This post keeps sliding through my fingers:
"NYC mayor’s hands-off approach panned" by Michael M. Grynbaum | New York Times, January 11, 2014
NEW YORK — The pizza arrived, steaming and delectable, a smoked-mozzarella-and-sausage pie presented to Mayor Bill de Blasio. The mayor, on a pilgrimage Friday to Goodfellas, the venerable Staten Island pizzeria, smiled, nodded at his slice, and then proceeded to do the unthinkable: eat it with a knife and fork.
“Disaster,” declared a writer at New York magazine, citing the longstanding city protocol of devouring pizza, no matter how greasy, with hands only.
One website called it de Blasio’s first mistake as mayor.
Confronted by reporters about his conspicuous use of utensils, de Blasio argued that he was simply being authentic to his Italian roots. “In my ancestral homeland, it’s more typical to eat with a fork and knife,” said de Blasio, whose mother was Italian.
Pressed on why a mayor who prides himself on populism would opt for a such a technique, longtime friend Charles Greinsky shrugged.
“He’s from Boston,” Greinsky said of the mayor. “He doesn’t know any better.”
See: Boston on the Hudson
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I'm glad New York doesn't have more serious issues to concern itself.
Related: De Blasio Already a Disappointment
He hasn't done anything to help himself since:
"‘Will not wait’ on inequality, Bill de Blasio tells New York" by Thomas Kaplan | New York Times, January 02, 2014
NEW YORK — Claiming his place as the 109th mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio delivered an inaugural address Wednesday that focused on the issue of inequality, promising that the attention he gave to the subject when he was running for office was not merely campaign rhetoric.
Uh-huh.
Outside City Hall — in front of an audience that included members of his family, luminaries like former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, and hundreds of New Yorkers — de Blasio spoke of the city’s history of embracing liberal causes, and he laid out a mayoralty that emphasized social and economic justice.
With Wall Street and surging homelessness in the city?
“We are called to put an end to economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love,” he said. “And so today, we commit to a new progressive direction in New York. And that same progressive impulse has written our city’s history. It’s in our DNA.”
He called on “millions of everyday New Yorkers, in every corner of our city,” for their help.
“Our work begins now,” de Blasio told the audience, saying he would push for the development of affordable housing, the preservation of local hospitals, and the expansion of prekindergarten.
De Blasio, 52, was formally sworn in shortly after midnight in front of his family’s rowhouse in Brooklyn. Later Wednesday, he was ceremonially sworn in by Bill Clinton, in whose administration he had served as a regional official in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
He spoke for about 20 minutes, during a ceremony that began with hip-hop music and ended with an invitation for New Yorkers to meet the new mayor.
A Democrat, de Blasio begins his term as an emblem of resurgent liberalism, offering hope to progressive activists and officeholders across the country — but also as an untested chief executive whose management of the city will be closely scrutinized.
So how does he eat a pizza?
Previously the city’s public advocate and before that a city councilor, de Blasio rose out of obscurity in a crowded Democratic primary field as he shaped his campaign around the “tale of two cities” — a succinct summation of the rising income inequality he vowed he would urgently address as the next mayor….
No mention of Weiner's wilting, the fact that Quinn was Bloomberg's girl, and the other guy that also ran Thompson.
The mayor also spoke of his proposal to expand prekindergarten and after-school programs by increasing taxes on high-earning New Yorkers.
Prepare for an exodus then.
“We do not ask more of the wealthy to punish success,” he said. “We do it to create more success stories.”
They don't $ee it that way.
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Great speech, but he's not going to mayor long if he takes on Wall Street.
"Taking helm of NYPD, Bill Bratton promises reforms" by Colleen Long | Associated Press, January 03, 2014
NEW YORK — William Bratton took over the nation’s largest police force Thursday for the second time, pledging to keep the city safe while also reforming community relations, which he said have been strained by the police tactic known as stop and frisk.
The 66-year-old was sworn in by Mayor Bill de Blasio at a New York Police Department headquarters ceremony attended by hundreds of law enforcement officers and civic leaders, including city council members, district attorneys, and US attorneys.
‘‘My commitment and the commitment of the NYPD that I am privileged to lead will be to work with you to ensure that at all times policing in this city is done constitutionally, respectfully, and compassionately,’’ he said.
Translation: stop and frisk will not end like de Blasio promised.
He takes the helm of the 34,000-officer department as it tries to maintain a historic drop in crime and an extensive counterterrorism program, even as its tactics have come under increased scrutiny. Bratton, who has also led the Boston and Los Angeles police departments, succeeded Raymond Kelly, the NYPD’s longest-serving commissioner.
De Blasio said New York remained a top terrorism target and said his administration would ‘‘spare no effort’’ to protect New Yorkers. But it would not be done at the expense of the rights of the community, he said.
De Blasio praised Bratton’s experience and his willingness to evolve and hear out new ideas.
At a news conference after the ceremony, Bratton pledged transparency and signaled he would keep and expand some crime-fighting and counterterror programs but wasn’t afraid to make changes.
He will take over a department with new, unprecedented oversight, after the addition of an inspector general and a possible court monitor to oversee stop-and-frisk reforms. The monitor is on hold pending an appeal of a federal judge’s ruling. De Blasio has said he will drop the appeal, but the police unions may press forward.
Bratton, known for his outsized personality, was police commissioner under Rudy Giuliani from 1994 to 1996.
He led the Boston Police Department and the formerly independent New York City Transit Police before running the NYPD, and spent seven years atop the LAPD.
So they just keep shuffling these guys around, huh?
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Also see: DeBlasio Daughter's Drunken Dump
And she wasn't even arrested for public indecency.
Meanwhile, out in the western part of the state:
"Union opposes Attica report release" by Michael Virtane | Associated Press, January 11, 2014
ALBANY, N.Y. — The union representing New York state troopers urged a judge Friday not to release sealed documents about the 1971 riot and retaking of Attica state prison in western New York.
The troopers’ Police Benevolent Association opposed Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s request to open remaining volumes of the 1975 Meyer Commission Report. Supreme Court Justice Patrick NeMoyer in Buffalo set a Jan. 17 deadline for written submissions.
In all, 11 prison workers and 32 inmates died — all but four shot by troopers and guards retaking the prison.
The union has a duty to protect the rights of troopers forced to testify about their actions during the riot, as well as those who have had to recount the event in criminal investigations and two decades of lawsuits, President Thomas Mungeer said Friday. Though he believes there is nothing to hide, painstaking investigations long ago concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing by troopers and this opens old wounds, he said.
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Cops never want to come clean in AmeriKa.
