So Alex Rodriguez finally confessed to having used steroids. What a shocker. He had no choice, because he had so clearly lied previously when he absolutely denied using the muscle-enhancing drugs. But, then, they say that steroids can shrink your balls, so his previous lack of courage is really no surprise either.
And now the Yankee who will forever be known to New York sports fans as "Roidriguez" or "A-Roid" says he wants to "help kids." Here's an idea for this expectant Mother Teresa: He can plow back a large share of his $25 million a year salary into the country's economy.
Naturally, like most other athletes, he thinks primarily of going to schools and preaching to them about the evils of steroids. How about spending some of that ridiculous money to help keep libraries and rec centers open?
In other words, spare us the message and spend the cash — especially during what Barack Obama now calls the "winter of our hardship."
Aiding and abetting Roidriguez's bullshit performance was ESPN's Pete Gammons, who, befitting his role as one of the high priests of baseball, lobbed questions at the pampered jock on the subject of what is commonly called "giving back to the community."
This is where repentant athletes get to show themselves off as people who are just here to help the rest of us. This is how they seek their absolution — by continuing to seek the adoration of their fans during heavily promoted speaking tours instead of perhaps anonymously doing good works.
Did Gammons have to participate in this charade by throwing Roidriguez some fat ones right down the middle of the plate? No, but he did, because most baseball writers owe their first allegiance to the game, not to their readers. It's the rite of professional sports for jocksniffing writers to play Ed McMahon for these Johnny Carsonesque stars.
ESPN's Selena Roberts broke the story, and Roidriguez accused her of all sorts of nefarious, "stalking" behavior. But Pete Gammons is a powerful member of baseball's establishment, practically an adviser to Commissioner Bud Selig. Was Roidriguez expecting these softball questions from Gammons? No doubt; it's part of the ritual. Here are two such questions — and Roidriguez's bullshit answers:
PETER GAMMONS: Given the opportunity, would you like to go to Major League Baseball and say, "OK, what can I do to help kids across the country?"
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: 100 percent. I mean, that's what I've done with the Boys and Girls Club my whole life. You know, I was born in Washington Heights [N.Y.]. I would love to really get into that community and do things that are real, that are going to make a difference. And I have an opportunity here to help out a lot of kids. And I have nine years and the rest of my career to devote myself to children in the future and really bring awareness to, you know, where we need to head as a game. And I think we are headed in the right direction.
PETER GAMMONS: Would part of your message be that your best years were clean?
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: 100 percent. One message is that what you have is enough. Hard work is the most important thing, having a clear mind, and realizing that — you know, having certainty is the most important thing, believing in yourself. And I've proven that in my career, at 18 years old when I came to the big leagues, and at 20 being second to Juan Gonzalez being MVP, probably my best year of all time, you know, followed by my 2007 year. And, again, no peaks and valleys. I mean, there's some peaks and valleys, but my career overall has been very consistent, not only in games played, but being out there for my team and performing at a high level.
I will hang my hat on that. And I just ask the American public to look at those three years as something that — as an aberration. I screwed up in those years. I was stupid. I was naive. And ever since I've been doing the right thing and proud of.
His best years were clean? Not by the one measure that steroids seem to affect: home-run power. When it comes to Roidriguez's "peaks and valleys," he's still lying.
ESPN's "Tale of the Tape" info box shows that during the three seasons Roidriguez says he took steroids he averaged 52 home runs a year. In his 10 other seasons, apparently without the muscle-building drugs that helped him and other players hit unusual numbers of homers, he averaged 39.2 homers a year. In other words, steroids apparently helped him increase his home run production by 33 percent. At least we know the drugs do work.
Guess he'll have turn his higher-power lie over to a higher power, too — perhaps Gammons, one of the sportswriters who will decide whether Roidriguez will be blackballed from the Hall of Fame.
If Roidriguez continues to wear sackcloth and obediently go along with the sports establishment, maybe that'll buy him a ticket to Cooperstown.
Otherwise, he'll just have to settle for continuing to fuck Madonna. Advice to Roidriguez: Lay off the steroids.
In "Taliban resurgence pushes troops to change tack,"Al Jazeera's Josh Rushing joins U.S. troops on the frontline in Afghanistan. Watch this and then ask yourself: Why isn't this as freely available on your cable as CNN or Fox News? And yes, you've heard Rushing's name; he's the former Marine flack during the Iraq invasion who was featured in the documentary Control Room and then defied the Pentagon by talking about his experiences with Al Jazeera. Now he works for Al Jazeera.
Unlike Wall Street's short-sellers, I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but capitalism is not dead, despite the moaning and groaning from Davos to D.C.
The International Monetary Fund predicts that the global economy will come to "a virtual halt." No, not yet and not for everybody. For evidence, see "What Red Ink? Wall Street Paid Hefty Bonuses" in the Times:
Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year.
That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday by the New York State comptroller.
While the payouts paled next to the riches of recent years, Wall Street workers still took home about as much as they did in 2004, when the Dow Jones industrial average was flying above 10,000, on its way to a record high.
On the other hand, you can say that capitalism is in trouble, judging by the surprisingly cynical, lively tone of Ben White's above story.
Yes, the fact that the bonuses sharply fell indicates trouble on Wall Street. But the main thing it indicates is that the bonuses in past years have been staggeringly unconscionable and are now falling back to being merely unconscionable.
In any case, Barack Obama, the nation's first Kenyan-Kansan president, has already used his bully pulpit to preach social responsibility and rail against greed. Looks as if he might have to summon these Wall Street gangsters to the basketball court and posterize them. You know, add them to his In-Your-Facebook.
And you can just ignore the caterwauling by Capitol Hill's Republicans about Obama's stimulus plan. Even the Wall Street Journalreports that corporate types look favorably on Obama's package.
For those of us accident victims bleeding after being run over on Wall Street or gasping for breath at the foot of Capitol Hill, that stimulus package can't come too soon. The depression is finally hitting home: I almost dropped my laptop when I heard that profits earned by my Sony baby daddy dropped by 95 percent. Poor little laptop overheats as it is.
If yours still works (and if you're reading this, it is), click on these items...
Astroland Park's popular Rocket won't be blasting out of Coney Island after all. City officials confirmed yesterday that the park's longtime operator, the Albert family, has donated...
Without a single Republican vote, President Obama won House approval for an $819 billion economic plan as Democrats sought to temper their own differences.
It takes a special kind of thief to get Morgy this mad. Manhattan's gentlemanly district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, yesterday needed a pair of profanities to describe a big-shot...
The seven defendants in the deadly assault on Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant, are accused of assaulting or attempting to assault a total of eight other Latino men.
The wealthy Upper West Side woman charged with bilking $80 million from Fortune 500 firms is complaining that she can't live without her Rolex, Warhol and MontBlancs...
George Mitchell, President Barack Obama's special Middle East troubleshooter, was chairman of a law firm that was paid about $8 million representing Dubai's ruler in connection with a child-trafficking lawsuit.
The impact of the $819 billion economic stimulus package will be felt within weeks once the final version becomes law, but estimating its effectiveness is far more complex.
...the bank suddenly began pulling its millions out of [funds that invested with Madoff] in early autumn, months before Mr. Madoff was arrested, according to accounts from Europe and New York that were subsequently confirmed by the bank. The bank did not notify investors of its move, and several of them are furious that it protected itself but left them holding notes that the bank itself now says are probably worthless.
Bernie Madoff is whining to anyone who'll listen that he's being held captive in his palatial penthouse and unable to traipse around the Big Apple as he did before being busted for running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, a source familiar with the scam artist told the Post.
"I'm a prisoner in my own house!" Madoff fumed. "I can't go anywhere! I'm stuck here all day!"...
In recent days, The Post has learned, private contractors have been moving at the request of federal authorities to install wiretaps on Madoff's apartment phones and computers.
"If he surfs the Web or makes a call, it's going to be tracked," a source said.
Traffic is still backed up on Civics 101. What was touted in the web's early days as the "information highway" has become too cluttered with political billboards.
This is not a vast right-wing conspiracy. The blizzard of b.s. is from Barack Obama's embryonic regime.
It's not really a shock. Liberals work just as hard — usually harder — at social-engineering projects, as part of their well-meaning if often misguided attempts to improve people's lives.
There's reason to assume that, in many respects, the new administration will be more open than the Bush-Cheney regime, which, after all, did hatch all sorts of secretive plots and strategies of lies and agitprop, particularly about the Iraq invasion.
But in one basic area, the road from D.C. to the rest of the country, there are so many Obama ads that you can't see the countryside whizzing past, and the view was actually less cluttered by presidential propaganda during the Bush Daze.
I noted this last week, and I'll keep harping on it until the new administration takes down some of its self-promoting signage about "transparent government" and actually delivers transparency.
OK, it's still early days for the Obama regime. But when the Bush regime took over for the Clintonians, there were changes to the whitehouse.gov site, but its core job of providing basic information remained intact.
Yes, you had to cut through the propaganda, but the transcripts, official White House photos of various events, videos of speeches to even nut groups were all there. And, yes, George W. Bush's malaprops were rarely expunged.
Eight years ago, of course, there was no YouTube. Now, government operatives are really into trying to bend the technology and are much more sophisticated about trying to give you what they want you to think you need. That must be why the Obama White House is — so far — less forthcoming with info about the prez's activities than the Bush White House was.
And it's apparently why the new administration is getting all creepy-crawly friendly on us by titling Obama's regular weekly speech "Your Weekly Address."
No, pal, it's yours. Do you have to put a marketing spin on everything?
The country gave it up for you, Obama. Now give it up to us.
Meanwhile, here's some other clutter to click on...
What's shaping up to be the longest and deepest U.S. recession in at least a quarter century may swell the number of Americans collecting jobless benefits by half this year.
Lending at many of the nation's largest banks fell in recent months, even after they received $148 billion in taxpayer capital that was intended to help the economy by making loans more readily available.
...the latest blow to Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish community. Since October, at least four Orthodox Jewish men in the borough have been charged with sexually abusing children.
The wipeout in 401(k)'s has made it clear that there needs to be a better way to ensure that a lifetime of savings can't be undone by forces beyond one's control.
Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's inability to restore confidence in the financial system is creating unprecedented demand for U.S. debt as his successor prepares to sell the most bonds in history.
...Consider Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It. Israeli-born and resident in New York, Ehrenfeld has made a career of following money trails to their murkiest sources and been threatened and sued multiple times for her efforts.
Most recently she became a victim of so-called libel tourism. In Funding Evil, she wrote that a wealthy Saudi Arabian, Khalid bin Mahfouz, had financed terrorist activities. Under U.S. law her well-documented accusation doesn't qualify as libel, so bin Mahfouz sued her in Great Britain.
The book had never been published in Britain or sold in book stores there, but a few copies had been obtained via online sellers. A British judge imposed a fine on Ehrenfeld and said her book should be destroyed.
Jeremy Grantham, the bear who called the tech bubble and stayed out of stocks while the credit bubble inflated, finally sees opportunities in U.S. stocks.
Ruth Madoff and Michelle Schrenker are two lovely women whose husbands have done not so lovely things. As a result, both men are facing federal prison. Bernie Madoff, husband of Ruth Madoff, is facing prison for pulling off the biggest Ponzi heist in Wall Street history. Marcus Schrenker is facing prison for leaving his private plane unmanned and calling in a fake distress signal after defrauding his clients of millions.
Most women's husbands who are facing jail or already in jail, probably haven't done anything quite as exciting as these two particular husbands. But the concerns are the same. What now? Where does she go from there?
Well, all I can say is that in New York, if your husband is going to be incarcerated for more than 3 consecutive years, you can get a divorce on that basis and he does not have to agree to the divorce.
Check out this smarmy explanation by the Obama White House's tech crew of its new website.
Barack Obama's version of the official presidential website, whitehouse.gov, is deeply troubling and downright scary.
So far, it's nothing more than puffery. Even under the Bush-Cheney regime, the site included not only the expected puffery but also easy-to-access news and transcripts and schedules and photos — a record of the presidency, even with George W. Bush's malaprops.
I've e-mailed the site, but have received no response. Seeking explanations elsewhere, I see that the Atlantic's Megan McArdlenoted earlier this week:
You'll be pleased to know that the new site is very smart looking. Unfortunately, that sleekness has been achieved by tucking even more of that unsightly information out of the way, where it won't mar the vista.
Just where it's tucked away is unclear. The fact that it's tucked away is more than annoying; it's a creepy display of propagandizing.
It's refreshing to have a brother in the White House. But Americans didn't elect a Big Brother.
Maybe there's another site that has that basic, necessary presidential info on Obama's White House. There had better be, or all his talk about "transparency" will truly be transparent.
Memo to Obama: Spare me the site's touted "blog" and give us the damn news and info.
Moving on from the government of record to the paper of record: The New York Times is ignoring not only other papers, as usual, but is showing a bald display of excessive ass-kissing of its new sugar daddy, Mexican robber baron Carlos Slim.
Freely admitting that I'm even whinier than usual, I'll point out that it's typical of the New York Times to pretend that other media outlets don't exist: Today's piece "Correction Officers Accused of Letting Inmates Run Rikers Island Jail" is heart-rending in its saga of brutality, but my colleague Graham Raymanbroke the scandal long ago in his slew of "Rikers Island Fight Club" stories.
On the other hand, the Times isn't even promoting its own past stories. The paper's radically altered coverage of its impending bailout by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim shows that the paper knows where its bread is buttered.
The very next month, September 2007, the robber baron started purchasing shares in the Times. [CORRECTION: Actually, Slim didn't start purchasing Times shares until September 2008. Thanks to reader Karl Werner-Bailey (see his comment below) for catching my error. My apologies. My careless error tarnishes, not demolishes, my point, but I have to face the facts that I'm having a bad day.]
Two months later, in December 2007, the paper's ball sack had already ascended out of view — suddenly Carlos Slim was no longer a "robber baron." In "A New Breed of Billionaire,"Landon Thomas Jr. wrote:
The global wealth boom has created a new breed of billionaire in once-destitute countries, and a number of them are using their wealth to push for social changes....
Carlos Slim Helú, the telecommunications entrepreneur in Mexico who is worth more than $50 billion, has pledged billions of dollars to his two foundations that will aid health and education.
In May 2008, the Times revealed in an out-and-out puff piece that Slim isn't another reclusive robber baron but is rather a "shy" guy. From the paper's "When Shakira Calls, Even the Shy Appear":
The Mexican telecommunications billionaire Carlos Slim Helú does not seem to like appearing in public, but he apparently could not resist an invitation from the Colombian pop star Shakira and about a dozen other Latin music stars.
Fast-forward to January 2009, and Carlos Slim is no longer so shy, but he's even more philanthropic: He's about to bail out the financially ailing Times itself, as Andrew Sorkin's "Billionaire Seeks Deal in Times Co." noted:
Carlos Slim Helú, the Mexican billionaire, is near a deal to invest about $250 million in The New York Times Company, helping to shore up the publishing company's struggling finances...
Under the terms of the deal, Mr. Slim, who already owns 6.4 percent of the Times Company, would invest $250 million in the form of 10-year notes with warrants that are convertible into common shares, these people said.
As part of Mr. Slim's investment, which resembles a loan, he is expected to get a special annual dividend, perhaps as high as 10 percent or more on this investment, these people said.
The January 16 Times story, which didn't mention its own earlier portrayal of Slim as a "robber baron" (though other media outlets regularly still mention that critics call him that) admitted that the paper intended to keep the deal hush-hush:
It is unclear what motivated Mr. Slim's investment, first reported by the Wall Street Journal over the weekend. He approached the Times Company in November, people briefed on the discussions said, offering to make a sizable investment. He never sought a governance role and did not express interest in influencing the company's operations, these people said. The talks were intended to be private.
Yeah, the billionaire "seeks deal in Times Co." It's the Times that was desperate for a deal.
You're unlikely to see the paper refer to him as a "robber baron" or "monopolist" these days.
While I place a call to the admirable Mr. Slim to get my own bailout, click on these items...
A delivery van jumped the curb on a bustling Chinatown street yesterday and plowed through a group of preschoolers as they strolled single file holding a walking rope while returning from a library - killing two of the youngsters and critically injuring another. The freak accident occurred at around 11:30 a.m., when the driver of the gray van...
...Under intense pressure from Wall Street to keep subscribers as the economy sags and competition intensifies, many carriers are bent on retaining customers even if it means offering big price breaks.
The dean of discipline at Cardinal Hayes HS has been arrested for allegedly fondling a 19-year-old student in his office, where he purportedly said, "I love you . . . I can take you someplace...
Law enforcement sources said the 25-year Hayes employee took the young man out of a class Jan. 13, and brought him to his office, where he allegedly unzipped the student's pants and began fondling him.
Some major companies are boosting the value of top executives' retirement plans by using a generous formula when converting a pension into a single payment. The practice can increase a pension's value by 10 percent to 40 percent.
New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating Merrill Lynch's eleventh-hour bonus payments....Merrill Lynch executives, led by John Thain, accelerated bonuses to employees before Bank of America could interfere with the payouts...
Cuomo has taken issue with Thain's actions before. Late last year, he criticized Thain's request for a $10 million bonus as "shocking" and wrote a letter of protest to Merrill Lynch's directors....
Mayor Bloomberg blasted Gov. Paterson's $121 billion budget proposal as "unfair" and "outrageous" yesterday, and said its cuts would result in tax hikes and...
As the credit crisis has worsened, more seniors have turned to federally insured reverse mortgages to tap home equity and, in some cases, to prevent foreclosure.
While still a very small share of the borrowing market, demand for these mortgages climbed in 2008 as credit tightened and retirement savings plunged. The market is expected to grow significantly as loan amounts increase and baby boomers with inadequate savings tap their home equity to fund retirement. Consumer groups, however, warn that fees are high and the cash sometimes is misused.
Here's one guy you wouldn't want to face on Iron Chef! A hot-blooded sushi chef got so mad during a road-rage incident on Staten Island Wednesday that he whipped out his...
Federal Reserve officials are likely next week to stick closely to their approach for handling the financial crisis, despite internal divisions about some of their tactics.
Federal agents raided two small Pennsylvania defense contractors that were given millions of dollars in federal funding by Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the defense appropriations committee and one of the most powerful men in Congress.
New York Times Co. is nearing a deal to sell a portion of its Midtown Manhattan headquarters in the latest of a string of recent efforts to reduce its debt load....
Times Co. has $1.1 billion in debt and $46 million in cash and a substantial amount of debt maturing over the next couple of years. With print advertising declines accelerating across all newspapers, Times Co. has been forced to consider a number of options to free up cash.
The company in November cut its dividend by 75% and is trying to sell its stake in the company that owns the Boston Red Sox and the team's Fenway Park. Earlier this week Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim agreed to invest $250 million in the company in return for senior unsecured notes with detachable warrants convertible into common stock.
Chrysler and Fiat both showed signs of trouble days after announcing an alliance. Fiat said its debt soared and Chrysler disclosed costly sales incentives.
You won't find the word "war" in this morning's lede story in the New York Times on Israel's bombardment and invasion of Gaza.
Is the Times afraid of offending New York's Jews, especially the right-wing Jewish establishment? Is it fearful of provoking a slew of accusations from that hawkish establishment that the paper is antisemitic? Probably.
But that's nuts. The word pops up several times in the city's main Jewish newspaper, the Daily Forward, which is definitely not a lefty publication.
For example, the Forward's lede story this morning is from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (the Chosen People's wire service), for whom Dina Kraft writes:
Just as in the summer of 2006, when the northern part of the country huddled in bomb shelters during the Second Lebanon War and the rest of the country carried on with its business, a new war has come that affects Israelis — at least in part — according to geography.
Practically all of the U.S. mainstream press goes through gyrations to avoid calling what's going on in the Middle East a "war."
That's why if you want to read the un-P.C. skinny about the current war between Arabs and Jews and about the complex, murky, often slimy world of American-Israeli politics, you have to read the Forward. Or at least the press in other countries.
Depending on your political or gastronomic persuasion, order another bagel or sfiha and click on these stories...
A high-ranking Israeli delegation was scheduled to arrive in Egypt to discuss the possibilities of a cease-fire in the Jewish state's 12-day assault on the Gaza Strip.
Online personality tests have helped retailers to automate hiring. But the tests are also creating a culture of cheating and raising questions about their fairness.
Department of Labor, please hold. A rush of out-of-work New Yorkers overwhelmed the state's unemployment system yesterday, forcing the program's automated phone banks and...
...Public campaigns have been launched on behalf of Jonathan Pollard, the Navy analyst who was sent to jail for spying on behalf of Israel, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a leading neoconservative and former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney. Jewish philanthropist and former junk-bond king Michael Milken had his application for pardon submitted by Washington bigwig Ted Olsen.
Satyam Computer Services Ltd. Chairman B. Ramalinga Raju Wednesday resigned admitting to falsifying company accounts and inflating revenue and profit figures over several years, sending the company's shares plunging 78%.....
Satyam's clients include General Electric Co., General Motors Corp., Nissan Motor Co., Applied Materials Inc., Caterpillar Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Sony Corp.
Forty-five percent of Americans want Gov. Paterson to name Caroline Kennedy to replace Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to a poll released yesterday.
Ten days before his arrest, Bernard Madoff received $250 million from a man who helped give him his start on Wall Street, a move that shows how the investment manager tried to raise cash to stave off his firm's collapse.
Mr. Madoff received $250 million around Dec. 1 from Carl Shapiro, a 95-year-old Palm Beach, Fla., philanthropist and entrepreneur who is one of Mr. Madoff's oldest friends and biggest financial backers, according to people familiar with the matter.
Former SEC exec Meaghan Cheung, who oversaw a 2006 probe of swindler Bernard Madoff's firm, defended herself yesterday against claims that she and others blew it by not uncovering his huge...
New York University lost as much as $94 million when a hotshot money manager, against the school's wishes, invested the cash with swindler Bernie Madoff, its lawyers told a judge yesterday...
Your own private Idaho.
When you can no longer afford even a night out in Boise, Idaho, your country's in deep financial trouble.
In a clever immorality tale about 21st century capitalism, the Wall Street Journal tells us this morning that people in the Intermountain West are having to give up meet and potatoes. Like many other families throughout the country, the average-American Capp and Muir families have had to stop spending and start saving.
No more nights out in downtown Boise. The Capps now have to stick close to their suburban home. But — the bad news keeps piling up — they've had to sacrifice cable TV! And they have teenagers in the house! (Memo to the parents: If you can't afford to put meat on the table, at least serve your kids Robot Chicken.)
Don't feel sorry for these hinterland families. The fact that they're desperately trying to save their money, instead of going into more debt, spells doom for the rest of us. By trying to extricate themselves from their own mess, they're just making it worse for all of us...and for themselves. Screwy, huh? Here's the explanation, per Evans's story:
As layoffs and store closures grip Boise, these two local families hope their newfound frugality will see them through the economic downturn. But this same thriftiness, embraced by families across the U.S., is also a major reason the downturn may not soon end. Americans, fresh off a decadeslong buying spree, are finally saving more and spending less — just as the economy needs their dollars the most.
Usually, frugality is good for individuals and for the economy. Savings serve as a reservoir of capital that can be used to finance investment, which helps raise a nation's standard of living. But in a recession, increased saving -- or its flip side, decreased spending -- can exacerbate the economy's woes. It's what economists call the "paradox of thrift."
It's more like a "Cash-22." I mean, you finally start acting responsibly, saving money instead of piling up even more outrageous credit-card debt and purchasing gizmos and gewgaws that relentless advertising has brainwashed you into lusting after, and that's bad for you, your family, and the country? More from Evans:
U.S. household debt, which has been growing steadily since the Federal Reserve began tracking it in 1952, declined for the first time in the third quarter of 2008. In the same quarter, U.S. consumer spending growth declined for the first time in 17 years.
That has resulted in a rise in the personal saving rate, which the government calculates as the difference between earnings and expenditures. In recent years, as Americans spent more than they earned, the personal saving rate dipped below zero. Economists now expect the rate to rebound to 3% to 5%, or even higher, in 2009, among the sharpest reversals since World War II.
The truth is that our economy demands that you continue acting like suckers by trying to live beyond your means. And when you stop being a sucker — like when you're laid off and you don't have a choice because you have to start saving your money to pay your bills and plan for the hard times — then you're blamed for not being a good citizen.
Oh well, Wall Street's worse-than-usual greed may have caused this problem, but we New Yorkers can be part of the solution. Bailouts of Wall Street haven't worked, so why not try to rescue some other downtowns?
Road trip to Boise!
Now that you know that the real goniffs are yourselves instead of people like Bernie Madoff, you're free to click on the following news items...
As European diplomats sought a cease-fire, Israeli troops poured into Gaza City, expelling residents and shooting militants. Meanwhile, Israeli troops suffered casualties from so-called "friendly fire."
New Yorkers who consume five or more drinks in one sitting face increased risk of HIV and other STDs, according to a new study from the city Department of Health.
Though never charged with a crime, Muhammad Saad Iqbal spent six years in American custody, during which he says he was secretly taken to Egypt and tortured.
A JetBlue passenger who was forced to cover up a T-shirt that read, "We will not be silent" in Arabic and English before boarding a cross-country flight won a $240,000 settlement from...
Patrick Littaye, 69, [co-founder of Access International Advisors,] invested all of his own money with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC last year, enticed by the firm's positive returns as other hedge funds slumped. His error was compounded because he borrowed money to increase the return on his investment, leaving him with $4 million in personal debts, Littaye said in telephone interviews from Jan. 2 through Jan. 4. He declined to specify the amount he had lost.
"I'm going to sell everything I have and start over," Littaye said from Brussels, adding that he planned to subsist on his French social security payments. "For Access, we'll go to our investors over the next couple of weeks and we'll see what they think of us."
Littaye's partner, Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, chose a different course. The 65-year-old co-founder and chief executive officer of Access was found dead Dec. 23 at his office in New York. Villehuchet killed himself after it became clear he wouldn't be able to recover the funds he and his clients invested with Madoff...
The sons of Bernard Madoff, who is accused of orchestrating a massive Ponzi scheme, told prosecutors last week that their father violated a court-ordered asset freeze by mailing them jewelry, watches and other items, his lawyer said.
In a further sign of the sheer enormity of Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme, on Monday a count-appointed trustee announced it had mailed claim forms to 8,000 former customers--an irate army of investors that is still only a fraction of the total number who may have been defrauded.
Who would have guessed that, with the end of the disastrous Bush regime in sight, we would have been so gloomy on New Year's Eve 2008?
You'd think this would be a time of celebration, or at least some happy whistling to ourselves as we sweep out Dick Cheney's accumulated droppings from the past eight years.
But the dropping's not done, and the deepest suffering is yet to come, as the fallout from Wall Street's wreckage turns from flurries tonight on Times Square into a blizzard next year throughout the country.
Global warning: It's hot in the Middle East, where bombs are dropping on Gaza (with Mayor Mike Bloomberg's support). And, to put it mildly, it's intemperate elsewhere: Aside from the numerous places like the auto junkyard in Detroit, builders and contractors will soon be dropping even those skilled workers who never drop tools. At this rate, things will be so bad by next Christmas that even Jesus's dad wouldn't be able to get a carpentry gig.
The shakes aren't typically a warning sign of an onrushing depression, but everybody's got them, especially bosses. The city's dropping Snapple from its vending machines, and one of Mike Bloomberg's aides is dropping his feverish P.R. campaign to give Princess Caroline Kennedy
the vacant Senate seat. (See the Post's "MIKE'S AIDE COOLING HIS CAROLINE PUSH."
A whole lotta droppin' goin' on. As usual, few of those who are dropping the ball aren't themselves getting dropped.
And then there are those millions of Americans who wish that Bernie Madoff would simply drop dead. If it does happen, I hope it's on my watch.
Now it turns out, as the Madoff yarn keeps unraveling, that his outrageous behavior is dearly costing a slew of organizations like Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First (see this Bloomberg list), in addition to the big and small charities we already knew about.
So, Happy New Year to civil libertarians everywhere!
Madoff's not the only source of grief. Many journalists are being dropped every day — prompting a jeremiad (in both senses of the word) for Nat Hentoff, a modern-day Jeremiah who I'm pretty sure was a contemporary of the prophet himself. (For Hentoff, I'll drop an IBM Selectric typeball tonight in Times Square; it's the most I can do.)
Whatever you drop, hang onto your laptop. You need it to click on these stories ...
YouTube has removed videos that the Israeli army posted as part of a public relations effort to rally world opinion behind its operation in Gaza.
On December 29, the IDF began posting videos of its aerial strikes. The rationale was that it wanted to support the claim that it is not targeting civilians, but rather Hamas targets -- especially rockets destined for Israel.
You go, Equinox! A Manhattan judge has let the gym chain off the hook in a lawsuit over an infamous spin class that went bad when one spinner attacked another for grunting and yelling things ...
Macy's Inc., Gannett Co. and New York Times Co.'s attempts to prop up their stocks with debt- funded buybacks have left them saddled with higher borrowing costs as they work to pay off loans.
Don't worry if you've been laid off, your kid's school has closed, your neighborhood's community center has had to shut down, your bank (revitalized by your tax money) is pestering you to turn over your home, the prices of booze and cigarettes have gone up again, subway fares are soaring, you couldn't afford to buy more than lumps of coal for your Christmas stocking, Bernie Madoff stole your gelt.
The local rags reported the great news as breathlessly as any hometown hack hinterlands newspaper would. From the Daily News:
In bagging free agents Teixeira, CC Sabathia, and A.J. Burnett, the Yankees have committed a guaranteed $423.5 million to those three contracts at a cost that will average $62 million a year. ...
Teixeira's contract pays him $22.5 million a year and includes a $5 million signing bonus as well as a no-trade clause. Together with Sabathia, Alex Rodriguez, and Derek Jeter, the Yankees have the four highest-paid players in baseball.
Rodriguez will make $32 million this year and (for now) gets to fuck Madonna.
You — and ordinary New Yorkers like you — helped make it all possible with hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies and free land. Take some pride in that. Even if you can't afford tickets to the games. Give yourself a pat on the back.
You also made New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon happy; the Mets got public money for their new stadium, making it possible for them to afford their new players.
But Wilpon wasn't as lucky as Alex Rodriguez. Fred got fucked, but it was Bernie Madoff who turned the trick and it cost Fred $500 million.
Aside from that, more good news for the rich people you subsidize: If you're one of those people who rents from city slumlord Isaac Toussie, raise a toast to him: George W. Bush just granted him a pardon.
Put a bucket under those drips and click on these ...
A Gallup editor punctures a religion bubble at the New York Times. ...
Ordinarily when the Times traffics in a trend story, it indemnifies itself by quoting a skeptic on the other side of the issue or it tosses off a "to be sure" paragraph noting the weakness of its anecdotal evidence. Not here. Given this leap of faith, let's hope the Times isn't looking into the existence of Santa Claus. Imagine the headline: "Despite Naysayers, Hundreds of Millions Believe in St. Nick."
A sharper picture is emerging about the investigation into the alleged fraud by Madoff, how it evolved to ensnare bigger clients and how long it went on. ...
A former securities broker was charged yesterday with helping disgraced lawyer Marc Dreier trick hedge-fund managers into making more than $380 million in bogus investments, authorities said.
Kosta Kovachev, who lost his broker's license after being implicated in a time-share Ponzi scheme, is accused of impersonating various real-estate execs as part of Dreier's elaborate scam to sell hedge funds phony promissory notes, according to the feds.
Kovachev, 57, and Dreier reportedly sneaked into the Manhattan offices of Solow Realty to meet with hedge-fund representatives in October. During that meeting, Kovachev pretended to be the company's controller, according to a Manhattan federal court complaint.
Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet was found sitting at his desk at about 8 a.m. with both wrists slashed ... A box cutter was found on the floor along with a bottle of sleeping pills on his desk. No suicide note was found. ...
His fund enlisted intermediaries with links to the cream of Europe's high society to garner clients.
Among them was Philippe Junot, a French businessman and friend who is the former husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco.
De la Villehuchet, the former chairman and chief executive of Credit Lyonnais Securities, also was known as a keen sailor who regularly participated in regattas and was a member of the New York Yacht Club.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver yesterday strongly suggested that Gov. Paterson reject Hillary Rodham Clinton's replacement - because she might be more loyal to Mayor Bloomberg than to the governor.
Only three shopping days 'til Depression. But no need to hurry as in years past because you may have already been laid off, so have that second cup of coffee before you head off to longingly press your noses against those store windows.
If you still have a job, it probably won't matter if you take off from work (because you're probably not going to have your job much longer anyway) to grab that new bauble for your spouse (because diamonds are forever).
Let's face it: You're fucked. (No really, Xmas season is the peak time of mating.)
Anyway, this could be your last chance to get that plasma TV. Next year you could be at the blood bank cashing in your plasma just to put food on the table.
Bernard Madoff's investors have lost everything, but his son and daughter-in-law seemed without a care in the world yesterday as they dashed around SoHo on a holiday shopping spree.
Andrew Madoff, 42, who worked with brother Mark at their dad's now-failed financial firm, still drives around in a BMW SUV to do his holiday shopping, loading up with purchases from J.Crew, Longchamp, Kidrobot and other tony stores in SoHo.
Andrew and wife Deborah, 41, who live on the Upper East Side, also shopped at American Eagle and a high-end lamp store, and checked out the windows at Vera Wang.
No word on whether the couple also went shopping for a shiny, new Ponzi to give to their dad. Take us for a ride, Bernie!
Already going for a spin at our expense is Governor David Paterson, who went to Iraq to "spread holiday cheer" to the troops, as the Daily Newsreports.
WTF is he doing in Iraq!? He has no say on decisions concerning the war. Some government is paying for that trip. The Daily Newssez:
Paterson, joined by Reps. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn, Queens) and Steve Israel (D-L.I.), arrived in Iraq with Yankees and Mets baseball caps for the soldiers.
He said he came to thank them for their service but wound up being "overwhelmed" by their appreciation in return.
It's bad enough that the two congressmen are over there for no practical purpose. But while tens of thousands of New Yorkers and other Americans are standing on line for the first time to collect food stamps and other dwindling social services, Paterson's collecting good wishes from the troops? We know that pols live for applause, but WTF!?
Rank-and-file investors, who likely account for half or more of all U.S. stock holdings, are losing faith in stocks just as in past, long market downturns. Investors withdrew an estimated $72 billion from stock funds overall in October.
Ramazan Baydan, owner of the Istanbul-based Baydan Shoe Company, has been swamped with orders from across the world, after insisting that his company produced the black leather shoes which the Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi threw at Bush during a press conference in Baghdad last Sunday.
Baydan has recruited an extra 100 staff to meet orders for 300,000 pairs of Model 271 - more than four times the shoe's normal annual sale - following an outpouring of support for Zaidi's act, which was intended as a protest, but led to his arrest by Iraqi security forces.
Maybe it wasn't the "Finest" idea. Two identity thieves ripped off cops at a Brooklyn station house after they got hold of a 15-year-old personnel roster and used the information ...
With the naming of 'the best basketball-playing cabinet in American history,' hoops madness is hitting Washington. But don't count out the bowling lobby.
A group of Japanese journalists, professors and lawyers demanded Friday that the US Internet search giant Google scrap its "Street View" service in Japan, saying it violates people's privacy. ... The service was expanded to 12 major cities in Japan in August and six cities in France in October. ...
The Google Japanese unit earlier said it was blurring the faces of people seen in Street View scenes by special technology and that it would delete the pictures of people and buildings upon request.
Japan has stricter protections on privacy in public than in the United States, with Japanese able to stop their pictures from being used against their will.
"When you talk to Arabs they talk about the American media, they say American media is synonymous with Fox.
"Well, no, American media is not synonymous with Fox. And great things are published by the American media. Great things are published by the American media. The American media covered the Shabra and Shatila massacres in a more dignified professional way than all the Arab media put together. Make no mistake."
Vice President Cheney offered an unabashed defense of the Bush administration's claims of broad executive powers today, mocking criticism from Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and saying the president "doesn't have to check with anybody" before launching a nuclear attack.
Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals. ...
The total amount given to nearly 600 executives would cover bailout costs for many of the 116 banks that have so far accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines.
CRISIS-HIT bank HBOS came under attack yesterday after rewarding 100 branch managers with an all-expenses paid trip to New York.
The four-day holiday - which includes tickets for their partners and spending money - comes weeks after taxpayers bailed out the bank with £11.5 billion.
The managers are being rewarded for hitting performance targets - in a year that ended with the bank facing collapse.
Paul Weyrich, called by some the founding father of the religious right, is dead at the age of 66.
America is fortunate that Weyrich was born too late, because what he could have done with the Internet, oh Jesus!
The D.C.-based Weyrich has been out of the mainstream news for years now, but he was a very big deal before and during the Reagan era's Great Leap Backward. In those glory days, he was a combination of cruise director and mailroom supervisor for the religious right, a behind-the-scenes guy who liked to think of himself as a thinker.
Energetic and argumentative, Weyrich was known, especially to himself, as someone who was right about every issue. He spent his whole life networking with others to prove it.
Before everybody went web-mad, Weyrich was exploring every opportunity to fight God's battles electronically. Take a look at my February 1994 story "Passing on the Right: Conservative strategists gear up for the information highway." Miraculously, you can find the long, long ago piece online. (You can tell how old the story is by my incessant use of the phrase "information highway," for which I apologize.)
Writing at the time for the Denver alt weekly Westword, I stumbled upon a coven of religious-right folk having some embryonic satellite broadcasts beamed into their brains by one of Weyrich's creations: an electronic conservative video/TV network.
I talked with Weyrich at some length about his new network — it sounded staggeringly boring and wonky. Here's how I started the piece, which was only slightly less so:
The information highway begins with a sharp right turn just outside Windsor. From the roof of the Windsor Center, a small office building on the edge of this farm town fifty miles north of Denver, your brain will board a parabolic dish paid for by beer prince Jeffrey Coors and travel 23,000 miles above the planet to an orbiting satellite.
An instant later you will beam back down to Earth and the Washington, D.C., studios of National Empowerment Television, the newborn brainchild of former Denver newsman Paul M. Weyrich, who years ago coined the term "Moral Majority" for Jerry Falwell.
Many people will remember Weyrich for his having founded — with millions in beer money from Coors — the Heritage Foundation.
I'll remember him for producing some really bad TV.
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