“This MTA budget not only lacks accountability, but is also most certainly not elementary, my dear Dr. Watson!” Source: The Gentleman Blog
THE COMMUTE: This can only happen in government. Governor Andrew Cuomo announces that he is making $358 million more available for the MTA in next year’s operating budget. The following week, the MTA announces it is deciding how to spend the new $40 million it will be receiving, while other analysts are claiming the amount is closer to $20 million. Just as the governor’s “new” money can disappear in only one week, so can the additional monies raised by a fare increase. Is it any wonder why transit riders and taxpayers are so frustrated?
Continue Reading »
Source: Silvercore Training / Flickr
BETWEEN THE LINES: What we have in Congress — to paraphrase the iconic line from “Cool Hand Luke” — is a failure to legislate. That was quite evident last week after the Senate failed to expand existing gun laws without infringing on the Second Amendment. On top of everything else, because of undue filibustering rules, a 45 percent minority — too afraid to challenge the all-too potent National Rifle Association — defeated the will of the majority.
The American people — pardon the phrase — should be up in arms over legislation that would have strengthened and expanded background checks for gun sales.
With the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre still fresh in our minds, it was disgraceful, albeit not shocking, that nearly four dozen senators did nothing to assuage the painful memories of victims’ families or the overwhelming support of the American public in a clear cut triumph for the National Rifle Association.
Continue Reading »
The Jackie Gleason Bus Depot. Photo by Erica Sherman
THE COMMUTE: Governor Andrew Cuomo, who I once said was “not a friend of public transit“ after he cut MTA funding, now has increased MTA funding by $358 million in the 2013/14 fiscal year budget. The question is what will the MTA do with this money? There are several alternatives. The MTA could:
- Return subway service crowding guidelines to what they were prior to the 2010 service cuts, thereby increasing subway service and reducing overcrowding.
- Restore all the 2010 bus service cuts. Some cuts may have been justified, but the MTA data presented at the time never conclusively proved that was the case. Routes with low ridership were eliminated, such as the B71 in Park Slope, when there were no suitable alternatives.
- Finally restructure the bus system to reflect land use changes made during the past 70 years. In many areas, needed bus route changes were never made because the MTA claimed they could not afford the added operational costs. Changes — such as the ones I mentioned here. I say “claimed,” because the MTA never considered increased revenue that would result from improved services, always assuming that additional service would not result in additional ridership or revenue.
- Provide new bus routes or extensions at minimal 30-minute service levels, attracting very new few riders.
- Provide managerial increases to managers who have not received a raise in five years and also not insist on a zero wage increase contract for the TWU.
Continue Reading »
Former NYC Mayor, Edward I. Koch, 1924-2013. Source: adam.luis.amengual / Flickr
Of all the elected officials I have known personally — with the exception of former Congressman Stephen Solarz for whom I once performed an internship during his first term as assemblyman for the 45th Assembly District — I’ve had the most personal contact with our former mayor, Ed Koch.
My First Encounter
It was 1969. One year before my college internship with Solarz. Unsurprisingly, I chose transportation as my topic for a political science school paper at Hunter College, where I did my undergraduate work. I wanted to write about what the federal government was doing to improve mass transit and someone suggested I see the local congressman whose office was located on Second Avenue, in the upper seventies. I was skeptical of obtaining any information because I did not reside in the “silk stocking” district, as the Upper East Side was then called. I was told that the congressman’s name was Ed Koch, a name I had never heard before. I was told he was active in introducing legislation to help mass transit and that’s why I should see him.
Continue Reading »
Like, yaaaah! Look at us! We’re hipsters… we’re better than you. Source: Look A Beauty Blog
I always thought it was so trite to begin a post, essay, or any piece of writing with the definition of a word but, as an homage to the anonymous everyman who spoke for so many of us Southern Brooklynites — the writer behind the eponymously-named blog, Die Hipster, who abdicated his literary throne this week — I offer you the definition of the word “prophet”:
A person gifted with profound moral insight and exceptional powers of expression.
While Die Hipster, by no means, claimed to “speak by divine inspiration or as the interpreter through whom the will of a god is expressed,” the perennially exacerbated wordsmith took to the Internets to decry the “culdesacian culture vultures [who] have basically destroyed art and music just about to the point of irreparable,” in his final post on the site.
The targets of Die Hipster’s wrath may have had blessedly little to nothing to do with our end of the borough (at least for the time being, for hipsters are a transient breed), he took the Herculean task upon himself to protect our Southern Brooklyn enclave from their unicycled migration like a modern-day Davy Crockett staving off those who would breach the Alamo.
Continue Reading »
A Bushmaster AR-15, one of the three firearms the Newtown killer used to ambush his defenseless victims. Source: barryt83 / Flickr
BETWEEN THE LINES: When I wrote my first column about gun violence in the wake of the fatal Columbine shootings years ago, I knew it wouldn’t be the last. Similar incidents happened before and were likely to happen again. I’ve written seven since then. Here’s number eight.
By now, I thought, Congress would at least have set stricter federal standards to reduce the chance of it recurring. Sensible, necessary laws are passed to ensure public safety with speed limits, penalties to reduce drug and alcohol abuse, in addition to requiring licenses, registrations and, in most states, insurance for motor vehicles. But when it comes to guns, the attitude is far too restrained.
In and around the annual commemorations to the victims of 9/11, the inevitable question is: “Do we feel safer?” That query relates to potential terrorist attacks. However, after last week’s slaughter of 20 first graders and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that question is also pertinent to our glut of guns. Americans own an estimated 300,000,000 of them.
Are we any safer? When people are massacred in small town schools and movie theaters, is there any safe haven from potential tragedy?
Continue Reading »
New York, December 20, 1909. "S.L. Clemens." Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, aboard the Bermudian after a trip to Bermuda, four months before his death. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. Source: Shorpy
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” ― Ray Bradbury
BETWEEN THE LINES: About 18 months ago, a debate took place at a Canarsie elementary school over a book of poems, when parents objected to some content, such as an anti-war poem with a line that President Bush “loves war so much he gets an erection,” and another about a crack-addicted hooker performing lewd acts.
City Councilman Charles Barron, who wrote the forward to the 2006 collection — which was authored by his goddaughter, Tylibah Washington — defended the book, noting it “speaks to the experiences and struggles of inner city youth,” though he subsequently acknowledged portions of it might be inappropriate for pre-teens.
Nevertheless, in a follow-up, Barron — who is currently seeking the Democratic nomination for the newly-created 8th Congressional District seat — objected to editing the poetry book, yet he called for removing Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from classrooms because the “despicable N” word is used numerous times.
Continue Reading »
Source: krossbow / Flickr
BETWEEN THE LINES: The decision by city schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott to defend replacing an ultra-patriotic song with one about teen romance for a kindergarten graduation at a Coney Island school is not only wrong, but it’s dumber, with a capital D, than the principal’s original decision.
The song intended to be used at the graduation ceremony at the West 12th Street elementary was Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” with lyrics such as “…’cause the flag still stands for freedom and they can’t take that away.” It seems that Public School 90 Principal Greta Hawkins rejected it as “inappropriate for five year olds…that would offend other cultures.”
Continue Reading »
SUGAR! (Source: Uwe Hermann/Flickr)
BETWEEN THE LINES: Somewhere in TV heaven, Brooklyn icon Ralph Kramden is so annoyed and likely supports the legions of angry New Yorkers, who are upset over Mayor Bloomberg’s latest proposal, that he’s been shouting, “How sweet it ain’t.”
New Yorkers with expanding waistlines have visibly ignored repeated advice from health pros and nutritionists that too much sugar may lead to a variety of health-related issues.
But don’t fret: Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a veteran proponent of healthier lifestyles, is on our case.
Continue Reading »
Source: mikealex/Flickr
Governor Cuomo signed into law this week a bill that will create a new class of metered taxis that service the outerboroughs and upper Manhattan. We decided to check in with Arthur Borko, Sheepshead Bites’ resident livery cab kvetcher to find out what he thinks of the development from his point of view as a car service driver.*
The New Livery Cab Expansion Bill is a bunch of Bull. Yes, I said it, and let me tell you why.
The city claims that there is a major issue because metered yellow cabs do not routinely pick up fares outside of Manhattan. Most of you will know that to be the case because most yellow cabs refuse to bring passengers out there to begin with. The reason is because there’s nobody to pick up!
They won’t make any money on their return trip to the city. For many years, there’s been a status quo where yellow cabs patrolled Manhattan, and the other boroughs were serviced by private door-to-door car services. There were two types of licenses (for both driver and car). In the city a person can walk outside and hail a cab, but out here in a place like Sheepshead, the car service rules. Most customers simply call one, and get taken to their destination for a pre-arranged fare.
Easy right? Well, no, not really. This bill creates a confusing type of third class of cab.
Continue Reading »
