Accepting Credit When Credit Is Due . . .

But if you are going to jerk around your fares, at least make sure you first check the name on the card:

Cabdrivers are flouting a new law by throwing up roadblocks to frustrated riders who try to pay with plastic, the Taxi and Limousine Commission chairman said yesterday.

The problem is so widespread, one dishonest hack even tried to refuse the TLC chairman’s credit card.

“It is going to give the industry a black eye,” chairman Matthew Daus told cab-company owners at a monthly TLC meeting.

Daus said that during his ride, a cabby hit a button on the meter from the front seat that selected cash for him. When the commissioner complained that he wanted to pay with his credit card, the driver said it was too late.

The TLC has since changed the meters so that taxi drivers cannot make a selection between cash and credit from the front seat, but drivers continue to insist their credit-card machines are broken.

“It’s just plain wrong,” Daus said yesterday. “This is just breaking the law.”

So then there must be something to those accusations . . .

The Horrible Truth About Stone Barns . . .

. . . is that it’s all about the tax break:

Super-rich New York city slickers are harvesting big checks from government programs originally set up to save poor family farmers during the Great Depression.

Among the dozens of billionaire sod-busters on both Forbes magazine’s rich list and the federal farm welfare rolls is banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller Sr., who reaped $29,615 from the corn-subsidy program in 2005.

Rockefeller, worth an estimated $2.6 billion, got the government money for farms in Westchester and Columbia counties, according to a database compiled by the Environmental Working Group lobbying organization.

Through a spokesman, Rockefeller, 92, said he’s unlikely to take any more of the money — and that he believes the system needs reform.

Location Scout: Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture.

Yet Another Item For The Oppo-Research File

If there’s one thing we know about Presidential elections it’s that American voters don’t want to hear that you’ve raised taxes:

Rules dating back to the city’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s call for the sales tax charged in the city to drop 1 percentage point, to 7.375%, this summer. Mr. Bloomberg is working to make sure the scheduled tax cut never happens.

The Bloomberg administration is asking Albany legislators to authorize a tax increase that cancels out the reduction so that the tax remains at 8.375%.

“We are working with the State and we anticipate that they will provide the necessary authorization,” a spokesman for the mayor said via e-mail.

During the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, the state raised the city’s portion of the sales tax to four cents on each dollar of goods sold from three cents to create a revenue stream dedicated to bailing out the city from its financial troubles. When the law that imposed a financial control board on the city expires on July 1, 2008, the sales tax increase also is set to dissolve.

. . .

The 8.375% sales tax charged in the city is divided into three parts: 4% goes to the state, another 4% to the city, and .375% to the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District.

According to a Preliminary Official Statement from the city sent to prospective bond buyers on December 5, the city projects that if it is unable to push through the tax increase, sales tax revenues in the city would drop by approximately $1.19 billion in the fiscal year 2009, $1.25 billion in 2010, and $1.31 billion in 2011.

“On July 1, 2008, the local sales tax, which is currently imposed by the State at the rate of 4%, will expire and, absent legislative action, a 3% local sales tax imposed by the City would be in effect. The Financial Plan assumes that the City will receive the legislative authorization to continue the local sales tax at the rate of 4%,” the document states.

Previously on Why Bloomberg Will Never Run For President: Hizzoner explaining the Iraqi insurgency at Cooper Union, Hizzoner placing the threat of terrorism below that of a hurricane, Hizzoner being alarmist about a return to the days of Hoovervilles, the steak dinner genesis story, his administration’s spendthrift ways (no really, check the MySpace page) and — worst of all — his clumsy Wesley Clark-like name checking of Shakira. And that list doesn’t even take into account his pro-choice position . . .

Center San Man!

On the eve of an exhibit on the history of the Department of Sanitation, NYU professor Robin Nagle discusses her goal of a full-fledged Sanitation Museum:

It’s long overdue. The department is kind of a victim of its own success. For the most part they do the job so well, you don’t have to think about them. It’s as if they’re forgotten. Sanitation personnel are used to being disregarded, so they forget to celebrate themselves. I have the privilege — since I come from the outside, but straddle both words — to say, “Look at how important you are.”

. . .

This is a modest start. It’s one room. But it signals to the world we have big goals. Once this is done, we’ll sit down and do the homework to file as a not-for-profit and raise money. We envision the museum as a cultural and education center.

What To Do With The Worst Park In The City?

One solution is to trade up:

Once a dumping ground for carcasses of animals sacrificed in Santeria rituals, the community board wants to use hilly 3.3-acre University Woods Park for an affordable condo complex.

But some local activists have been working to clean up and save the park.

Two years ago, Community Board 5 approached developer Andrew Lasala about swapping the park for his property on the waterfront just north of it, which would be ideal for a greenway, said District Manager Xavier Rodriguez.

The state was interested in buying Lasala’s waterfront property, Rodriguez said, and there was interest in swapping it for the University Woods acres, which have been a haven for drug addicts and homeless people and last year was ranked as the worst park in the city by an advocacy group.

Location Scout: University Woods.