Despite all the bluster about Stalinism and “looking oneself in the eye” (not the mirror?), somehow there are still schools today:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was set to lose control of the New York City school system at midnight Tuesday, but despite dire predictions of chaos from the mayor and others, it appeared that the nation’s largest school district would continue to operate largely as usual.

The shift of power, from Mr. Bloomberg’s hands to the clutches of a yet-to-be-appointed Board of Education, came after an impasse between Republicans and Democrats in the State Senate thwarted attempts to renew mayoral control of schools, which the Legislature authorized in 2002. The law set June 30, 2009, as the day the mayor’s control would end if it was not renewed.

As the playwright said, “One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.” Otherwise, you’ll look like a manipulative third-tier politician destined for nothing better than chief executive of some sclerotic town somewhere between Boston and D.C.

Yesterday it was “appearing to set the stage” . . . today, the stage is set (that was quick!):

Mayor Bloomberg is threatening to lay off up to 7,000 city workers, saying municipal unions and state officials haven’t done enough to help New York balance its budget.

Budget Director Mark Page told agency heads Wednesday to cut $350 million from their budgets, saying previous cuts of $3.1 billion starting July 1 weren’t enough.

“This next step would most likely rely heavily on additional headcount reductions, whether through attrition, or, as is more likely, through layoffs,” Page wrote them in a letter.

“It is expected that these savings could result in a reduction of as many as 7,000 positions citywide.”

. . .

The mayor has asked municipal unions to pay for 10% of their health care costs and find additional health cost reductions to save $557 million, in order to avoid layoffs.

“This is a ploy to get more money from Albany, and he really deserves it,” said Harry Nespoli, head of the Municipal Labor Committee, which negotiates for city unions.

“We’re still at the table. He just made it more difficult to negotiate.”

While Bloomberg’s request for $350 million in savings won’t plug the $1.6 billion gap in next year’s budget, Nespoli said he would tell the city’s 310,000 employees that the threat is real.

“I’m going to tell my workers there’s a possibility of layoffs in the city of New York. I’m not going to lie to them,” said Nespoli, who heads the sanitation workers’ union.

“In this crazy world today, nobody can eliminate layoffs.”

The question is whether the arrow shooter is still on the loose:

Cops were searching Tuesday night for the archer who shot an arrow that nearly hit a Queens father as he carried out the trash.

If you’re going to skimp, skimp on the Rolls-Royce and not pest control:

Brace yourselves for more fun news: recessions, it turns out, while bad for humans, may be good for cockroaches and mice.

Veterans in the pest control industry said that their customers, both residential and commercial, appear to be sacrificing on regular exterminations as a cost-cutting measure. While restaurants are bound by the threats of steep fines, apartment landlords and office buildings are cutting back services, the exterminators said.

Robert Agatowski, with Control Exterminating Company on East 33rd Street in Manhattan, recalled a recent call from a general manager of a business.

“He said, ‘It’s very simple. I don’t know if we can make the rent or the payroll,’” Mr. Agatowski recalled. “‘So in other words, you’re out. We’ll step on the bugs and kick the mice.’ The exterminating almost becomes like a luxury item.”

He and other exterminators interviewed this week were careful not to name names.

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.”

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.

New York Post freakout coming in 5, 4, 3, 2 . . . blammo:

It was those damned geese!

A feather from a bird and “organic material” has been found on the engine, wings and fuselage of the US Airways airliner that crash-landed in the Hudson River, federal authorities said yesterday.

Investigators also have found that fan blades in the Airbus A320’s right engine “revealed evidence of soft-body impact damage.”

. . .

“What appears to be organic material was found in the right engine and on the wings and fuselage,” said the NTSB in a press release. Samples of that material have been sent to the US Agriculture Department for DNA analysis.

“A single feather was found attached to a flap track on the wing,” said the release, adding that the feather “is being sent to bird-identification experts” at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

It was the evidence of the old bird’s feather! It increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage!

The Post treads a dangerousely Hearst-like line by inflaming the anti-geese passions of at least three middle-aged men in Queens:

New Yorkers clamored yesterday for flocks of geese near area airports to be killed to prevent them from taking out another plane like the US Airways carrier forced to crash-land in the Hudson.

“These geese are a blight,” said William Santos, 50, as he walked the World’s Fair Marina near La Guardia Airport, where more than 100 geese gathered. “The city has to get them out of here, just for our own safety, never mind the mess they leave behind.”

Another marina visitor, Jack Riley, 43, was more blunt: “They should have a hunting season here on these geese. Let the criminals shoot the geese instead of people.”

A collision with a flock of geese is being blamed for the engine failure of the US Airways flight.

They’re already acting like the Constitutionally fictional Counter-Terrorism Unit on 24. So are you sure you want the same department that worked the RNC and likes to go bananas on hippie bicyclists to be able to jam cellphones, too? Shorter leash, please:

New York police officials are studying the feasibility of disrupting cellphone communications between terrorists during any attack, after revelations that gunmen in Mumbai received electronic transmissions during their killing spree in November.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly raised the possibility in Washington at a Senate hearing on Thursday, but he noted there were technological hurdles to shutting down cellular service in a narrow location, like a hotel or movie theater.

. . . just say you’re thinking about cutting funding for libraries.

Or the school band. No one ever wants to cut funding for the school band. The public eats up this stuff.

Given that the mayor seems to want to stay in office, perhaps we should rename certain long-term planning departments? Because now it should for sure take longer to get to one million more people:

Expecting a national recession to compound the effects of the Wall Street crisis, the New York City comptroller’s office is now forecasting that the city will lose 165,000 private-sector jobs over the next two years.

That would be almost twice as many as the comptroller’s office had projected three months ago, when it said that about 85,000 jobs would be lost. The difference, according to the comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., is that the nation has slipped into a general recession with effects that will spread far beyond the financial services sector and across the whole city economy.

About one-fifth of those lost jobs, about 35,000, will come in investment banking and other financial services, according to the revised forecast. The previous projection was for a loss of 25,000 jobs in financial services, or almost one-third of the expected total.

Ronald Lauder, who bankrolled the 1993 and 1996 term limit referendum, tells us we should kill it, kill it:

My fellow New Yorkers agreed with this and voted overwhelmingly for term limits in both elections. And over 15 years, the concept has proved itself correct. Term limits gave us a more dynamic City Council. It also gave us Michael Bloomberg — a smart, competent and popular mayor. So having said all that, why do I suddenly have a change of heart on something about which I feel so strongly? Why do I believe term limits should be lifted temporarily to allow Mr. Bloomberg to run for a third term? The answer is simple.

I lived and worked here in New York during the fiscal crisis in the early 1970s. I remember how close this city came to going under. I also remember how that financial crisis trickled down and depressed life not just on Wall Street, but on every street in every borough. Housing prices plummeted, storefronts remained empty for years, business stagnated and opportunity dried up. A corresponding rise in crime led to nightmare murders that became the stuff of horror movies. Visitors stayed away, further eroding the city’s economy. Times Square in 1975 was not a place you wanted to bring your children.

I never want to see that happen again. During the last few weeks, we have seen an unprecedented rupture in our national economic system that rivals not 1975, but 1929. Ground zero for this financial meltdown is not Washington or California or small-town America, but New York. The sudden and shocking demise of major institutions like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns only reinforces the comparison to the earlier and even darker time.

Certainly, there are able candidates for mayor in both parties; I know and admire many of them. But I believe that for a city poised on the brink of economic disaster (and experience tells us that economic disasters eventually become social disasters), a prosperous future depends in large measure on a mayor with a deep understanding of finance, governance and politics.

There’s a strong vote of confidence about what the city’s economy will look like on January 1, 2010. I wonder what he knows . . . but as much as Lauder feels good about his own efforts to tame the sclerotic system of entrenched lawmakers, shouldn’t an idea be a good or bad idea regardless of who supports it financially?

So let’s tease this out — given that Bloomberg is especially suited to saving New York City from catastrophic economic woes 15 months from now, what exactly has the mayor done that is so impressive on this front? What will he do, create a computer terminal? What about his tenure in office — doing mayoral things that every mayor does, and acccomplishing mayoral goals that every mayor has — what about his work in office would bring someone to this conclusion? For starters, consult his astounding 96 percent success rate in fulfilling his 2005 campaign promises (as of 2007) (.pdf here). Obviously no one else in the whole world would have been able, for example, to “expand the Out-of-School Time (OST) system to increase the number of young people served” (page 4). That’s great and all — but that doesn’t exactly show how he would single-handedly stave off a worldwide recession.

I say look on the bright side, if Bloomberg is unable to lead and the city starts to look like Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, then we won’t have to worry about where to put those million new residents, will we?

No, not this mayor. “The Mayor’s Dangerous Idea” was the title of a Times editorial in 2001 that argued against Giuliani’s idea to extend his term three months to deal with the aftermath of Sept. 11:

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani wants to extend his current term of office into 2002, postponing the inauguration of a new mayor for several months. This is a terrible idea. Neither New York City nor the nation has ever postponed the transfer of power because the public was convinced it could not get along without the current incumbent. The very concept goes against the most basic of American convictions, that we live in a nation governed by rule of law.

To suggest that the city would be incapable of getting along without Mr. Giuliani after the end of the year undermines New York’s sense of self-sufficiency and normality, which the mayor himself has worked so hard to restore. While Mr. Giuliani has been a great leader during this crisis, the truth is that no one is indispensable. George Washington understood that when he rejected repeated attempts to keep him in office indefinitely. Washington was followed in the presidency by a long line of successors, some of them distinctly mediocre. But the country went on, because people put their faith in the democratic process and not in the strength of any one individual.

Mr. Giuliani has asked his three possible successors to agree to postpone the next inauguration and let him stay on for a few more months to continue his work on the city’s recovery. He and his supporters are holding out the threat that if the mayor is not given his wish, they will mount an attempt to repeal the term limits law so he can run for re-election in November. They argue that he needs just a few extra months to finish the most critical work in the wake of an enormous disaster. But one critical task after another is going to crop up for the foreseeable future. And history suggests that the worst time to change the election rules is right before an election, in a time of crisis.

. . .

Mr. Giuliani already has the ability to make sure the transfer of power is smooth. The mayor should begin working immediately to bring his potential successors up to speed. When he leaves office Jan. 1, he should urge key members of his own administration to stay on to finish the work they are doing if his successor wishes them to stay. The best way for Mr. Giuliani to help New York City after Jan. 1 is not by retaining power but by giving it up in the most generous way possible.

All of which is interesting given the Times’ editorial this morning endorsing Bloomberg’s proposal to temporarily overturn term limits to allow himself and all members of the City Council a chance to run for a third term:

The bedrock of American democracy is the voters’ right to choose. Though well intentioned, New York City’s term limits law severely limits that right, which is why this page has opposed term limits from the outset. The law is particularly unappealing now because it is structured in a way that would deny New Yorkers — at a time when the city’s economy is under great stress — the right to decide for themselves whether an effective and popular mayor should stay in office.

Partly for this reason, and partly to extend their own political careers, a majority of City Council members are thinking about amending the city law to allow elected officials to serve three consecutive terms instead of two. That would permit Mayor Michael Bloomberg to run again in 2009 and could also prolong the service of council members and other senior elected officials. Mr. Bloomberg, who is expected to announce on Thursday that he will seek a third term if he can, likes the idea a lot.

We do, too. But we would go further and ask the Council to abolish term limits altogether — not to serve any individual’s political career but to serve the larger cause of democracy.

Which really is to say, we’re not serious about this at all. Think back to the large outpouring of support for Giuliani after Sept. 11 — “mayor for life” and all that. Does the Times editorial board really — no, seriously, really — think Bloomberg has more good will right now than Giuliani did after Sept. 11?

It makes a lot of people uncomfortable to legislatively rewrite a law that voters have twice approved at the ballot box — in 1993 and 1996. It makes us uncomfortable, too, and we previously took the position that any change should be left to the voters. But we have concluded now that changing the law legislatively does not make us nearly as uncomfortable as keeping it. It is within the rights of the Council, itself an elected body, to do so.

Term limits are seductive, promising relief from mediocre, self-perpetuating incumbents and gridlocked legislatures. They are also profoundly undemocratic, arbitrarily denying voters the ability to choose between good politicians and bad, especially in a city like New York with a strong public campaign-financing system, while automatically removing public servants of proven ability who are at a productive point in their careers.

But again — who exactly — exactly who — is agitating for a change? Is this something families discuss over dinner, expressing fear that their elected representative who is right in the middle of a productive point in his career won’t have had enough time to fulfill his legacy? Or is this coming from the people who would truly be affected by term limits, which is to say, the mayor and the City Council?

The City Council members who want to change the law are not alone. A survey in The Times last month found that at least two dozen local governments are suffering buyer’s remorse about the term limits they adopted, mostly in the 1990s. One common complaint is that they force politicians to focus on small-bore projects that can be achieved quickly rather than visionary ideas. The constant churning also diminishes accountability in governmental institutions like the City Council.

See, elected officials in governments everywhere are unhappy that they only have a limited time in office! As much as I’m excited to let council members explore visionary ideas, I have a feeling New York City will somehow survive.

Then there’s the up-is-down argument that this is actually more democratic:

Most places that are trying to relax term limits are likely to do so via the ballot box, with several referendums due in November. There is a chance that a vote on the issue could be organized early next year in New York in conjunction with special elections to the City Council. But such elections do not attract many voters. In the end, a vote by the Council is probably the most democratic way to address the matter.

And if you don’t like it, vote the bums out:

It is worth repeating: This is a rule that needs to be abolished. If the voters don’t like the result, they can register their views at the polls.

Good idea. It almost makes you want to hope that Bloomberg, despite the millions he will spend, will go down horribly next November.

Ultimately, you have to wonder who is so excited about a third Bloomberg term? The Times’ report clarifies:

With his decision, Mr. Bloomberg is overruling the advice of his top three assistants at City Hall — Deputy Mayors Edward Skyler, Patricia E. Harris and Kevin Sheekey –who have expressed opposition to a third term.

Those aides have told the mayor — at times forcefully — that any campaign to challenge the term-limits law would look like an end run around voters, and could sully his legacy as a reform-minded outsider. Others have told the mayor that they may not remain for a full third term.

In the business community, however, the idea of a Bloomberg third term is popular. At charity balls and on golf courses, executives like the financier Steven Rattner, the developer Jerry I. Speyer and the media mogul Rupert Murdoch have encouraged him to seek a third term.

Got that? Wall Street, a developer and Rupert Murdoch. Given what has happened this past month, do you really want to trust those guys?

So bascially Thomas Friedman is holding Peter Vallone, Sr. responsible for the United States’ alarming lack of transportation infrastructure:

As I sat in my seat at the Bird’s Nest, watching thousands of Chinese dancers, drummers, singers and acrobats on stilts perform their magic at the closing ceremony, I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years: China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for Al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones.

The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnetic propulsion instead of steel wheels and tracks, to get to town in a blink.

Then ask yourself: Who is living in the third world country?

Buried Lede: Authoritarian regimes can do a lot of cool shit, can’t they?

. . . the plague of Frostbacks — who have no apparent willingness to understand our culture, language or way of life — worsens:

Since 2000, the number of Canadians living in New York City has more than doubled to over 21,000, myself included. In Manhattan alone, we make up the eighth largest population of foreign-born residents. And there are between 70,000 and 99,000 unauthorized Canadians nationwide, according to the Urban Institute, a research firm that estimates figures based on population surveys. Although no one tracks the number living illegally in New York, the city continues to be a draw for my northern brethren.

For the most part, Canucks “pass” as Americans. (Disclosure: This writer is one of Them.) We speak the same language — just about. We watch the same television programs. We eat the same food and read the same magazines. As one young Canadian New Yorker put it, “We’ve already been stirred in the melting pot.”

At the same time, Canadians are increasingly thinking of New York as a city that is, if not exactly hostile, definitely not home.

. . .

Most Candians don’t move to New York for love. We come to steal your jobs, mostly in the fields of finance, law, and to a lesser extent, the arts and media. (We call this migration “brain drain.”)

Canadian New Yorkers are generally in their 20’s to 40’s. They are more highly skilled and wealthier than the general population in the U.S. — and in Canada. As Mahmood Iqbal noted in a report for the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, these emigrants “are the best and brightest of the Canadian human resource pool.”

. . .

Part of the reason for this influx of Canadians is a class of visa that was created in 1994, when NAFTA went into effect. The Trade NAFTA (TN) visa authorizes workers from Mexico and Canada to live in the U.S. for up to one year, provided they work in one of 60 scheduled occupations. A Canadian need only prove that she has a job as a graphic designer or an accountant, show up at the border, and pay $50. She can obtain a visa on the spot.

No wonder this town’s crawling with frostbacks.

The Canadian Association of New York, which organizes the ultra-glitzy Maple Leaf Ball, has 500 members. The “Canadians in NYC” Facebook group has almost 1,000. This year’s Canada Day celebration, which was held at Mama’s Bar in the East Village on July 1, drew twice as many people as last year. Canadians lined up around the block.

In March 2007, New York’s first Canadian-themed restaurant opened. In the meatpacking district. The Inn LW12 is a self-styled “elegant British pub meets Canadian country inn.” The bar menu features two kinds of poutine (that Quebecois delicacy of French fries, gravy, and cheese curds). The restaurant’s décor, which includes a bookshelf fashioned out of a canoe, was inspired by the cottages of the restaurant’s three founders. “It’s nice though, eh?” asked Phil Jalbert, one of the co-founders.

Which is to say, when they start imitating Celebrity Rehab, we should talk, but until then:

Life is imitating television on the Upper East Side, where an anonymous eighth-grade girl has founded a gossip Web log modeled after the one that is the backbone of “Gossip Girl.”

While on the TV show the fictional parents and school leaders appear oblivious to the catty Gossip Girl blog, the real-life provocateur, who calls herself Miss ITK (for Miss In The Know), has caused an incredible stir. School hallways are buzzing with the name of her URL; eighth-grade girls across the city are reportedly breaking down in tears, and, in the final climax, an unknown force has pushed the site offline.

Before it was shut down earlier this week, the blog had generated more than 300 comments, with some posters remarking on Miss ITK’s accuracy and others begging her to kill the blog, describing many tears shed and some friendships broken.

Miss ITK chronicled the social lives of what she described as the class of 2012’s “elite A-list.” One post described two girls’ attempts to revamp their images: one through eye-coloring contact lenses and another by dancing suggestively at a bat mitzvah. Another crowned a couple “our very own Queen and King.” Later, a post cataloged the class of 2012’s “A List” and “B List.”

Parents and students said the blog seemed like a deliberate copy of the one that is the heart of “Gossip Girl,” and whose author, Gossip Girl, narrates the show.

Like the television Gossip Girl, Miss ITK had her own signature salutation. On television, it’s “XOXO.” In real life, the line that reverberated with students was “Hello my butterflies.”

And unless something drastic is done, the city may start to eat itself:

New York City is growing fatter faster than the rest of America, a Health Department report said. The study, published in Preventing Chronic Disease, said that the city’s rate of obesity grew by 17 percent between 2002 and 2004, versus 6 percent nationwide. Diabetes also grew by 17 percent in the city, but remained unchanged in the rest of the country. “Obesity is now just as common in New York City as in the rest of the U.S.,” said study author Gretchen Van Wye. The department said the city gained 10 million pounds during the two years studied.

Or is it just because everyone quit smoking at the same time? Thanks a lot, Mayor:

While public health officials said the findings underscored the need for disease prevention programs, others drew a correlation between the rising obesity rate and a smoking ban that took effect in the city’s bars and restaurants in 2003. According to city health officials, about 240,000 New Yorkers quit smoking since the agency launched a comprehensive antismoking campaign in 2002.

Weight gain among individuals who quit smoking has been well documented. According to one study that evaluated weight gain after smoking cessation, researchers found the risk of weight gain is highest during the two years after a person quits. The study, published in 1998 in the Journal of Family Practice, found that on average, those who quit gain between 11 and 13 pounds.

“What you see on the micro level of your friends gaining weight after they quit smoking has to also have an effect on the macro level,” a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Walter Olson, said. “Yes, it probably is true that one of the reasons America is gaining weight is because of tobacco going out.” He said the ban was probably “one factor among many” contributing to the high obesity rates here.

(Takeaway: If someone can blame a smoking ban for something, they will.)

Lost in the discussion about the mysterious, still-unexplained one million new residents is that the number includes a previously overlooked army of 300,000 new seniors, making New York City the nation’s top retirement destination:

The city’s elderly population is projected to jump 44 percent by 2030, which means there will be roughly 1.35 million senior citizens comprising 20 percent of the city population. That includes roughly one-third of the projected additional 1 million New Yorkers the Bloomberg administration expects here then. That surge motivated the PlaNYC initiative to address issues such as the environment, energy and the city’s aging infrastructure — but not so much its aging population.

The City Council yesterday announced that the New York Academy of Medicine will receive $125,000 to develop a blueprint to prepare the city for its aging population. It’s expected by April.

“Our focus has been on the cost of care and biomedical research,” said academy president Jo Ivey Boufford. “This deals with prevention — how people can be as healthy as they can be, as long as they can. . . . We’re creating a blueprint for investment over a number of years and policy action over a number of years.”

The Advance makes the situation sound that much more dire:

With New York City’s population expected to boom, adding nearly 1 million more residents by 2030, demographers predict that the number of elderly dwellers will increase by 300,000.

. . .

“There’s been much discussion and planning, appropriately so, about what the future of New York City will look like in 2030,” Ms. Quinn said in respect of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s environmental agenda to combat global warming. “But one of the things we’ve not yet looked at is the reality that by 2030, there will be 300,000 additional senior citizens in New York City.”

This should be easy to monitor because it’s not like the Staten Island Ferry is one of the three top tourist attractions in New York City or anything. Yup, right:

Taking pictures aboard the Staten Island Ferry? Watch where you’re pointing that camera, bub.

The recent scare in Washington state — two men, apparently of Middle Eastern descent, were spotted photographing sensitive areas of the ferryboats that ply Puget Sound — has triggered heightened sensitivity to shutterbugs.

Photography is officially permitted onboard and in terminals here, and with so many tourists enjoying the views of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty from the boats each day, “picture-taking is a part of the experience,” acknowledged city Department of Transportation spokeswoman Molly Gordy.

An official memo sent to ferry staff in 2005 indicated that crew members were “not to prohibit anyone from taking photographs in any areas open to the public,” while remaining vigilant and informing security and supervisors if anything seems unusual about a passenger’s photo op.

“If pictures are being taken that seem suspicious, just as if a person is acting suspicious, NYPD on board would be alerted and the parties would be questioned,” Ms. Gordy said.

Is it a convenient way to use up some of that Homeland Security money or a profound cultural shift? You know, like role-playing games once were:

E-Tech Computers, located at 71-06 Grand Avenue in Maspeth, recently introduced a new security camera system that offers 360-degree views, making them ideal for warding off burglars, prowlers and other miscreants.

Eric, the proprietor of the store, said the time seemed right to expand into the field of home security. Currently, E-Tech has a variety of high-tech models for sale, some having the familiar security camera shape, while others are half-spherical and offer full-room views to guard against blind spots.

The employees of E-Tech take great personal pride in the cameras and security they offer. Not only are the cameras on the cutting edge, Eric said, but he believes they have never been more necessary in Maspeth, Middle Village or just about any part of the big city. “People get robbed,” he said. “Bad stuff happens.”

Staff members at the store agreed. “Right now, New York is becoming less safe,” one worker claimed. “People need something to record what happens.”

Still, the cameras represent a slight departure from the usual merchandise E-Tech sells. The store, which has been in business for five years, is best known for dealing in hardware and software, not surveillance technology.

Eric and his E-Tech co-workers, however, have the freedom to change directions depending on what they presume the market demands. After all, the store is not part of a computer conglomerate, but like so many Grand Avenue retailers, a homegrown business financed out of Eric’s own pocket. As such, the store offers some items one wouldn’t expect in a traditional computer store, such as 30-sided dice and replicas of samurai swords.

You can thank Ray Kelly for the new climate of fear in Staten Island this morning:

It is the sobering reality of post-9/11 life on Staten Island.

In New York City.

Across the country.

Terrorism is potentially lurking in every alleyway and on every street corner.

Most frightening is that the new-age terrorist does not have to wear a disguise or assimilate.

Because the person most likely to threaten our safety is made in America.

While the threat from overseas jihadist groups like al-Qaida remains real, New York City and other U.S. targets face an increasing and evolving threat from homegrown terrorists, such as those who planned to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey, according to an NYPD Intelligence Division report issued yesterday.

The report says resident terrorists are often “unremarkable” people who plan attacks on the U.S. after they are radicalized by social, economic or political “triggers.”

. . .

The radicalization process is often sparked by a personal crisis, the report says, such as the loss of a job; the experiencing of a real or perceived episode of discrimination, or the death of a close family member.

Without mentioning specific locales, the report says that “cafes, cab driver hangouts, flop houses, prisons, student associations, non-governmental organizations, hookah bars, butcher shops and bookstores” are frequently “rife with extremist rhetoric” and act as “radicalization incubators” for potential jihadists.

Once immersed in radical ideology, the jihadist often seeks to join with other like-minded individuals. Under the guidance of a “spiritual sanctioner,” such as a cleric, and an “operational leader,” groups such as these, the report says, can morph from “just being a bunch of guys” into operational terrorist cells.

The Internet is a powerful “driver” and “enabler” of jihad, according to the report, providing access to radical ideology; an anonymous, virtual meeting place for jihadists, and access to information about potential targets and weapons design.

Though not formal members of Al-Qaida, jihadists use the principles of Osama bin Laden’s terror network as “their inspiration and ideological reference point,” the report says.

They “look, act, talk and walk like everyone around them,” the study adds.

Of course it’s an issue for local law enforcement — they’re the ones best suited to tackle the threat:

Police officials said the report laid the groundwork for a public policy debate over the growing concern about homegrown terrorism and would serve as a tool for law enforcement to better understand threats in the United States compared with threats by Al Qaeda members overseas. Local law enforcement officers, corporate security officials and some politicians praised the Police Department for addressing the human factors at play in terrorist plots and for helping to synthesize trends in human behavior. But critics called the report a faulty stereotyping of entire communities of Arab people, a notion the Police Department rejected.

“The report is at odds with federal law enforcement findings, including those of the recently released National Intelligence Estimate, and uses unfortunate stereotyping of entire communities,” Kareem W. Shora, the national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said in a statement.

The “sweeping generalizations” of the report may serve to cast a pall of suspicion over the entire American Muslim population, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said yesterday.

“The report also claims that signs of radicalization include positive changes in personal behavior such as giving up smoking, drinking and gambling,” said Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the group’s board, adding that the report made similar claims about those who wore Islamic clothing. “Is Islamic attire or giving up bad habits, which is something recommended by leaders of all faiths, now to be regarded as suspicious behavior?”

Police officials from New York visited Washington this week to brief officials, including those from the White House and the F.B.I., said Lawrence Sanchez, an assistant police commissioner.

Mark J. Mershon, assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s New York office, did not attend yesterday’s briefing. Stephen Kodak, an F.B.I. spokesman in Washington, said, “We have no comment on the report.”

Note the Power Point slide in the picture — remember, it’s easy to shut down homegrown terrorists when you goad them into committing crimes. Ostentatiously pronouncing that homegrown terrorists are the most dangerous threat out there is the only obvious thing to do . . .

The Daily News wants you to know that we are all going to die:

The Brooklyn Bridge is one of 166 city bridges labeled “structurally deficient,” putting it in the same category as the one that collapsed into the Mississippi River.

In fact, under the the feds’ rating system, the Brooklyn Bridge scored dramatically lower than the doomed Minneapolis bridge — and the Willis Ave. Bridge, which connects East Harlem to the Bronx, was not much better.

The Brooklyn Bridge also got lousy marks from the state, which called it one of three city bridges in “poor” condition with rusting steel joints and deteriorating brick and mortar on its ramps.

The biggest problem was the roadway deck on the Manhattan and Brooklyn approaches.

The state felt the “poor” rating was enough to raise concerns but not enough to shut down traffic like it did with the nearby Williamsburg Bridge in 1988.

At the city’s iconic landmark, a reporter observed considerable rust on metal structures and areas of missing brick work on the Manhattan anchorage.

Responding to the Daily News’ findings, Charles Carrier, a spokesman for the city Department of Transportation, said, “The bottom line is, if a bridge is unsafe, we close it. Obviously the Brooklyn Bridge was not deemed to be unsafe, but there are issues we’re going to be addressing.”

. . .

City officials stood by what they termed a “state of the art” inspection system and declined to perform additional checks on any of its bridges.

In New York, the federal government has labeled 2,110 bridges “structurally deficient,” of which 166 are in New York City, records show. The feds define this as structures with “deteriorated conditions of significant bridge elements.”

All of these bridges are rated by the U.S. Department of Transportation on the same 1-to-100 scale that gave the Minneapolis bridge a “sufficiency rating” of 50.

Considering factors such as structural adequacy and safety, serviceability and functional obsolescence, the Brooklyn Bridge was given the lowest possible “sufficiency rating,” a zero.

On the other hand, Sewell Chan is not into fear mongering*:

More than 2,000 bridges in New York State meet the federal government’s definition of “structurally deficient,” from the heavily traveled on-ramps of the Brooklyn Bridge to a 28-foot span across Trout Brook near the Canadian border.

The bridge that collapsed Wednesday in Minneapolis had also been labeled structurally deficient. But the term can have a variety of implications, and does not necessarily mean that any of the bridges are in real danger of significant failure. Typically the finding means inspectors have identified some kind of deterioration, cracks or movement.

The ramps to the Brooklyn Bridge, which carries about 132,000 vehicles a day, were downgraded last year from fair to poor condition. Yesterday, city officials said $149 million in repairs to the span were under way and that the bridge was safe. Still, city inspectors were at the bridge yesterday afternoon to check on its condition.

. . .

In the last eight years, the city has spent $3 billion improving some of the 787 bridges it controls, said Lori A. Ardito, the first deputy transportation commissioner. As a result, Ms. Ardito said, the number of bridges that the city deems to be in poor condition dropped to 3 last year from 40 in 1997.

In addition to the Brooklyn Bridge, the two others were a pedestrian bridge at East 78th Street over the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in Manhattan and a bridge at Willow Lake at 76th Road in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens.

Ms. Ardito said “poor” did not mean a structure was at risk of collapse. At the Brooklyn Bridge, the major problem is the roadway deck on the ramps, and not structures that support the roadway. She said a more complete rehabilitation was expected to start in 2010.

“The poor rating for the Brooklyn Bridge means that there’s only components of the bridge that are in poor condition,” she said. “They’re actually the ramps leading to the bridge, not the span of the bridge.”

*Not that he didn’t try . . .

Earlier: Nothing A Little Paint Won’t Fix.

Location Scout: Brooklyn Bridge.

The bold proposal to develop Pier 40 on Manhattan’s West Side — with plans for a dedicated Cirque du Soliel theater — has been derided by critics as “Vegas on the Hudson,” a cancerous, infectious Vegas on the Hudson:

Because the designs were first released late last year, community opposition has been tough and unified, with critics decrying the idea of a tourist hot-spot that would take the place of community recreation space and spread uncharacteristic development to the adjacent neighborhood.

“Clearly this is a regional tourist destination that would have little connection to the neighborhood and would solely be an attraction to tourists,” the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, said of Related’s proposal. “If you have Vegas on the Hudson next door, the tendency will be to look to develop similar uses in the inland area — and that would be totally unacceptable.”

Parent groups have been vocal about the Board of Education’s plans to increase the number of “schools within a school” — specialized magnet programs — throughout the city. Space considerations are a big issue, but then there’s this:

Park Slope parents are up in arms over a Department of Education proposal to insert a new small school focusing on Arabic language and culture inside the same building as their children’s elementary school.

Department officials faced what is becoming a familiar uproar over new small schools when they announced a proposal to locate the Khalil Gibran International Academy, one of the more than 200 small high schools created by the Bloomberg administration, inside P.S. 282, the Park Slope school.

. . .

Fearing that their children will lose art, music, and science classrooms and a library if Khalil Gibran moves into the Park Slope school’s top floor, parents reacted by “screaming and crying,” a parent who attended the meeting with department officials Monday night in the school’s auditorium, Jennifer Bacon-Fossati, said. She said parents were also concerned about the safety of their younger children, who may have to share bathrooms with the older students.

. . .

Another parent, who asked that her name be withheld to protect her child’s safety, said she feared that the school’s focus on Arabic culture and language may draw a backlash from right-wing groups that could threaten the building’s students.

“There are concerns of the kind of criticism this school could face,” she said. [Emph. added]

Lady, quit overreacting! The students are long gone by the time Sanitation gets there on trash day . . .

They act like being a convicted sex offender is a bad thing:

Nearly a third of the city’s most dangerous sex offenders live within just two blocks of an elementary or middle school — and authorities have no power to make them move farther away, the Daily News has learned.

The sobering findings emerged from the most exhaustive examination ever conducted of the state sex offender registry.

The disturbing report, completed by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn), shows that about 670 of the city’s 2,114 worst sex offenders live within two blocks of a school.

The clusters of sickos grow even larger a few more blocks away.

More than 85% of the city’s Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders — the worst of the worst — live within a quarter-mile of a school, Weiner’s examination found. “Every day my kids when they leave the house I say a little prayer that they won’t cross one of these sex sickos,” Bronx mom Cynthia Hawkins, 35, said as she walked her kids home from Public School 33 in Highbridge.

Anthony Weiner: master of the low-hanging fruit.

So paranoid:

A graffiti crew called “Made U Look NYC” — or MUL NYC — is boasting to have spray-painted a piece spanning 10 subway cars last month, according to a Web site madeulooknyc.com.

The site is selling T-shirts featuring a photo of an R train with the Monopoly character painted on it, and promoting a 60-minute documentary about the piece’s creation that they plan to auction on eBay Mar. 1.

Some bloggers, however, speculate that the NYPD may be behind this stunt as a way to lure the culprits.

“If you were thinking of buying a T-shirt commemorating Made U Look’s painting of 10 whole NYC subway cars, you may want to reconsider now,” warned city blog RazorApple.com. Its recent posting of an explainer showing how the NYPD might be monitoring the site’s visitors got picked up by various blogs such as Gawker and Gothamist.

“It seems illogical that [MUL] would incriminate themselves in this way, with a Web site selling T-shirts,” Razor Apple’s editor Will Sherman told Metro yesterday, “but stranger things have happened.”

Sherman doesn’t doubt MUL was behind the “staggering feat” of painting the 750-foot-long piece — “Nothing this large was put on the subway since Easter Sunday 1988,” he said — but the site’s photos, which appear to have been taken at a rail yard on Dec. 26, seemed fishy, he thought. “It’s hard for me to believe they were able to film and take all those photos in daylight.”

He grew more suspicious after an e-mail exchange he had with “Frank,” who responded to the e-mail address listed on MUL NYC’s site. “He talked about other members in his crew, calling them ‘gentlemen,’” Sherman said. “I wouldn’t think you would describe the people in your crew like that.”

“Frank” denied allegations of police involvement in an e-mail to Metro.

Some stray dogs excite the imagination. Others — large black rottweilers, for example — just tend to freak out the neighbors:

Civic activist Mandingo Tshaka sounded the alarm on the stray pooch when he saw it roaming without a leash on his 46th Avenue block several times in the week before Christmas.

After he and other residents called 911, Tshaka said, police came and put the dog back behind the gate of his owner’s home, he said. Neighbors said the owners were away, but Tshaka said officers should have taken the dog away because it escaped again several times.

“Concerning this issue, they’ve been useless as tits on a boar hog,” he said of the police.

Police are not allowed to take a loose dog if someone claims custody of it. Officers would only capture a dog if they saw it pose a threat, according to Sgt. Liam Burns of the 111th Precinct. Burns said he has been in touch with the owner and is trying to resolve the issue.

The dog, a large black rottweiler, did not injure anyone but it did chase the mail carrier, Tshaka said.

On the afternoon of Dec. 27, the dog could be seen walking back and forth on 206th Street east of the Clearview Expressway. Tshaka, dressed in a full-length fur coat and holding a samurai sword at his side, watched it from his front door.

“I don’t like the fact that I have to keep in my front door a samurai sword,” he said. “People shouldn’t have to live in terror.”

Tshaka, no fan of dogs, then went on to make an unfortunate comparison:

Tshaka called the dog a “menace” and said he should have been taken away instead of put back behind the owner’s gate. He also suggested there was a double standard.

“If an African-American male had chased the mailman down the street, where would he be?” he said. “The system has more compassion for the dog than it does for my people.”

Ever cautious, the NYPD suggests conceiving of parenting as a massive CIA-caliber intelligence operation:

The Bloods and Crips in this city have numbers, weapons and pride themselves on all the crimes they commit.

But, all of their gangsta’ bluster can be rendered powerless by the tenacity of a nosy parent.

So say the NYPD, who still believe that the best deterrent to the proliferation of street gangs is a parent who makes it a point to know their child’s business.

“There is nothing wrong with snooping through your child’s things . . . to know who they are hanging out with,” encouraged Police Officer Mildred Roman, of the NYPD’s Community Affairs Training Unit, who kept parents on the edge of their seats recently during an frank discussion about street gangs and the ways parents can help dry up the flow of new recruits filling the ranks.

. . .

Giving a packed house at last week’s 69th Precinct Community Council in Canarsie a glance into the “thug life,” Roman explained that changes in a child’s dress, demeanor and how he greets his friends can all be indicators that he is planning to or may already have joined a gang.

But to be sure, a parent should look through the child’s notebooks, where, if he is consorting with gang members, he will be practicing their “alphabet.”

Roman went on to add “the best defense is a good offense” and that “that namby pamby Dr. Spock” is for “pussies” . . .

*No, that’s actually the headline.