“Pop” A Tax On Their Ass!

The best thing about the soda tax (and probably fishing, too) is that it makes people that much more enthusiastic about the prospect of soaking the rich. Bwahahaha:

New York State voters oppose the so-called “obesity tax” on nondiet soft drinks by a resounding margin of 60 percent to 37 percent, but support, by an even more overwhelming margin of 84 percent to 13 percent, raising the state income tax on people who make more than $1 million per year, according to results of a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday.

Even those who prefer diet sodas — which would be exempt from the proposed 18 percent sales tax — said they opposed the measure (58 percent to 39 percent), while drinkers of regular sodas opposed the idea by an even stronger margin (64 percent to 31 percent). Majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents surveyed all opposed the proposed tax, though by varying margins.

(In an amusing aside, the Quinnipiac poll noted, “Independent voters are the most weight conscious on the political spectrum as 37 percent prefer diet soft drinks, compared to 27 percent of Republicans and 30 percent of Democrats.”)

Meanwhile, support for the so-called “millionaires’ tax” extended even to Republicans, who favored the measure, by a margin of 72 percent to 27 percent. Gov. David A. Paterson has expressed opposition to raising taxes on wealthy voters, but has suggested that there might be no other option if the state budget crisis continues to fester.

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Makes you want to root for Cole Hamels:

Despite the recession, our New York teams keep doing what they’ve always done: spending the competition into oblivion. Especially the Yankees. Sabathia had made it clear he didn’t want to come to New York, even after the Bombers had offered him $140 million. So the Yankees gave him 20 million more reasons to change his mind.

How is this even possible? Where’s this money coming from? Never mind that $161 million is, at the very least, unseemly right now. If you want an answer, look back to the days before the Sabathia announcement, when details leaked about the Yankees and Mets asking the city for a combined $450 million more in public bonds, to pay for cost overruns on their immoderate new stadiums. (They’d initially been granted $1.5 billion.) Already, the two teams are not paying rent or property taxes on the new stadiums, and the MTA ($104 for a monthly MetroCard, anyone?) is giving the Yankees their own Metro-North station. The teams are also subtracting construction costs from their share of MLB’s revenue-sharing program, which pays out to less-flush franchises. The Yankees (and Mets) have prepared for a potential recession the old-fashioned way: by reducing their own expenses long before everyone else was doing it. That made paying Sabathia (and Rodriguez) easy. The recession is going to cause normal teams to scale back. The Yankees and Mets are not normal teams. They have big shiny new stadiums and fancy cable channels. So they don’t get normal players.

Yes The Bronx!

No the Yale!:

The posh Yale Club in Midtown is fast becoming a cheesy wedding hall, with old-money members complaining of steady invasions of crowds from such lowbrow places as The Bronx.

“It’s crappy,” said a woman who insisted The Post identify her only as “Mrs. Harrison DeSilver.”

“I just want to put my feet up here, but instead, weddings are being shipped down from The Bronx,” groused DeSilver, a member for 50 years.

“On the weekends, it just gets ridiculous.”

DeSilver said the majority of the weddings at the club seem to involve people from The Bronx.

Leading Economic Indicator: The Laid Off I-Banker Trend Piece

Don’t look now — the $405 Club is back:

In the wake of continuing, even worsening, layoffs in the financial industry (10,000 in New York since last August, Bloomberg recently reported, with behemoths like Citigroup cutting 10 percent of its investment bank alone); as double-digit drops in net worth have top executives wringing their hands in The Times, much of Wall Street’s young are simply throwing up theirs and saying, “Whoo-hoo!”

Tommy Kim, 27, formerly of UBS, for example, logged 37 days of snowboarding in 2008 after being fired last January. “When I got laid off, it was like, hallelujah,” he said.

After the snow melted, he came back to New York, where “I went paint-balling,” Mr. Kim said. “I went to Six Flags.” Now: “I stay up late, wake up late, go to the beach a lot. I play a lot of video games when I can’t find people to hang out with. I started reading again for pleasure, which is something I haven’t done since before college.” (Currently on the nightstand: Freakonomics).

He doesn’t have a three-bedroom in Westchester or a country club membership. He’s single and owns a one-bedroom in Queens that he bought “really cheap” in 2004.

Recently, Mr. Kim turned his attention to organizing his vast music collection and playing DJ gigs around town, including a Saturday party at the Brooklyn Museum and a few weddings (he was a well-known DJ during his undergrad days at Dartmouth). He’s also taking break-dancing classes. And he built himself a new computer, just for the hell of it. Looked up the instructions online, bought the parts, et voilà!

And his job search? “I’m kind of looking,” Mr. Kim said. “I decided last week maybe I should be more proactive.” It’s hard to get worked up, though, because “President Bush extended unemployment by another 13 weeks!” That’s $405 a week on top of the “generous” UBS severance.

Buried Lede: Unemployment Benefits Stagnate; Unaccountably Rich Hardest Hit!

And Averaging 93.6 Inches Of Snow Annually!

Adam “Jersey City” Sternbergh out-Sternberghs himself:

Until last May, Cloyd and Herbeck were living in Sunset Park, in Brooklyn, and they were barely making it. They ate mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner. They couldn’t afford to go out with their friends. They wanted a family, but “there was no room in our Brooklyn equation to have kids unless we put them in a closet,” Herbeck says.

Then one night, Herbeck, who’s 30, found herself browsing online listings in Buffalo. (Why Buffalo? She comes from Buffalo. And like many young Buffalonians, she got out as soon as she could.) “We were like, ‘Okay, the prices are great,'” she says. So they looked at some photos. “And we were like, ‘Okay, they’re really nice apartments. They’re really big. And right by the park.'”

And all of a sudden, they found they were staring at a very different what-could-be life: the one they’d be able to have if they were willing to leave New York.