After a bit of a spat over some congregations renting out space in schools on weekends in some neighborhoods, the schools were immediately ordered to stop such agreements because they violated the wall of separation between the church and the state. The New York State Senate recently decided that such an argument was silly and instead passed legislation allowing schools to rent out such space to local houses of worship and it now awaits Assembly approval. So how does the public react? Angrily, of course.

Here’s a sampling of the comments on News12′s Facebook page.

NO, use a church or home. Relgion is the WORST tool ever invented by man. People and their stupid relgions holding back the progress of humanity. Religion has NO PLACE in an educational institution. Keep god out of out schools, off our money and OUT of the pleadge.

And this one…

I agree with you @Johnnie…..don’t listen to anyone else. RELIGION IS A PERSONAL CHOICE and SHOULD NOT BE PROMOTED or AFFORDED BY THOSE WHO DISAGREE WITH IT. These “religious” buildings and organizations are already TAX EXEMPT ……now they want to take from the taxpayers even more. F%CK YOU PRETEND RELIGIOUS PEOPLE.

Do the RIGHT THING……if you believe in your religion than GOOD FOR YOU….don’t try to brainwash others around you buy standing your lazy azz on a corner passing out tracts…..because that is NOT WHAT GOD WANTS FOR YOU. You’re suppose to be humble and HELP OTHERS WITHOUT TRYING TO CONVERT THEM and LOVE ONE ANOTHER NO MATTER WHAT and PAY YOUR F%CK TAXES instead of living off taxpayers through tax exempt status and public assistance.

And, finally, this bit of brilliance.

If you want religion in schools – go to a religious school! Do not use a taxpayer funded facility. Religion already gets tax-exempt status. Use the money you would have had to pay in taxes and get yourself a religious facility. BTW, I attended parochial school through college so don’t preach to me. My religion, my choice, my facility.

None of these idiots seem to understand the actual point, but instead are choosing this issue to lecture on separations of church and state and all of that idiocy.

This isn’t about worship during school, nor is it about a religious organization co-opting the building for free and brainwashing children. This is a simple agreement between these houses of worship and a building owner (in this case, the City of New York) to use unoccupied space that otherwise goes empty for their services in exchange for payment.

That’s right, payment. The New York City Schools that are always saying they don’t get enough funding and can always use more will be paid for the use of their buildings by these congregations and yet, on Facebook, the idiots raging against it almost create the impression that there are going to be special Jesus assemblies in the auditoriums every Wednesday.

What is wrong with people? Have we gotten so far from reality that now we just pontificate without even bothering to make an attempt at understanding the issue?

So embarrassing. Kudos to the folks who tried to interject some common sense into that thread. Shame they were drowned out by, as usual, the idiots.

“Reopening the Elmhurst Station will go a long way toward revitalizing the Elmhurst community and growing Queens’ economy,” said Rep. Crowley. “This is more than an investment in improving residents’ commutes; it’s about making Elmhurst a destination for all New Yorkers and visitors. Councilman Dromm and I are joining forces in calling on the LIRR to join us in making this idea a reality. The truth is Elmhurst residents already endure the noise and inconvenience of a train running through their neighborhood, why shouldn’t they enjoy the benefits of it becoming an integral part of the neighborhood?”

“Restoring service to Elmhurst on the Long Island Railroad is vitally important for the development of Elmhurst and the surrounding areas here in Queens” said Council Member Dromm. “By linking its residents to Manhattan, we are effectively spurring the job creation and economic growth necessary for communities like Elmhurst to flourish. The reopening of this station is something that will be a boon to all New Yorkers as it would burst opens the doors to one of the world’s most diverse and vibrant neighborhoods.”

The impression created is clear. Elmhurst is cut off from the city. It’s transportation poor.

That’s crap. Here’s a map. The blue arrow shows where the station used to be (the Long Island Railroad closed it a few years ago because it wasn’t used enough to justify it being open). The red arrow represents existing subway stations for the E, M, R, and 7 trains.

How much more transportation does Elmhurst need? Remember, none of these arrows represent buses. These are all trains, and every one of them goes to Manhattan, which is approximately a 20 minute subway ride away. When buses are factored in, much of the un-arrowed area will be covered by surface transportation as well.

The question for Representative Crowley and Councilmember Domm is clear. How much transportation does this tiny neighborhood need before it’s considered “transportation rich” enough to not throw more money at?

Eighth-grade reading scores for this group dropped dramatically compared to their peers in other large cities between 2003 and 2011.

Middle-income students’ average test scores in fourth-grade reading and in fourth- and eighth-grade math showed no significant gains, even while nationwide scores trended up.

“Bloomberg put a lot of emphasis on the very poorest kids. Whatever gains were there were offset by what was going on in other neighborhoods,” said Clara Hemphill, editor of InsideSchools.org at The New School.

“There has been this intense focus on the poorest schools.”

Roughly 200,000 — or 20% — of city students fall under the category of middle income, a number that has not changed significantly in the last eight years.

[…]

In 2011, 34% of the city’s middle-income eighth-graders scored proficient or better on the reading test, down from 48% in 2003. In large cities around the country, the number of middle-income eighth graders passing the reading exams rose from 31% to 40%.

As the husband of a woman who teaches special education in one of the neediest parts of the city, I can tell you for a fact that poor students get the one to one attention that we always say we want for every student. In fact, that’s the problem.

If you’re poor and in certain neighborhoods, you get everything handed to you because then the powers that be can puff out their chest and point out how they helped out the people lower on the ladder than them.

If you’re rich, you don’t live in those neighborhoods, but you probably don’t send your kids to the public schools (and I don’t blame you).

But if you’re in the middle class and you aren’t incredibly poorly performing, you get to be left alone and left to your own devices because the school’s success hinges firmly on whether or not test scores improve, not how good the student body as a whole does.

The middle class student in this city is neglected because they aren’t poor enough to be a political football. Plain and simple.

The Confusing Streets of Queens: MyFoxNY.com

I did a video on this very subject, for your reference…

It’s always been my contention that the people in communities that cry the most about their neglect are the ones neglecting their neighborhood the most.

In New York City, the “working class” will often complain about the condition of the subway system while, at the same time, pissing in a corner and throwing garbage on the floor. Recently, the system started installing a new station map in some stations to trial them and get feedback. What do you think happened to those station maps?

You guessed it.

Benjamin Kabak, who took the photo, is a transit blogger and advocate in New York City. He had the following to say on the destroyed map:

Of course, it’s not a big surprise that a free-standing sign at a busy subway station was vandalized. Basically anything the MTA installs — from signs to benches to garbage cans — is at risk of suffering the same fate. But on the other hand, this outcome raises a question: Why should the MTA bother to invest in simple things that improve the system if this is how riders respond?

I completely agree. Why indeed? Just leave it as it is and let the scumbags from Lord of the Flies rot, and this is from someone who rides the subways on a regular basis.

And when someone in the “community” says that they feel neglected, point out exactly why they don’t get to have nice things: because they’re animals who insist on acting like animals and deserve to be treated as such. Nice things are for civilized people, and anyone who thinks it’s cool to tear down a map in a subway station isn’t civilized enough to have one.

It’s that simple.

Yep. Just your regular every day working stuff.

I have a lot to say about 9/11, but today is not the day to do it. For that, there is tomorrow.

Due to an earlier Earthquake in Virginia, there is no effect to train service.

There ya go. We now return you to your regularly scheduled hysteria.

Now if it ended there, you would think this wasn’t that big a deal; of course it didn’t. Before I show you the next video, the company that operated the cab told the press that proper procedure was followed and the horse was taken back to the stable, checked out, and went back to work with a clean bill of health. The problem? That probably didn’t happen because immediately after the horse passed out in the park, it was back in line waiting for passengers.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. These things need to go. There’s no reason for them whatsoever, the horses obviously don’t like it, and many of them are hurt by cars and work under horrific conditions.

If you want to have a fun ride through Central Park, get your fat ass on a bike.

The things this city has done in the past few years to encourage cycling is just heartwarming.  It really makes me happy and this new path is gorgeous.

“When it was free, it was packed,” said student nurse Jamie Fried, 28, of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. “There’s definitely a big difference since you have to pay for it.”

Ridership plummeted from 10,900 a day for the 10 days that passengers could ride the newly expanded ferry service for free to just 3,613 a day in the first five days they had to pay.

And last Monday, the first work day passengers had to shell out $4 for one-way tickets, only 2,824 paying customers boarded the 149-seat ferries, compared to about 5,700 the Monday before.

“Things today are much quieter. Last week at this time, we already had people lined up for the ferry,” a crew member said last week before a mid-afternoon run from Manhattan’s East 34th Street pier to stops in Brooklyn and Queens.

Luckily, it’s subsidized, which means even if it fails, the government will still keep pumping money into it to keep it afloat.

Source

Blatant piggybacking.

No good law is ever passed out of tragedy, and this won’t be any different. Here’s why this is a dumb law.

If you’re a parent and your child goes missing, is reporting that child’s disappearance in a timely manner really an issue? Is there some epidemic of non-reported missing child cases that none of us know about? Obviously not or Nancy Grace wouldn’t have a job. So now the question is who is this targeted after? Someone who killed their kid?

Let’s take that, then. If you killed your child, you’ve demonstrated that you’re willing to commit murder. If you’re willing to commit murder, a crime, why would you then report your child missing? Do you think, as the body is planted, the killer is thinking “I have to report this or I’m going to get in real trouble!”

Meng said in her letter to the District Attorney’s Association that legislatures are put in place to solve problems. I’m just curious; what problem is this solving, short of the problem that 3 days ago nobody knew who this idiot even was?

The report issued is below, and all of the restrictions are on the first page so you don’t have to scroll through to find it.

06-30-11 New Recommendations Issued in Hydraulic Fracturing Review 11-79[1]

This strikes a good balance between the “I don’t want us exploring for energy at all in this country ever” environmentalists and the “damn the environment, drill baby drill!” folks. It’s the right thing to do.

Can you imagine if he told this racist loudmouth to “sit the fuck down you fat spic?” The ACLU would have his ass.

Funny shit because you see it all the time. Some “urban youth” gets on the bus or train and decides to put on a public performance of the latest shit they stole from Limewire and God help you if you say something about it.

Animals.

Absolutely insane. From City Hall News:

On any given day, about 700 acres of New York City parkland—almost all of them in Manhattan—are patrolled by 78 parks enforcement officers, close to half of the parks department’s manpower. The remaining 86 officers are left to cover the other 28,000-plus acres.

The difference in staffing levels comes down to who’s footing the bill: the city or private parks conservancies.
As staffing for the city’s Parks Enforcement Patrol plummets due to an ongoing hiring freeze, a two-tiered system that favors affluent neighborhoods is being thrown into sharp relief. Hudson River Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Washington Square Park and others are always well staffed, because private associations—not taxpayers—hire PEP officers. While Battery Park has some 30 officers, the entire borough of the Bronx has only 15—and officers say that official figure is higher than the reality.

“Right now there’s three sergeants and two officers,” said one Bronx PEP officer, who declined to be named for fear of reprisals, adding that only five officers cover the day shift.

“Because we’re so short-staffed, there’s only one eight-hour tour,” the officer said, “and we respond to the whole borough.”

An unannounced police and State Liquor Authority inspection at the Eagle, a “leather and Levis” gay bar in Chelsea, in the midst of celebrations over the legalization of gay marriage is raising eyebrows about the timing of the raid.

“In typical New York City Police Department fashion, the N.Y.P.D. demonstrated its disrespect for the gay community by raiding the Eagle mere moments after the passage of most important piece of gay rights legislation in history,” said veteran gay rights activist Allen Roskoff. The police maintain the inspection was part of a routine operation planned weeks ago under a program known as MARCH, or multiagency response to community hot spots. The Eagle has been the subject of several noise complaints from the surrounding community, and the inspection lead to six violations being issued to the bar, for things like noise and a lack of a public assembly permit.

The State Liquor Authority claims that these raids are planned in advance, which I find even more troubling. They hit up a gay bar on the Friday before Pride Weekend and, coincidentally, on the night the gay marriage vote was going down and, essentially, found pretty much nothing.

I have a real problem with the timing, unless you’re going to tell me that the SLA goes into all the Yankees-themed sports bars on River Avenue during the playoffs and does the same thing. Yeah. Exactly.

Anyway, most New Yorkers, my self included, seem to think the NYPD is full of crap with its justification of complaints, and the site Vanishing New York looked into the noise claims. To borrow a phrase from the media when describing any Obama-related bad news, unexpectedly, there’s no evidence of such claims.

As the Times reported on this weekend’s raid, the police turned on the lights, shined flashlights in patrons’ faces, and forced people to empty their pockets. Patrons report being harassed and intimidated. An NYPD spokesperson said the raid had nothing to do with the bar’s clientele, “it has to do with complaints.” Said the Times, establishments targeted for this type of inspection are “selected because they are the subjects of ‘chronic complaints’ from community members” for problems like excessive noise.

How many noise complaints has the Eagle had in the past year? According to the 311 Service Request Map, there have been zero complaints of any kind. Most of the complaints in this largely unpopulated area are about construction noise.

So where are all the noise complaints that prompted this? No one knows, particularly the 311 service which handles such things. You would think a place with so many complaints would have a few logged where they are dealt with, wouldn’t you? Well, yeah, if the complaints were actually true.

The simple fact is that the SLA waited until they knew the bar would be its busiest and chose the moment to demonstrate force to a community celebrating history. If that’s not the case, I’m willing to be proven long and I look forward to the long list of raids that will go on during October when the Yankees are in the playoffs. Having been through that area at those times, you couldn’t convince me that the same “noise” complaints couldn’t be had in that area, particularly with the drunk scumbags falling out of the places and into the street under the 4 train.

The city has some explaining to do.

I’m surprised that it passed, but honestly I’m way more surprised about the reaction of “it’s a sad day” and other nasty and stupid comments from people I know. This is a great day, and should harden our resolve to do even more to further the idea of liberty and freedom.

It’s my position, and that of many libertarians, that the state should have no interest in marriage whatsoever. It shouldn’t promote it, reward it, or offer special privileges to the people who choose to engage in it. If you want to pick a person to spend the rest of your life with, hurray for you and have a good one! The state (and by the state, I mean the government) should have no interest whatsoever in whether or not you do so and should provide you no special privileges for it.

Ideally, in my perfect world, there would be no marriage taxes or penalties, and no special benefits for marriage. It would be treated just like any other private contract between individuals, and those choosing to get married would be responsible for enforcing their own agreements. Adultery would no longer be treated as anything but a contract issue, and property ownership and disputes could be settled in the courts as a violation of contracts. Essentially, the state would be out of the “marriage business.” If any politician from either party ran on a platform of abolishing state recognition of marriage as anything other than a contract between individuals for mutual benefit, I’d vote for them immediately.

That, however, is never going to happen.

Seeing as it won’t, the next best thing is for the states to pass it so that marriage is equally allowed to anyone who wants to engage in it. Barring the idiotic slippery slope arguments of “now I can marry my dog” or “I can have a 13 year old wife I want one,” this is the only other viable solution that fits constitutionally into our government. States have the “police power” and, unlike the federal government, have an open-ended license to pass their own laws and decide how to enforce them. The federal government’s powers are extremely limited under Article I Section 8 of the constitution, and seeing as marriage is not one of them, a bill that recognizes or refuses to recognize gay marriage (such as the Defense of Marriage Act) probably wouldn’t pass constitutional muster.

In New York State, and in other states, the federal system is proving to be exactly what it was supposed to be. Local governments making decisions for their people, not the federal government making one decision for the entire country. If you want gay marriage, it’s available. If you don’t, you can either not participate, or move.

There are many arguments against gay marriage, none of which pass the sniff test. Whether it’s the tried and true favorites of “homosexuality is a disorder” to “I like gays, but marriage is between a man and a woman” to “God created blah blah blah,” none of those arguments are rooted in anything but religion. I would rather the state (and by the state, I mean the government either local, state, or federal) not legislate morality and religion. There are documents that define how the government may and may not act and the bible is not one of them. If it were, we would all be eating Kosher food, wearing unblended materials, and burning our pets on an alter to please the Lord. If that’s not your intention, then kindly leave your quoting of Leviticus out of it and let government be government while church is church.

I’m proud today. I’m proud not because we suddenly have something we should’ve had years ago, but I’m proud that the state essentially came together across party lines and realized that there are only two valid conclusions to the gay marriage question: either legalize it for everyone or stop recognizing it for everyone. Seeing as the second one is not a possibility, the first is the next best thing.

Congratulations to the gay community in New York State, and I’m really sorry it took so long. I look forward to coming to your weddings if you’ll have me.

A new DiNapoli audit says despite agency spending of an eye-popping $777.7 million on bus maintenance in 2008, 62% of Metropolitan Transportation Authority buses failed to meet inspection standards for reliability.

What’s more, nearly half the bus fleet—including virtually all of the fleet’s hybrid-engine buses—have not been properly inspected, the state found. 

“New Yorkers aren’t getting what they pay for when it comes to bus service,” DiNapoli said.

Well the story gets more interesting. See, we know that the buses weren’t being properly inspected. Now we have this, from Gothamist…

Not only are MTA buses slower than taking a big wheel tricycle, they’re trying to kill us in creative, Final Destination-esque ways. Wheels have come flying off MTA buses twice in 2011, with one incident captured on a surveillance camera. Union leaders claim that the flying wheels are the direct result of MTA cutbacks on maintenance, allegations an MTA spokesman denies to the Daily News. “There have not been changes to maintenance schedules,” he says, “Maintenance is not being deferred.”

Here’s the video of the incident…

Now what does that tell you? It tells me that the problem of lax inspections has been known since January and now, in June, nothing has been done.

Incidentally, TWU Local 100 is asking for an increase in both salary and benefits this year.

Isn’t that special?