New York State of Mind

So you might have heard about a little dust-up we had in New York City's Times Square this week. And according to Mayor Bloomberg's astute assessment this is the face of a potential terrorist...

I know you probably have heard and read Bloomberg's statement before, but I feel it bears repeating often. He publically pondered and I quote:

"If I had to guess 25 cents, this would be exactly that. Homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or somebody with a political agenda that doesn't like the health care bill or something. It could be anything,"

Oops. A few days later, we found out he was wrong and he had to apologize.  And there were some in the media who were actually disappointed that it turned out to be exactly who any reasonable person would have suspected - an Islamic terrorist. Faisel Shazhad.

This is what Contessa Brewer of MSNBC has to say:

"I get frustrated...There was part of me that was hoping this was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country...There are a lot of people who want to use terrorist intent to justify writing off people who believe in a certain way or come from certain countries or whose skin color is a certain way. I mean they use it as justification for really outdated bigotry."

Sorry to disappoint your Neo-bigoted minds, Mike and Contessa, but it wasn’t a crazy, redneck, racist Tea Partier. It was just your average, ordinary, run of the mill, predictably cliche-ish Islamic terrorist trained in some bomb-making camp in Pakistan hosted by the Taliban.

Mayor Bloomberg appeared at a Congressional hearing inexplicably whining that our gun laws allow terrorists to buy guns.  With the exception of the Mumbai terrorist last year and Major Hassan in Texas, there has been very little gunplay involved. Common and legal items like cars, fertilizer, and propane tanks, yes; guns, not so much.  So, as a result of his appearance, we now will have 800 new police officers walking the streets and every square inch of Manhattan will be covered by video cameras.   But maybe someone can explain why, even after all these years, we can't even stop a known terrorist from getting on a plane after buying ticket at the last minute with cash and with no luggage.

But, let’s be honest, we dodged a huge bullet on May 1st and not because of anything that the Federal Government did or didn't do.  If not for the quick thinking of a military veteran t-shirt vendor, the NYC police, firefighters, bomb defusers, and, most importantly, one incompetent Islamic terrorist, it could have been catastrophic. The very heart of NYC would have been crippled for years. So for now, the people here are a little jittery and are seeing terrorists in every shadow. As a result, Times Square was shut down twice this week because of unattended “suspicious packages”. One turned out to be a discarded water dispenser and the other was someone’s discarded lunch. Life goes on.

Moving on…

Local – We were visited by another terrorist this week. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in NYC to attend the U.N. Nuclear Nonproliferation conference. He gave a speech berating the US for “acts of terror”. As he went on his much publicized rant, the US delegation walked out along with delegates from other rational countries. He went on to explain that, and I quote:

"The sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to annihilate all human beings. Its possession is disgusting and shameful."

Okey dokey, Mahmoud. We will take all you say under advisement. BTW, would you be so kind as to stop developing nuclear weapons too. No rush.  Actually he came and left without the usual fanfare or invitations to speak to the students at Columbia University. It was finals week on campus, so I am guessing no one had the time to “speak truth to power”.

State – Well, Luv Guv Eliot Spitzer screwed us again. In the very short time he was governor, he brokered an agreement with the Service Employee Federation that if they would make a few concessions in 2006, he would guarantee raises of up to 7% -  3% of their cost of living raise, plus 4% on top of that – in 2010. Well fast forward four years and $2 billion deficit later, and now the SEF members are demanding their 7% raises and Governor Patterson is saying “No! We're broke.” What part of “$2 Billion deficit” don’t they understand? If they don’t back down, Patterson has threatened to furlough all state workers. And we can’t count on our elected representatives to be too helpful either. They refuse to approve the new state budget that was due April 1st until Patterson reinstates some of the massive cuts he had to make to try to dig the state out of a hole. Everyone wants money, but no one understands we do not have any. We can only hope that the trees that Mayor Bloomberg has been planting around town can grow money.

Federal – There are more people coming out of the woodwork to challenge Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. As you may remember, Sen. Gillibrand was appointed by Gov. Patterson to replace Hillary Clinton. This week, the fourth Republican has thrown his hat into the ring. So far now it’s Orange County Executive Edward Diana, Ex-Westchester Representative Joe DioGuardi, former NY/NJ Port Authority Board member Bruce Blakeman, and David Malpass, an economist. I do not know any of these men, but I will do a little research and report back.