"Brother can you spare a diamond?" Hard luck on the New York subways. Or, while the mayor plays with his campaign funds...

My pal Underbelly (that's his avatar, at right) recently visited New York from his small California home town, which he calls (I suppose with affection) Palookaville.

While here, he dared to ride the subway. Naturally, he was accosted by a well-spoken female panhandler. The experience left him scratching his head.

Hey Underbelly, this happens all the time on the subway here. Everybody and his drug addicted sister has a hard luck story. And while it’s illegal to pitch your tale of misfortune for money on public transportation, our mayor is too busy overturning election laws and spending $75 million or so on advertising aimed at convincing the voters he’s indispensable to bother enforcing the law.

Wait till you hear my own pitch!

Anyway, I get accosted by subway panhandlers so often that I’ve begun to fantasize about how I would make my own (illegal; they're all illegal) subway car pitch. It would be bullshit, of course, as are most of the subway panhandler pitches. But here’s what I’d say:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention please. Until the financial meltdown I was a hard-working trader and arbitrageuer at a hedge fund, earning $839,000 per year, plus an average $3 million annual bonus.

"Unfortunately, due to the trading errors of others, we experienced a meltdown and I was let go on short notice. Furthermore, for some political reason instigated by those frothing-at-the-mouth taxpayers and politicians, I was robbed of my bonus, which this year would have come to $3,200,795. Over three mil out of my pocket! That's highway robbery!

It's a total bleeping tragedy!!!

"Now you've got to understand what a tragedy this is to me and my family. I have a son at Yale, another at Princeton, and my third wife has a daughter from her first marriage at Brearley. I owe $145,000 in tuition, room and board payments alone, not to mention the kids’ allowances and clothing budgets.

"My second ex-wife and her bloodsucking matrimonial lawyer are hounding me for the balance of the alimony payments I owe her, and the tax bill is coming due on my beach house in Bridgehampton.

"We’ve already had to fire the maid who takes care of the Park Avenue apartment, the caretaker in Bridgehampton, and cancel our lawn maintenance and swimming pool care contracts out there. Did I mention that we had to let the cook go? Leuba has been with us for 12 years, but I had no choice. We even had to cancel our annual gala and dinner party for 150 of our closest friends and get out of the catering contract with Daniel Boulud.

Save me from a life of crime

"Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want to turn to a life of crime. I don’t want to mug you on the subway the way other people do, or establish any Bernie Madoff or Allen Stanford-style retirement funds. But I’m down to my last five million and I have to tell you, it’s hard out here for an arbitrageur. All I’m asking is that you reach into your pockets and contribute to helping me get back on my feet.

"Anything will help. A hundred dollar bill or three, even a few fifty dollar bills. I am also accepting bearer bonds and coupons if you still have any, and I will even accept your check for over $500. I am also accepting your donations of statement quality jewelry. Just put it in this MacDonald’s coffee cup I’m shaking as I walk down the aisle.

"Thank you, Godbless. Thank you, Godbless. Thank you, Godbless. Than…what the hell is this? An effing quarter? What the hell do you think I am, anyway?"

“Subway rider Bloomberg?” NY Times reveals my cranky doubts about the mayor's commute were well founded.

Late in June, I crankily noted that Mayor Bloomberg’s supporters say he rides the subway to work every morning. But I had my doubts. I wrote on this blog:

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.

Well guess what, folks. A team of New York Times reporters staked out the mayor’s mansion – not the official residence, which he shuns sleeping in, but his own private mansion on East 79th Street.) Were they inspired by The New York Crank? I dunno. But guess what?

They discovered

• Mayor Bloomberg only commutes via subway part of the time. And not a big part of the time, either.

• Even when he commutes by subway, he gets driven via SUV to the subway.

• He not only gets driven in a high fuel consumption SUV, but another SUV always accompanies his own SUV. That’s two SUVs to get the billionaire Mayor’s hind end to a subway

• He doesn’t even go to the subway station closest to his personal mansion – the same station I use – which may explain why I’ve never seen him there. Instead, he gets driven more than a mile to a less crowded subway station where he can catch a faster train.

All of which makes him as much of a typical commuter as I am free of cranky moods and loathing for this mayoral phony.

This is the man who piously tells us to stay out of cars to reduce traffic and pollution in New York.

He sanctimoniously tells us that an $8 charge for driving south of 86th Street will decrease congestion – which it will, for himself and his co-billionaire friends in their own SUVs, for whom $8 means less than eight cents to you and me.

Meanwhile, those New Yorkers who can’t afford a chauffeur-driven ride to the subway and an $8 tax for accepting it, sweat it out in the real commuting world.

What’s Michael Bloomberg’s real reason?

I’d be willing to hazard a cranky guess at several secret Bloombergian motives:

1. Despite his protestations to the contrary, it is evident that Michael Bloomberg is considering a run for the Presidency as a third party candidate – sort of a Ralph Nader spoiler with a few billion extra bucks in his pants pocket to blow on screwing up the election and throwing it to a Republican successor.

2. Here in New York, his school reorganization, despite Mayor Bloomberg's own advertising to the contrary, isn’t achieving much of anything. To claim he did something important, he’s grabbing at straws, like an $8 daily automobile use tax. (Disclosure of sorts: I do not own an automobile. You’d have to be crazy in this town just to pay the garage rental of $600 a month and up, not counting existing taxes and New York automobile insurance rates.)

3. Mayor Bloomberg is after the half billion bucks the Federal government will award the city if he enacts his plan, no matter how ill-advised the plan is or how much damage it does to the middle class. He may need the dough – plus the revenues his daily automobile use tax will generate – to balance his budget, since he doesn't plan on kicking in any of his own personal loot. Please remember: I dunno this for sure. I’m only speculating

4. With a daily tax on people who need to drive below 86th Street plus the half billion of federal greenback largesse for enacting the plan, watch him declare if he runs for President that he never raised taxes. Even though the $8 fee is a tax on every person who buys something delivered below 86th Street, or who pays for services below 86th Street.

So what can I say to Mayor Bloomberg? Only one thing:

Liar, Liar, yer pants on fire.

Check out this New York Times blog:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/shadowing-the-mayor-of-new-york/

Or read the whole Times article here:
(Sorry, you'll have to copy and paste this one into your browser)

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/nyregion/index.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1185998905-VjnVbYs/wuBPxJzjlIcWng