Why Bloomberg Will Never Run For President, Too

He warns people that we may see Hoovervilles return to Central Park:

Housing in Central Park?

It’s not out of the question if disaster strikes and the city finds itself desperate to find homes for thousands of displaced residents, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday as he announced a design competition for long-term emergency shelter.

“Clearly, in an emergency, rather than let people sleep on the streets, you would do that,” the mayor said.

If There Are Fishermen, You Open A Bait Store — It Makes Sense To Go Where The Business Is

And everyone knows that teens love sex — they just tend to be a little cheap when it comes to paying for it, which is why sometimes you need to entice them:

Teens at a Lower East Side high school were getting their sex education outside the classroom after being targeted by pimps who lured them to a nearby brothel and enticed them with cut-rate romps, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.

The brothel, at 39 Eldridge St., was recently shut down by NYPD vice cops following complaints from outraged parents who learned that their sons at Pace HS across the street were targeted by the sleazy operators, the sources said.

Police sources said that a pingpong hall was a front for the whorehouse in the back of the establishment, and that it was run by Benjie Zheng, 47, who lived a few blocks away, and Ming Liuchang, 48, of Queens.

The men would try to lure students to the Robo-Pong Training Center by distributing business cards outside the school, sources said. The cards were printed only with a contact number, an image of a topless woman — and a word, “Good.”

Zheng and Liuchang allegedly recruited immigrant women off the street to peddle flesh in hidden rooms at the center, whose hours were posted on a sign adorned with rulers and pencils and the words “School Days.”

. . .

The rates were apparently designed to attract students who might not have wanted to wait until prom night.

“It was obvious that they were targeting young students, because the prices were so low,” said one disgusted police official, adding, “Most brothels charge at least $100.”

Ah Choo! I Feel Soo Congested . . .

First museums, then cars, then the subway and now airplanes:

New Yorkers by next summer could be paying higher airfares and have access to fewer flights, as the Federal Aviation Administration says it is eyeing congestion pricing and a cap on flights arriving and departing from John F. Kennedy International Airport in an effort to reduce crippling airline delays.

Responding to a summer marked by the worst flight delays since the FAA started keeping records in 1995, President Bush said yesterday there is “a lot of anger amongst our citizens” about unreliable flight schedules.

Mr. Bush has asked his secretary of transportation, Mary Peters, to convene a task force of airline executives and officials from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to make recommendations on how to reduce air traffic delays at JFK and throughout the New York region. The group is to issue recommendations by the end of 2007.

Airlines could be charged steeper fees to land their planes during peak hours, which could work as an incentive to steer more flights into off-peak slots, Ms. Peters said. Airlines would be expected to pass on the extra costs to customers.

This Is Just Killing His Chances . . .

Exciting because it’s been a while since I’ve thought about “Kill it!”:

The federal government is suing Bloomberg L.P., the financial services and media giant founded by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, saying the company engaged in a pattern of discrimination against women after they became pregnant and took maternity leave.

In the suit, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charges that female employees at Bloomberg were demoted and had their pay cut after they disclosed that they were pregnant.

In some cases, managers questioned the women’s ability to carry out their work because of their family responsibilities, according to the suit, which was filed in United States District Court in Manhattan yesterday.

. . .

The discrimination is said to have occurred after Mr. Bloomberg became mayor in 2002, and though he remains the majority shareholder of the firm, company officials stressed yesterday that he had not been involved in its day-to-day operations since early 2001.

The case could be damaging to the mayor, however, as he seeks to boost his national profile and flirts with a presidential bid. In a similar case, Mr. Bloomberg was sued in 1997 by a sales executive who claimed that after she became pregnant, Mr. Bloomberg urged her to have an abortion, telling her, “Kill it!” and saying sarcastically, “Great! Number 16,” apparently referring to the number of pregnant women at the company. Mr. Bloomberg adamantly denied any wrongdoing and settled the case out of court for an undisclosed amount.

This Is When Things Start To Get Shakespearean

Fame, power and inevitable recriminations:

This should be a moment to savor for the venerable Latin food vendors of the Red Hook soccer fields in Brooklyn.

With help from well-placed allies and the passionate advocacy of their media-wise organizer, the vendors — lately a cause célèbre for pro-immigrant groups, free-market cheerleaders and gastrobloggers alike — recently won an extension of their operating season and an inside track on permanent status for the open-air multinational food court they have run on a temporary basis since the 1970s.

But just as they get ready for a difficult winter-long effort to comply with the city health code while preparing a formal bid for the concession rights, the vendors find themselves a family deeply divided over questions of leadership, money and less tangible issues.

In the last three weeks, the group’s organizer and public face, Cesar Fuentes, resigned as its day-to-day operator, threatened to sue vendors who spoke against him, threatened to quit representing them in city negotiations, then agreed to return, after all the vendors signed a petition on Wednesday avowing their “total support” and asking him to stay.

. . .

. . . Ricardo Ramirez, who helps run the largest stand, said that vendors felt that Mr. Fuentes acted as if he was not accountable.

“We want to know where the money goes,” Mr. Ramirez said last week. “How much he pays for insurance, how much he pays the workers who clean up. But when we talk to Cesar and ask him these things, he gets mad.”

Several vendors said they blamed Mr. Fuentes’s publicity efforts for attracting the attention of the city’s regulators, something they found particularly annoying because the resultant influx of non-Hispanic customers has been offset by a drop in Latino customers. “Business is the same,” Ms. Carrillo said. “But now there’s more problems.”

Mr. Fuentes said that he had provided the vendors with an accounting, and that the salary he pays himself — $20 per vendor per day, a total of $560 per weekend from the 14 vendors — was justified by his work.

Early this month, the vendors met without Mr. Fuentes. At the meeting, Esperanza Ochoa, a supporter of Mr. Fuentes who runs a Guatemalan stand and attended the meeting, said, some vendors spoke of keeping Mr. Fuentes around long enough to help them win the parks concession, then deposing him.

It was that meeting, Mr. Fuentes said, that prompted his resignation.

Location Scout: Red Hook Ballfields.