Random noise, incoherent thoughts, whatever.
I was having brunch this afternoon at the Water Club in Manhattan.
When we walked out I saw one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen in my life. There were about 10 Ferraris parked outside of the restaurant.
Check the photos I took at Flickr: Ferrari Club at the Water Club
-TPP
New York City Journals is documenting one person’s project to replicate New York City in Sim City 4.
This thing is incredible. It is extremely well done. The amount of work gone into it already must be ridiculous.
-TPP
New York City Mayor Bloomberg has revealed his long term development plan for New York City.
It’s a great read of the problems New York City will face during the next 25 years, and how the city is preparing to tackle them.
One can only wish Bloomberg’s successor(s) will also be looking into the future beoynd their term limits.
-TPP
Washington Post reports that the US poverty rates increased to 12.7% last year. The poverty rates have been going up every year for the past four years.
In New York City, the poverty rates are up to 20.3% from 19%. That’s one in every five New York City residents living under poverty levels. I guess that happens when you have millionaires running the city.
I find these statistics completely mindboggling. To me they demonstrate a complete failure of the federal and city governments. We’re spending unlimited funds to fight tyranny around the world, but then let our own citizens get poorer and poorer with seemingly no concern. When is the last time you heard George W. Bush talk about fighting poverty [1]?
It is not the job of non-profit organizations and charities to take care of the poor. It is the government’s job to make sure poverty doesn’t exist, as much as possible. The government is failing in its job. Switch it!
-TPP
1. The social security system reform doesn’t qualify, as it would actually increase poverty
1,806 people were arrested sometimes with distinct gestapo style tactics in New York City during the Republican party convention last year.
1,670 of those cases have so far been decided. In 91% of the cases the charges were dropped or the people were found not guilty of the charges filed against them.
The New York Times article also reports edited video tapes were sometimes being used to present the prosecutor’s case. Unedited tapes clearly showed people to be not guilty. The police, of course, is saying the editing was accidental. Sure…
But, hey, they were only protecting the President against grave threats. Surely their actions were justified.
-TPP
The Washington Post has an article today on the arrests of demonstrators in NYC during the Republican Convention. The article describes how a large majority of the people arrested by the NYPD were in fact completely innocent of any crime. It is not a crime to demonstrate, unless you live in North Korea or, apparently, New York City.
The keeper quote from the article is this wonderful quote from our Repulican Mayor Bloomberg:
Bloomberg has acknowledged that police may have arrested some innocent bystanders, but he suggested that it was partly their fault.”If you go to where people are protesting and don’t want to be part of the protest, you’re always going to run the risk that maybe you’ll get tied up with it,” he said on a weekly radio show on WABC.
What the f***?
-TPP
A firsthand report from a peaceful demonstration in Union Square Park on August 31st 2004 shows how the cops trawled, literally, the demonstrators into a sidestreet, blocked both ends of the street with orange netting and arrested everyone, after sitting them down on the street for more than two hours, then bused with city buses to temporary holding pens at Pier 57.
People were arrested in several locations of the city in exactly the same way.
Apparently the whole thing was planned beforehand, but when the arrested got to Pier 57, it was clear the cops had not planned that part too well or simply didn’t care about people’s medical emergencies, lack of sleep or feeding the detainees with proper food.
The detainees are the same people, who were held in custody too long and subsequently caused a Supreme Court Judge fine New York City $1,000 per detainee for not releasing them.
Funny how the democratic convention in Boston didn’t produce such “results”.
-TPP
