Traffic Calming . . . By Drowning Traffic In The Bathtub Or Shanking Traffic With A Rusty Shiv

If you want to create a pedestrian mall, then by all means, create a pedestrian mall — people should drive less and walk more — Yay! Woohoo! — you just made Gary Numan cry again! But if you do create a pedestrian mall, please, please, please don’t call it a “traffic congestion reducing measure,” because closing streets cannot possibly reduce congestion — no matter how much you want to repeat the lie:

The city plans to close several blocks of Broadway to vehicle traffic through Times Square and Herald Square, an experiment that would turn swaths of the Great White Way into pedestrian malls and continue Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s effort to reduce traffic congestion in Midtown.

Nate Silver Adjusts Regression Analysis By Adding Rodent Aggression Factor

A new X factor in political polling emerges in the wake of the Groundhog Day Uprising:

Staten Island Chuck was merely defending his turf when he chomped on Mayor Bloomberg’s finger, according to a poll out Wednesday.

A Quinnipiac poll shows that 61% of New Yorkers believe Chuck was protecting his home, while 15% say the feisty groundhog was making a political statement.

Less Confident Than Crazy*

Mayor Bloomberg wants $45 million to retrain employees who are probably the least likely to trust government job training programs:

Just as Michigan is scrambling to retrain laid-off auto workers, New York City officials have come up with a plan to find new work for the unemployed from one of its core industries: financial services.

Under a program unveiled on Wednesday by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the city wants to invest $45 million in government money to retrain investment bankers, traders and others who have lost jobs on Wall Street, as well as provide seed capital and office space for new businesses those laid-off bankers might create.

The plan is intended to stem a potential exodus of banking professionals from the city during the restructuring of the financial services industry, which has been the city’s economic engine for decades, and to speed the industry’s recovery, which will take at least several years, officials said.

. . .

The mayor announced the 11-part program at a building at 160 Varick Street that will house an incubator for start-up companies that might employ laid-off professionals. Trinity Real Estate donated the space for three years and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University will select the entrepreneurs who will occupy the space, beginning in April. A second business incubator is scheduled to open in Lower Manhattan later in the year, said Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation.

The agency plans to put $3 million into funds to make small investments in start-up companies, Mr. Pinsky said. He said that he hoped to attract twice as much money from private investors and that $9 million would be enough to help start hundreds of new businesses.

All told, city officials plan to spend about $15 million on the program, in addition to the $30 million of federal money. They estimate that over 10 years, it could stimulate the creation of at least 25,000 jobs and contribute $750 million to the local economy, but Mr. Bloomberg referred to those projections as a “guess.”

*And think of how many housing project roofs or elevators that could be fixed with $45 million . . .

Too Bad, Because The Three Things Voters Hate Most Are Hypocrites, Liars And False Modesty

Whatever happened to “I am not a very good politician”? That was so three years ago:

Mark Green — New York City’s public advocate from 1994 to 2001, who famously sparred with Rudolph W. Giuliani before narrowly losing the 2001 mayoral race to Michael R. Bloomberg in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks — formally declared on Tuesday that he was running to get his old job back.

Mr. Green made his announcement in a four-minute video and a letter addressed to his supporters and the news media on his Web site. “In a time of crisis, the City needs leaders who combine proven experience with new ideas,” he said.

Does Anyone Really Believe The Media Is Out To Get Bloomberg?

Regrets of some reporters aside, the major papers’ uncritical support of the mayor’s suspension of term limits sort of makes Bloomberg’s complaint that it’s hard to “get his message out” seem rather Palin-like:

Yesterday, Bloomberg defended his right to spend unlimited amounts of money on his campaign, saying, “It is very difficult to get a message out to the public” and “sometimes some reporters don’t accurately describe what we have done.”

Campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson elaborated, saying that Bloomberg’s wealth gives him independence unmatched by candidates who are dependent on donor money.

In an email, Wolfson wrote, “The mayor has never taken a dime of special interest money. He has never taken a dime from lobbyists. This November NYers will again have an opportunity to vote for a candidate who is unbought and unbossed and beholden only to the public.”

Bloomberg’s campaign spending has been an issue even before he won his first term. In a Nexis-able 2001 interview on the Today Show, host Katie Couric speculated that Bloomberg may wind up spending “$45 million more than, perhaps, your opponent?”

In the interview, Bloomberg replied: “Well, that’s not a fair comparison because if you had been a politician for a long time, if you’ve been in government, you have all the visibility that that office has created. You have the use of your staff that’s paid for by the taxpayers for getting out, working, and manning phones, and sending out faxes and mails. And if you’ve run many times, my opponent’s run for office 11 times, he’s used that, rightly so, to build up name recognition.