If you like George Bush or Ralph Nader, you’re gonna love Michael Bloomberg pecking away at New York’s and America’s future. Here’s why.

The New York Times on Tuesday discovered what most of us who ride the city’s subways and busses have known for years: A ride during rush hour is torture.

There’s no room. No room on the platforms for more people. Platforms too short for longer trains. No more capacity to add more trains. Busses that pack people in like sardines (and send them flying like loose cargo if they don’t hang on tight enough during start-stop rides through Manhattan traffic.)

To quote the Times:

“From my point of view, this is scary,” said Howard H. Roberts Jr., the president of New York City Transit, who presented the data to members of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board. “This is scary in the sense that right now, on a lot of these lines, we’re several years and a big capital construction project away from being able to provide what I consider adequate service. We’re constrained.”

Mr. Roberts said the data had particular significance in light of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s proposal for a congestion pricing system that would charge most drivers who enter Manhattan below 86th Street — with the intent of moving people out of their cars and onto mass transit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/nyregion/26mta.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin

Not only can’t Manhattan handle a significant increase in transit passengers, neither can New Jersey, where Governor John Corzine is said to be stewing at what Michael Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan would to do New Jersey Transit, already stretched to overcapacity.
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_169170029.html

So why is Michael Bloomberg pushing so hard for congestion pricing? One suspects it’s because he doesn’t give a damn for the consequences. He’s hellbent for doing something-or-other in the coming Presidential election, with pundits debating whether he’ll actually run, thus acting as a spoiler the way Ralph Nader did when he paved the way for the George Bush presidency. Or whether Bloomberg is simply trying to play “kingmaker” and decide who else will run, on what platform, in what party – specifics yet to be announced.

What a filthy misuse of his $5 billion fortune! In fact, what an argument for a 90% tax bracket on incomes over several millions of dollars a year and accumulated fortunes over $50 million, to make certain nobody can accumulate enough money to ruin an election that’s a life and death matter for Americans in uniform overseas, of retirement age at home, and in need of medical care anywhere in the nation.

Michael Bloomberg has rushed into congestion pricing the way George Bush rushed us into Iraq – without a timetable, without a damage assessment (or environmental inpact statement in New York's case)without a significant contingency plan other than “we’ll see if it works,” without a measurable standard for success, without regard to the millions of lives it will affect, without regard to the damage it will do to the economy of New York when the straw of ridership breaks the camel’s back and not only the new riders, but all riders, no longer can get to work on time.

If he really and truly wants to reduce traffic in New York, Michael Bloomberg has to start with a massive injection of money neither the city nor the state has to add subway lines, rebuild subway lines, lengthen platforms, put on more trains – and then, only then, start pricing ordinary drivers off the streets. He also ought to limit truck double parking and the way construction sites bleed over into the streets and eat up lane space. That could do a lot more to stop congestion that slamming some lowly commuters from Lyndenhurst with an $8 a day fee.

He could also do a few small things, such as encouraging cycling as an alternative means of transportation. (His plans mention walking, but never bicycles. No, he prefers to arrest cyclists on trumped up charges. Come to think of it, he’s been arresting young black mourners for walking together to a funeral, too.) http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0228246

Right now, all Mayor Bloomberg is doing is turning the streets into speedways for his limo-riding friends, for whom an $8 charge is like eight cents to you and me. And if he has to add lots more of those big, space-eating, slow-moving busses to make up for the lack of subway capacity, he may actually add to the congestion.

Hey, what does Michael care? He’s making a “legacy” for himself. Or maybe a king. Or maybe a spoiled election. Whatev-urrrr.

Some of his supporters will rush to tell you he rides the subway himself.

Yeah? How often? And at what time of day? I get on at Lexington and 77th Street, same place as Bloomberg would get on if he takes the subway to City Hall from the station closest to his multi-million dollar private mansion. Funny, I never seen him on the platform. Not ever.

Hey fellow Lexington Avenue Line riders, how often have YOU seen Bloomberg on the subway? (I used to see the late former Mayor Abe Beame on the subway about once every month. He also boarded at Lexington and 77th and he was indeed a regular mass transit rider. Moreover, he was even shorter than Michael Bloomberg, which is saying something. So it’s not hard to believe that if Bloomberg rides the subway to work at rush hour, people would spot him there.) But finding Bloomberg on the subway at rush hour is about as likely as running into the tooth fairy.

Michael Bloomberg’s “legacy” will be stalled New Yorkers, a stalled economy as businesses flee the city so their workers can get to the office on time, frayed tempers, a worsening of quality of life here, and if the terrorists ever attack the subways, a higher body count.

Listen pal, if you get killed on the subway because of Mike Bloomberg, don’t run and tell me I didn’t warn you.

Carrots, sticks, homicide, love, politics, assault weapons, Michael Bloomberg, Jack Kennedy and Barak Obama

Ignored, overlooked, or feeling unloved, once or twice a year in this country a student grabs a firearm and blows away some of his schoolmates.

Why do I think it isn’t such a huge leap from berserk students to the kind of people who grow up to be politicians?

Love, yearning, bullets and ballot boxes

Think about it. Running for office is a way of trying to make people love you. Or at least of trying to make them support you. Political candidacy often satisfies just the kind of yearning for attention and power you’d feel if you finally got so hungry for it that you grabbed an assault weapon and shot up the school.

What about people who don’t support you for election, or who try to siphon away to other candidates the love you feel you’re owed? You can get even with them if you’re a successful politician.

You can slime them. You can smear them. You can lie about them. Or you can employ a political “operative” (a fancy term for thug) like Karl Rove to do it for you. You can run for prosecutor in New York and then after you’re elected indict people and make them do the perp walk like Rudi Giuliani and Elliott Spitzer did. Just make sure, as former New York Attorney General and then New York Governor Elliott Spitzer didn’t, that if you’re stirring the public pot you don’t also have a little something cooking on the side.

In other words, running for office in the United States is, as often as not, a symbolic way of whacking people over the head with a stick, or blowing their heads off.

Ya gotta be nuts!

There’s an increasingly popular notion that you have to be slightly twisted to want to be President of the United States. My own theory, to state it in another way, is that most politicians – there are exceptions, as you’ll see – are a heartbeat away from being serial killers and that elective office is mass murder by other means.

For all I know some politicians like George Bush who so far has gotten over 4,000 Americans plus who-knows-how-many Iraqis killed during his Presidency may be even further along than that.

Which brings me to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. No, I don’t think he’s as ham-handed a gunslinger or stick swinger as George Bush. But for a while the people around Mayor Bloomberg seemed to be mumbling something about a Bloomberg third party candidacy for President. More lately he seems to be flirting with a McCain endorsement, which – who knows? – might lead to the vice-presidential nomination on the Republican ticket.

However, right now, the Bloomberg approach to problem solving – a kind of business executive top-down management style – seems to have hit a concrete wall at racetrack speed.

Congestion pricing gets all jammed up

The legacy item of Bloomberg’s administration was supposed to be congestion pricing – a rule that would have charged motorists $8 each time then drove in and out of mid-to-lower Manhattan on weekdays.

Bloomberg promised a bunch of carrots to New York Citizens in return. New York would get some money from the Federal government. Traffic would move more smoothly.

The problem is, the representatives of most New Yorkers didn’t buy it. First of all, precious few of us drive to work in this town. You’d have to be crazy. Forget the stick of $8 congestion pricing. A garage for the day can easily set you back over $30. Park your car on the street and it’s likely to get hauled away, while you get stuck not only with a fine, but also commercial towing and garaging charges until you rescue your vehicle.

The secret tax

Congestion pricing was really a hidden tax that probably would have raised the cost of everything from a plumbing repair bill to real carrots, since plumbers have to bring their trucks to the job, and carrots don’t make the trek from rural America to midtown Manhattan on roller skates.

So Manhattan residents would have been doubly screwed. They’d pay to use their own cars (if they have them) to get out of town on weekends and home on Sunday nights. And they’d pay even if they don’t drive every time the sink leaked or they got a yearning for carrot soup (or anything else edible.)

Meanwhile, city employees get thousands of free parking permits and the mayor, who says he uses the subway, admits taking a chauffeured limousine to get to the subway from his Upper East Side townhouse. So why support anti-congestion measures that he doesn’t support himself?

What real leadership means

Mayor Bloomberg, like Elliott Spitzer, like most politicians, forgot what real leadership is all about. You don’t get people to follow by dangling a carrot in front of them and threatening a stick if they don’t follow you.

In fact, here in New York, a good many of us feel most of the time as if we’re chewing on a stick while the Mayor beats us over the head with a bunch of carrots.

What is real leadership?

You lead as a few exceptional people have. In my lifetime there have been two of those. One was the late President Jack Kennedy, whom I’ve missed since some frustrated politician named Lee Harvey Osald blew him away from a perch in a Dallas schoolbook warehouse.

The other is Barack Obama.

Watch (in early 1960s film clips or the evening television reports today) how they do it. They do not dangle carrots and tell us about shining cities on hills. They do not brandish sticks and tell us Al Quaida is coming, so we’d better be good, we’d better not pout. Instead, they inspire us to join them in great and urgent work.

John McCain waves a stick at me, warning that I’d better agree with him or Osama Bin Laden will magically emerge from under my bed and destroy me. Hillary Clinton keeps warning me with her waving stick that if the phone rings at 3 AM in the White House (for what? A man at the door with a late night pizza delivery?) she’ll know what to do. Or maybe she’ll just have a $2 tip handy for the delivery man.

Leading by inspiration

It’s time for our politicians to act like the leaders they’re supposed to be. No carrots. No sticks. Just inspiration – inspiring all of us to pull together for the common good, and then giving us programs we can pull for.

So far as I can see, the only political candidate for anything in the United States who leads by inspiration is Barack Obama.

Sweltering New Yorkers endure a forced march, traffic clogs the streets, and Mayor Bloomberg’s “congestion pricing” won’t fix it

I woke up at 5 AM this morning to the sounds of thunder and a loud tattoo of rain on the air conditioner outside my bedroom window.

By the time I got downstairs to breakfast, CNN was reporting that most of the West Side subways were suffering severe delays or had come to a dead stop due to flooding. Yeah, flooding. The City of New York is getting to resemble a third world country. It rains for two hours and the city's mass transit arteries suffer the municipal equivalent of a stroke.

As I write this, CNN has posted a story saying that the whole subway system, including that on the East Side, is kaput for the moment.

"Due to severe flooding throughout the subway system, there are extensive delays on all subway lines," said a statement from the Metro Transit Authority (MTA). "Customers are advised when at all possible to use bus service." http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/08/nyc.weather/index.html

Bus service? You gotta be kidding!

I figured that it would be crazy to go down into the Number 6 subway line during this kind of mess. Unfortunately, I forgot that you should never put your trust in the Metropolitan Transit Authority. So this morning I hiked over to Fifth Avenue where there are bus lines that would get me fairly close to my office.

Lotsa luck! Where normally there are sometimes four or five people during rush hour waiting at the stop that serves me, there were now about 100 New Yorkers lined up for the next bus – more than could crowd onto a bus even if the bus arrived empty. A bus crawled right past them – already packed too full to take on more riders.

I started to walk. Bus stops further down the line were equally crammed with discouraged would-be riders. But I wasn’t the lone hiker. Platoons of grimly resigned people were trudging toward midtown. It was not a good day for a long walk. The temperature humidity index is supposed to make it feel like 105 degrees by noon today.

Meanwhile, Fifth Avenue was clogged – with buses, taxis, trucks, a few private cars, and lots and lots of limos and chauffeur-driven SUVs. Nothing was moving. Nada. Zip. The city has gridlock growing on its gridlock. The photograph above is just a bit of what I saw.

The goose egg nightmare

What effect would congestion pricing have? On a day like today, draw yourself a huge goose egg.

Desperate commuters from the outlying boroughs – and from the ‘burbs where there are also service “delays” today – desperate commuters can’t very easily walk the five, or ten, or twelve or 40 miles to the office. Even if it costs them two hours or more of extra commuting time in a gridlocked automobile, or an extra eight bucks, they’ll drive.

And on an “ordinary” day?

The guys in the limos won’t miss the eight bucks. The trucks have to get through, no matter what. The taxis will still be here. You may scare away a few automobile commuters, but you won’t achieve more than that.

To the extent that congestion pricing works at all, more hapless commuters than we have today will be driven into the dangerously crowded subways or aboard the jam-packed buses at rush hour. Which will simply make travel easier for limousine-riding billionaires like the mayor. They'll simply pay the eight bucks and laugh all the way to their power breakfasts.

Who wants a practical solution? Not the mayor.

A practical thinker might suggest that if Mayor Bloomberg really wants to get more people on mass transit, the first thing he’d do is work to improve mass transit. Improve the infrastructure and they will come. Drive them into the crumbling infrastructure with a punitive equivalent of a fine for driving and they will merely suffer.

The mayor might try to find way to help speed up construction of the under- construction- for-40-years Second Avenue Subway. Find funds to help the Metropolitan Transit Authority (admittedly not under his control) put more buses into service. Encourage cyclists instead of having his cops arrest them at every opportunity.

The city’s controller has already suggested something like this – a way to help out but still keep subway riding affordable for the average working stiff.
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/NewsBeats/transit.jsp

But don't count on Mayor Bloomberg for anything like that. Shuffling money around, even for a good cause, won’t get him the kind of notice he wants when he’s running for President. As reported at various times on this blog, the Mayor is definitely out to run as a third party candidate, which will make him the most arrogant spoiler in U.S. politics since Ralph Nader.

Oh yes, as if to confirm the matter once again, the New York Daily News caught the off-guard mayor talking about his presidential ambitions.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/08/08/2007-08-08_juror_mike_was_dc_dreamin-1.html

Hey Bubblehead, how many times do I have to tell you not to shoot your mouth off among strangers on elevators?

A New York steampipe explosion causes a slight frisson of fear

Shortly before six o’clock last night, an underground steam pipe in Manhattan exploded.

A geyser of asbestos-laden steam, taller than the 77-floor, 1,046 feet tall Chrysler building a block away, jetted into the air and continued roaring out of the ground for more than two hours before it was brought under control. The east side 4, 5 and 6 subways, formerly known as the Lexington Avenue Line, came to a complete stop from lower Manhattan to 86th Street, a bit more than two miles to the north of the midtown mishap.

Some of the news coverage would lead you to believe there was instant panic. Judging from news station footage of people running away from the steam, and shoes left in the street, it’s hard to argue that there wasn’t some panic.

And people most certainly were wise to run out of geyser range. Two people were brought to a local hospital, one with third degree burns over 90 percent of his body, the other with 60 percent burns. There also has been one death reported so far, evidently someone who suffered a heart attack fleeing the scene.

But all the panic seems to have been confined to the area immediately adjacent to the steam geyser. I was on a Madison Avenue bus. I became aware that something unusual was afoot at approximately 6:15 PM, as the bus passed 41st Street, the cross street on which the explosion occurred, two blocks to the east.

WHAT I SAW – AND WHAT
WE ALL DIDN’T SAY

I happened to be on the left side of the bus, looking out the window toward Fifth Avenue. I saw all of 41st Street between Madison and Fifth Avenue jammed literally wall-to-wall with people, all of them looking eastward. So I looked east as well, expecting to discover a street fair of some kind. Instead, I saw a wall of grayish brown smoke so close by and so opaque that I thought whatever had happened must have happened only a few dozen feet away, not two blocks.

Now I became more aware of the sirens of fire engines, police cars and ambulances – a background cacophony so commonplace in New York that must of us unconsciously tune it out.

Around me, people were picking up cell phones. And they began quietly asking questions. “Do you know what it is?” “What happened?”

The words you didn’t hear spoken were “9-11” and “Al Quaida,” although they were most assuredly as top-of-mind for my fellow passengers as they were for me. There was no screaming. No panic on the bus. Nor did I see any on the street outside. People were either standing together and watching, or walking away with deliberate but not extraordinary speed.

One passenger announced loudly, “I’m getting off at the next stop,” and did so. This may have been a mistake. As the TV news announced later, there was asbestos from the steam pipe in the air nearby. (Note: Even more recent reports now say the air is clean. Whether it was at the time is uncertain.)

I tried to call home. It took several attempts. Evidently the cell phone towers were jammed by thousands of callers simultaneously trying to assure people at home that they were okay.

The bus suddenly seemed to be creeping at a snail’s pace, even for a New York City bus at rush hour. Eventually I reached the voice mail at home and left word that there had been an explosion of some sort in midtown but that I was okay, on a bus stuck in traffic that would probably make me quite late for dinner. I also asked, “When you get this, would you please turn on the TV and see if there’s any word on what’s going on? Then call me.”

JAMMED AND GRIDLOCKED,
WITH NO COPS DIRECTING TRAFFIC

It turned out that the cell phone towers were still sporadically jammed. After several attempts, my caller reached me some 20 minutes later. By then the bus was at a gridlocked standstill at Madison Avenue at 57th Street, less than a mile further north.

Police cars – I counted 11 of them in a row although there may have been more – were standing still on West 57th Street, lights flashing, sirens howling, unable to get through. I realized that nowhere in this immense traffic jam had I seen a police or traffic officer trying to direct the chaos and keep things moving. Nor did I see any police officer get out of his patrol car to do so.

“The TV news says it was a transformer that exploded on Second Avenue,” I was told.

That was misinformation as it turned out, misinformation both about the cause and the precise location of the explosion – which occurred on 41st and Lexington Avenue. But at least it brought relief that terrorists had not blown up Grand Central Station or the subways and commuter rail lines below it, the first thought that occurred to me. I passed along the word to my fellow passengers. Most also seemed relieved.

LUXURY LIMOS
CONTRIBUTE TO THE CHAOS

Given that nothing was moving, I began to wonder how many private cars were contributing to the gridlock. So between 42nd Street and 60th Street I spent a considerable part of the time staring out the window.

I saw almost none of what you might call commuter automobiles. Taxis were the kind of vehicle I saw most often. The next most common variety of car was chauffeur driven, black, and tended to have one passenger in the back seat. Most were either either standard limos of the Town Car variety, or black Cadillac Escalades. Busses were the next most frequently occurring kind of vehicle, followed by emergency vehicles of all kinds.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT IN NEW YORK
STILL KAPUT. BUT PHOENIX AZ GETS MORE
HOMELAND SECURITY BUCKS

As of rush hour this morning, the Lexington Avenue subway lines were still out of service south of 86th Street. Lexington Avenue in the immediate area was still blocked off, pending an investigation into how badly the asbestos had been spread around.

I turned on television while I was getting dressed to discover that the city of Phoenix, Arizona was rejoicing. They’ve gotten more money from the Department of Homeland Security this year.

And by the way, I’ve heard not so much as one word of concern about New York so far from either Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff or the Deciderer-In-Chief. Well, from the window of my bus I did see an Escalade with its own flashing lights and siren trying to get away from the center of the action. So maybe you guys or one of your political appointees was aware of the situation after all and distancing yourselves from it as fast as you could.

FAQS FOR NON-NEW YORKERS
AND SOME OF MY FELLOW CITIZENS

Q: Why are there steam pipes under New York’s Streets?

A: Consolidated Edison, the local power company, uses steam to drive the turbines that drive its electric generators. Over eighty years ago, somebody at Con Ed, as we call it here, got the bright idea to sell the steam for use in heating buildings. Those underground pipes conduct the steam from the power plant in Queens to offices in Manhattan.

Q: But it’s summer. Who’d want to heat a building when you’ve been having 80 and 90-degree temperatures?

A: Nobody. But the steam also can be used to cool the buildings. I’m not sure how. Ask your local physicist or heat exchange engineer.

Q: When I visited New York last winter, I saw steam coming out of chimneys protruding from the asphalt. Did that have something to do with Con Ed steam?

A: Yeah.

Q: Where did the asbestos come from?

A: It was the insulating material in common use over 80 years ago, when those pipes were first installed.

Q: But you just said that was over eighty years ago! How come there isn’t a pipe replacement or asbestos abatement program in News York that could have fixed the problem?

A: The abiding philosophy here seems to be, “If it ain’t busted, don’t fix it.” I’m strongly in favor of that philosophy when it comes to invading other countries. I’m not sure how I feel about it in relation to New York’s infrastructure. Mayor Bloomberg’s too busy thinking about running for President and trying to ram through congestion pricing to bother a whole lot with everyday matters like steam pipes.

Look, it’s not entirely clear whether Michael Bloomberg thinks that focusing on keeping the city from crumbling to ashes is boring. And Con Ed won’t budge until somebody grabs its chairman by his privates and twists real hard, because capital expenditures for pipe replacement and asbestos abatement produce no additional revenue and suck money out of the bottom line.

Of course, now Con Ed is going to have to replace at least one piece of pipe anyway, and they’re facing massive law suits from the dead and injured victims of the explosion. New York juries don’t take kindly to utilities that scald passers-by over 90 percent over their bodies. So now Con Edison faces a double whammy of unexpected costs. Disclosure: I happen to own a few hundred shares of Con Ed, and the stock had been going down even before this happened. Looks like now I’m really screwed.

Q: Okay Crank, what lessons have we learned from this?

A: Several:

1.New York’s emergency planning doesn’t seem to be all bad, but some bozo seems to have forgotten that people like to get away fast from smoke, steam and, say, radiation from dirty bombs. The city, from what I saw yesterday, has made no provisions to unclog gridlocks during these emergencies to speed people away from danger. It doesn’t take much technology. A tough-looking cop at each strategic intersection making “go” and “stop” hand signals would probably do it. This might also help emergency vehicles get through to emergencies quicker. Many of those vehicles were gridlocked with the rest of us yesterday.

2.Congestion pricing isn’t going to do diddley-squat to stop New York limo jams. Anyone who can afford commute with his own Escalade and driver, or who can afford to rent a commercial limo to take him to and from work at roughly $50 a pop isn’t going to be the least bit fazed by an $8 congestion pricing plan. That’s chump change to the people who are really crowding the streets. If anything, congestion pricing will simply make commuting a tad faster for limo passengers who place their own comfort over the environment.

3.If Mayor Bloomberg really wants to do something about congestion, he should impound all of his friends’ limousines.

4.I know this is slightly off the subject, but the real way to lessen traffic congestion is to make public transportation more attractive. When electronic metrocards made lower fare programs available some years ago and service improved, so did ridership on the subways. Instead of giving New Yorkers and out-of-towners a carrot for riding the subways instead of driving, Michael Bloomberg is trying to club them over the head with an $8 stick.

5.Based on my personal experience, the local transit authority did a hideously bad job of communicating with its riders. Busses are connected to a transit radio system that regularly broadcast route instructions to drivers. And drivers have PA system. Do you think somebody would contact the drivers and ask them to explain – while we were all frozen in traffic and suffering our frissons of fear – that it was only a steam pipe? Nah! “Keep ‘em sweating.”

FOR MORE INFO, GO HERE:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/nyregion/19cnd-explode.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Good pix and wildly hyperbolic Murdoch-style reporting here:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07192007/news/regionalnews/steam_blast_a_deadly_hell_regionalnews_brigitte_williams_james__dan_kadison_and_leela_de_krester.htm

Should The New York Crank seek the Democratic nomination for President? This is an extremely serious question (almost).

Thanks to free clipart like this example from Clipart-Library.com

anybody can make a poster and run for President. And  it looks as if

quite nearly everybody does.

I mean, why the hell not?

As of this posting, there are already 29 declared Democratic candidates for President. That rises to 30 if you count not-quite-announced probable candidate Joe Biden. It rises to 31 if you count not-yet-decided Stacey Abrams and to 32 if you count not-yet-decided Bill deBlasio, the less-than-wonderfully-competent mayor of New York.

A million gurgling bile ducts'

worth of incompetence

Given that incompetence seems to be a prerequisite for the job of head of state these days, I will bet up to two cents…no, make that three cents…no, make that a nickel…. that deBlasio will sooner or later declare himself a candidate. But I’m getting ahead of myself. So back to the incompetence thing.

Exhibit A, of course, is the creepy clown, (or should that be kreepy klown?) currently occupying the White House. Collusion or no collusion, it’s a wonder the guy can tie his own shoelaces without inadvertently hanging himself. 

The little staff

that wouldn't

Until recently, it would appear that all kinds of horrors were not visited on the people of the United States, and possibly of the world, simply because Trump's underlings ignored his orders. This was exacerbated by the fact that Trump either forgot he had issued the orders, or didn’t know what to do when people disobeyed him.

It would appear that after two years, Trump figured this out, fired most of the Defiant Ones, and is slowly replacing them with Yes men (there seems to be a shortage of Yes women) whose slavish devotion to His Klownship for all I know might lead us either eventually or very quickly to a major depression. Or runaway inflation. Or a nuclear war with North Korea. Or us unilaterally nuking…I dunno, maybe France or England.

We don't need comic opera.

We have Donald Trump.

The thing about Donald Trump is that he’s on trend. Incompetence at the top of national governments used to be confined to nations about which composers of limited talent wrote operettas back in the 1920s. As one parody of these operettas, written by a nearly-forgotten humorist named Newman Levy, described the quintessential  situation:

The scene: a public square in Ruritania  

Fair Ruritania, land of gay romance

Where the people have a strange and curious mania 

For gathering in the public square to dance.

Derision of the gods

You don't have to limit the current examples of Ruritanian comic opera to Brexit. (You didn't think I'd leave out Brexit, did you?) For another contemporary recreation of Ruritanian incompetence, I herewith submit to you Ukraine. 

There, a comedian with zero political experience, who stars in a TV sitcom about a shlub with no political experience who is accidently elected President of Ukraine, was in fact elected President of Ukraine. A perfect example of life imitating art, imitating life, imitating art, in a zen-like wheel of repetitive insanity. 

We don’t need versified parodies of operettas. The gods are already mocking us.

The new Ukranian President Zelenskiy almost makes Trump look good. He has no political experience, and makes promises that call for explanations, without offering any explanations. In other words, he's just like Trump, only funnier. Zelenskiy has promised to fight governmental corruption without explaining how he’ll do it. Ditto his promise to end the conflict with Russia in Eastern Ukraine. 

(Maybe he’ll do both by simply surrendering the nation to Russia. That would serve the citizens of Ukraine right for thinking they’re in on the joke.)

Should deBlasio's campaign slogan

be "You could do worse?"

Now we come to wavering U.S. Presidential candidate Bill deBlasio, who presently happens to be mayor of New York, the city where I live. DeBlasio's strongest claim to the Presidency, so far as I can determine, is that he is not really the worst mayor New York has ever had. He is merely incompetent. Not to mention tone deaf.

For an example of his tone deafness I give you his stubborn insistence on going to the gym each morning. No, there’s nothing wrong with going to the gym. It’s how and where he goes to the gym.

The mayor lives in an official residence on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He works in City Hall, in lower Manhattan. Between those two points there are, last I counted, three Ys (the closest to him only a few blocks from his residence) and more private health clubs that I can count. So where does he go?

To his favorite YMCA in Brooklyn, a round trip drive of — I’m estimating here — twelve miles. But deBlasio doesn’t take the subway, the way the late Mayor Abe Beame often did. Instead, he gets into a gas-guzzling SUV, followed by a a security detail in two other gas-guzzling SUVs, and burns carbon all the way to Brooklyn and back.

Cogestion pricing? That's

for the little people.

Then, because traffic gridlock is so bad in New York, deBlasio slams the city with a congestion pricing tax that has upped my taxi fare whenever I need a taxi to go to the doctor, or when I’m horribly late to someone’s home. 

DeBlasio's traffic congestion tax adds to the impossibility for most New Yorkers of owning any kind of a car, for any reason, in Manhattan. Make an exception here for the super-rich, who deBlasio aids and abets while opposing them.

And then he positions himself as an environmentalist.

Why won’t he walk to a neighborhood gym? He evidently loves his Brooklyn Y more than he loves any thing else. Which means, if he becomes President, that Air Force One will be flying him to New York each morning, where a Presidential motorcade will meet him on a daily basis and take him to his Brooklyn Y and then back to the airport again. Terrorist crisis? Let it wait. President deBlasio is on his treadmill to oblivion.

Did I mention that in New York the subways are a mess, public housing is falling apart, potholes are a plague, infrastructure is rusting, affordable housing is vanishing, triple-digit million dollar skyscraper condos are sprouting like weeds, and most of the city’s once great schools continue to be mediocre at best?

One reason for all that? Fourteen of the city’s agencies, offices and corporations lack a permanent head. The mayor simply hasn’t gotten around to doing that part of his job. It’s more Trump-like than Trump.

Will they love him in November

like they do in Nevada?

Meanwhile, incompetent deBlasio busily buzzes off to faraway places in Iowa and Nevada, testing the waters for enthusiasm about his candidacy for President.

All this is right on trend. Tone deaf incompetence is creeping toward universality. Have I mentioned Venezuela? Do I need to?

So that’s why I’m considering running for President. If elected, I promise to sleep in, wake up in foul moods, throw temper tantrums wherever and whenever possible, secure world peace including between Israel and Palestine, eliminate nuclear weapons, tax the rich until they bleed from their eyeballs, fix the environment, lower temperatures two degrees Celsius, get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, provide Medicare for all (but only for the people who want it), and force every child of a celebrity millionaire to take the college entrance exams under the trained and watchful eyes of murderous thugs armed with AR-15s. 

Vote for me.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg vs. New York City’s taxi industry: Here’s wishing a plague of boils and oil leaks on both their vile, law-flouting houses

Let me start with my cranky prejudices. I hate New York City taxis.

Generally speaking, New York’s cabs are filthy, uncomfortable rattletraps. The “clear” Plexiglas partitions between the front and back seats (actually, most of them are opaquely grimy), designed to keep the driver from getting shot by a stickup man, can also get a passenger’s face flattened if the vehicle stops suddenly.

The seats in most of New York’s taxis (they’re rejiggered Ford Crown Victorias) are low on the floor. The seats supposedly offer lots of “leg room” but don’t you believe it. The front seats get pushed so far back (I assume for the comfort of the driver) that sometimes passengers can’t even find “foot room.”

Still more reasons to hate New York taxis: The driver’s identification card, only sometimes posted where it’s supposed to be, is generally unreadable behind the filthy Plexiglas shield. At night, lighted by the rough equivalent of a dim flashlight bulb, it’s just as unreadable.

Cell phone madness

Its also rare — extremely rare — to get in a cab in which the driver isn’t chattering away on his cell phone. I’ve had drivers take me to the wrong destination because they were too engrossed in their conversations to listen to where I said I wanted to go or to notice that we had passed my destination.

Much as I hate the taxi industry I also have an equally intense loathing for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the who's ultimately in charge of regulating taxis.

"The voters be damned!"

Bloomberg campaigned for term limits, got them, and subsequently decided that contrary to the term limits law and he will of the voters, he wanted a third mayoral term. So now he has used his considerable political clout to overrule term limits (which the New York's citizens voted for twice) with the complicity of the City Council. The Council was in effect bribed by having their own term limits lifted, too.

That's only a small part of it. Another item: In his misguided efforts to achieve something that would make his record look good, the mayor unsuccessfully fought for a lunatic congestion pricing plan which would have done little to relieve congestion, but would have driven up the cost of doing business in New York. You’ll find a number of informative rants on the subject here:

Turning yellow cabs “green”

The latest bee in the mayor’s slightly cockeyed bonnet has to do with “green taxicabs” — you know, the kind that spew out less pollution and carbon dioxide and drink up less fossil fuel.

Never mind that Mayor Bloomberg could save New York from tons of hydrocarbons, not to mention a good part of the traffic that’s clogging the streets simply by outlawing cruising. That’s the practice the cabs have of trawling the streets for passengers—a practice that puts just about all 13,000-plus cabs on the city on the street. They're out there 24 hours a day, seven days a week according to a taxi industry legal brief for which I’ll produce a URL shortly.

If we simply had a law like the one in Paris that prevents flagging down taxis in streets, the vehicles could line up at designated taxi stands, engines off, until a passenger came along. And during rush hours, you wouldn’t have potential passengers desperate for a ride wading into oncoming traffic to snare an empty cab.

Less traffic? Less pollution? A safer city? Nope, that would be too easy. Instead, the Bloomberg-controlled Taxi and Limousine Commission suddenly decreed that all new taxis have to be of a new and fuel efficient design that gets 25 miles to the gallon. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Sad to say, wrong.

Cute, clean, green and dangerous —
maybe the mayor’s people can’t read.

There are already some of these cute 25 mpg-or-better vehicles out on the street. I like to ride in  them. They’re of a completely different design than the traditional, modified Ford Crown Victoria that gets only 12 mpg. They’re higher off the ground, therefore more comfortable than the Crown Victoria. They're easier to get into and out of. They seem to offer about the same amount of legroom, but offer passengers the added advantage of being able to sit up straight. And maybe just because they’re new, they’re not as filthy as the Crown Victorias.

A small problem:
they’re also not as safe.

The taxi fleets that successfully sued the Mayor to lift his regulations pleaded that the little cars weren’t as safe as the big Fords. I assumed for many weeks this was just an industry red herring. I was wrong, as I learned when I examined court papers filed by the taxi industry. Some examples of safety problems:

…just weeks ago, the TLC [Taxi and Limousine Commission] was forced to issue a warning and directive stating that one of its mandated after-manufacturer vehicle alterations - the addition of vinyl seat overings – hinder the deployment of side curtain and front seat air bags in the hybrids. Had the TLC taken time to read the owners manuals of the approved vehicles, it would have seen that they explicitly warn against the installation of vinyl seat coverings. The TLC, however, ignored this safety warning and many others in its rush to mandate hybrid taxis.

Oh, and even one of the manufacturers agrees these fuel efficient babies aren’t safe as taxis:

…Toyota, who created and licenses hybrid technology – refuses to support the use of its cars as taxis due to its engineers’ concerns. A Toyota spokesman said: “Our engineers are nervous about it because they were not designed for commercial use. (NY Times, April 27, 2008) Another Toyota representative explained that the hybrids “have not been designed to withstand the rigors of 24/7 commercial use.”

And in the “You’re doing a
heckuva job, Bloomie” department…

In October 2004 the TLC [Taxi and Limousine Commission] conducted a sealed bid auction fort the CNG or hybrid (collectively “alternative fuel”) licenses. The City set the minimum bid price at an amount significantly below the then-prevailing market price for unrestricted licenses because the TLC recognized that alternative fuel vehicles are more costly to own and operate than conventional gasoline-powered vehicles…

…At the time of the auction, the TLC knew that there were no commercially available alternative fuel vehicles that meet TLC specifications for use as a NYC Taxi….Despite the lack of available alternative fuel vehicles, the TLC went forward with the auction …Eighteen of the licenses were successfully bid on…The bidders proposed the use of hybrid Ford Escapes, but the TLC refused to allow them to use these vehicles because they did not meet the TLC specifications for interior room. The TLC rejected all other vehicles the bidders proposed, and did not offer any other vehicles that could be used with the alternative fuel licenses…

Congatulations, license bidder —
you’ve successfully bid on…nothing.

Because the TLC refused to issue the bidders licenses and refused to approve any vehicles for use with the alternative-fuel licenses, on April 21 2005 the bidders sued the TLC demanding that the TLC close on their licenses.

We were for the Hondas before
we were against them —but now we’re
umm...ahh...ummmm....

In July 2008…the Honda Civic Hybrid and Honda Accord Hybrid were removed from the list. Plaintiffs were told that the Honda Civic Hybrid was removed due to particularly poor performance. Later in July, however, the Honda Civic was inexplicably added back to the approval list. In August 2008…the Honda Civic was also removed again.

Here are my own cranky solutions
to New York congestion and taxi problems

1. Outlaw taxi cruising. Require all taxis to wait for passengers at taxi stands, or to be summoned to specific addresses by telephone. It works in Paris, where the streets are even crazier. It'll work here, too.

2. Detroit’s on the rocks. Require them — require them I said — to manufacture hybrid cars safe enough to be used as taxis. Just tell them, “no taxis, no bailout.”

3. With city taxis lined up at taxi stands, it’ll be easy enough to subject them to a daily filth inspection. If they’re filthy inside, cut off their medallions (which the City auctions off like permanent real estate for a minimum upset price of $700,000. In fact, in the aftermarket those medallions sell for well over a million bucks. Is it any wonder a taxi ride costs so damn much in New York, while taxi drivers barely eke out a living working 12 hour days?

4. Stop the city’s cabbies from talking on the phone, with or without hands-free devices. If they’re caught talking on any telephonic devices in their taxis, don’t cut off their medallions. Cut off their ears.

5. Put a moratorium on those million dollar taxi medallions. (An exception can be made for individuals who own just one medallion and are trying to make a living.) After two years, all other medallions should become invalid and the taxi owner (usually a multi-car fleet) will be forced to rent taxi medallions from the city for an annual and more reasonable price. The city will collect a steady income stream — instead of an occasional taxi medallion windfall that the city then has to pay for by spewing more taxis onto the street. And because taxi overhead will be so much lower, drivers who lease their cars should be able to earn more, while passengers pay less.

But it all has to start with dumping Mayor Bloomberg. Despite a considerable amount of image doctoring, he’s not a successful mayor. He’s just as incompetent as George Bush. Send him back to Wall Street, with the rest of the investment world failures.

As giant cranes tumble on New York pedestrians, a smallfry politician offers a plan to protect you. With this.

Man, it’s getting tougher and tougher to live in New York and – sorry Mike – before I get to the smallfry, it’s time to start socking it a little harder to outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

For a long time Bloomberg appeared to be on a quest for – what was it again, the Presidency of the United States? Anyway, his quest led him to nanny the city into smoking bans in bars, calorie postings next to menu items in fast food restaurants, a failed try to tax citizens from the outer boroughs who dared to drive into Manhattan, and a whole lot of traveling away from the city – instead of staying where the Mayor’s ought to have been keeping an eye on things.

Meanwhile, certain basic services that have always been the city’s responsibility got, uh, shall we say neglected?

When the mayor’s away
the rats will play

For example, while the Mayor traveled around the United States last year, evidently in a failed attempt to seek a Presidential nomination, his health inspectors were giving passing grades to rat-infested restaurants.

Had the mayor but stayed home and walked around his city a bit more often, he might have seen what thousands of residents of Greenwich Village saw: a virtual rat menagerie attracting crowds as the cute little critters skittered around the restaurant.

Eventually that led to TV news coverage of the restaurant rat zoo and an ensuing scandal. The health inspector who for one reason or another – Do I detect the aroma of bribe money? – gave the rodent-infested eatery a passing grade was relieved from duty.

Of course – to deliberately and horribly mix a sackful of metaphors – that was closing the barn door after the rats were out of the bag. But hey, better late than never.

You’d think the mayor might be inspired by this ratty scandal to do a top-to-bottom review of what, whether and how the city’s myriad inspectors were doing their jobs, which were designed to protect the public’s health and safety. But no.

Look out…below-o-o-o-oh!

So then, surprise! Last March, a giant construction crane collapsed, flattening a townhouse and killing seven people below, after a building inspector gave a passing grade to the crane – which it turns out he hadn’t inspected.

Well, Bloomberg was busy fighting for his failed congestion pricing plan at the time. Had he but succeeded, future victims of collapsing cranes at least wouldn’t be inhaling the fumes from quite so many cars – Mayor Bloomberg’s limo excepted.

Little wonder, with not only his presidential ambitions thwarted, but also his mayoral record tarnished, the mayor has been appearing even crankier than The New York Crank. In fact, if you Google “Mayor Bloomberg getting testy,” you’ll find something like 27,000 entries.

When the bigwigs fail,
the lightweights rush in

Already, the local political vultures are pouncing on the carrion of Michael Bloomberg’s mayoral career. Recently, I received an e-mail that New York State Assemblyman Johnathan L. Bing sent to all of his constituents.

In yet another case of rats, barn doors and bags, Assemblyman Bing revealed his efforts to pass legislation that hereafter would penalize inspectors more severely after the cranes they don’t inspect collapse on people.

Here’s an idea worth bagging

But best of all, as part of the collapsing crane discussion in his e-mail, Assemblyman Bing announced this stunningly helpful initiative:

Assemblyman Bing will be hosting an event later this month with the American Red Cross to inform constituents about emergency preparedness and to give away free "Go Bags" containing supplies that New Yorkers should have in case of emergency.

"Go Bag?"

That’s the knapsack-sized bag up at the top of the page. So hey, I’m not worried any more. If a 10-ton crane falls on my head, I’ll simply unzip the knapsack that no doubt I’ll be carrying with me everywhere, whip out a bandage, and put it on my crushed skull. Why, there might even be a bottle of water for me to sip, assuming I’m still alive and not quite totally paralyzed.

Another construction crane collapses in New York, taking some lives, ruining others. But where’s the mayor? And where’s the outrage?

I’ve begun writing this just before 10 AM. About an hour and 45 minutes ago, roughly a mile from where I live, yet another of those death-dealing construction cranes collapsed in New York.

It’s hard to tell how many are dead. At least two, says NBC News. At least one, say another report. They’ve barely begun to dig around in the rubble for bodies. Meanwhile, I've been hearing the wail of fire engines and ambulances all morning from my window, and the roar of helicopters overhead.

Once again, the crane not only damaged its own construction site, but destroyed some apartments in a building across the street. Firemen are searching for victims, living or dead. People in the area – and there are hundreds of apartments in the area – are being evacuated.

It’s little more than a week ago that I wrote an angry rant about the mayor ignoring the safety and health concerns of his fellow New Yorkers, instead focusing on congestion pricing and other headline-grabbing causes. (Scroll down a bit to find it.)

Peek-a-boo! Where’s the mayor?

This morning, so far, we’ve not heard from the mayor. The highest ranking official I’ve heard interviewed was Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. He did a credible PR job for the politicians who are “discussing” what to do about collapsing cranes, while failing, at least in the two interviews I’ve heard, either to express concern for the dead and displaced New Yorkers, or to express any amazement or outrage whatsoever that you put your life in danger just by living here.

Hey, where is Mayor Bloomberg? Out in Podunk, giving another political speech? Or taking a long weekend at his retreat in Bermuda? Who knows? His home is also only a mile from the disaster. He could have walked from his front door to the disaster in 20 minutes, even if his limo wasn’t handy.

Fleeing from action

Former Mayor Ed Koch, even Mayor Giuliani (whom I like even less than Bloomberg) would have been on the scene almost instantly, at least appearing to be irate that such a thing could happen in their cities. They thrived at running toward the disasters, not away from them.

Somebody in municipal government ought to be in high dudgeon. Instead, all we New Yorkers are getting are the equivalent of a high-handed shrug. It’s the CEO attitude: “Well, you know, we need to make progress and sometimes there are accidents.”

In other words, City Officials To New Yorkers: "Drop Dead."


Saturday Morning Addendum: I'm away for the weekend, with only limited access to a borrowed computer. Friends called to say that some time last night on television (I think they mentioned NBC) there was footage shown of the mayor making a statement about the collapse. They think he used the words "intolerable" or "unacceptable." I'm told he even sounded, if not outraged, at least somewhat piqued. Well hallelujah! Maybe someone on his staff is reading The New York Crank.