Department Of Education Janitor Pants!

Who knows, you might actually like the idea of wearing an official Department of Sanitation cap:

The mayor unveiled a new Web site yesterday — officialnycshop.com — where shoppers can snag all kinds of gear emblazoned with NYPD, FDNY and Sanitation Department logos.

For $14 you can have a “distressed” Sanitation Department baseball cap. An NYPD play set is $14.99 and a Central Park fountain T-shirt is $19.99. Part of the sales go back into Police and Fire Department foundations.

As Long As We’re Making An Average Of $2,500 A Week!

The good news is that the average weekly pay for people in Manhattan is $2,500 a week. The bad news is that this is largely due to the fact that the average pay in the financial sector is $8,300 a week:

The average weekly pay for finance jobs in Manhattan was about $8,300 in the first quarter of 2006, up more than $3,000 per week in just three years, new federal data show. And with another year’s bounty from Wall Street about to be paid out in annual bonuses, that number is expected to jump again.

The 280,000 workers in the finance industry collect more than half of all the wages paid in Manhattan, although they hold fewer than one of every six jobs in the borough. The pay gap between them and the 1.5 million other workers in Manhattan continues to widen, causing some economists to worry about the city’s growing dependence on their extraordinary incomes.

Despite their recent success, the financial companies that have long formed the economic engine of New York City have not created many more jobs. More of the job growth in the city is occurring in lower-paying service jobs in restaurants, stores and home health care, but the pay for those jobs has been lagging, said Michael L. Dolfman, regional commissioner of the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

. . .

For all of the 1.8 million jobs in Manhattan, the average weekly salary in the first quarter of this year was slightly more than $2,500, a rise of about 35 percent from the first quarter of 2003, the federal data show. But the raises are not spread evenly across Manhattan’s job market, economists said.

The average is skewed by the large number of high-paying jobs at investment banks, brokerage firms and hedge funds, they said.

. . .

Mr. Dolfman, whose report is included in the bureau’s Monthly Labor Review, said one negative consequence of the unequal distribution of income gains is that “the middle class is being squeezed out of the city because of the tremendous purchasing power of the people in the global sectors of the economy.”

Then Again, They Also Could Have Just Asked Us . . .

According to detailed analysis of the Hudson River, residents in the Hudson River watershed consume more cocaine than anywhere else in the world:

Researchers for the Nuremberg’s Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research scoured the Hudson River for benzoylecgonine — a substance produced by the human body while processing cocaine — and found byproducts equivalent to a total of 16.4 tons of cocaine per year.

An estimated 3.4 million people ages 15 to 65 live in the Hudson’s watershed. Nearly three percent of Americans in this age group use cocaine at least once a year, according to the United Nations “World Drug Report.” That equates to about 95,000 people who are consuming the 16.4 tons of pure coke annually.

The researchers also discovered more pure coke in our river than anywhere else — including Washington’s Potomac River and San Francisco Bay.

Elderly Nazis . . . I Hate Those Guys (The New York State Commission On Health Care Facilities, Too!)

Someone tell Anthony Weiner now that the balance of power has changed in Congress it’s no longer necessary to keep vapidly grandstanding*.

First, out to the Rockaways to rail against something over which he has no control:

Congressman Anthony Weiner yesterday railed against the state closing one of two hospitals in the Rockaways.

Reacting to word that either Peninsula or St. John’s Episcopal would be recommended for closure by a state panel, the Queens/Brooklyn Democrat argued that hospitals are being punished for an antiquated system that funnels more money into surgical care than preventive care.

“The Rockaways need two major health-care providers,” said Weiner, whose district includes both Queens hospitals. “Everybody agrees that there should be more outpatient care and fewer hospital beds, but the regulatory obstacles are enormous.”

Then it’s off to Jackson Heights to go fuck with some elderly Nazis:

Congressmember Anthony Weiner (DQueens, Brooklyn) grabbed a sign and joined a neighborhood protest in Jackson Heights November 9 outside the home of a former Nazi SS death camp guard who was stripped of his United States citizenship in 2003.

Jakiw Palij, 84, has not been deported because U.S. immigration officials can’t find a country to take him. He was stripped of his citizenship after officials discovered he lied when he applied for an immigrant visa in 1949.

Weiner joined hundreds of high school students at the protest who demanded that Palij open his door and face them.

“No one is going to hide among us,” Weiner said. “This monster is responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of people in the Nazi death camps. He is not paying for his crimes by living a peaceful life on 89th Street in Jackson Heights.”

*What is he thinking seriously about a run for Borough President or something? Oh, right — Mayor. Forgot.

I Don’t Think It’s April 1st Today . . .

There is open speculation that the City may be selling its iconic Municipal Building:

Speculation is heating up that the Municipal Building, the soaring limestone landmark that overlooks City Hall, could be among the government real estate assets to be sold off and converted to residential buildings as municipal employees prepare to move into a new, privately managed office building planned for ground zero.

The Municipal Building at One Centre St., the home of the Department of City Planning at 22 Reade St., and another large office building overlooking Foley Square at 2 Lafayette St. are among the assets whose sale is under consideration, according to a source familiar with the process.

In September, Mayor Bloomberg penned an agreement with developer Larry Silverstein to take 600,000 square feet in Tower 4 at the former World Trade Center site as early as 2013. Mr. Bloomberg said at the time that the city could sell off some real estate assets, which could be developed or converted into residential buildings. Mr. Silverstein has the right to cancel the deal between now and September 2008 if he finds a tenant that would pay more than the city’s offer of $56.50 a square foot a year in rent.