Weiner: City Would Lose $94 Billion Under GOP Budget

According to Democratic Congressional Representative Anthony Weiner's numbers, New York City would lose $94 billion in federal dollars over the next 10 years if the proposed Republican budget passes.

Among other cuts, the GOP budget, if approved, would slash funding for the city's 1 million seniors who rely on Medicare; cut $745 million in public school funding; strip the MTA of more than $2.3 billion in funds for vital rail and bus infrastructure; and result in deep cuts to the NYPD and public housing budgets. 

Weiner is seeking your feedback.

Gennette Nicole Cordova and the "Weinergate" Hack

Gennette Nicole Cordova follows Rep. Anthony Weiner on Twitter. A while back, she tweeted "I wonder what my boyfriend @RepWeiner is up to" -- not because Weiner is literally her boyfriend. She used the term as an affectionate generic. Cordova is no more Anthony Weiner's girlfriend than she is Barack Obama's, Ray Allen's or Cristiano Ronaldo's, although she also calls them "boyfriend" on Twitter.

Cordova, a 21-year-old Seattle resident who goes to college in Bellingham, has never met Anthony Weiner, although she is a fan -- nor has she ever been to New York or Washington.

Yesterday, someone used Rep. Weiner's Twitter account sent Cordova a dirty picture, allegedly from Weiner.

Right-wing libelist Andrew Breitbart was all over it, parlaying the incident into the "Memorial Day Weinergate."

Here's Cordova's statement:

"Friday evening, I logged onto Twitter to find I had about a dozen new mentions in less than an hour, a rare occurrence. When I checked one of the posts I was tagged in, I saw it was a picture, supposedly tweeted by Congressman Anthony Weiner.

The account these tweets were sent from belongs to a person who has harassed me many times since the Congressman followed me on Twitter a month or so ago. Since I had dealt with this person and his cohorts before, I assumed that the tweet and the picture were their latest attempts at defaming the Congressman and harassing his supporters.

Annoyed, I responded with something along the lines of “are you f***ing kidding me?” and “I’ve never seen this. You people are sick." I blocked their accounts, made my page private, and let the matter drop, expecting them to eventually do the same. 

Within about an hour, I realized I had grossly underestimated the severity of the situation I had somehow become part of.

The last 36 hours have been the most confusing and anxiety-ridden of my life. I’ve watched in sheer disbelief as my name, age, location, links to social networking sites, old phone numbers, and pictures have been passed from stranger to stranger.

My friends have received phone calls from people claiming to be old friends of mine, trying to get my contact information. My siblings have received similar tweets.

I began taking steps, though not quickly enough, to remove as much personal information from the Internet as possible -- not because I “was Weiner’s mistress” or   "responsible for the hack,” as Gawker suggested,  but because, believe it or not, I do not enjoy being harassed or making my loved ones targets of harassment.

I have seen myself labeled the “Femme Fatale of Weinergate,” “Anthony Weiner’s 21-year-old coed mistress” and “the self-proclaimed girlfriend of Anthony Weiner.” All of this is so outlandish I don’t know whether to be pissed off or amused, quite frankly.

This is the reality of sharing information online in the 21st century. Things I never imagined people caring about are being plastered all over blog sites, including pictures of me from when I was 17 and tweets taken completely out of context. 

There have never been any inappropriate exchanges between Anthony Weiner and myself, including the tweet/picture in question, apparently deleted before it reached me. I cannot answer questions I do not have answers to. I am not sure whether this letter will alleviate future harassment.

I also do not understand how or why I am involved in this fiasco. I do know that my life has been seriously impacted by speculation and faulty allegations, and my reputation has been called into question by those who lack the character to report the facts."

The post from Alternet.

How Conservatives stalked Weiner on Twitter [Alternet.]

Brooklyn Memorial Day Parade Photos

Palin, on a Harley, Invades Rolling Thunder Rally

 Event organizers were not happy about Conservative Republican presidential wannabe Sarah Palin using a Rolling Thunder bike rally in Washington yesterday as a campaign photo-op.

Members complained that Palin, who made the rally a stop on her cryptic cross-country political bus tour, would be a big distraction, as indeed she was.

When Palin rolled up to the rally, riding bitch on a Harley driven by her daughter Willow and looking every inch the Redneck princess, about 200 of the thousands of people attending the rally were drawn away from the main event.

Event organizers decried the unannounced visit by Palin and her media, security and public relations entourage, yelling at and sometimes shoving reporters. Apparently, a splinter faction within the group had made the arrangements with the Palin camp.

Ted Schpak, Rolling Thunder's national legislative director, told the Washington Post the Palin entourage jumped in at the front of the parade instead of respectfully bringing up the rear.

Other group members commented that there was no reason for Palin's involvement, other than to make the rally a backdrop for campaign photos. Rolling Thunder, they said, is not a political organization.

The article from the Atlantic Wire.

More from TPM.

Iris, 73rd Street

T.J. Maxx (out the AC)

Call me Debbie Downer, but the most notable thing I found at the new T.J. Maxx outlet at 86th Street and 5th Avenue was the fact that the front doors were propped wide open, cooling the sidewalk.

Not a very environmentally-conscious thing to do, T.J. 

You might want to fix that escalator, too, so the XXL set can make it to the second level without triggering a 911 call.

And I know this is a lot to ask, but how about some inventory?  Maybe you need more time. 

If so, could you please close the doors while you're stocking?

Thank you.

National Registry Eyed for Tanker

Red Hook not-for-profit PortSide has been invited by the State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (SHPO) to apply to the National Register of Historic Places on behalf of re-purposed tanker Mary A. Whalen (formerly the S.T. Kiddoo), which serves as the organization's onboard headquarters.

Here's the pre-designation letter from SHPO. Click here to read about the ship's history.

It is hoped that eligibility for the National Register will raise the ship's visibility and increase funding opportunities, both for PortSide and for Red Hook.

Summer Youth Employment Program

PortSide has been selected to participate in the NYC 2011 Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP). During July and August, a "TeenTeam" of five will have the chance to earn $7.25/hour working 25 hours a week restoring the captain's cabin.

To learn more about the restoration, click here.

PortSide needs to raise $16,000 by June 30 to fund SYEP program expenses, like supervisor's salary, restoration supplies and materials, in order to offer summer jobs to youth living in nearby Brooklyn public housing.

Financial supporters will be invited onboard for a party and private preview of the summer's completed restoration work.

To support this project or to monitor PortSide's fundraising progress, click here or here.

Summer Internships

PortSide will also offer internships this summer doing historic preservation research, cultural tourism, event planning, and graphic and web design.

To apply for an internship, send your resume and a cover letter detailing your availability to:  research.portsidenewyork@gmail.com.

Crimson Snapdragons, 72nd Street

The Apocalypse and the Need for Certainty

The world was supposed to have ended last month, according to Christian cult leader Harold Camping, operator of the Family Radio Network.

As we know, it didn't.

We laughed at Camping's followers' total commitment to this lunatic theory, wondering how they could believe it.

But not so fast with the judgment. As one science writer puts it, the religious nuts aren't so different from the rest of us. Humans are hardwired for something he calls "theory lock" -- that's what ambiguity does to our brains. Faced with mounting doubt, we refuse to admit that we don't know the answer.

The human brain is designed to find order in randomness. We see patterns everywhere. This cognitive feature has served us well: once we have a theory, everything lines up behind it and we get things done. Pattern recognition has made us the mighty, mighty power that we are.

Without a theory, we feel powerless. We'll grab any theory, even a weak one, to explain the situation we're in, and hold onto it, forcing every ambiguity into its framework.

The longer we believe in our theory, the truer it seems, something psychologists call "confirmation bias."

The more sure we are, the less flexible we become, and that's where the trouble comes in.

Take a search and rescue mission. The key to a successful search is not getting locked into your theory. If you're not getting results, you have to be willing to go back to the basics and come up with an alternative theory.

If this is hard even for professionals, it can be nearly impossible for ordinary people. When The Apocalypse failed to happen on May 21, for instance, Harol Camping simply re-scheduled it.

Jeff Wise's post from Psychology Today.

Fifth Avenue Spring Festival

The Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District will present its annual Fifth Avenue Spring Festival from 12 PM to 6 PM on Sunday, June 5, between 69th Street and 85th Street on 5th Avenue in Bay Ridge.

The event will feature fun for the whole family, including live bands, a Karaoke contest, outdoor dining on 5th Avenue, the Brooklyn Pizza Eating Contest, sponsored by Rocco's Pizzeria, face painting, pony rides, and more.

For more information, call 718-238-8181.

Vendor Information.

It's not too late for vendors to sign up for the festival at the Fifth Avenue BID office at 464 Bay Ridge Avenue, which will be open on Tuesday, May 31 from 10 AM to 4 PM.  The telephone there is 718-238-8181.

Your application must be accompanied by photocopies of your license(s) and permit(s), and submitted with your check or money order payable to the Bay Ridge 5th Avenue BID.  No cash.

For additional vendor information, call 917-882-5066.

Movie Nights at Narrows Botanical Gardens

Here's the 2011 summer Movie Night lineup at the Narrows Botanical Gardens:

Friday, July 8 (rain date - Saturday, July 9) Mamma Mia!, the film version of the hit Broadway musical starring Meryl Streep and featuring the music of the 70s super-group Abba.

Friday, July 22 (rain date Saturday July 23) Wall*E, the Pixar animated sensation.

Friday, August 5 (rain date Saturday, Aug. 6) Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' 1974 spoof of classic horror films, starring Gene Wilder, Teri Garr and Madeline Kahn.

Friday, August 19 (rain date Saturday, Aug. 20) Over the Hedge.

For more information, visit the website.

Golden Calls Gay Marriage Irrelevant, Dissolute

State Senator Marty Golden, in a recently-televised interview, characterized Democratic support for gay marriage as an irrelevant waste of time -- a distraction from "jobs" -- and cast Republican opponents as defenders of traditional family values.  

Golden, acknowledging that the gay marriage issue, which has the full-throated backing of Governor Andrew Cuomo, may have a fighting chance in the New York State Legislature, condemned former Governor David Paterson's executive order requiring the state government to honor same-sex unions legally entered in other states.

Golden has introduced a bill that would undo Paterson's executive order by stripping gay couples married in other states of legal status in New York.

Golden reads gay marriage as a sign of dissolution, a symptom of the coming fall of the American Empire.

The Golden interview took place in the context of a state-wide anti-gay marriage demonstration in Albany, organized by the Republican opposition, which Golden cast as an ecumenical alliance in defense of traditional marriage between a man and a woman.

More from Bay Ridge Interpol.

Howard Dean: Attack on Medicare Will Cost GOP the House

Former Vermont governor, Democratic National Committee Chair and presidential candidate Howard Dean predicts that Congressman Paul Ryan's plan to kill Medicare will cost Republicans the House majority.

Dean sees Democrat Kathy Hochul's upset win in a special election in the most Republican district in New York State -- a district even Barack Obama, at the height of his popularity, couldn't win in 2008 -- as evidence of the damage the Ryan plan has done.

Dozens of other Republican candidates who voted, as did local Republican Congressman Michael Grimm, to kill Medicare, will be running in swing districts -- some, like Bay Ridge, Democratic-leaning. The road to a Democratic majority, Dean said, leads through these districts.

Republicans took the House last year saying that they were going to create jobs.  Then they attacked Medicare, Social Security, organized labor, women's health care, infant nutrition, early childhood education, the environment, student financial aid, and voters' rights.

Next time, we'll know.

deBlasio Mounts Website for Parents

New York City Public Advocate Bill deBlasio, as part of a “Parent Day of Action” today against Mayor Bloomberg's proposed teacher layoffs, urged New Yorkers to upload content to his website, www.parentsforteachers.com.

The website provides parents with a forum to speak out about the proposed layoffs, allowing them to upload content, including audio and video files, supporting their children's teachers. 

The site aggregates parent content from all five boroughs, with dozens of new listenable audio messages and embeddable video uploads each day.

De Blasio, a public school parent who vows not to be shut out of the budget debate, says the proposed teacher layoffs would send class sizes through the roof.

Councilmember Margaret Chin snarked that the Bloomberg administration, while threatening the jobs of thousands of teachers, has found billions in the Department of Education's budget this year for private contractors, IT consultants, even head-hunters.

MAS Livable Neighborhoods Training

Community activists are invited to register for the Municipal Art Society's Livable Neighborhoods Program on Saturday, June 18 from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM at Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue in Manhattan.

The Livable Neighborhoods Program (LNP) is a free, day-long workshop series offered by MAS and Hunter College’s Center for Community Planning and Development. It is designed to provide communities with the resources they need to transform local vision into effective planning. Hundreds of New Yorkers have participated in the program since it began in 2007.

Program components include:

• a day of free training taught by committed, experienced community leaders and government representatives on a variety of topics including zoning, community organizing, 197-A planning and more;
• an online toolkit on planning topics relevant to New York City neighborhoods; and
• an ongoing, web-based “practitioners network,” designed to facilitate an exchange of information and ideas among graduates of the program

Click here to learn more about the program and how to register.

Perfetto Convicted

A Brooklyn jury, after 2 days of trial and 3 days of deliberation, convicted former Bay Ridge Democratic District Leader Ralph Perfetto today of posing as an attorney.

Once an ombudsman for the Public Advocate's Office, Perfetto stood up in court for his cousin's son, Anthony Martire, at a preliminary hearing in a 2008 harassment case.

Richmond County ADA Om Kakani, standing in for recused Brooklyn DA Charlie Hynes, cast Perfetto as a do-gooder who went too far.

Prosecutors acknowledged that Perfetto played his role perfectly, though.

It is unlikely that the 75-year-old Perfetto, facing a possible year in jail, will do any hard time.

It's hard to see this pricey little bit of "justice" as anything other than a political spanking.

The article from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

More from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

More from Gothamist.

Brooklyn Memorial Day Parade

The Brooklyn Memorial Day Parade, which survived a financial shortfall this year with the help of the local community, will kick off at 11 AM on Monday, May 30 at 89th Street and Third Avenue in Bay Ridge. Muster begins at 9:30 AM.

All veterans are welcome to march in the parade.

Bay Ridge civic activist Larry Morrish will serve as this year's grand marshal.

The parade will travel down Third Avenue to Marine Avenue, then up to Fourth Avenue and over to John Paul Jones Park for a Memorial Day ceremony, which will include a wreath laying, flag raising, taps and a 21 gun-salute.

Brooklyn’s Memorial Day parade, which dates to 1867, is the longest continuously-run Memorial Day parade in the U.S.

This photograph of the parade, from the Brooklyn Historical Society, was taken on May 30, 1895 at the intersection of Bedford Avenue and Heyward Street. The parade historically ran from Bedford Avenue to Eastern Parkway, falling out at Grand Army Plaza.

It was relocated to Bay Ridge about 20 years ago.

Magnolia Blossom, Ovington Avenue

From Convent to Group Home

Local Community Board 10's Senior Issues, Housing and Welfare Committee has unanimously backed a plan by YAI Network, a health and human services agency, to convert the former St. Anselm’s Convent, on 83rd Street between Third and Fourth Avenues in Bay Ridge, into a 12 bedroom group home, primarily for wheelchair-bound developmentally-disabled seniors.

The planned renovation, to begin this fall, would leave the building exterior intact.

If approved by the full board, St. Anselm's would become the 22nd group home in Bay Ridge.

CB 10 will host its monthly general meeting on June 20 at 7 PM at Shore Hill Community Room, 9000 Shore Rd. between 91st and 92nd Streets in Bay Ridge (718) 745-6827.

The article from Brooklyn Paper.

Private Eminent Domain for Gas Drillers

The gas drilling industry, looking to make a killing on the shale gas boom, is using a controversial legal maneuver called "forced pooling" to drill underneath people's property -- without getting the owner's permission.

The practice is common in oil and gas states, but landowners in areas where the industry is not established, who are increasingly concerned about the controversial natural gas drilling technique known as hydrofracking, have been blind-sided by it.

One rural New York landowner wasn't initially concerned when he found out that his property had become part of a "drilling unit" -- until his well got contaminated.  Now he and his neighbors are suing the drilling company.

Opponents of forced pooling call it infringement of property rights -- a kind of "private eminent domain" -- that forces holdout landowners to join their neighbors' gas-leasing agreements.

Generally, forced pooling lets drillers extract minerals from a large area or "pool" -- typically a minimum of 640 acres-- once a certain percentage of landowners have given the driller leases.

The company can then harvest gas from the entire area.

Drillers typically can't build surface wells on land they haven't leased -- so they go in underneath the unleased land and extract the gas.

Thirty-nine American states have some form of forced pooling law.

New York law requires that 60% of landowners in the proposed drilling unit sign leases before the state oil and gas board will let a driller pool the land.

If the board approves the driller's petition, holdout owners typically get three choices: contribute to the costs of drilling and share the gas profits; don't contribute to the costs of drilling and share a portion of the gas profits, or get a state-mandated minimum royalty.

A landowner who refuses to sign a lease is automatically enrolled in the royalty option, the default. There is no opt-out.

The post from Pro Publica.

Selected Shorts at Brooklyn Tech

On Thursday May 26, Rooftop Films will screen No Way Out, a collection of short thrillers, on the roof at Brooklyn Tech, 29 Fort Greene Place (between Dekalb and Fulton), in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

(G to Fulton, C to Lafayette, 2,3,4,5 to Nevins or B,M,Q, R to Dekalb).

Doors open at 8 PM.

The films, to be screened at 9 PM, range from comedy to animation to music videos, telling the twisted tales of terrified souls trapped inside the machine.

All that, and the Brooklyn skyline at dusk.

Pre-screening, listen to the dreamy musical stylings of Ela Orleans at 8:30 PM, and postscreening, there'll be an afterparty at No. 7 Restaurant (7 Greene at Fulton) at 11 PM.

Tickets and more information at: http://rooftopfilms.com/2011/schedule/no-way-out/

The Films:

TWINSET (Amy Rose | Scotland)

JPBF (Stephen Collins | USA)

ONCE IT STARTED IT COULD NOT END OTHERWISE (Kelly Sears | Houston, Texas)

PROM NIGHT (Celia Rowlson Hall and Jae Song | Brooklyn, NY)

WE USED TO CALL PEOPLE LATE AT NIGHT (Eran Hilleli, Anna Shevchenk and Yoav Brill | Israel)

EVASION (Speedy Graphito | France | 5 min)

PROTOPARTICULAS (Chema Garcia Ibarra | Spain)

OUT OF NOWHERE (Will Lamborn | Los Angeles, CA)

WOUNDED MAN (Zachary Volker | New York, NY)

LIARS: SCISSOR (Andy Bruntel | TK | 4 min.).

BURNING WIGS OF SEDITION (Anna Fitch and Simon Cheffins | San Francisco, California)

Vanessa Bellucci Lobbies for Kendra's Law

T

Twenty-six year old law student Vanessa Bellucci, sister of Eric Bellucci, the Staten Island man charged with murdering his mother and father in the family home last fall, is lobbying state legislators to pass The Kendra's Law Improvement Act.

The bill, now in committee, would beef up the existing Kendra’s Law, which allows courts to order a violent or recidivist mentally ill person into outpatient treatment as a condition of being allowed to live in the community.

The law would require hospitals, when they release an involuntarily committed mental patient, to tell local mental health authorities whether the patient should continue receiving treatment.  It would also facilitate the investigation of reports by relatives and neighbors of persons in need of psychiatric help.

Vanessa Bellucci believes that the bill would make it harder for authorities to ignore family members seeking mental health treatment for a relative.

Vanessa described her brother, Eric Bellucci, who has been declared mentally unfit for trial and ordered to a secure psychiatric facility, as "psychotic and delusional" at the time of his parents' murders.

Had the Kendra's Law Improvement Act been in place, Vanessa said, it would have closed the loophole that allowed Eric to refuse treatment by providing Eric with a case manager, when he was released from hospitalization in 2009, to monitor and ensure that he stayed on his anti-psychotic medication.

Absent that oversight, she said, Eric deteriorated, and his family was powerless to intervene.

The bill is not expected to make it to a vote this session.

The article from Staten Island Live.

More from the Ithaca Journal.

Smokers Rail Against Public Ban

It's hard out there for a nicotine fiend.

Citing public health reasons, Mayor Bloomberg has signed legislation, passed overwhelmingly by the City Council, extending New York City's public smoking ban to parks, beaches, boardwalks, pedestrian plazas and other public spaces as of May 23.

Chicago and San Francisco have similar laws banning second-hand smoke in public places.

The ban will be enforced, not by the NYPD, but by the New York City Parks Department, which will issue warnings before dropping a $50 fine on violators.

As you can imagine, smokers, who have called the ban "tyranny" and hosted an outdoor "smoke in" on the 23rd, are burnt.

As a reformed smoker, I have no sympathy for the "victims".  Second-hand cigarette smoke is obnoxious.  I hate getting caught in a smoker's backdraft when I'm walking down the street.  It's like driving behind a semi belching diesel fumes. 

You can still smoke on sidewalks, as well as in parking lots, streets and, if the landlord allows it, apartments, in New York City.

The article from Reuters.

Obama Kills a Pint of Guinness in Moneygall

President Barack Obama began his European tour today with a visit to the tiny Irish village of Moneygall, where he searched the parish records and headstones for traces of his Kearney ancestors, met a distant cousin, and killed a pint of Guinness in four drafts at Ollie's Bar.

Irish civil servant Christy O'Sullivan, watching the live feed, was impressed. "The president actually killed his pint! He's the first president I've seen drink the black stuff like he's not ashamed."

Obama first discovered he had Irish roots during his 2008 presidential campaign, when Canon Stephen Neill of the Moneygall Anglican church located the family's baptismal records and established the connection. Falmouth Kearney, Obama's great-grandfather on his mother's side, came to the U.S. from Moneygall in 1850, when he was 19 years old.

The article from the AP.

Meanwhile, an American town, Joplin, Missouri, comes to terms with devastation [AP.]

Red-Lining Brooklyn Response Times

A report this week from Public Advocate Bill de Blasio shows the proposed cuts to 20 fire companies in Mayor Bloomberg’s Executive Budget pushing the emergency response times of 6 Brooklyn firehouses over the national 4-minute standard.  (That's not counting the time the 911 caller spends on the phone with the 911 operator, which could add another two minutes.)

The purpose of the National Fire Protection Association's 4-minute standard is to contain the fire within a single room.  Once the fire expands, the risk of fatality goes up by a factor of 3, and the risk of property damage goes up by a factor of 8.

DiBlasio flatly accuses the Bloomberg administration of falsifying FDNY response times and using the falsified numbers as justification for closing fire companies. FDNY response times are significantly higher than the administration is reporting, and its response time reporting policy is "misleading, inaccurate and dangerous", DiBlasio said.

Here's DiBlasio's list of the 6 Brooklyn fire companies that would be pushed above the 4-minute response standard if the Bloomberg cuts are made:

- Engine Company 205 will increase from 3:28 to 4:20

- Engine Company 206 will increase from 4:01 to 4:29

- Engine Company 220 will increase from 3:38 to 4:08

- Engine Company 284 will increase from 3:39 to 4:48

- Ladder Company 104 will increase from 3:45 to 4:36

- Ladder Company 161 will increase from 4:39 to 5:18

Read the report, which is based on FDNY estimates, here in PDF.  Or read it on Scribd here.

Brooklyn reacts to the threat of fire house closures [Brooklyn Daily Eagle.]

Beveridge: The Census Got It Right

Demographer Andrew Beveridge, a Queens College professor, thinks the Bloomberg administration's projection that New York City would hit 9 million residents by 2030 is probably wrong.

The 2010 census poured cold water on the mayor's development plans by coming up 246,636 short of the expected count.

The problem was the growth rate:  the 5.2% rate projected since 2000 has shrunk to a mere 2.1%. At that rate, the city wouldn't make it to 9 million until the 2050s, which would mean the mayor's projections are off.

The mayor's not having it.  His administration is planning to challenge the count through the Census Bureau's Count Resolution process, a technical procedure that generally corrects obvious counting errors.

But the mayor's argument, involving the relationship between increased vacancies and undercounted immigrants, isn't obvious. 

Beveridge finds four reasons to believe that the mayor may have gotten it wrong and the Census Bureau may have gotten it right:

• Increased housing vacancies are part of a citywide and nationwide trend. The city saw about 170,000 residential units added over the decade, during which period vacant units increased by 82,000.  The Bloomberg administration says many occupied units were misclassified as vacant. Beveridge counters that many of the new units built during the housing bubble -- take a look along Shore Road down around the 69th Street Pier in Bay Ridge -- are still vacant. Absent unprecedented growth, Beveridge said, the vacancies may be real.
• The Bloomberg administration says the census missed many immigrants, particularly those here illegally or living in illegally-subdivided apartments.  Beveridge agrees that some immigrants were missed, but points to the slowdown in immigration due to the financial crisis, which may have cooled the city's immigrant-fueled growth.  By one estimate, one million fewer immigrants came to the U.S. between 2007 and 2009, which would likely have affected New York City.
• The 2000 census may have overcounted the city's population, with the correction coming in 2010. 
• The 1990 census may have undercounted the city's population. If there was an undercount in 1990 and an overcount in 2000, the result would have been an inflated growth rate between 1990 to 2000, which the Bloomberg administration would have used as the basis for its projections.

Beveridge sees all of this indicating that the 2010 census -- since New York City was not spared the widespread effects of slowed immigration and overbuilding -- was probably accurate.

On the bright side, Beveridge finds evidence of the city's robustness in the fact that neither the 9/11 attacks nor the financial crisis stopped the city's growth.

The post from Gotham Gazette.

An earlier, related post on this blog.

The undercount argument, from the New York Times.

The census controversy is a perfect example, I think, of a phenomenon called "feeling the elephant".  Both sides of the controversy are in the dark trying to make sense of something inexplicable from very different -- and very limited -- points of view.   

Catholic Church Blames Woodstock for Pedophile Priests

A five-year study commissioned by American Catholic bishops to name the cause of the church's child sex abuse crisis exonerated celibacy and homosexuality, blaming pedophile priests on poor training and supervision, stress, and the "Woodstock Generation".

As the study found, reports of child sexual abuse by priests rose sharply during the 60s and the 70s, particularly after the Catholic hierarchy sided with the priests against the victims.

The “blame Woodstock” hypothesis has been floated by Catholic bishops since the scandal broke in the U.S. in 2002 and by Pope Benedict XVI since it broke out in Europe in 2010.

The New York Times sent up the backwards logic of the study by pointing out that the openness fostered by the "Woodstock Generation" was likely why those former altar boys felt comfortable enough to talk about what had happened to them at the hands of Catholic priests -- not what caused it to happen.

That's my take:  that what was new during the 60s and 70s was the reporting, not the abuse.  A lot came out of the closet during those decades. 

The post from Alternet.

Pet Day at the Wonder Wheel

On Saturday, June 11, The World-Famous *BOB* will host the First Annual Pet Day at Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park, featuring a pet costume contest on the Coney Island Boardwalk.

From Noon to 6 PM, pets ride the Wonder Wheel free when accompanied by owner. Bring your dog, cat, fish, snake, whatEVA, for a ride!

The Coney Island Pet Costume Contest will begin at 2 PM on the boardwalk, followed by a festive parade.

Registration for the pet costume contest will be at the boardwalk registration table across from Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park, next to the stage.

Entry is limited to 25 pets, so registration will be on a first-come-first-serve basis. Pre-registration is encouraged. You can download a registration form at www.wonderwheel.com.

The price of entry for the pet costume contest is a can of dog food -- as a donation to Sean Casey Animal Rescue, which will have an adoption van parked on 12th Street all day.

First prize in the costume contest will be a season pass to Deno’s Wonder Wheel, plus a $150 gift certificate from Petco. Second prize will be day passes to Deno’s, plus a $75 gift certificate from Petco. Third prize will be day passes to Deno’s, plus a $25 gift certificate from Petco.

Trash Bin Removal Plan Working Well

Homemade Wine, 72nd Street

Streetsblog: Don't Count Bike Lanes Out

It would be a mistake, says Streetsblog, to assume that local Community Board 10, which again rejected a proposed bike lane on Bay Ridge Parkway this week, won't change its attitude.

Three CB 10 members who sided against the bike lane last year changed their votes this time around.

Transportation Alternatives brought more than a dozen local bike lane advocates to the meeting, including Pastor David Aja-Sigmon of Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church; Bay Ridge Parkway resident Harry Denny; Bay Ridge native Juliet Moore; and local pedestrian advocate Jessica Panettiere.

Board member Bob Cassara, himself a bike lane advocate, believes that educating the board on the safety benefits of bike lanes, and assuring them that bike lanes won't cause traffic jams, would help a lot.

The DOT bike lane proposal, viewable here in PDF, would not remove traffic lanes or parking spots.

The post from Streetsblog.