The problem is that it’s a lot easier to get the Obama Administration to twist in the wind than it is to get a thousand-ton tunnel boring machine to poke a couple more holes in the bedrock:

Fresh off a victorious effort to persuade the federal government to move the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed trial from New York City, the Real Estate Board of New York, the powerful lobbying arm of the industry, has turned its attention to the missing link in the No. 7 line. This week it started a Web site (BuildTheStation.com), a petition drive and a lobbying campaign to press the Obama administration to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for the station.

“We think it should have two stops,” said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board. “There is substantial growth already taking place near 10th and 41st. For them to quietly let the station evaporate, without anyone telling anybody, is a mistake.”

(Innocent question: Since when did REBNY get the government to switch the KSM trial location?)

In 2000, .8 percent of the city’s workforce made more than $100,000, a figure that by last year rose to 8.4 percent:

The number of city workers pulling down $100,000 or more jumped more than tenfold in the last decade, largely because of hefty raises won by schoolteachers and principals.

See how Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro defends the usefulness of his position:

Staffers with civil service-protected jobs would also have to be retained on the city payroll, even if they were transferred to other agencies or boroughs. The Borough Hall building, he said, would remain open, meaning that the city would still have to pay for heat, electricity and phone service.

Oh wait, they do blood drives, too:

Borough Hall also gets local businesses to sponsor concerts and other activities that don’t cost the city any money but improve the quality of life for Islanders. His office also sponsors blood drives, and food and coat giveaways that benefit the needy.

The good news is that the city’s 14 sewage plants are finally meeting Clean Water Act standards. The bad news is that it’s really, really expensive to upgrade sewage treatment plants. And that’s part of the reason it’s so expensive to live here:

New DEP Commissioner Cas Holloway said the performance will further improve once ongoing projects like the $5 billion upgrade of Brooklyn’s Newtown Creek plant are completed.

$5 billion! Is that a typo? Jeez . . .

Location Scout: Newtown Creek.

It’s a genius plan — taxing jet fuel will raise millions and mean that fewer of us will leave the city, leading to even more spending at home:

He proposed a sales tax on airplane fuel yesterday as part of his spending plan for the 2011 fiscal year, a move that could mean the cost of flying will soar.

. . .

By extending the 8.875% sales tax to jet fuel at airports, he expects to raise $169 million. Airline executives wouldn’t say how the tax would spill over to customers – but they are against the plan.

Unpainted speed bumps in Astoria are keeping up the neighbors, and providing new thrills for drivers:

“My house is rumbling,” said John Warren, 45, a father of three who lives on 49th St. near the speed bumps.

. . .

Before the bumps were installed in 2005, the street used to be a “raceway” for speeding vehicles, residents said.

But the speed bumps haven’t slowed everyone down.

“People [speed] purposefully because they want to see how airborne they can get,” Warren said.

Oy:

A clutzy art lover tripped onto a rare Picasso painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, tearing a hole in the century-old masterpiece, the museum said Sunday.

Location Scout: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In case you were somehow unclear about why these guys put their names on garbage cans:

Former Councilman Michael McMahon (D-SI) spent $24,000 in city funds on 46 bright green bins bearing his name in July 2008, while he was a member of the council and a front-runner to fill an open seat in Congress.

But after he won the congressional election that November, the then-outgoing city lawmaker had the Sanitation Department revise labels on the baskets to read, “Sponsored By Former Council Member Michael E. McMahon.”

See also: Unanswered Questions: City Council’s Phantom Funds (Gotham Gazette, April 14, 2008).

The state’s real message behind the soda tax? Save money, drink beer:

“A six-pack of soda is going to cost you approximately $4.99″ if the penny-an-ounce tax goes through, [New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes chairman Nelson] Eusebio said, “where you can pick up beer from $2.99 to $3.99.”

It’s hard to believe that a crew flying in and out of La Guardia had never seen this before:

A US Airways crew panicked by a Jewish teen’s prayer ritual aborted a flight from LaGuardia Airport on Thursday, landing in Philadelphia amid unfounded fears of a terrorist bomb.

The trouble began when the 17-year-old White Plains youth pulled out two small Scripture-filled boxes used for his morning prayers on the Louisville, Ky.-bound plane, authorities said.

The frightened boy and his sister, headed for a four-day visit with their grandmother, were instead greeted in the City of Brotherly Love by bomb-sniffing dogs, police and the FBI.

The mayor plans to do the heavy lifting, cutting and consolidating where he can:

Two small agencies — the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting, and NYC TV — will also be merged.

How generous of the mayor to consolidate a troubled division he himself created!

Harold Ford, Jr. channels Robert Duvall:

As for the pedicures, the Ford camp says he gets foot scrubs, not pedicures, because of severe athletes’ foot. More to the point, Ford said: “This race isn’t about feet, it’s about issues.”

Ford said that, like a lot of New Yorkers, his favorite charms are the city’s simplest.

Top of his Manhattan-centic list: Walking down 5th Ave. at sunrise with a cup of coffee, weekend strolls in Central Park, or jogs along the Hudson River.

On his I-Pod: Stevie Wonder, Tribe Called Quest and Jay-Z.

“I love New York, I love the smell of New York. . . . I love the subway,” he said.

It’s not just for blunt-force racial coding during campaigns . . . when we get to three it’ll be a trend:

Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that President Obama’s plan to slap a tax on banks is aimed squarely at the city’s lifeblood and could turn Manhattan into a crumbling wreck like Detroit.

Bloomberg warned that the plan could bring about the collapse of the city’s financial sector and starve New York of revenue it needs to provide basic services.

. . .

“And if you want to see what happens to a city when their major industry fails, just take a look at Detroit,” which has been reeling from the collapse of the auto industry.

Another campaign against another food additive . . . and the Campbell Soup Company weeps big, salty tears as they shake in their boots, hoping against hope that Supernanny Bloomberg finds another blighted neighborhood or some great new gadget to focus his attention on instead:

On Monday, the Bloomberg administration plans to unveil a broad new health initiative aimed at encouraging food manufacturers and restaurant chains across the country to curtail the amount of salt in their products.

The plan, for which the city claims support from health agencies in other cities and states, sets a goal of reducing the amount of salt in packaged and restaurant food by 25 percent over the next five years.

The BATC Editorial Board weighs in:

• First thought, Wow, it’s pretty ballsy for a city government agency to attempt to change the food industry. Second thought, This might work, but… Third thought, Hey, wait, why is a city government agency doing this? Don’t they have something better to do with their money and time?
• The Health Dept. is really cheesing me off now. Just glory hogs using the agency as a stepping stone. I buy that transfats are bad, but salt is not universally bad for you, and it’s a lame slippery slope to other goofy shit, like smoked/charred foods (possible cancer link), or whatever else. Fewer glossy ad campaigns, more stuff like vaccines.
• But maybe they don’t have something better to do…? Salt is a big issue in the American diet, that’s not in doubt, the question is just what to do about it and who should lead the change. Even if pressuring the food industry to change its ways — a la the transfat issue — is the way to make us healthier, I think it’s still something I’d feel better about seeing come down from the Surgeon General (beats talking about masturbation, anyway) than Bloomy.
• I’m guessing they do have a lot of better stuff to do, including vaccines, probably HIV/STD campaigns & education, probably putting money into their low-income clinics. I just really, really mistrust glossy media-whoring campaigns like this.
• There’s good point about whether this is more appropriate for a federal agency — right now, most of the places that have taken on trans fats (and who knows who will jump on the salt bandwagon) are cities and counties on the coasts . . . not places with a vested interest in making those salty, trans-fatty foods.
• Yeah, I’m not always against half steps, but I don’t think tweaking the ingredients in processed foods is going to do all that much good for public health. Processed foods represent a host of problems for people who overconsume them. Cutting transfat isn’t cutting the actual fat in the diets of people chugging Oreos, and cutting salt in canned soup isn’t going to do much for hypertension either.
• The food industry muzzles the truth, which is that there just aren’t many processed products that come with a shelf life that are actually healthy for you. It might be worse for the average American to get the idea (we call it a “health halo” around here) that now that x, y, and z REALLY BAD ingredients are out, now that box of fatty o’s is totally fine to eat at will.

Here’s some of what all your stimulus money is going toward:

Newly rebuilt chunks of the famed Coney Island Boardwalk are already starting to fall apart, advocates said.

On the stretch of the Boardwalk fronting Coney’s amusement area, where the Parks Department finished installing new planks last spring, there are now screws popping out of their holes and planks coming loose and protruding.

“It’s not even a year old, and we’re right back to square one,” said Todd Dobrin, chairperson of Friends of the Boardwalk.

The new planks are part of a $30 million project to rebuild 15 blocks of the fabled 42-block stretch.

Location Scout: Coney Island Beach & Boardwalk.

Maybe you love your own child’s heartwarming refrains, but remember that it’s only December 10:

Sunset Park students are serenading Fifth Ave. pedestrians with holiday songs recorded at their schools and piped over the street on lamppost-mounted speakers.

. . .

The Sunset Park Business Improvement District recorded student musical groups’ holiday songs at seven local schools over two months, collecting about 50 songs that reflect the diverse neighborhood with songs in English, Spanish and Mandarin.

The results will play on the Fifth Ave. shopping district between 38th and 64th Sts. from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. until Jan. 10.

Location Scout: 5th Avenue in Sunset Park.

Not only who the mayor entertains down at the office but also the NAEP scores that have finally been released:

New York City’s fourth and eighth graders did not perform significantly better on federal math exams this year than in 2007, according to test scores released on Tuesday.

The results on the federal tests differ sharply from the city’s performance on state-administered tests, where the city has registered large gains in the last couple of years. On state exams, 71 percent of the city’s eighth graders met state standards this year, but just 26 percent were considered proficient or better on the federal exams.

In 2007, the last time the federal tests were administered, 22 percent of eighth-grade students in the city were proficient.

In the fourth grade, 35 percent of the students were proficient this year, compared with 34 percent two years ago.

. . .

Most of the other 17 large school districts whose results were reported Tuesday also showed gains over the last six years. Boston and Washington had larger increases than New York in the fourth grade, and San Diego had the most improvement in the eighth grade.

The city did improve more than the rest of the state on the 2009 federal tests, and the city’s fourth graders are now at nearly the same level as the rest of New York State.

The results of the federal test, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress and widely considered the gold standard in standardized testing, will be fodder for skeptics who believe that the mayor has not achieved the educational successes he claimed during his re-election campaign.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Hasids vs. Hipsters:

Groups of bicycle-riding vigilantes have been repainting 14 blocks of Williamsburg roadways ever since the city sandblasted their bike lanes away last week at the request of the Hasidic community.

The Hasids, who have long had a huge enclave in the now-artist-haven neighborhood, had complained that the Bedford Avenue bike paths posed both a safety and religious hazard.

Scantily clad hipster cyclists attracted to the Brooklyn neighborhood made it difficult, the Hasids said, to obey religious laws forbidding them from staring at members of the opposite sex in various states of undress. These riders also were disobeying the traffic laws, they complained.

. . .

A source close to Mayor Bloomberg said removing the lanes was an effort to appease the Hasidic community just before last month’s election.

Location Scout: Bedford Avenue in Southside Williamsburg.

Maybe you thought your living situation was bad:

Not so long ago, pigeons were being raised on the roof of 2320 Aqueduct, prompting an invasion of rats on the floors below. More recently, prostitutes plied their trade in the lobby’s utility closet (and, when kicked out, they merely took their johns to a nearby radiator and sprawled on it). When the dope dealer out front concluded his business for the day, you could find him living in the building’s elevator machine room, perhaps cooking a chicken on his hibachi. Currently, a makeshift casino and numbers parlor operates out of a first-floor apartment — and that’s one of the place’s amenities.

And yet there’s such a knowledgeable, involved tenants’ association president:

“I’m the equalizer in the building,” Adolph Santana says with a smile. “Whether you’re gay or straight, sick or going blind — I’ll help anybody. I’m the president of the tenants association! I know when the girls get their periods. Kids come out to me. Everybody knocks on my door.”

In the new economy, we will barter in chocolate and braggadocio:

The four-sided, Hebrew-letter-covered spinning top typically plays a minor role in the annual Festival of Light, but Williamsburg bar owner Eric Harris Pavony wants to change all that through Major League Dreidel, the first “professional” sports “league” for the nation’s top dreidelers.

On Dec. 12, the second night of Hanukkah, MLD Knishioner Pavony will bring his pros — and also the arena, the “Spinagogue” — to the Knitting Factory in Williamsburg for an evening of competition the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since the days of the Second Temple.

“MLD validates the dreidel as a bona-fide sport — and its elite are recognized and respected like professional athletes,” Pavony said. “However, they are paid in chocolate money.”

If “[i]t costs a lot of money to get a message out and I’m trying to show what we’ve done and tell people,” then he shouldn’t have to be shy about releasing those final numbers. So of course you do that on one of the slowest news dump days of the year — the Friday after Thanksgiving:

To eke out an election victory over the city’s low-key comptroller, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg spent $102 million of his own fortune — or about $174 per vote — according to data released Friday, making his bid for a third term the most expensive campaign in the city’s history.

. . .

Throughout the campaign, the mayor’s aides sought to project an air of inevitability, but data released on Friday revealed just how anxious they had become in the final weeks.

From Oct. 20 to Nov. 26, his campaign burned through $18.6 million, much of it on last-minute television and radio advertising.

The Daily News notes what $18.7 million can buy:

That outlay would cover first-semester tuition for about 8,000 students at Borough of Manhattan Community College (or for 319 freshmen at Bloomberg’s alma mater, Johns Hopkins).

The reports show visits to some upscale joints, but pizza and Dunkin’ Donuts fare were definitely Team Bloomberg staples.

The total paid to pizza places during that period was more than $17,000 — enough to pay a minimum-wage worker for 310 days or buy 5,556 gallons of milk.

. . .

The mayor “is one of the world’s leading philanthropists and is honored to have assisted organizations in need here [and] around the nation and the globe,” said spokesman Howard Wolfson.

Baruch College Prof. Doug Muzzio jokingly said that with all the money being thrown around, the City Council — which altered the term-limits law to let Bloomberg run a third time — “should pass legislation to force this guy to run every year. We could solve the recession,” he kidded.

*On account of the mayor still has to pay out bonuses to campaign staffers — since under Bloomberg, campaigns are treated like flush years at Goldman Sachs — in 2005, these totaled more than $1.5 million.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

If I ever snap one day for enforcing the social code on public transportation, I hope my family members will be a little more circumspect about my behavior:

“Oh, no, what did he do this time? Did he finally kill someone?” said Lisa Rivera, 45, when The Post asked her about Gerardo Sanchez, 37. “I’ve been afraid of that for a long time.”

Nice to see John Liu settling into his old ways of vacuous grandstanding after the fact:

Signs of an altered landscape quickly emerged as Mr. Bloomberg, never known for his humility, made an elaborate show of deference. His staff hastily arranged a highly visible meeting, at a Manhattan restaurant, with the city’s public advocate-elect, Bill de Blasio, a Democrat. Just a few weeks ago, the mayor said the citywide office was “a waste of everyone’s money,” and called for its abolition.

But tellingly, when the mayor tried to meet with John C. Liu, the Democratic comptroller-elect, Mr. Liu said he could not find time on his schedule, a highly unusual slight.

Later, Mr. Liu told a reporter: “A long time ago, the people of New York decided there would be no king nor a monarch in New York City.”

It wasn’t just the media who were fundamentally incurious about the polls but also the Democratic Party itself:

As the cheering dies down over at William C. Thompson Jr.’s headquarters, where close almost passed for victory on Tuesday evening, New York’s Democrats are left to consider a colder reality:

This was a race most Democrats now believe they could have won. Numbering among the co-conspirators in the Democrats’ defeat, in the view of some party leaders and activists, are Democratic grandees, from President Obama — who did not campaign for Mr. Thompson — to the City Council speaker, whose support could not have been softer, to two powerful labor unions that remained studiously neutral.

. . .

Barbara Fife, a deputy mayor under David N. Dinkins, acknowledged many ills, from an honorable but lackluster candidate to a too-quick willingness of many prominent Democrats to write off Mr. Thompson’s campaign as stillborn.

But she wondered at a Democratic president who could barely bring himself to utter the mayoral candidate’s name, much less to make a swing through New York. “He made people feel this was not winnable; Bill got lumped in with Paterson in many minds,” Ms. Fife said. “Obama had lists he could have given, and support. But he never said boo.”

And back in that first article there’s an important lesson to take away — specifically, feel free not to fall for campaign bullshit, because they’re probably just making it all up:

Behind the scenes, the close margin had set off second-guessing and soul-searching among some of the aides, who privately questioned the heavily negative advertising efforts.

As the city’s political establishment tried to understand the huge gulf between the cocksure rhetoric of the mayor’s campaign and his showing at the polls, Bloomberg aides said that they had relentlessly promoted the mayor as invulnerable in the race when they knew differently, saying it was the only way they for them to keep the Democratic establishment from rallying behind Mr. Thompson.

Said one top Bloomberg campaign adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect internal discussions: “If a poll had come out showing that the race was within five points, Barack Obama would have swung into town, the United Federation of Teachers would break for Thompson and Mike Bloomberg would not be mayor today.”

On Election Day, this adviser said, “everybody woke up and saw what we saw. We are lucky to have seen it first.”

And here’s where it leaves you:

Mark Radichio, 42, who owns a landscaping company, said that he has been a lifelong Democrat, but that he voted for Mr. Bloomberg in 2001 and 2005.

“I liked his style, his independence, and I’ve always liked the fact that he doesn’t take campaign money from anyone,” Mr. Radichio said.

Then two things happened that made him change his mind about the mayor. “First, it was term limits. The guy just wants to be mayor for life, and I don’t like that,” said Mr. Radichio, who lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. “Then, it was all this money he spent on his campaign. People are unemployed, they’re losing their homes, and you’re spending tens of millions of dollars on a political campaign? There’s something wrong with this picture.”

Mr. Radichio thought it over and decided he would vote for Mr. Thompson, whom he confessed knowing little about, but who he thought would be a better choice, given Mr. Bloomberg’s “baggage,” as he put it.

“I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t vote,” Mr. Radichio said. “I just assumed Bloomberg was going to crush the other guy. I’ll tell you, I’m never going to sit out an election again.”

Speaking of people not showing up when it counts, an e-mailer passes along this conversation that took place this morning in a Midtown office building:

Girl in Yankees shirt in coffee room at [Midtown office]: Yeah!

Guy in business casual: Awesome, I know!

Girl: Did you watch the game?

Guy: Nah, I knew they were going to win. I went out with my boys instead, and they’re Mets fans, so . . .

Girl: Yeah, I only watched the one game. So awesome!

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

If this doesn’t make you finally want to leave the city, I don’t know what will:

According to a 2005 NYC Housing and Vacancy survey, 40 percent of Big Apple citizens live in one-bedrooms or studios. While there’s no breakdown of how many of those dwellings house kids, anecdotal evidence indicates that a lot of families are making do — and making whoopee — in uncomfortably close quarters.

But if we don’t pay attention to them, they don’t exist.

After threatening to close the cookie factory where an extended strike took place, Stella d’Oro announces it is moving operations to Ohio:

The owners of Stella D’oro, the longtime Bronx Italian cookie and breadstick baker, said Wednesday they have sold the company — and its operations will be moving to Ohio by the end of the month.

Some 150 union and other plant workers will be out on the street.

Item:

Newcomers to the city’s food-cart wars say that when they stake a claim to a busy corner, they frequently get threatened by a loose-knit band of gyro-cooking thugs they call the “Halal Mafia.”

Item:

A city firefighter was fighting for his life last night after being repeatedly hit in the head by two men and a woman early yesterday in the Staten Island Ferry’s Whitehall Terminal, authorities said.

. . .

“They said, ‘Shut the f- – - up before we beat you up!’ ”

The three then jumped Dugan, pummeling him about the face and head before running away.

Item:

Three peed-off perps brutally beat a man for taking too long in the bathroom at a Greenwich Village bagel shop, police said yesterday.

Item:

As The Post reported yesterday, the luxury suites at Citi Field are leaky and moldy, tiles have been falling apart, electrical systems are shorting out throughout the building, and concrete panels have fallen off the walls, according to sources who’ve seen the damage.

Item:

Grant told cops that he was walking home from Amersfort Park at East 39th Street and Avenue J in East Flatbush around 1:30 a.m., when the gun began to fall into his pants, sources said.

When Grant grabbed for it, he accidentally pulled the trigger, firing a bullet right through his penis.

Location Scout: Whitehall Ferry Terminal, Citi Field.

The lesson being, if you ever start a sentence by sneering “the last time I checked,” you probably should have actually checked:

Mayor Bloomberg Friday interrupted a radio health care discussion to blurt out that drug companies — and their execs — don’t make big bucks.

“Last time I checked, pharmaceutical companies don’t make a lot of money,” he said on his WOR-AM radio show. “Their executives don’t make a lot of money.”

Someone must have quickly rechecked, because he backpedaled after a commercial break.

“I looked up the top pay of some of these executives in big pharma,” Bloomberg said.

“Some of them are making a lot of money. Some of them are making a decent amount of — more than a decent amount of money.”

Corollary: Voters probably don’t care about what you think about R&D costs . . .

City lifeguards have been on the “hot seat” for a while now, and today Denis Hamill uses a drowning to go after them again, but not before the Post catches another somehow continuing his tax work at the beach, which is strange, considering it’s August and all:

An Aug. 13 letter from the City Conflicts of Interest Board warned Williams, a lifeguard since 1984, that he’d violated board rules by using a Parks Department phone to call clients and meeting a client at work.

Maybe Bloomberg wants to rethink the exciting new test score results? They’re impressive:

Despite Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to end “social promotion,” sixth-graders can score high enough on state English exams to move to the next grade – just by guessing.

The number of correct answers needed to score a Level 2 to get promoted has sunk so low that a student can guess on the multiple choice section and leave the rest of the test blank.

In seventh grade, students who guess need just one extra right answer to make the cut.