Leading Economic Indicators: Gutter Punks!

Is it Williamsburg or Big Rock Candy Mountain? Hahahahahahaha:

Heroin-addict hobos from around the country are overrunning hipster haven Williamsburg — living in stalled luxury condo projects in the trendy Brooklyn neighborhood.

The newcomers, who call themselves “gutter punks,” are stirring outrage among residents and shopkeepers who charge the bums brawl on the sidewalk, shoplift and shoot heroin in trendy cafe bathrooms.

“It’s like St. Marks in the ’70s,” said Williamsburg activist Philip DePaolo[*], referring to the notorious East Village hangout. “It’s the bad old days all over again. There’s crack and heroin all over the neighborhood.”

The squatters, from middle-class families, hop freight trains to the city, where they can earn up to $150 a day panhandling in Manhattan. At night, like plenty of other borough commuters, they return to their homes: grubby hideaways inside boarded-up lots that pock the once-booming neighborhood.

“I’ve got to sleep somewhere, and I might as well do it in Williamsburg,” said Stuart, 22, a Florida college dropout.

The admitted alcoholic and heroin user makes $15 an hour panhandling in Union Square, holding a sign that reads “Traveling Broke and Sexy.”

“The girls here like it that I’m dirty and I ride trains,” he added.

*He’s gotten a couple of mentions recently; Honey, is the BS detector still in the garage?

Leading Economic Indicators: Sexually Unfrustrated Jack Tripper

Is Norman Lear still alive? If so, he should start working on the pilot because it’s a sit-com waiting to happen:

It’s an impressive space they live in, and one that is decidedly “grown-up” for a neighborhood teeming with party-loving youths who share messy apartments four or five to a lease. They have two floors. High ceilings. Terrace off the master bedroom. Brand-new everything, including granite countertops in the kitchen. By any measure, their domestic life is one that any young couple living in New York City would envy, with the exception, perhaps, of one small detail: They have a roommate.

His name is Juan Carlos “J. C.” Villars, and he was sitting on an adjacent couch with his legs kicked up on an oak-colored coffee table, a stubbly faced fellow in a dark blue dress shirt and jeans fiddling alternately with a set of hex head wrenches and a controller for the Nintendo Wii.

Mr. Bronstein, 31, a marketing consultant in dark-rimmed glasses (you might also remember him as a former editor-at-large at FHM magazine, or from Road Rules season four), and Ms. Hoge, 27, a pretty event manager for Lincoln Center who wore her brown hair clipped up, said that they couldn’t imagine ever not living with Mr. Villars, 32, an engineering project manager — even if, one day in the not-so-immediate future, marriage and kids entered the picture.

“We talk about not moving, and we talk about not imagining J. C. leaving,” said Mr. [Jake] Bronstein, who’s been close friends with Mr. Villars for more than three years, longer than he and Ms. [Kristina] Hoge have been dating. “So I think, by transitive property, that all adds up to getting married and still staying with J. C.”

“We’ve joked about it, and none of those things seem like a reason why we’d wanna get rid of him,” Ms. Hoge said with a laugh.

“I can’t even imagine how I’ll ever get there, quite honestly,” Mr. Bronstein said. “How I’ll ever get beyond . . . this.”

Primary Lesson: Bloomberg Can Buy Off Nearly Anyone Out There

Secondary lesson — disregard most of what Howard Wolfson ever says:

As a master strategist for the New York Democratic Party, Mr. Wolfson worked with a handful of other elite party operatives to lay out a grand plan to defeat Mr. Bloomberg in the 2005 mayoral race, writing in an internal memo, “Michael Bloomberg is an out-of-touch billionaire who can’t relate to the problems of ordinary New Yorkers.”

When the mayor tried to impose nonpartisan elections in the city, Mr. Wolfson called it a “cynical power grab.” When he spent tens of millions of dollars of his own money to bankroll his re-election, Mr. Wolfson said such spending “distorts the terms of the debate.” He impugned Mr. Bloomberg’s attempt to build a West Side stadium (an “out-of whack-priority”) and even criticized his beloved “Gates,” the saffron cloth panels arrayed through Central Park by the artist Christo (“shmattes on sticks”).

And when some prominent Democrats defected to the Bloomberg camp that year, Mr. Wolfson cried foul, declaring himself personally dismayed by their disloyalty.

This year, Mr. Bloomberg is again spending tens of millions of dollars to run for re-election on the Republican ballot line against a Democratic opponent. But this time, Mr. Wolfson is a senior architect of the effort.

Mr. Wolfson’s conversion has become a source of fascination and dismay among New York Democrats, who are now on the other end of the cutting brand of politics he perfected as a chief strategist for Hillary Rodham Clinton. In the city, he is credited in political circles with pressuring Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a Democrat, to quit the mayor’s race. The switch has been cited as an example of how the billionaire mayor, who is prepared to spend as much as $100 million of his own money to win a third term, can buy the silence of even his most ardent critics — an assertion summarily dismissed by Mr. Wolfson, whose consulting firm is earning $40,000 a month from the campaign.

Third lesson — the people who flock to Bloomberg are cheap dates, yes-people who tie their careers and legacies to the most powerful in a way that Niccolo Machiavelli would approve of:

Mr. Wolfson said in an interview at the Bloomberg campaign complex in Midtown that he was as surprised as anyone to be where he was, but he described himself as one of many Democrats who have come to admire the mayor — and said such political conversions are the best testament to the cross-party allure of Mr. Bloomberg’s nonideological way of governing.

Still, there is an alternate view: that Mr. Wolfson, reeling from Mrs. Clinton’s demoralizing loss, and an object of scorn among some Obama loyalists for the attacks he waged long after it became clear that she had no chance of winning, saw in Mr. Bloomberg an easy, high-profile victory.

“I am not interested in losing,” he said.

Fourth lesson — anything these people say is the pinnacle of debate club-style bullshit:

It has also been intriguing for people to watch Mr. Wolfson explain away things he once declared outrageous, like the mayor’s campaign spending.

On a Friday afternoon in the spring, he gathered a group of reporters in Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign headquarters to share the news that the mayor had spent $18 million in the first few months of his re-election effort. The announcement spurred the kind of questions Mr. Wolfson himself once so pointedly asked, like whether the mayor was trying to buy the election. Mr. Wolfson knocked down the questions in stride, and did not seem the least bit fazed by the contradictions.

“They don’t pay me,” he said in an interview that day, “to disagree with the mayor.”

Fifth lesson — it’s also easy to stop this. Just refuse — no matter how many glossy circulars you get about “jobs” or “honesty” or how many commercials you see about the man who “sees rooftops” or how many editorial boards endorse* (the latest suckup comes from the Queens Chronicle) — to vote for Bloomberg. And with any luck people like Howard Wolfson will go down with him, too.

*But remember that there are heroic beat reporters who don’t agree and will stand up to the mayor by continuing to ask the inconvenient questions . . . these people (Times Metro reporters, Observer reporters and at least someone at the Voice, too, as well as at least two editorial writers) are the last line of defense and deserve our attention and respect. (This does not apply to the New York Post, which has proved very capable of carrying water for Bloomberg.) When everyone from the rich to the non-profit sector and the unions to political operatives like Howard Wolfson have totally rolled over, reporters are all we have left.

While The Rest Of The Country Plunges Into A Depression (Or Whatever) . . .

. . . our whip-smart businessman mayor gives managers huge raises:

After crying poverty for months, Mayor Bloomberg authorized fat raises Friday for 6,692 of his managers and nonunion employees, worth $69 million over two years.

. . .

Those getting the raises will get lump-sum retroactive checks covering 16 months.

The seven deputy mayors will get raises ranging from $16,978 to $18,541, with the salary of First Deputy Commissioner Patricia Harris rising to $245,760.

Top commissioners will get a $23,247 raise, bringing their salaries to $189,700.

. . .

The raise was announced in a written statement by Bloomberg Press Secretary Stu Loeser, on a Friday afternoon, a time frequently reserved for news meant to slip under the radar.

Which is to say, the budget is basically kind of bullshit.

There’s Something Obscene About Michael Bloomberg Spending $37 Million Before July 4 . . . Here’s Why

Like a pro, Bloomberg dumped the news that he has seemingly broke every conceivable spending record on a Friday. How brave:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign for re-election has already burned through nearly $37 million, according to records released Friday, about four times as much as he had spent at this point in 2001 to introduce himself to New York voters.

So is this a “self-made man” practicing “free speech” or is it actually kind of one of the most offensive examples of the ever-present nexus of wealth and power that hangs over American society? OK, don’t answer that.

But here are some comparisons. Combined spending during the 2000 New York Senate race between Clinton, Giuliani and later Lazio was “only” $90 million — apparently the most expensive Senate campaign in history. Even Senator Clinton’s 2006 reelection campaign “only” spent $36 million, which was still the highest amount during the 2006 Senate campaign cycle. Jon Corzine — another “self-made man” — “only” spent $60 million for his first Senate run in 2000. And while Bloomberg outspends Thompson (or whoever) 50 gazillion to one (or whatever), remember that Al Gore spent $49 million during the 2000 primary cycle in an election where people were shocked to see the first $100 million campaign. (Last several figures from here.)

$100 million seems like a lot for someone whose main responsibility is to fix potholes.