronic Devices (PEDs) policy, officially allowing airlines to grant passengers permission to use PEDs "during all phases of flight." In its official press release, the FAA said implementation of the new policy among airlines will take time as carriers must prove that their fleets can handle the usage of multiple PEDs gate-to-gate, but the agency expects that by the end of this year, passengers will "be able to read e-books, play games, and watch videos on their devices during all phases of flight, with very limited exceptions."

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Sephora On Verge Of Opening At Brooklyn Municipal Building


The retail presence will be a boon to this corner.  Anyone know what other tenants there will be?  Looks like a separate space to be occupied on the Court Street side.  The sidewalk improvement on the Court Street side are nice as well.  I always wondered if I was going to fall through that decrepit metal grate.

I hope there is some plan to refurbish the lower level that opens onto the 4/5 subway station.  That dark and dingy disused building entrance could be transformed into a busy and beautiful entryway with the right treatment/tenant.  

New Energy Efficient LED Streetlights Coming To Your Block

And every other block in our fair city:
 In an energy-saving effort, the city plans to replace all of its 250,000 streetlights with brighter, whiter, energy-saving, light-emitting diode fixtures in one of the nation’s largest retrofitting projects, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, said in a news conference on Thursday.
I've been eagerly awaiting this for years, but this is one example of when it's good to be a later adopter.  The quality of LED bulbs has improved remarkably at the same time that prices have fallen dramatically.  And now:
The news conference was on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, where lights have already been replaced, expecting to save more than $70,000 and nearly 248,000 kilowatt-hours a year in energy. Unlike standard lights, which last six years, LED bulbs can burn for 20 years before they need to be replaced, the administration said, and the project is expected to save $14 million a year in energy and maintenance costs.
The project, which began as a pilot program in 2009, will be completed in three phases. The full removal will start in Brooklyn with 80,000 “cobra-headed” streetlights, with their sodium high-pressured bulbs, then move on to Queens and, eventually, the rest of the city.  
I hope at the same time they're going with a lamp design that reduces light pollution by doing a better job of focusing the light downward.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Mischief Night In NJ - Negligence On 1st

In NJ, The Night Before Halloween Is 'Mischief Night'
Indeed, where I grew up in south Jersey the night before Halloween was mischief night, and any parent who let their kids out on 10/30 was negligent, a fool, or worse. 

I guess it's a testament to 9 years of Brooklyn living, but when I was putting out a fire in the backyard (good times!) an hour ago, the words mischief night never even occurred to me.  Rather, it was "thoughtless asshole smokers" because there is no doubt in my mind that a carelessly tossed cigarette butt sparked the fire. 

No worries though, a neighbor and I had the fire extinguished by the time the fire department got here - and damn, they got here FAST!  Very impressive response time.
" In some parts of the United States, the night before Halloween is the night when youths wreak havoc on suburban homes. Or maybe it only happens in New Jersey and Michigan—a dialect survey found that New Jersey residents call it "mischief night" and Michiganders call it "devils night" while other U.S. residents have no name for it at all! Maybe it's just referred to as the night where you go and throw eggs at houses and cars, put shaving cream everywhere and then TP the whole yard."
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NSA Sophistry

NSA Non-Denial Denial 241,352,052
So their angle is this: anything they collect outside of the geographic boundaries of the US is "foreign".  That, to me, is not a "good faith" extension f the meaning.  If I were a FISA judge I would sanction the %$#@ out of their lawyers.

It's bullshit, it's indefensible, and it's illegal. Surprise!
"Which brings us to the familiar refrain, in which collection the NSA admits includes US person collection is redefined as "foreign" which makes all us white people okay with it unless we're hackers or some other enemies within. NSA is a foreign intelligence agency. And we're focused on discovering and developing intelligence about valid foreign intelligence targets only. Of course, this refrain doesn't work anymore, given that we know that discovering and developing intelligence about foreign intelligence also involves collecting the phone records of each and every one of us. But I guess it's stuck in NSA's boilerplate until it becomes embarrassingly obvious to all that "foreign" no longer necessarily has much to do with "other countries.""
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Atlantic Tunnel Redux?

The Lost Cow Tunnels of New York City

I'll bet that remnants of the west side cow tunnel are still buried, much like the "lost" Atlantic Ave. tunnel.  And I defy you to gaze upon that manhole cover and not see a waffle.
Like every other major metropolis, New York City has tunnels for people, tunnels for cars, and lots of tunnels for trains. But it also has something rather more unique: tunnels for cows. Or does it? T…
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Use Yahoo or Gmail? The NSA Has Stolen Your Personal Information


NSA Returns to Stealing from Yahoo and Google
I'm not sure what it takes to get the average person angry about the flagrant and pervasive violation of our 4th Amendment rights.  Maybe this will finally do it.  Probably not.  But there are yet more shoes to drop, so maybe one of those will do it.  The wanton criminality institutionalized at the NSA must be stopped.
" Screen shot 2013-10-30 at 1.23.18 PM The entire point of the Protect America Act and FISA Amendments Act was to provide a way for NSA to collect data from Yahoo and Google without stealing it from telecom switches, which is what they had been doing for 6 years. That was the primary goal: provide a legal means, with oversight, to collect intelligence from the multinational US-based Internet companies that dominated the free email market. Yet, as I've been predicting for weeks, that wasn't good enough for NSA. In addition to all the intelligence they collect legally using PRISM under Section 702 authority, it turns out they've been busy returning to their thieving ways. The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials."
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Bernie Sanders Sets The Record Straight On Social Security


The Koch brothers, Pete Peterson and other billionaires are spending huge amounts of money trying to cut Social Security and other vitally important federal programs. As part of this campaign, an enormous amount of misinformation is floating around. Let me try to set the record straight by answering a few of the questions that people are asking my office. Is Social Security "going broke"? No! Social Security is not going broke. According to the Social Security Administration, the Social Security Trust Fund has a surplus today of $2.8 trillion. This sum, plus revenue that comes in every day, can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 20 years. In 2033, unless Congress acts, Social Security will be able to pay out only 75 percent of benefits owed. Congress must act and make Social Security strong for the next 50 to 75 years.
Far and away my favorite Senator.  And as a side note: it's striking how much damage that two families (the Kochs and the Waltons) have done to this country in the last forty years with their relentless, all-consuming greed.  They won't rest until all of us live in penury, existing only at their whim.
The Koch brothers, Pete Peterson and other billionaires are spending huge amounts of money trying to cut Social Security and other vitally important federal programs. As part of this campaign, an enormous amount of misinformation is floating around. Let me try to set the record straight by answering a few of the questions that people are asking my office. Is Social Security "going broke"? No! Social Security is not going broke. According to the Social Security Administration, the Social Security Trust Fund has a surplus today of $2.8 trillion. This sum, plus revenue that comes in every day, can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 20 years. In 2033, unless Congress acts, Social Security will be able to pay out only 75 percent of benefits owed. Congress must act and make Social Security strong for the next 50 to 75 years.


Cold Brew Coffee - Better Iced Coffee


Easy cold-brew coffee with a French press
Mrs. Firstandcourt prefers iced coffee.  I read about this method a few months ago and it works great.  Grind and steep the night before and you have perfect iced coffee ready to go in the morning.  Just add ice and milk and sugar to taste.
"Cold brewing coffee works like this: combine ground beans with room temperature (or cooler) water and let steep for 12 to 15 hours. That's it. I love the smoother flavor of cold brewed coffee. From what I've read, some folks consider the resulting coffee to be a concentrate in need of dilution. Not me. Maybe it's the ice."
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CNN: The Worst Name In News

The Daily Show's Latest CNN Takedown Is a Very Good Thing
Good or bad?  24 hour cable news is the worst thing to ever happen to cable, or news.
"Jon Stewart justifiably lays into CNN for dumbing down news to the point where even Michele Bachmann has become too nuanced. "
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The Wealthy Are Undertaxed, And The Economy Suffers

The Dow hits another record high. Where are all the jobs?
News flash to reporters: the stock market index is not the economy

The economy for many people in this country is one where work is hard to find, real wages have shrunk, and robust benefits and job security are tall tales to regale the young with. 

Young people burdened with crushing student loan burdens are facing futures with scant opportunity.  And at the root if all of it are policies that favor the accumulation of wealth among the already wealthy.  The relentless growth of income and wealth inequality has been largely driven by tax policy.

Where is the leadership, Mr. President?  I understand there is a recalcitrant, obstructionist GOP befouling the people's House.  But you're not even making the case.  And it may be water under the bridge, but your initial extension of the Bush tax cuts only exacerbated the problems we face.  It was bad politics and even worse policy.
It is a fact that taxes on the wealthy are at near historic lows, and that the share of the wealth controlled by the rich is at historic highs. It is a fact that corporate profits are at record highs, as is the stock market. Business, and big business in particular, is doing very, very well. Yet unemployment remains high, wages are stagnant, economic mobility is weak and the middle class is shrinking. Corporations are sitting on vast accumulated wealth, but are not investing that wealth in human capital that advances broad-based prosperity. We do, on the other hand, have plenty of evidence that high levels of income inequality are very damaging to an economy. We have plenty of evidence that corporations are unwilling to invest in new products because they're not certain that consumers will be able to afford them. Moreover, we know that unemployment was lower and the nation more prosperous when taxes on the wealthy were higher, when regulations on Wall Street were more stringent, and when organized labor was more powerful.
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X-Men Days Of Future Past Trailer

When I was 12 I used to dream about my favorite comic books on the big
screen. Even the small screen would have been nice. As an adult it's
been great to revisit so many of those stories as movie magic has
caught up to the imaginations of generations of kids. The sad
decision of Bryan Singer to skip the X-Men franchise for an
ill-advised entry in the Superman universe was doubly tragic in that
it foisted Brett Ratner onto what should have been a great third film.  Instead . . . meh.

But now Singer is back to helm perhaps the best X-Men story arcs of
all time: Days of Future Past. And by of all time, I mean up to about
1990 when I stopped reading comics on a regular basis.

Anyway the trailer is up and it looks great.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

End The Embargo of Cuba

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to condemn the U.S. commercial, economic and financial embargo against Cuba for the 22nd year in a row. The symbolic vote Tuesday was 188-2, with three abstentions. The United States and Israel voted against it. General Assembly resolutions are unenforceable. The embargo was enacted in 1960 following Cuba's nationalization of properties belonging to U.S. citizens and corporations. Sanctions were strengthened to a near-total embargo in 1962.

It's a despicable, bullying legacy of the Cold War. It makes no sense, and has a tremendous cost both in human terms and financial. But even more, it is antithetical to our professed position as "leader of the free world". 



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The Birth Of Liberal Hollywood

79 Years Ago This Month: Hollywood Took Its First All-Out Plunge Into Politics
Interesting backstory.
"How did Hollywood get so "liberal"?  It all started when author and ex-socialist Upton Sinclair swept the Democratic primary for governor of California in 1934, as I explore in my book and ebook The Campaign of the Century, winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.  Hollywood's response, including the creation of the first "attack ads" for the screen by none other than Irving Thalberg--you can watch excerpts below--destroyed Sinclair but also led to the rise of the "liberal" movie industry we see today."
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DeBlasio Still Standing Tall For LICH

Bill de Blasio, who was arrested last June while protesting the imminent closure of  Long Island College Hospital, isn't letting the issue go. The mayoral front-runner stood today with union members and hospital workers to protest the layoff of 500 hospital workers, which he plans to fight in court. "If you take away the personnel, the hospital effectively dies," Mr. de Blasio, the city's public advocate, declared to reporters at a press conference in front of the hospital's playground. "We're going back to court. We are simply not gonna take it," he added later. Mr. de Blasio announced that community members are requesting a court order to "stop these layoffs dead in their tracks," which he argued was a matter of public safety. "Effectively what SUNY is trying to do is close LICH at all costs and somehow put a legal fig leaf on it. So it's just once again SUNY proposing and pursuing a closure plan, just not admitting it out loud," he said.
SUNY's actions are worthy of sanction and I hope they are punished for them. Whatever ultimately  happens, SUNY would have already closed our hospital if not for deBlasio's efforts.
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Bill de Blasio, who was arrested last June while protesting the imminent closure of  Long Island College Hospital, isn't letting the issue go. The mayoral front-runner stood today with union members and hospital workers to protest the layoff of 500 hospital workers, which he plans to fight in court. "If you take away the personnel, the hospital effectively dies," Mr. de Blasio, the city's public advocate, declared to reporters at a press conference in front of the hospital's playground. "We're going back to court. We are simply not gonna take it," he added later. Mr. de Blasio announced that community members are requesting a court order to "stop these layoffs dead in their tracks," which he argued was a matter of public safety. "Effectively what SUNY is trying to do is close LICH at all costs and somehow put a legal fig leaf on it. So it's just once again SUNY proposing and pursuing a closure plan, just not admitting it out loud," he said.



Modern art was CIA 'weapon' - The Independent

So how many of these foundations do we have today?  I'll say it again, I would shut down the entire directorate of operations at CIA.  It's existence is anathema to an open democracy. 

So, unknown to the Tate, the public or the artists, the exhibition was transferred to London at American taxpayers' expense to serve subtle Cold War propaganda purposes. A former CIA man, Tom Braden, described how such conduits as the Farfield Foundation were set up. "We would go to somebody in New York who was a well-known rich person and we would say, 'We want to set up a foundation.' We would tell him what we were trying to do and pledge him to secrecy, and he would say, 'Of course I'll do it,' and then you would publish a letterhead and his name would be on it and there would be a foundation. It was really a pretty simple device."Julius Fleischmann was well placed for such a role. He sat on the board of the International Programme of the Museum of Modern Art in New York - as did several powerful figures close to the CIA.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Glenn Greenwald On Impunity For America's Elites

TL;DR
Before the internet I would want to tear my hair out reading articles about obvious government abuses and crimes that went unpunished, and the blathering a of pundits who were  (and are) courtiers to the powerful.  

The internet was a revelation, because finally there was a way to talk about these things that were simply glossed over and ignored in the corporate press. I am very much looking forward to Glenn getting a bigger microphone.
"So, for the top national security official in the United States to go to the Senate and lie to their faces and deny that the NSA is doing exactly that which our reporting proved that the NSA was in fact doing is plainly a crime, and of course he should be prosecuted, and would be prosecuted if we lived under anything resembling the rule of law, where everybody is held and treated equally under the law, regardless of position or prestige. Of course, we don't have that kind of system, which is why no Wall Street executives have been prosecuted, no top-level Bush officials were prosecuted for torture or warrantless eavesdropping, and why James Clapper hasn't been prosecuted despite telling an overt lie to Congress. And what's even more amazing, though, Amy, is that not only has James Clapper not been prosecuted, he hasn't even lost his job. He's still the director of national intelligence many months after his lie was revealed, because there is no accountability for the top-level people in Washington. And the final thing to say about that is, there's all kinds of American journalists who love to go on television and accuse Edward Snowden of committing all these grave and horrible crimes. They're so brave when it comes to declaring Edward Snowden to be a criminal and calling for [inaudible]. Not one of them has ever gone on television and said, "James Clapper committed crimes, and he ought to be prosecuted." The question that you just asked journalistically is such an important and obvious one, yet not—none of the David Gregorys or Jeffrey Toobins or all these American journalists who fancy themselves as aggressive, tough reporters, would ever dare utter the idea that James Clapper ought to be arrested or prosecuted for the crimes that he committed, because they're there to serve those interests and not to challenge or be adversarial to them."
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IPhones Selling Like Hotcakes - 33.8M Sold Last Quarter

Apple Sold 33.8 Million iPhones, 14.1 Million iPads, And 4.6 Million Macs In Q4 2013 | TechCrunch
Yes, in one quarter. $35B in revenue and $7.5B in profit in three months.  Apple's business is huge - it's hard to get your head around the scale of their operation or their cash hoard.  Pretty amazing when you stop to think about what goes into putting up those kind of numbers quarter after quarter.


Spying With Impunity

America's Secret 4th Branch of Government: The NSA kept even Obama in the Dark
It will only get worse until the laws are enforced and people are held accountable.  Instead of nvestigating and prosecuting the leakers, we need to focus on the crimes the leakers exposed.
"If so, imagine how furious Obama is behind the scenes. It is not his style to act out in public. But the sudden announcements of the retirement of NSA chief Keith Alexander (who apparently should be in jail) and of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (who certainly should be in jail for lying to Congress) likely signal that Obama demanded they leave. All of these revelations are being treated as bureaucratic infighting by the inside-the-Beltway courtier press. It doesn't seem to occur to anyone to ask what the implications are that an occult intelligence bureaucracy funded at $52 billion a year by your and my tax dollars keeps our elected leaders in the dark about its activities."
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Saturday, October 26, 2013

New York Underground: A Centuries-Old Underworld of Caverns, Squatters, and Unmarked Doors | Vanity Fair

Good long-form underground geekery at Vanity Fair :

Deep below the streets of New York City lie its vital organs—a water
system, subways, railroads, tunnels, sewers, drains, and power and
cable lines—in a vast, three-dimensional tangle. Penetrating this
centuries-old underworld of caverns, squatters, and unmarked doors,
William Langewiesche follows three men who constantly navigate its
dangers: the subway-operations chief who dealt with the devastation of
Hurricane Sandy, the engineer in charge of three underground
mega-projects, and the guy who, well, just loves exploring the dark,
jerry-rigged heart of a great metropolis.
The scale of these works is breathtaking to behold.  I wish everybody had the opportunity to go down inside the roughed out caverns of these massive works before they are made ready for people.  It's like nothing you've ever seen.

Weekend Subway Service Advisories

Weekend work affecting 11 subway lines
The local:
From 11:15 p.m. Friday, October 25 to 5 a.m. Monday, October 28, Coney Island-bound F trains are rerouted via the M Line from Roosevelt Avenue to 47th-50th Sts due to station work at Lexington Avenue-63rd Street for theSecond Avenue Subway Project.
From 11:45 p.m. Friday, October 25 to 5 a.m. Monday, October 28, Jamaica-bound F trains run express from West 4th Street to 34th Street-Herald Square due to track tie renewal at 23rd Street, 34th Street-Herald Square and 42nd Street-Bryant Park.
From 11:45 p.m. Friday, October 25 to 5 a.m. Monday, October 28, Coney Island-bound F trains skip 4th Avenue-9th Street, 15th Street-Prospect Park and Fort Hamilton Parkway due to work on the Church Avenue Interlocking.
From 12:30 a.m. Saturday, October 26 to 5 a.m. Monday, October 28, Jamaica-bound F trains run local from 21st Street-Queensbridge to Roosevelt Avenue due to electrical and cable work at Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue. Coney Island-bound F trains run local from Roosevelt Avenue to Queens Plaza due to tunnel lighting work south of Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue.
From 11:45 p.m. Friday, October 25 to 5 a.m. Monday, October 28, Church Avenue-bound G trains skip 4th Avenue-9th Street, 15th Street-Prospect Park and Fort Hamilton Parkway due to work on the Church Avenue Interlocking.
For the big picture head to Second Ave Sagas:
Weekend work affecting 11 subway lines

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Friday, October 25, 2013

You Can Only Push People So Far

The Coercive Power of Capitalism
We're living in a tinderbox of inequality. A good long read on political economy.
"And this might put the "failure of capitalism" theme in context. If you have a system that requires that people sell their labor as a condition of survival, yet fails to provide enough opportunities to sell labor to go around, you have conditions for revolt. Hungry, desperate people having nothing to lose. That, and not charity, is the root of the welfare state, to provide a buffer for when the capitalist system chokes up and presumably on a short-term basis, fails to provide enough jobs (that and to provide for people who are infirm, handicapped, or otherwise cannot work, which communities in England did in the early modern era). So you can see the obvious tension: the capitalist classes in America, to increase their riches further, have been squeezing workers harder by not hiring as they did in the past. We've never had a "recovery" in the post-WWII era with so little of GDP growth going to labor (meaning both hiring and wage increases). In the past, the average was over 60% and the lowest was 55%. I haven't seen a recent update, but the last figures I saw was that the level for this "recovery" was under 30%. Yet simultaneously, theres's a full-bore effort on to gut the remaining safety nets. If this isn't a prescription for social and political instability, I don't know what is."
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Even the Liberal New York Times Favors Going To War

The Horrors of Peace for the US Elite: Bashing 'Isolationism,' Blaming it for War (Bacevich)
The New York Times always has space for those who advocate for our next glorious war.
"For this very reason, the term isolationism is not likely to disappear from American political discourse anytime soon.  It's too useful.  Indeed, employ this verbal cudgel to castigate your opponents and your chances of gaining entrée to the nation's most prestigious publications improve appreciably.  Warn about the revival of isolationism and your prospects of making the grade as a pundit or candidate for high office suddenly brighten.  This is the great thing about using isolationists as punching bags: it makes actual thought unnecessary.  All that's required to posture as a font of wisdom is the brainless recycling of clichés, half-truths, and bromides.  No publication is more likely to welcome those clichés, half-truths, and bromides than the New York Times.  There, isolationism always looms remarkably large and is just around the corner."
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Thursday, October 24, 2013

‘The Blood Telegram,’ by Gary J. Bass - NYTimes.com

It's hard to overstate what a monstrous human being Henry Kissinger is.  Kissinger should be rotting in a prison, but instead he is wealthy and celebrated by many in the political establishment and media.     Bush the Lesser even wanted this villainous bastard to chair the 9/11 Commission.  The corruption in our foreign policy establishment will continue to fester and grow until we address some of the crimes of the last half century. 

The voices of Kissinger and Nixon are the book's most shocking aspects. Bass has unearthed a series of conversations, most of them from the White House's secret tapes, that reveal Nixon and Kissinger as breathtakingly vulgar and hateful, especially in their attitudes toward the Indians, whom they regarded as repulsive, shifty and, anyway, pro-Soviet — and especially in their opinion of Indira Gandhi. "The old bitch," Nixon called her. "I don't know why the hell anybody would reproduce in that damn country but they do," he said.These sorts of statements will probably not surprise the experts, but what is most telling is what they reveal about Nixon's and Kissinger's strategic intelligence. At every step of the crisis, the two men appear to have been driven as much by their loathing of India — West Pakistan's rival — as by any cool calculations of power. By failing to restrain West Pakistan, they allowed a blood bath to unfold, and then a regional war, which began when Gandhi finally decided that the only way to stop the tide of refugees was to stop the killing across the border. That, in turn, prompted West Pakistan to attack India.

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EBay Billionaire To Launch Media Venture That Is Not Terrible

Looks Like Journalism to Me
I'm really looking forward to this.  A billionaire who can run a good paper AND is not an asshole?  This might be a first.  And Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill in the mix, this is something we've needed for a long time and for once I have high hopes for a media project.
"This is interesting: Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire EBay founder, can run a good paper and is not an asshole. Here's the account of one of his reporters:"
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Wednesday, October 23, 2013

The United States Committed Torture And Everyone Knows It

Speaking of torture
But we are preventing the tortured from telling the military tribunals about it on the specious grounds of national security.  This is an absolute disgrace and antithetical to our legal system.
"On Tuesday, October 22, the lawyers for the September 11 accused argued that the Guantanamo military commissions' protective order violates the United Nations Convention Against Torture. The protective order states that the defendant's "observations and experiences" of torture at CIA black sites are classified. Defense counsel say that this violates the Convention Against Torture's requirement that victims of torture have "a right to complain" to authorities in the countries where they are tortured, and makes the commission into "a co-conspirator in hiding evidence of war crimes." It is not only the defendants' lawyers who object to the protective order. The ACLU has called the restrictions on detainees' testimony "chillingly Orwellian." Earlier this year, the Constitution Project's bipartisan, independent Task Force on Detainee Treatment (for which I served as staff investigator) found that the military commissions' censorship of detainees' descriptions of their own torture could not be justified on grounds of national security, and violated "the public's First Amendment right of access to those proceedings, the detainees' right to counsel, and counsel's First Amendment rights." "
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The NYT Spins More BS On Syria

On that Acknowledged Covert Op in Syria
The NYT coverage of Syria the past few years has been abysmal, and the paper of record continues to paint a misleading picture for US readers. 

As for Petraeus, I don't doubt he's been aggressive in pitching this line of BS.  Petraeus has probably spent more time cultivating the media than any other single task in his last ten years.  Go back and read Tom Ricks' Fiasco (which I was eagerly looking forward to at the time); it turned out to be a sloppy wet kiss to David Petraeus slash hit piece on Ray Odierno.  That was when I first realized what an oily, ambitious operator Petraeus is.  Anyway, take all of NYT's reporting on Syria, Iraq, and Iran with truckloads of salt.  They've been wrong on so much for so long it's practically impossible for them to report straight anymore without constantly correcting their prior work - and few people enjoy doing that.
"Did no one in the intelligence establishment do that? Has the US been so entranced by the propaganda of those aiming to use the Arab Spring as an opportunity to expand their influence that no one questioned the rosy assumptions until far into the plan? What the NYT pitches as a story of Obama's failure is, rather, a picture of continued failures by our intelligence community (including those close to David Petraeus, who is a likely source for the pitched narrative)."
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Today's Worst Person In The World: Ken Rogoff

Ken Rogoff Loses It, Calls Criticism of Errors in Debt Paper a "Witch Hunt"
I was going to limit it to "worst economist in the world", but Ben Stein refuses to relinquish the title.
"It reveals quite a lot about Rogoff's sense of proportion to see him on about McCarthyism and his misguided sense of victimhood when his policies produce outcomes like hospitals in Greece running short of medicine and having to reuse sheets, or the exodus of 13% of the population of Latvia to find work, or as many as 146 million Europeans falling into poverty by 2025? What brought the end of McCarthy's rein of terror was when the Wisconsin senator smeared a junior member of the legal team representing the Army on national television. The lead counsel Joseph Welch upbraided McCarthy, ending with the now-famous "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" The same question could just as well be posed to Rogoff."
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Criminal Investigations of SUNY Over LICH Pillaging


SaveLICH: Brooklyn DA and State AG Both Investigating SUNY's Actions
I hope they expand the investigation to the role of Continuum in looting LICH for its real estate assets before SUNY came on the scene.
"PIX11 reports that both the Kings County (Brooklyn) District Attorney's office and the New York State Attorney General are investigating possible criminal activity by SUNY Downstate's management in its efforts to shut down Long Island College Hospital. "
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Exploding Healthcare Costs: Regulatory Capture By Big Pharma


The arsenal of medicines in the Hayeses' kitchen helps explain why. Pulmicort, a steroid inhaler, generally retails for over $175 in the United States, while pharmacists in Britain buy the identical product for about $20 and dispense it free of charge to asthma patients. Albuterol, one of the oldest asthma medicines, typically costs $50 to $100 per inhaler in the United States, but it was less than $15 a decade ago, before it was repatented. "The one that really blew my mind was the nasal spray," said Robin Levi, Hannah and Abby's mother, referring to her $80 co-payment for Rhinocort Aqua, a prescription drug that was selling for more than $250 a month in Oakland pharmacies last year but costs under $7 in Europe, where it is available over the counter.
The linked article is specifically about asthma, but the excerpt below indicates just how far off base we are with the rest if the world because we've allowed the pharmaceutical industry to buy Congress. 

In a sane country with prohibitions on corporate spending in politics and strong curbs on lobbying, you wouldn't have, e.g. prescription drugs advertised like retail products, heroin readily available in pill form (OxyContin, etc.), or drug prices that are across the board an order of magnitude higher than in the rest of the developed world. 

These are policy choices, and our corporate-funded politicians (basically 99% of Republicans and 40-50% of Democrats) choose to put the interests of their benefactors ahead of the health and welfare of their constituents.
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The arsenal of medicines in the Hayeses' kitchen helps explain why. Pulmicort, a steroid inhaler, generally retails for over $175 in the United States, while pharmacists in Britain buy the identical product for about $20 and dispense it free of charge to asthma patients. Albuterol, one of the oldest asthma medicines, typically costs $50 to $100 per inhaler in the United States, but it was less than $15 a decade ago, before it was repatented. "The one that really blew my mind was the nasal spray," said Robin Levi, Hannah and Abby's mother, referring to her $80 co-payment for Rhinocort Aqua, a prescription drug that was selling for more than $250 a month in Oakland pharmacies last year but costs under $7 in Europe, where it is available over the counter.




The End of American Exceptionalism …

Exceptional hypocrisy
Would be a good thing.  I wish more leaders on the Democratic side would look an ignorant belligerent know-nothing like Sarah Palin or Sean Hannity in the face and repudiate the idea that we should be held to a lower standard than any other country on the planet.  

The doctrine of American Exceptionalism is a disgraceful beard for conducting ourselves in whatever manner suits us at any given moment, other people and stated values be damned, simply because we say so.  It's nonsense. It excuses the participants of a representative democracy in advance and across the board for any acts, regardless of actual malice, recklessness, negligence or wanton indifference.
"The deeper threat that leakers such as Manning and Snowden pose is more subtle than a direct assault on U.S. national security: they undermine Washington's ability to act hypocritically and get away with it. Their danger lies not in the new information that they reveal but in the documented confirmation they provide of what the United States is actually doing and why. When these deeds turn out to clash with the government's public rhetoric, as they so often do, it becomes harder for U.S. allies to overlook Washington's covert behavior and easier for U.S. adversaries to justify their own. Few U.S. officials think of their ability to act hypocritically as a key strategic resource. Indeed, one of the reasons American hypocrisy is so effective is that it stems from sincerity: most U.S. politicians do not recognize just how two-faced their country is. Yet as the United States finds itself less able to deny the gaps between its actions and its words, it will face increasingly difficult choices -- and may ultimately be compelled to start practicing what it preaches."
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RIP Major Owens, Formerly Represented Carroll Gardens In Congress

Our condolences to Chris Owens (Democratic District Leader) and the rest of the Owens family on the loss of Major Owens.  When I moved to Brooklyn in 2004 Major Owens was our congressional rep.  
Former Brooklyn Rep. Major Owens, who helped pass the Americans with Disabilities Act during his 24 years in Congress, died on Monday night, his family said. He was 77.
The crusader for working-class families rose up the ranks politically after serving as a poverty fighter under Mayor John Lindsay, heading the city Community Development Agency.

THREE Family Halloween Parades Coming Up In The Neighborhood

Our two-year-old is obsessed with Halloween.  It's always been one of my favorites as well.  The good news is your little ghouls get to double - even triple - dip this year: 

Saturday 10/26 - 11:30am Carroll Park
The annual Carroll Park kids Halloween parade this Saturday.  Gather at 11:30am, parade begins at 12:00 and refreshments will be provided by sponsor Smith Canteen.

Sunday 10/27 - 10:00am - 12:30 The Urban Meadow is hosting a Halloween parade with music:

Thursday 10/31  HALLOWEEN!
4:00pm - Cobble Hill Park - parade and music organized by the Cobble Hill Association

Get those costumes ready!  And insulin.  Don't forget the insulin.

Monday, October 21, 2013

Carroll Gardens Welcomes Capt. Lenz To The 76th

CARROLL GARDENS: Meet the new top cop at the 76th Precinct
We've been fortunate to have had a series of solid commanding officers. Our newest commanding officer for the 76th precinct, Capt. Lenz, introduced himself to the public safety committee of CB6 last week.  First blush is he seems like he'll continue the trend.
"Lenz, a 23-year veteran of the New York City Police Department, picked up the reigns from Deputy Inspector Jeffrey Schiff, who headed the precinct for a year and a half. Schiff is now the commanding officer of the 106th Precinct in Queens, a neighboring borough. Before taking over the 76th Precinct, Lenz served as the executive officer of the 24th Precinct in Manhattan, and previously served at the 112th Precinct in Queens. The 30-year member of the New York Army National Guard spent the last three years heading the NYPD's Brooklyn North Narcotics squad where he covered narcotics operations in East New York and Brownsville."
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Less Money For Bombs, More Money For Bridges

After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, few disputed there was a need to respond, by eliminating the safe haven for al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan. But when that seemed too easy -- when not enough ass was kicked, it seems -- we turned to Iraq, muttering something about "weapons of mass destruction" that weren't even there. Killing mass numbers of people, just to prove that you can, is morally unconscionable. But does it even work?. After nearly seven decades of post World War II butt-kickery, U.S. respect and support -- and arguably power and influence -- are at or near record lows. The nations that are on the rise are the ones that have invested less in producing weapons of mass butt-kickery and more in "soft" things like education and bridges that don't collapse. That is the reality-based world that our president and are generals have failed to see -- the one that was staring them in the face when they thought they were kicking butt.
All of this.  Until some senior Americans are held to account (just once!) for war crimes, we'll continue to bomb instead of build.  But in the meantime they get book deals and TV gigs and speakers fees and fawning media treatment.
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After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, few disputed there was a need to respond, by eliminating the safe haven for al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan. But when that seemed too easy -- when not enough ass was kicked, it seems -- we turned to Iraq, muttering something about "weapons of mass destruction" that weren't even there. Killing mass numbers of people, just to prove that you can, is morally unconscionable. But does it even work?. After nearly seven decades of post World War II butt-kickery, U.S. respect and support -- and arguably power and influence -- are at or near record lows. The nations that are on the rise are the ones that have invested less in producing weapons of mass butt-kickery and more in "soft" things like education and bridges that don't collapse. That is the reality-based world that our president and are generals have failed to see -- the one that was staring them in the face when they thought they were kicking butt.




Saturday, October 19, 2013

Weekend Subway Service Part 2

Weekend work impacting 14 subway lines

Looks like Ben dragged himself out of bed, so here's the fuller picture:

From 11:45 p.m. Friday, October 18 to 5 a.m. Monday, October 21, Jamaica-bound F trains run express from Church Avenue to Jay Street-MetroTech due to work on the Church Avenue Interlocking.

From 11:30 p.m. Friday, October 18 to 5 a.m. Monday, October 21, there is no G train service between Church Avenue and Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts due to work on the Church Avenue Interlocking. Customers should take the F instead. G service operates in two sections:

  • Between Court Square and Bedford-Nostrand Avs
  • Between Bedford-Nostrand Avs and Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts, every 20 minutes

To connect between F and G service, customers should take the A or C between Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts and Jay Street-MetroTech.


" From 11:45 p.m. Friday, October 18 to 5 a.m. Monday, October 21, Jamaica-bound F trains run express from Church Avenue to Jay Street-MetroTech due to work on the Church Avenue Interlocking. From 11:30 p.m. Friday, October 18 to 5 a.m. Monday, October 21, there is no G train service between Church Avenue and Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts due to work on the Church Avenue Interlocking. Customers should take the F instead. G service operates in two sections: Between Court Square and Bedford-Nostrand Avs Between Bedford-Nostrand Avs and Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts, every 20 minutes To connect between F and G service, customers should take the A or C between Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts and Jay Street-MetroTech."

http://secondavenuesagas.com/2013/10/19/weekend-work-impacting-14-subway-lines-7/

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Weekend Subway Service Advisories

Carroll Street F /G Service warning:  if you're Manhattan bound, you have to take the Coney Island bound train to 7th Ave in Park Slope and switch to a Manhattan bound train.  There's work going on at the Carroll Street station on the Manhattan bound side, as ai learned to my sorrow this morning.

Ben hasn't post the usual roundup, so you'll have to check in with the MTA:

http://www.mta.info/weekender.html

Friday, October 18, 2013

Peterson Shill Group "Fix The Debt" Not Fooling Anyone Outside The Beltway Media

The anti-deficit lobbying organization "Fix the Debt" staged a question-and-answer chat on Twitter Thursday. Its goal presumably was to reach America's smartphone-savvy youth with its message that Social Security and Medicare payments to their grandparents are going to land them in the poorhouse a few decades from now.  It's fair to say that "Fix the Debt" got more than it bargained for. Twitterers from all over responded to the invitation with pointed, tactless and downright impolite questions. Many of them aimed to discern how paring social insurance benefits for the elderly and infirm will make society stronger, which is the core of the organization's worldview. Those so inclined can still post their thoughts at #fixthedebtqa.
When twitter is great, it's great.
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The anti-deficit lobbying organization "Fix the Debt" staged a question-and-answer chat on Twitter Thursday. Its goal presumably was to reach America's smartphone-savvy youth with its message that Social Security and Medicare payments to their grandparents are going to land them in the poorhouse a few decades from now.  It's fair to say that "Fix the Debt" got more than it bargained for. Twitterers from all over responded to the invitation with pointed, tactless and downright impolite questions. Many of them aimed to discern how paring social insurance benefits for the elderly and infirm will make society stronger, which is the core of the organization's worldview. Those so inclined can still post their thoughts at #fixthedebtqa.


Bad Lip Reading Does Game of Thrones

I would pay to see this imaginary movie
Rather than just do a poor job of lip reading scenes from Game of Thrones, Bad Lip Reading took the entire series and transformed it into a raunchy romcom called Medieval Land Fun-Time World."Theme park manager Eddie Stark has one week to whip his lackluster group of employees into shape before the park's grand opening," reads the videos description.
Very well done.  Click through for the five minute trailer, you won't regret it.

More Like This: Labor Flexing Muscle On SS, Medicare, Medicaid

The vampire of politics
Absolutely correct.  The conventional wisdom on these programs is bullshit due to decades of sustained propaganda funded by billionaires like Pete Peterson and Stanley Druckenmiller.  Democrats and big labor especially need to push back hard to defend and these popular, effective Democratic programs.
"In an interview, Damon Silvers, the policy director of the AFL-CIO, laid down a hard line, putting Dems on notice that any agreement that cuts entitlement benefits — even in a deal that includes GOP concessions on tax hikes — is a nonstarter. Silvers strongly suggested labor would withhold support in 2014 from any Dem lawmaker who supports such a deal. "We are opposed to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits cuts. Period," Silvers told me. "There will be no cover for members of either party who vote for such a thing." Silvers said the AFL-CIO also opposes the entitlements cuts in the President's budget, such as Chained CPI and a form of Medicare means testing. It's unclear how, or whether, those will figure in what Dems bring to the table in the budget talks, which are mandated by the deal just reached to end the crisis. "Chained CPI is like the vampire of American politics," Silvers said. "It keeps being shot through the heart and it keeps reviving. The reason it keeps coming back is because it has billionaires behind it.""
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Opossums (aka 'Possums) Are Harmless

Another Opossum Encounter In Carroll Gardens
Jesus people.  It's okay to have a little nature in the city.  Appreciate the 'possum like you would a bird or a squirrel or a rabbit.  Those things wouldn't hurt a fly.  Leave them be.  I'd be over the moon if I saw an oppossum on my fire escape.
(photo credit:TJ) Carroll Gardens, like other Brooklyn neighborhoods, seems to have a thriving population of opossums. Over the last few years, people have reported quite a few sighting s, including …
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NYC Residential Building Boom - But For Who?

Building boom 2013
Serious question.  Who can afford to buy all these $1M+ condos?  Where are the buyers coming from?

I do worry that Bloomberg's legacy will be a hollowing out of the middle class in NYC.
"However, the Building Congress report notes that last year New York City produced only 11,000 new housing units from $5.3 billion in residential construction because of the shift in the market to the Extell- and Vornado-type projects. In 2008, the city gained 33,000 units from almost the same amount of money, $5.8 billion."
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Miserable Hack Tom Friedman Shills For Stanley Druckenmiller

Who Should Young People Throw Under the Bus: Granny or Billionaire Hedgie Stan Druckenmiller?
Fortunately there is no need to read the vacuous garbage that Friedman regularly deposits on the NYT opinion page.  Instead, read this piece on what a piece of work Druckenmiller truly is.
"And if you widen the frame, this country has been through a protracted and successful campaign to revise the social contract to favor capital over labor. You can see its success in the accelerating rise in income inequality, the lack of economic mobility, and the huge corporate profit share. Warren Buffet claimed that a level of over 6% of GDP wasn't sustainable; depending on how you measure it, it's currently at over 10%, some peg it as high as 12%. That rise in corporate profit share has come at the expense of employment and wage growth. The policy shift started under Carter, but the old model of having companies share the benefit of productivity gains and basing overall prosperity on wage growth was abandoned in the Reagan/Thatcher era for one that favored asset price growth and used rising levels of consumer leverage to mask stagnant wages. Druckenmiller was a huge backer of the politicians that promoted those programs. Yet he has the temerity to try to turn young people against ordinary folks in their 50s and 60s, most of which who never had any political influence, when he was a major sponsor of the very policies that have helped impoverish American youth. Perhaps Druckenmiller is making such an aggressive and public disinformation tour because he knows that if young people were to turn on the old, he'd be one of the most deserving targets for their vengeance."
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Thursday, October 17, 2013

Among Bloomberg's Last Acts: Ram Through Carroll Gardens Homeless Prison To Reward Cronies

The Bloomberg administration is attempting to jam 170 homeless men into a ten unit, illegally built structure on West 9th Street in Carroll Gardens.  In exchange for cramming 170 men into conditions more crowded than a California prison, the brand new operator linked to the buildings corrupt developer would be paid $30 MILLION over five years - and even more thereafter.  This is even more money than the developer would have gotten for selling the illegally built units.  Even from an administration as riddled with hubris as Mike Bloomberg's, this is shocking behavior:
A public hearing on the proposed contract long-term contract to Aguila, Inc. to operate a shelter at 165-167 West 9th Street will be held on Thursday, October 17, at 49 Chambers Street at 10 a.m.
Craig R. Hammerman, District Manager of CB6, said via email that the community board received a letter on Friday, October 11 from the Department of Homeless Services informing them that the agency proposed, via a letter to Mayor Bloomberg, to award the controversial contract to Aguila.
Daniel M. Kummer, Chairperson of Community Board 6, immediately fired off a letter to Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Michele Ovesey, calling the shelter proposal “wholly inappropriate.” He also expressed amazement that Mayor Bloomberg was never informed that CB6’s board had resolved by a vote of 31 to 1 (with 3 abstentions) to oppose the use of the site “based on both defective process and lack of merit.”
“Notably, none of the concerns we raised at that time appear to have been addressed in your October 10 letter to the Mayor in any meaningful way,” Kummer wrote to Ovesey.
The city says it faces “unprecedented” demand for homeless shelters, and the proposed shelter –- in a building originally designed as a 10-unit luxury condo -- is compatible with the surrounding area.
But Victoria Malkin, organizer of the petition on Change.org, writes, “What does it say when you take the biggest building in a neighborhood, turn it into a shelter for 170 people with no community input under an emergency dictate, give it to an organization ‘Homeless Solutions’ that is just over one year old to manage, where the owner of the building is on the board and the organization is run by the former DHS Housing commissioner. Whose interests do they have at heart?”
The kicker?
Housing Solutions USA/Aguila Inc. is headed by former Bloomberg official Robert Hess.
Councilmember Brad Lander, Assemblywoman Joan Millman, Senator Velmanette Montgomery and Community Board 6 (of which I'm a member) all vehemently opposed this corrupt disgrace.  This city has "unprecedented demand for homeless shelters" due to the disastrous policies of Mike Bloomberg.  Amazing that his very cronies now stand to profit from it.