You’re Fired (Upon)!

The Post notes which of the wealthiest among us are armed:

Ronald Lauder has joined trigger-happy tycoons Donald Trump and Seagrams scion Edgar Bronfman Sr. as the richest men in the city packing heat, according to the NYPD’s gun-permit list.

Lauder, the cosmetics heir, and multimillionaire Marvel Comics CEO Isaac Perlmutter are the newest gun-club members licensed to carry a weapon — topping a list that already included “Mean Streets” actors Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro, “Scarface” producer Martin Bregman and shock jocks Don Imus and Howard Stern.

These boldfaced names are among more than 38,000 licensed gun owners in the city; the number has steadily declined in recent years as fewer people apply for permits — and fewer are approved.

“The review is thorough and it may include a site visit,” said Police Inspector Michael Coan. “Permits are reviewed upon renewal to ensure proper cause exists to continue the permit.”

Other gun-toting notables — who have a license to carry as opposed to a permit to keep their weapon only at a home or business — include anti-gun activist Fernando Mateo and Giuliani Partners execs Richard Sheirer and Anthony Carbonetti — an in-law of the notorious booze-peddling Dorrian clan.

Republican Senate majority leader Joe Bruno and music czar Tommy Mottola remain licensed carriers, according to NYPD records through March 17. [Emph. added for the delicious irony]

And You Thought New York Was Different Than The Rest Of The Country

Happily, teens in New York are just as weird about prom as those kids profiled on MTV:

Jenna Cossuto spent $2,400 on her custom-made dress. She’ll rent a 22-seat stretch Hummer to transport her closest friends to privately booked Gotham Hall.

And then it’s off to the swanky South Street Seaport at Bridgewater and afterward, a party in Crobar’s VIP section before a long weekend in a Hamptons beach house.

But this once-in-a-lifetime weekend isn’t for Cossuto’s wedding.

It’s for this 17-year-old’s senior prom.

“You only do prom once, and I’ve been planning this for over a year,” said Cossuto, who will graduate from Leon Goldstein HS in upscale Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn.

She’s part of a growing generation of teens who think of prom as the end all, be all of their young lives.

“Teens think of prom as their Oscar night. They want to look and feel like celebrities,” says Gina Kelly, fashion director at Seventeen magazine.

. . .

“I’m not sure exactly how much I’ll spend, but probably thousands and thousands,” said Cossuto. If she gets all she wants, the total will exceed $10,000.

“My parents are just happy that I saved up myself for the dress, and they’ll obviously help me pay for everything else I need.”

Her mom, Susan, rolls her eyes, but says she and her lawyer husband are happy to give their only daughter all the things they never had while growing up.

Beyond the designer Jovani dress, which includes multi-carat Chopard diamonds, Cossuto got $550 Gucci shoes, a matching handbag, tanning sessions, eyebrow shaping and professional hair and makeup for the big day, June 7.

Sure, We’ll Stop Charging People To Park On Sundays — We Just Won’t Change The Signs!

After the City Council reversed the mayor’s short-lived Sunday parking meter scheme, the city has been slow to change parking signs, leading some to wonder if it is intentional:

Drivers no longer need to feed parking meters on Sunday but wouldn’t know it by looking at the city’s street signs.
Since the ban on Sunday parking meters became official last November, the Department of Transportation has corrected only 5,137 of its 15,062 Sunday parking signs — a mere one-third over four months.

The slow pace has motorists crying foul.

“The reason they’re not moving quickly is because they want the revenue,” said Glen Bolofsky, president of ticket-fighting Web site parkingticket.com. “They have false signs up encouraging people to insert money into a meter that legally is not even supposed to accept the money.

“The city is just reaping a windfall from unsuspecting people,” he said.

The most backlogged borough is Brooklyn, where only 57 of 3,520 signs have been corrected. Manhattan is next, with only 1,675 of 4,711 signs replaced, and Queens third with fewer than half of its 5,590 signs changed.

“The city was fast to put them up when they were going to make revenue,” said Craig Hammerman, district manager of Community Board 6, which covers Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Park Slope.

“It was as if a white tornado blew through the district,” he said of the 2002 policy change that required Sunday parking fees.

The city estimated the Sunday fees generated $7 million annually.

DOT could not estimate how much money it is still collecting on Sundays since the November ban.

Sad To Say That Tort Reform Would Deny Us All This Fun

The Daily News reports that the homeless man who successfully sued a New Jersey town is now setting his sights on Amtrak:

A scruffy homeless man who cleaned up by filing discrimination lawsuits in New Jersey is now a regular on this side of the Hudson River — and trouble is brewing at Penn Station.

Fifteen years ago, Richard Kreimer got national attention when he won $230,000 from the Morristown, N.J., library and local cops who wrongly booted him from the library because of his horrible hygiene.

But all that money is now gone, and Kreimer, 56, spends several nights a week alongside other homeless men and women in a waiting area for Amtrak and NJTransit ticket holders.

Kreimer says he always has a ticket — but charges that hasn’t stopped Amtrak officials and cops from trying to eject him from the waiting area. “If they keep pushing me, I’ll probably speak to a lawyer about it,” he told the Daily News early yesterday inside Penn Station. “If push comes to shove, I’ll probably file a lawsuit against them, and I’ll include the other homeless, too.”

Kreimer’s allegations against Amtrak were echoed by other homeless who say they — and people who appear to be vagrants — are targeted during purges of the waiting area.

Kreimer calls it “homeless profiling” and clear discrimination — a charge Amtrak denied.

“Nobody discriminates or singles out the homeless,” said station master Norma Diggs.

Diggs said travelers can use the waiting room for up to two hours, and can stay longer only if the next train to their destination isn’t scheduled to depart during the two-hour window. Anyone in the waiting area beyond their allotted time is asked to leave, she said.

But two Amtrak workers, who asked not to be identified, charged that a station master ordered a clerk in the waiting area to “throw the bums out” about a week ago, which Diggs disputed.

Questions include but are not limited to:

• How do you blow a quarter of a million dollars when you’re homeless?
• What lawyer takes this case and do they take their customary third of the settlement?
• Can an Amtrak employee on the inside collude with the man to get some of the earnings kicked back
• If so, how can others contact the man to get on board?

Just asking . . .

America’s Hedge Fund — Fuck Yeah!

I’m pretty certain I watched this plotline on Season 2 of the Sopranos:

Ten reputed members of the Colombo, Luchese and Bonanno organized crime families made millions for the mob by selling bogus stocks to unwitting investors, coercing stockbrokers into their scheme with bribes, threats and even once chaining an uncooperative promoter to a pit bull, federal prosecutors charged yesterday.

. . .

According to an indictment unsealed by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, the 10 men secretly controlled at least 15 branch offices of brokerage firms, mostly in Manhattan but also on Staten Island and in Brooklyn, where brokers would make cold calls to investors to push fraudulently inflated stocks.

Between 1994 and 2005, they bilked investors of more than $20 million, court papers state.

To protect their financial interests, the defendants used their mob ties to intimidate brokerage firm owners and their employees, prosecutors charge.

In addition to the incident with the pit bull, a cold caller was hit over the head with a golf club, and a broker was beaten with a bat and stabbed when he said he wanted to leave the firm, according to prosecutors.

This version of organized crime either says something about the mob or about Wall Street. In any case, we have another idea for a band name:

The case is the culmination of a three-year investigation into the Colombo family’s alleged corruption of the penny stock market — stocks worth under $5.

In their classic pump-and-dump scheme, the accused made vast purchases of low-prospect stocks deemed unsuitable by the Securities and Exchange Commission. They would trick investors into buying in and driving up the price, then would sell off their holdings, according to prosecutors.

Brokers at the agencies were bribed into promoting these so-called house stocks with commissions of 20 to 50 percent of the selling price, the indictment states.

As an offshoot of the scheme, John Baudanza and Jerry Degerolamo, 34, also created a phony partnership called America’s Hedge Fund, L.P., based at 125 Demopolis Ave. in Eltingville.

The defendants lured investors into buying into the fund, then used the cash to buy cars, renovate their homes and pay off their credit cards, prosecutors charge.

(No, not “Pump And Dump” — that’s a terrible name, you sicko! — I’m talking about “America’s Hedge Fund”!)

(My memory isn’t so bad after all — it was season 2!)