What Civil Service Title Does Imam Fall Under?

“Some” (read: the New York Sun) are questioning how much New York spends on clergy for its city jails:

The case of New York’s embattled jailhouse imam, Umar Abdul-Jalil, is causing some to call into question the existence and size of the city’s prison chaplain program, which costs taxpayers more than $1 million a year.

As top city officials decide whether to fire Abdul-Jalil for his remarks to a conference of Muslim students last year, the case has raised questions about the city’s use of taxpayer funds to provide chaplains for inmates in municipal jails. The city’s Department of Correction employs 21 full-time and 19 part-time chaplains from the Muslim, Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish faiths.

Critics have suggested that the city’s employment of clergy is a misuse of taxpayer dollars when other major municipalities, including Los Angeles and Chicago, rely on volunteer chaplains to serve their inmates. The city, which has employed clergy in its jails for decades, says a volunteer-based program would not work for the around-the-clock needs of its jail system.

. . .

At a conference in April 2005, Abdul-Jalil said the “greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House” and urged Muslims in America to “stop letting the Zionists of the media dictate what Islam is to us.” The imam also said that Muslims were tortured in a city jail.

. . .

In Los Angeles County, which at 21,000 inmates has the nation’s largest municipal prison system, chaplains provide ministerial services entirely on a volunteer basis, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department, Steve Whitmore, said. The same is true for about 9,000 inmates in Cook County, Ill., which serves Chicago.

New York City, meanwhile, allocates $879,395 a year to pay the salaries of its 21 full-time chaplains, according to the mayor’s preliminary budget. That does not include the costs of benefits such as health care or pensions, nor the compensation for part-time chaplains and administrators such as Abdul-Jalil, who made $76,602 as the department’s director of ministerial services.

You Call That A Dog Shit? Rats Around Here Drop Loads Bigger Than That

They’re still looking for Vivi, the wayward whippet who — dead or alive — is somewhere in the Jamaica Bay-JFK area:

Two weeks to the day after a champion whippet named Vivi broke free of her crate at Kennedy Airport and ran off into the marshes, searchers have not given up, continuing to hand out thousands of lost-dog fliers and canvass the 5,000-acre airport.

An organized search party of volunteers is planned Saturday at 8 a.m., starting at the Vetport at Building 189 in Cargo Area C.

. . .

While Vivi might be lying low, her supporters aren’t. Brian Rosenberg, vice president of the Garden City Hotel and a whippet owner himself, is planning a “Vivi and the Strays” fundraiser at the hotel’s nightclub, Posh, on March 11. Proceeds will benefit the search, which may expand to include a pet detective, as well as local rescue groups that help other lost dogs.

“It seems like this is the start of something, whether Vivi is found or not,” said Rosenberg. “It shouldn’t just be about one show dog.”

The there is the perverse possibility that someone is holding the dog for ransom:

And searchers worry that Vivi’s well-heeled reputation might work against her. Initially, one of Vivi’s owners said she was worth $150,000 — an exaggeration intended to put the search for her into high gear, but one that might make the $5,000 reward look disproportionate.

“She is worth $20,000 as a show dog in the right context, possibly, but she is not worth a cent without her papers,” said Bengtson, adding that the cost of showing and “campaigning” a show dog like Vivi easily mounted to that much in expenses for her owners. “We’re dreading that someone might be holding out for more money. But the reward is $5,000, and not anything more.”

Meanwhile, the Queens Times Newsweekly’s editorial page thinks enough is enough:

Enough already with Vivi (short for Champion Bohem C’est La Vie), the missing Whippet show dog that got loose from its cage at Kennedy Airport.

Hundreds of man-hours have been wasted at JFK by Port Authority personnel who have to accompany the dog-seeking entourage — including a handler, breeder, groom, walker and a host of volunteers. Coast Guard helicopters flew around for days trying to locate the canine and bloodhounds have been unleashed. Since bloodhounds usually track people, there’s a special Rottweiler that tracks dogs.

. . .

It is unfortunate that Vivi, fresh from its appearance in the Westminster Dog Show, was lost. But the odds of its survival are slim indeed. Cold weather and packs of stray dogs known to roam the area all but ensure doom.

. . .

Now comes word of the newest advancement—a probe of dog droppings. Apparently, one of the dog’s owners claims that some droppings found are consistent with the 30-pound Whippet’s. However, some workers at Kennedy counter that rats in the area drop loads the same size.

Like “The Son Of A Mill Worker,” But Better!

The city is abuzz over news that a one-time cabby Tamir “Tom” Sapir is buying the $40 million Duke-Semans Mansion on Fifth Avenue. Today the Post investigates his amazing ascent from rags to riches:

After moving to Israel himself for awhile, Sapir decided to take his chances at fortune in America, originally landing in a small, close-knit Jewish community in Louisville, Ky.

His first job was driving a bus for senior citizens.

There was a special perk in it for the young, Russian-speaking immigrant.

“While I was driving, they taught me how to speak English,” Sapir said.

He picked up odd jobs where he could to beef up his income, collecting garbage and even hauling around a pal’s hammers and nails when needed.

Ten months later, with some savings in his pocket, he moved his family to New York City.

While Sapir’s first home with Russian-born wife Bella was their 108th Street apartment, his second home became a city cab.

“I drudged from early morning until late at night, sleeping nights at airports to be in when the first planeload of passengers arrived — actually, they would awake me by tugging at my clothes, ‘Wake up, man!'” the tycoon recalled in a recently published interview of his early days as a struggling driver.

But within six months, he said, he had made enough to buy a coveted cab medallion — and eventually began pulling in $300 to $400 a day.

If I’m not mistaken, medallions are pretty expensive*. And is it just me or are there some big CV gaps between owning a fledgling electronics store and becoming a billionaire real estate mogul? You be the judge:

He wound up using his medallion as collateral on a $10,000 bank loan to become partners in an electronics store on Broadway near Madison Square Park.

The move was dicey, but it paid off.

Realizing that he had a potential gold mine in technology-starved Russian tourists, immigrants and visiting government big shots, Sapir lured them to the store by the hundreds daily.

He then took the money to gain a hand in oil contracts in Russia, and from there began investing in Manhattan real estate. His first purchase was a condo at 5 E. 22nd St. in 1985 — just around the corner from his shop — for $324,500.

He went on to acquire properties everywhere from Madison Avenue, Park Place and Fifth Avenue.

“Oil contracts.” What a country!

*See more about the economics of the medallion system at “Villain or Bogeyman? New York’s Taxi Medallion System”, which notes that cabbies took in on an average of $64 a day in 1986; medallions seem to have cost about $100,000 then.

As If Circumcision Wasn’t Already Bad Enough

Hizzoner is in hot water with the ultraorthodox sect that gives babies life-threatening genital herpes after the City Health Department’s recent public information campaign warning parents about the dangers of allowing a mohel to suck the blood from a baby’s freshly circumcised penis. The Times has the latest:

Some in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities say the city is infringing upon their religious rights. They go so far as to accuse Mr. Bloomberg of reneging on what they say they took as an election-year assurance that the administration would leave the matter to rabbinical authorities. But others outside those communities had been harshly critical of the administration, saying that it failed to take adequate action against a practice that has been endangering the lives of infants.

The dispute, which had the mayor trying to calm rabbinical leaders at Gracie Mansion yesterday in what his aides called a frank exchange, has put Mr. Bloomberg in the rare position of balancing a key constituency against the policies of one of his most trusted commissioners. And it occurs against the backdrop of the roiling ethnic politics of New York, with Orthodox leaders having threatened to disrupt the mayor’s inauguration last Sunday by wearing yellow stars like the ones Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany. [Emph. added]

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that the City Health Department warning parents about geezers who give infants life-threatening genital herpes is so not like Nazi Germany. (And fuck you for the equivalence, you baby dick sucking apologists.) (Was that last part out loud? Sorry.)

Anyway, as Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner Dr. Thomas R. Frieden notes, “There’s no question this is one of the most delicate issues I’ve ever had to deal with.” An understatement.

As for the ultraorthodox community being upset because they feel they got assurances from Bloomberg that he wouldn’t “infringe” on their “religious right” to practice this kind of circumcision, talk about single-issue voting — they make the pro-life platform seem like de Tocqueville:

An editorial last week in a local Yiddish newspaper, Der Blatt, cited the mayor’s position then as a catalyst for the huge campaign rally for him on Nov. 5 in Williamsburg.

“What has been promised to us prior to the recent elections — and this was the only request we made — was that the subject of metzitzah b’peh should be completely untouched by the city department of health,” the editorial said. “This and only this was the reason why thousands of Orthodox Jews registered themselves to vote, undersigned a petition to the mayor, came out in droves, men, women and children, to an unprecedented rally.”

God help us.

What Was That About Again? No, Seriously . . .

The MTA and the Transport Workers Union reached a settlement on a new 37-month contract, striking a deal that — for current transit employees — is in fact worse than what was first offered by the MTA:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the transit workers’ union announced a settlement yesterday in which the authority abandoned its demand for concessions on pensions and the union agreed to have all workers pay a portion of their health insurance premiums.

Last night the executive board of the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, voted 37 to 4 to approve the tentative 37-month contract. One member abstained. The city’s 33,700 subway and bus workers are expected to vote on the agreement early next month; some are expected to oppose it out of unhappiness over having to pay toward health premiums for the first time.

The agreement calls for transit workers to pay 1.5 percent of their wages toward the premiums, cutting into the raises they receive. That comes on top of the fines of slightly more than $1,000 that most transit workers face for participating in last week’s illegal transit strike.

The new contract includes raises of 3 percent in the first year, 4 percent in the second year and 3.5 percent in the third year . . . in other words, exactly what the MTA offered to the union just before it went out on strike.

And instead of pension contributions for future employees, now all transit workers will contribute money towards their health care premimum. So going out on strike not only cost the average transit worker $1000 but now they will have to pay for health care as well. Smart, smart move.

Transport Workers Union board members were ecstatic:

“These were huge items for our membership,” said Marvin W. Holland, a station cleaner and board member who voted to approve the contract. “If it took a strike to get it, so be it. I think this is an overwhelming success.”

Meanwhile, in an impressive display of moving goalposts, TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint apparently decided that all he had to do was outdo Philadelphia transit workers’ recent contract:

One union leader close to the talks said Mr. Toussaint was eager to be able to show his union’s members that he delivered a better contract than the one received by 5,000 Philadelphia transit workers after their one-week strike last month.

The Philadelphia workers received raises of 3 percent a year for three years and their union agreed, for the first time, to have workers pay 1 percent of their wages toward their health premiums.

Mr. Toussaint agreed to higher premiums but he can say he obtained bigger raises than the Philadelphia union received.

It’s admirable to “refuse to sell out the unborn” — the recent police contract that lowered rookie pay to around $25,000 was an egregious example of a union selling out its “unborn” — but I find it very difficult to believe that current transit employees will be happy about actually getting a worse deal by upholding that noble principle. They should vote down the contract. And I would totally understand why.