Things your lawyers don’t want a jury to hear include “So I killed someone — that makes me a bad guy?”:

Murder suspect Keith Phoenix confessed to the hate-crime slaying of Jose Sucuzhanay with these shockingly callous words: “So I killed someone — that makes me a bad guy?”

Police sources said Phoenix showed no remorse for beating the 31-year-old victim in the mistaken belief he was gay because he was walking arm-in-arm with his brother.

“He kept saying, ‘What’s the big deal? The guy’s dead,’” a police source said.

We wanted you to exist, which is of course why you exist:

It’s not that there’s no truth in it. Megan and I exist. That’s like saying David Sedaris’s life never happened

If you want to create a pedestrian mall, then by all means, create a pedestrian mall — people should drive less and walk more — Yay! Woohoo! — you just made Gary Numan cry again! But if you do create a pedestrian mall, please, please, please don’t call it a “traffic congestion reducing measure,” because closing streets cannot possibly reduce congestion — no matter how much you want to repeat the lie:

The city plans to close several blocks of Broadway to vehicle traffic through Times Square and Herald Square, an experiment that would turn swaths of the Great White Way into pedestrian malls and continue Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s effort to reduce traffic congestion in Midtown.

A new X factor in political polling emerges in the wake of the Groundhog Day Uprising:

Staten Island Chuck was merely defending his turf when he chomped on Mayor Bloomberg’s finger, according to a poll out Wednesday.

A Quinnipiac poll shows that 61% of New Yorkers believe Chuck was protecting his home, while 15% say the feisty groundhog was making a political statement.

Proving that Brooklyn is all things to all people — including but not limited to pizza, perfume and baby names — it is now also an incubator for a culinary-minded generation whose idea of fun is learning how to make something delicious and finding a way to sell it.

Read: Who am I kidding? I just wrote down $3 billion in debt* on my newspaper operations . . . we need all the advertisers we can get:

As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me.

Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.

Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you — without a doubt — that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such.

*

Things you enjoy reading on a morning when it is revealed that the MTA budget is in even worse shape than once thought include the debut of the Robo L Train and the transit authority’s novel new system for making sure train conductors are actually at work:

Robo train finally shed its training wheels and took to the rails.

. . .

Communications Based Train Control will enable NYC Transit to run trains closer together, more frequently, and safer than the current antiquated signal system allows, said Associate Project Manager Anthony Candarini.

“It is more efficient. It makes the trains faster and safer because the computer sensors can see things that the motormen can’t,” said Candarini.

. . .

The train began its historic run at the Eight Avenue and 14th Street station at 12:22. The train picked up speed and navigated the turns without losing speed.

“The future has arrived and it feels weird,” said Natasha Fletcher, 22, a student from Canarsie as she enjoyed the smooth ride.

. . .

The MTA had wanted to remove conductors from trains in automatic mode but had to back off because the move violated the transit workers’ contract.

The motormen working the Brooklyn-Manhattan line remained on board, pushing down on a button every fifteen seconds to ensure that they are alert in the event that any problems arise.

But it’s not so much that the executive of the nonprofit gets such a generous car allowance as it is the culture in which being driven around in a fancy car somehow encourages people to donate more money:

Three weeks after the Staten Island Zoo reported it had cut overtime for staffers, a move that could affect the quality of care for animals, and planned to hike admission prices by $1 to mitigate budget cuts, executive director John Caltabiano leased a brand new 2009 Lincoln MXZ sedan, paid for by the Staten Island Zoological Society.

A 39-month lease on such a car goes for about $359 a month with $3,000 down.

“This is not a frivolous expenditure,” Caltabiano said during an interview in his West Brighton office, explaining that his choice of the Lincoln actually reflects a cost savings to the society; his first choice, a Cadillac CTS, would have cost $175 more a month.

The cost of the car lease is covered as part of Caltabiano’s fixed annual expense account, which he is contractually entitled to along with his salary, which was $100,397 in 2007. The society also pays to insure the car, and covers gas and tolls.

Zoo board president William Frew said the expense money is Caltabiano’s to spend as he sees fit.

“That’s in his discretion,” Frew said. “If he chooses to lease a car, it’s up to him. That means he has less money to spend on other things.”

Frew pointed out that Caltabiano’s job, like most executives, entails being on call around the clock, and requires entertaining wealthy potential donors and driving them to and from meetings and events, which is why a luxury car would be an asset in that line of work.

“More than one third of my time is used for fund-raising,” Caltabiano said. “The vehicle is one means by which I do that.”

Maybe a recession wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to us . . .

I’m hoping this means we can stop worrying about traffic congestion and asthma rates until at least the third quarter of 2009:

A traffic recession is triggering a precipitous drop at the MTA’s crossings, costing the cash-strapped agency a staggering $55 million a year in tolls, statistics show.

“In the last three months, we’ve seen a large drop. That period is when the economy got especially bad,” Dave Moretti, an executive with MTA Bridges and Tunnels, recently told an agency board committee.

Even slumping gas prices aren’t helping, he added, calling the cheaper fuel “questionable as to how much of a stimulus it provides” in boosting traffic and tolls.

End of the world scenarios, now with added earthquakes:

The trio of earthquakes that surprised New Jersey over the past month has seismologists wondering what’s next — and they say it doesn’t look good.

They call the geological fault lines crisscrossing Manhattan a perfect storm for a temblor that could topple older buildings, cause billions of dollars in damages and kill people citywide.

New York has survived at least three quakes measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale, but two of them hit back in the 1700s and the other centered on Coney Island in 1884, toppling chimneys.

The city should expect a jolt like that last one every 100 years, the experts warn — which means we’re overdue. Jersey’s recent baby quakes, which caused no damage and failed to rise above 3.0 in magnitude, may have been warning shots, they say.

A 6.0-magnitude quake could cause as much as $200 billion in damages, according to a 2003 study by the New York City Area Consortium for Earthquake Loss Mitigation.

Tony, we’re trying here but you have to come up with something better than this:

Mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner — in his zest to champion middle class issues — chose a convicted felon who killed two priests to highlight child support issues.

Lisa Bongiorno appeared with Weiner at a Jan. 25 news conference where he announced his opposition to a new $25 state fee to help parents collect child support.

She was the perfect poster mom, except for one thing.

Bongiorno had been convicted of vehicular manslaughter in the deaths of two Greek Orthodox priests, the Revs. Germanos Stavropoulos, 51, and Dimitrios Frangos, 81.

She was high on angel dust and behind the wheel in March 1994 when she lost control of her Chevrolet Caprice and plowed into the priests’ car.

The men, who were stopped at a Queens traffic light, were killed on impact. Bongiorno, a legal secretary at the time, was sentenced to two to six years in prison. She was released in 1999.

The Howard Beach single mom told the Daily News she didn’t tell Weiner’s staff about her past.

You know you need to get off the island when the subways start talking to you:

Just when the train is starting, as if the cars were screeching, “There’s a place.”

. . .

Once heard, it is unmistakable: an echo of “Somewhere” that rises from the ceaseless tide of shrieks and moans in the subways.

A revival of “West Side Story” begins previews next week, but this little piece of it has been playing nonstop beneath Broadway since 2000, when new cars began rolling with an innovative propulsion system. Most of them are on the 2, 4 and 5 lines, and fresh audiences arrive daily.

. . .

The sound is a fluke. Newer trains run on alternating current, but the third rail delivers direct current; inverters chop it into frequencies that can be used by the alternating current motors, said Jeff Hakner, a professor of electrical engineering at Cooper Union. The frequencies excite the steel, he said, which — in the case of the R142 subway cars — responds by singing “Somewhere.” Inverters on other trains run at different frequencies and thus are not gifted with such a recognizable song.

The playwright Tony Kushner told New York magazine last year that it was his favorite New York noise. Riders often ask transit officials about it, and readers still write to the City section of The Times to report their discovery.

Nice:

The Yankees are getting a new stadium, but some of their most loyal fans are getting the shaft.

Hundreds of full- and partial-season ticket holders got word Friday they aren’t getting the seats — or packages — they requested in the Bombers’ new digs.

. . .

“I wanted to have seats comparable to what I had before, near the first base line. They told me I was high on the list. Then they put me in these horrible seats by the foul pole line and told me I should be grateful.”

A Brooklyn fan, who asked to remain anonymous because he’s still trying to snag season tickets, said he, too, didn’t get the seats he asked for.

“These are the real Yankee fans,” he said. “They’ll bend over backward for the big corporations, but not for regular guys like me.”

Another disappointed fan — a partial-season ticket holder — said he was prepared to shell out more dough for worse seats because he loves the Yankees and he knows a new stadium means higher prices.

“I specifically requested a weekend package because that’s what I had before and that’s when I can see the games,” he said. “They offered me a weekday package and basically said take it or leave it.”

Mayor Bloomberg wants $45 million to retrain employees who are probably the least likely to trust government job training programs:

Just as Michigan is scrambling to retrain laid-off auto workers, New York City officials have come up with a plan to find new work for the unemployed from one of its core industries: financial services.

Under a program unveiled on Wednesday by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the city wants to invest $45 million in government money to retrain investment bankers, traders and others who have lost jobs on Wall Street, as well as provide seed capital and office space for new businesses those laid-off bankers might create.

The plan is intended to stem a potential exodus of banking professionals from the city during the restructuring of the financial services industry, which has been the city’s economic engine for decades, and to speed the industry’s recovery, which will take at least several years, officials said.

. . .

The mayor announced the 11-part program at a building at 160 Varick Street that will house an incubator for start-up companies that might employ laid-off professionals. Trinity Real Estate donated the space for three years and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University will select the entrepreneurs who will occupy the space, beginning in April. A second business incubator is scheduled to open in Lower Manhattan later in the year, said Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation.

The agency plans to put $3 million into funds to make small investments in start-up companies, Mr. Pinsky said. He said that he hoped to attract twice as much money from private investors and that $9 million would be enough to help start hundreds of new businesses.

All told, city officials plan to spend about $15 million on the program, in addition to the $30 million of federal money. They estimate that over 10 years, it could stimulate the creation of at least 25,000 jobs and contribute $750 million to the local economy, but Mr. Bloomberg referred to those projections as a “guess.”

*And think of how many housing project roofs or elevators that could be fixed with $45 million . . .

The wicked cult of trees will stop at nothing to get its way:

A plan to plant a million trees is being met with opposition from homeowners not in the loop on where they are planted.

Under the city initiative, a property owner’s consent is not a requirement for the city to plant a street tree in front of their property.

“To us it’s identity theft because anybody can request a tree to be planted in front of your house,” said Dyker Heights property owner Sonny Soave, who has been fighting with the city on the initiative ever since a neighbor requested a tree in front of his house.

Soave said he stopped the operation as planters readied to put the tree down in front of his house, but has little hope he will get more than a stay of execution.

Among his complaints is that the tree will take up too much sidewalk space in front of his house. He also says that the gas shut-off main and the sewer pipe are right below that.

Soave said he also complained the tree roots will eventually break or lift the sidewalk and the Parks Department told him he would be long dead by the time that happened.

“We were told the tree costs a thousand dollars each to buy and plant and if you times that by a million that’s a billion dollars,” said Soave. “To him (Bloomberg) trees are more important than anything else. He is cutting back on the Fire Department, Police Department and teachers. Now what do we do when we need help, call a tree?”

The Parks Department is actively courting residents to come forward encouraging them to suggest the planting of trees on their block, even in front of a neighbor’s house.

Maybe you were wondering how the City will pay for the $2.1 billion 7 train extension to an undeveloped part of Manhattan. So are they:

Now that there are a handful of giant holes under Chelsea for the line, and soon to be two drills that are making tunnels, the likelihood that the project will actually come to fruition is increasing substantially (though no one has agreed to pay for cost overruns yet). But with the economy in shambles, the question becomes how quickly — or slowly — development will sprout up on the far West Side.

This is more than just an academic question. To fund the $2.1 billion budgeted for the extension, the city sold bonds that are to be repaid with the extra taxes expected from all the new development on the West Side. If development takes years to begin — or never happens — the city would need to use money out of its budget to pay the $100 million or so annually in debt service, adding to an already high debt burden.

At the announcement today, the mayor delivered what sounded like a slight plea to developers to get building again.

“If anybody’s a developer out there, and if you want to know a good time to start, I can’t think of a better time,” he said. “People are ready to take the jobs, you can buy concrete and steel a lot cheaper than you could have before, and you’ll have these buildings ready when our economy comes roaring back and people are going to need space.”

Time was, mayors cared about snow removal and potholes, but jeez, you know what, I’m sold — deliver him a third term already:

The streets of New York may look more like the canals of Venice in the coming decades as temperatures — and water levels — rise to dangerous new heights, according to a report released today by a panel of scientists assembled by Mayor Bloomberg.

Similar to a scary sci-fi movie, the scientists said water levels around the city could rise by two feet or more in the coming decades and average temperatures likely go up at least 4 degrees, according to a report by the New York City Panel on Climate Change.

“Planning for climate change today is less expensive than rebuilding an entire network after a catastrophe,” said Bloomberg. “We can’t wait until after our infrastructure has been compromised to begin to plan for the effects of climate change.”

But who are we to judge if this somehow saves us all from Great Depression II:

Marlo Saab bought a $555,000, two-family home in Queens three years ago — no money down.

Now, teetering on the brink of defaulting on his mortgage, Saab is looking to President Obama’s plan for struggling homeowners to help him hold on to his house.

“I think that his plan gives us hope,” said Saab, 40, a computer technician. “I just want a little help not [to] go down the drain.”

When he bought the Jamaica Hills house, Saab got an 80/20 mortgage — splitting his borrowing between two lenders, IndyMac and Countrywide — for a total of $3,400 in monthly payments.

He makes $80,000 a year and says he has a healthy credit rating. The Saabs have rental income and they’ve paid off their car.

However, Saab’s overtime has been slashed. His wife is looking for work. The couple also have renovated their home and spend $10,000 a year to send their two kids to Catholic school.

Saab has racked up $70,000 in credit card bills and borrows from family and friends to make his mortgage. He has never missed a payment, but he’s not sure how much longer that can last.

I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be a “positive” story, too . . .

. . . specifically, Would you chop off your leg for $2.3 million? Like what happened to this guy:

A Brooklyn man whose right leg was ripped off by a train after he drunkenly ended up on a subway track has been awarded $2.3 million by a Manhattan jury.

. . .

His lawyer argued the train’s motorman had time to stop when he caught a glimpse of the man on the tracks from 180 feet away.

“He thought it was garbage,” said lawyer Andrew Smiley.

[The plaintiff] had a sky-high blood-alcohol level of 0.18 and didn’t recall arriving at Union Square, where he was hit by an N train.

“They’re not allowed to hit you just because you’re drunk and on the track,” Smiley said. “That doesn’t give the Transit Authority a free pass.”

Whatever happened to “I am not a very good politician”? That was so three years ago:

Mark Green — New York City’s public advocate from 1994 to 2001, who famously sparred with Rudolph W. Giuliani before narrowly losing the 2001 mayoral race to Michael R. Bloomberg in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks — formally declared on Tuesday that he was running to get his old job back.

Mr. Green made his announcement in a four-minute video and a letter addressed to his supporters and the news media on his Web site. “In a time of crisis, the City needs leaders who combine proven experience with new ideas,” he said.

Let’s pass this stimulus soon. There’s a mayoral election this year, you know:

In a hearing at City Hall this afternoon about the impact of the federal stimulus bill on the city, the director of the Michael Bloomberg’s office of operations, Jeff Kay, was asked what role “if any” the New York City Council will play in putting together a list of projects.

“Um, it’s a good question,” he said.

He added that the mayor’s office has been discussing this issue with the City Council’s finance staff for some time. That isn’t enough for Councilwoman Letitia James, she made clear while questioning Kay during the hearing.

James — who has opposed the mayor several times, including on his extension of term limits — said she is afraid people not already allied with Bloomberg will not see projects in their districts funded.

“There are those who are not above retribution,” James said.

“Not one dollar of any of this money,” said Kay, “[will] be spent without releasing a list of projects it’s going to be spent on.”

Kay said the list could be released within two weeks of the president signing the bill. “I’ve been looking for this list for the last three weeks,” James replied.

You can save teachers’ jobs, you can fix roofs in housing projects and you can weatherize homes. Oh, and you can also build a better live music venue next time Okkervil River comes to town:

A section of the House version of the bill provides $1.7 billion to address “critical deferred maintenance needs” within the nation’s park system.

The bill doesn’t specifically mention the big-bucks rehab, but Castle Clinton is on a list of “top priority” projects the feds want to fund, according to a House Appropriations Committee aide who reviewed an agency list.

The aide put the price tag at $5.6 million to begin the renovation of the fort as an outdoor music venue, based on information the administration provided.

Location Scout: The Battery.

Questions including but not limited to “What exactly are you injecting in my ass?” for example:

Major League Baseball banned steroids in 1991, though it didn’t start testing players until 2003. It had long been illegal to use them without a doctor’s prescription.

Rodriguez was vague on how he obtained the drugs, but admitted he took them without asking many, if any, questions.

“Again, it was such a loosey-goosey era,” he said. “I’m guilty for a lot of things. I’m guilty for being negligent, naive, not asking all the right questions. To be quite honest, I don’t know exactly what substance I was guilty of using.”

And “Monopole” is not the B-side of some obscure grunge 7″ circa 1989:

It looks like a grand patriotic gesture on the part of one of Staten Island’s best-known Realtors: Flying a huge American flag, albeit atop a bulky-looking 90-foot pole, behind the Neuhaus Realty office in Richmond.

But it’s not your typical flagpole: It houses sensitive and essential communications technology recently put in place by the federal government in direct response to 9/11.

The “monopole” was erected under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security by private aerospace and defense technology contractor Northrup Grumman with the OK of the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DOITT), confirmed the city and Northrup Grumman.

Its underlying purpose: To enhance the city’s wireless communication network and aid first-responders in case of an emergency, as part of a $500 million five-year effort by city government.

What’s more, the fake flagpole in Richmond is one of four monopoles that have been constructed in the borough — with more on the way.

Because of security considerations, the city won’t divulge where the others are.

A similar-looking one, on Capodanno Boulevard in Midland Beach, erected in 2005, “isn’t ours,” a source in city government said. At the time, the Advance reported it was a cell phone tower.

One of the more awesome Sully quotes:

“I had this expectation that my career would be one in which I didn’t crash an airplane.”

Elsewhere, how to ditch a plane into a body of water, just in case you ever find yourself in that position:

He said he knew the plane was in trouble when he heard birds hit the engines and he knew the landing had to be perfect in several ways, he said. “I needed to touch down with the wings exactly level,” he said. “I needed to touch down with the nose slightly up. I needed to touch down at a — at a descent rate that was survivable. And I needed to touch down just above our minimum flying speed, but not below it. And I needed to make all these things happen simultaneously.”

Yes, they pay taxes and whatnot:

It’s hard to know just how badly a crippled Wall Street will affect life in the city. New York is a better place to live than it’s been in decades, and Harvard economist Edward Glaeser has noted that the city’s long-term vitality is assured by its concentration of bright, creative people. But what are all these smart people going to do while the financial world remains in intensive care? One of the Street’s leading obituary writers, Michael Lewis, contends that any industry that pays young, clueless college grads exorbitant salaries to do things they have no idea how to do — like it once did him — must be doomed.

But he’s wrong. Wall Street paid well to lure the callow hordes away from other career choices. It was, for the big firms, a relatively cheap way to ensure a deep talent pool from which to pluck the brightest and most ardent moneymakers. The vast majority of junior employees at Goldman Sachs don’t make partner, or ever come close. They end up seeking their fortunes elsewhere, like Lewis did. Wall Street has a warped incentive ecosystem, but it’s evolved that way because, over the years, it’s worked.

One solution is for the city to simply not gamble on Wall Street for tax revenue. Another thing they could do is a rainy day fund, which New York City doesn’t have (blame Boss Tweed, I’m told). Until then there’s not much incentive for the City to either change the way they collect taxes or spend them.

Regrets of some reporters aside, the major papers’ uncritical support of the mayor’s suspension of term limits sort of makes Bloomberg’s complaint that it’s hard to “get his message out” seem rather Palin-like:

Yesterday, Bloomberg defended his right to spend unlimited amounts of money on his campaign, saying, “It is very difficult to get a message out to the public” and “sometimes some reporters don’t accurately describe what we have done.”

Campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson elaborated, saying that Bloomberg’s wealth gives him independence unmatched by candidates who are dependent on donor money.

In an email, Wolfson wrote, “The mayor has never taken a dime of special interest money. He has never taken a dime from lobbyists. This November NYers will again have an opportunity to vote for a candidate who is unbought and unbossed and beholden only to the public.”

Bloomberg’s campaign spending has been an issue even before he won his first term. In a Nexis-able 2001 interview on the Today Show, host Katie Couric speculated that Bloomberg may wind up spending “$45 million more than, perhaps, your opponent?”

In the interview, Bloomberg replied: “Well, that’s not a fair comparison because if you had been a politician for a long time, if you’ve been in government, you have all the visibility that that office has created. You have the use of your staff that’s paid for by the taxpayers for getting out, working, and manning phones, and sending out faxes and mails. And if you’ve run many times, my opponent’s run for office 11 times, he’s used that, rightly so, to build up name recognition.

With the Yankees set to dominate baseball this year, we needed something to level the playing field:

The legend of “A-Fraud” grows.

Joe Torre took a lot of heat last week over excerpts from his new book. Among the myriad of skeletons he exorcised from the Yankees closet, he said the idea that Alex Rodriguez may not be the most genuine soul in the world had always been a running joke inside the Yankees locker room.

Well, it looks now like A-Rod’s words and actions are going to have to be good for more than just his teammates. With Saturday’s bombshell CNN/SI report that Rodriguez tested positive for steroids back in 2003, he now finds himself in the unenviable position of having to choose his words carefully because if indeed failed that test what he says next will go a long way toward determining if the rest of baseball — and the sports world for that matter — will be as forgiving with him as they were with players like Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte.

If Rodriguez doesn’t play this thing perfectly, he’ll be the East Coast version of Barry Bonds and the Yankees’ 2009 traveling zoo will be inhabited by far more than its usual cast of 800-pound gorillas.

Whether or not you buy the apologies from Giambi and Pettitte, those guys are generally very likeable, players you rally behind because they appear to be good people and good teammates. New Yorkers are a forgiving bunch. They want to see their heroes fight back from adversity, even if the hole they have put themselves in is because of their own doing.

New Yorkers are the polar opposite of fans in a city like San Francisco, where despite every single piece of evidence suggesting Bonds is as guilty as O.J. Simpson, the people who buy the tickets continue to turn the other cheek and actually support the guy, almost to the point where they have convinced themselves that Bonds is the victim and that this is all one big witch hunt.

For laid off Wall Street employees, it’s PBR squared:

But for Ms. Adamski and other young women (they are mostly women) in the glamorous world of New York’s auction houses, the downturn has hidden benefits in the form of a social correction that puts them on more equal footing with their friends working — or formerly working — on Wall Street.

Art professionals said that Ivy Leaguers with master’s degrees typically earn $19,000 for a junior position to $50,000 for a midlevel specialist at an auction house, perhaps a fifth of what peers make working in law or banking. Now, with so many who chose the more lucrative paths unemployed, Ms. Adamski and others say there is less pressure to spend, spend, spend.

“Now we have an even playing field,” said Lydia Wickliffe Fenet, an affable 31-year-old who heads special events at Christie’s and says she has cut back on the number of nights she goes out and is choosing less expensive places. “My friends say, ‘Let’s go have a beer instead of a $40 drink.’”

Brooke Lampley, who is 28 and has been at Christie’s for four years specializing in Impressionism and modern art, said her college classmates who were laid off from their Wall Street jobs now follow more pedestrian pursuits. Most recently some of those friends went to a rodeo.

The Times puts to the test whether executives would actually be able to live on $500,000:

Private school: $32,000 a year per student.

Mortgage: $96,000 a year.

Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.

Nanny: $45,000 a year.

We are already at $269,000, and we haven’t even gotten to taxes yet.

Five hundred thousand dollars — the amount President Obama wants to set as the top pay for banking executives whose firms accept government bailout money — seems like a lot, and it is a lot. To many people in many places, it is a princely sum to live on. But in the neighborhoods of New York City and its suburban enclaves where successful bankers live, half a million a year can go very fast.

“As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable,” said Holly Peterson, the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, “The Manny,” and the daughter of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. “Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale.”

Sure, the solution may seem simple: move to Brooklyn or Hoboken, put the children in public schools and buy a MetroCard. But more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men (and they are almost invariably men) whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue: a life of private schools, summer houses and charity galas that only a seven-figure income can stretch to cover.