Weekend Subway Service Advisories

The local:

From 11:45 p.m. Friday, June 6, to10:00 p.m. Saturday, June 7, Coney Island Stilwell Av-bound F trains skip Sutphin Blvd, Briarwood-Van Wyck Blvd, and 75 Av due to rail work south of Parsons Blvd.

From 11:45 p.m. Friday, June 6, to8:00 p.m. Saturday, June 7, Jamaica-179 St-bound F trains run express between Avenue X and Jay St-MetroTech due to rail work north of Ditmars Av and signal work at Church Av.

From 11:30 p.m. Friday, June 6, to8:00 p.m. Saturday, June 7, G trains are suspended in both directions between Church Av and Hoyt-Schermerhorns Sts due to signal work at Church Av.

And the big picture:

http://secondavenuesagas.com/2014/06/06/work-affecting-eight-subway-lines-as-weekend-m-heads-to-manhattan/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SecondAveSagas+%28Second+Ave.+Sagas+%7C+Blogging+the+NYC+Subways%29

Berg-ghazi-care*

Right-wingers whipping themselves into a frenzy over the Bergdahl swap has nothing to do with underlying facts. Depending on the person, it is either cynicism, emotional reaction due to visceral hatred of Obama, or some combination thereof.

On the worst of the worst. Well one of them anyway.

"And anyway, the idea that any single individual is so dangerous that to let them go is to jeopardize national security betrays either a very cynical PR strategy or a very stupid threat assessment. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but there will never come a day when we've imprisoned or killed all the "bad guys." New ones are born every day --- many of them because of that godforsaken black hole of a prison camp where we are holding people forever. If all these patriots were really concerned about national security they'd be for closing Guantanamo instead of holding on to a rapidly aging group of prisoners, turning them into martyrs, and pretending that it is keeping us safe. It's doing the opposite. "

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/on-worst-of-worst-well-one-of-them.html

*With apologies to Stephen Colbert. 

The Worst Person In The World

I often steal this appellation from Atrios, so this time I'm linking to his site.  As I've said a thousand times, the original sin of the Obama administration was the appointment of Summers and Geithner.  I knew right then my hopes had been misplaced. Which is not to say there was an alternative. There was not.

The Worst Person In The World

Larry Summers.

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2014/06/the-worst-person-in-world_6.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FbRuz+%28Eschaton%29

Typos courtesy of my iPhone

A Monster Off The Streets, A Broader Problem Remains

As a society we can and must do better.  We are warehousing the mentally ill and drug addicts in the prison system, and it makes no sense. To be clear, St. Hubert should have been institutionalized and remained institutionalized. 

Serial NYC Stabber Daniel St. Hubert Blames the Devil

"But his sister blames the system for releasing him from prison in May with no medication. "I begged them and they didn't do it," she told the Daily News. "I spoke to the social worker in regards to his mental capacity and when will he be able to see a doctor. They told me it doesn't happen right away. It usually takes a couple of weeks. Usually they're discharged with medication." St. Hubert, reportedly a paranoid schizophrenic, spent five years in jail for trying to strangle his mother with an electrical cord and assaulting a female corrections officer. Three times he was found unfit to stand trial and committed to a psychiatric hospital. A week after his release, police suspect St. Hubert stabbed 18-year-old Tanaya Grant-Copeland in East New York. Two days later, he went after two kids. And his MetroCard places him at the scene of a similar attack on a homeless man in a Chelsea subway station Wednesday morning."

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/06/daniel-st-hubert-the-nyc-ripper-blames-devil.html

This is problem that has been decades in the making.  For more background, see

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/

Austerity: Establishment Media Disinformation

There are a number of topics, especially foreign policy and economics, where reading respectable newspapers on a daily basis will leave you worse off than not reading a newspaper at all.

How the Troika, the WSJ and the NYT Keep the Public Befuddled About Austerity and Deflation

"If the troika (the European Commission, ECB, and IMF) taught sex education students would believe that storks brought children, that sex had nothing to do with pregnancy, that confident women never got pregnant, and that women should be forced to lose weight when they became pregnant.  The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times would repeat these myths as science. The NYT would employ one of the world's top gynecologists (Dr. Krugman).  Dr. Krugman would debunk these myths nearly every week – and neither the troika nor the reporters for the NYT and the WSJ would ever listen to him. The last several days have led to a flurry of WSJ and NYT stories about "deflation."  I just posted critiques of some of the earlier stories here and here. There's only one of me, but the dual U.S. heralds of the troika employ dozens of scribes who faithfully proclaim its message without any intervening critical thought.  I've decided to make a bulk response to the scribes."

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/06/troika-wsj-nyt-keep-public-befuddled-austerity-deflation.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Reacting to US media disinformation is a Sisyphean task.

4th Ave Medicaid Building Goes For Big Bucks

A logical development site.  Last year a friend of the blog suggested this site as one of several potential moving pieces to be used in a swap with Brooklyn Public Library for the threatened neighboring library branch that BPL has slated for sale/development.  The (worthy) end goal of his proposal was the preservation of the BPL building, which was one of the original Carnegie buildings, which could be restored and put to a new use.

In any event, the building has now sold for a cool $25M.

Park Slope Medicaid Office Building With Lots of FAR Sells for $25,000,000

A Park Slope office building that's home to one of Brooklyn's few Medicaid offices has just sold for $25,000,000, according... Read More… Read More

http://www.brownstoner.com/blog/2014/06/park-slope-medicaid-office-building-with-lots-of-far-sells-for-25000000/

Will be interesting to see what gets proposed for the site.  Obviously there will be condos or rentals, I mean the specifics of what gets proposed.

Confronting School Segregation & Increasing Diversity in District 15

Our District 39 Councilmember Brad Lander and District 38 CM Carlos Menchaca are co-sponsoring this important event tonight:

Confronting School Segregation & Increasing Diversity in District 15TONIGHT, Thursday, June 5, 2014, 6:30pm - 8:30pm
John Jay Educational Campus: 237 7th Avenue (between 4^th & 5^th Streets), Brooklyn

Moderated by Mark Winston-Griffith from the Brooklyn Movement Center
Special guest, Nikole Hannah-Jones from ProPublica 

Co-sponsored by: 
Council Members Brad Lander & Carlos Menchaca
District 15 Community Education Council
RSVP: http://bradlander.nationbuilder.com/school_diversity

At the forum, we will learn and talk about:

• Why we value diverse public schools
• The current state of school segregation in NYC and District 15
• Innovative efforts in other NYC districts to develop policies that combat segregation
• District 15 schools that strive to achieve diversity, including the Brooklyn New School, Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies, the Brooklyn Children’s School, PS 133, PS 15 (newly a magnet school), Brooklyn Prospect Charter and Park Slope Collegiate.
• Ideas for next steps toward more integrated & inclusive schools

A worthy conversation and effort.