Why There Oughta Be A Zoning Regulation!

This way they’ll be forced to purchase more nutritious alternatives at the “mom-and-pop” health food bodega down the block. Yes, that should fix everything:

A powerful city council member yesterday proposed overhauling the city’s zoning rules to limit the number of fast-food restaurants in neighborhoods where obesity is epidemic among youths.

The fat-busting plan also would bar McDonald’s, Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts and the like from locating near schools, said council Health Committee Chairman Joel Rivera (D-Bronx).

Rivera dropped the frying-plan bombshell during a council hearing on obesity.

“We have to be as strong with obesity as with the cigarette campaign. More people die from obesity-related issues than smoking cigarettes,” said Rivera.

“We’re looking at the zoning resolution to limit the number of fast-food restaurants,” he added.

Rivera asked city Assistant Health Commissioner Lynn Silver, testifying before his committee, what she thought of his idea.

She said restrictive zoning seemed to be a “perfect example” of how government could help curb the fat epidemic.

Rivera said obesity is a supersized problem in a city where 21 percent of kindergarten students are already fat and 53 percent of adults are overweight.

“It’s one of the best ways to tackle the obesity issue,” Rivera told The Post. “In low-income areas, you find more fast-food restaurants. In more affluent areas, you find more mom-and-pop restaurants.”

www.imadouchebagwithawebsite.com

www.itisalmostasifhewantedtogetcaught.com:

Police arrested a Manhattan subway flasher after one of his grossed-out victims gave officers an Internet address that was emblazoned on the back of his jacket — and busted him when they found X-rated pictures of him on the site.

Police charged Kenneth Hoyt, 41, with public lewdness in connection with at least four incidents of flashing women on the subway.

Cops had been searching for Hoyt, who is listed as a Level III sex offender, after a 25-year-old Upper East Side victim went to the Web site and saw an X-rated picture of him.

The woman called cops, who found three other known victims. They identified him as the creep who also flashed them.

Police said Hoyt, who lives in Hell’s Kitchen, began his flashing spree March 18. He allegedly approached two teenage girls on a northbound N train between 14th and 23rd streets and exposed himself.

Hoyt struck again May 7, when a 25-year-old woman said he flashed her on an uptown R train between the City Hall and Cortlandt Street stops.

“He was sitting there with no pants on in a sarong that he flapped open,” said the woman, who did not want to be identified. “Then I saw his penis and moved away.”

She said he then flashed another woman before exiting the train. “He got off the train with no pants on,” she said.

Why does it seem like this always happens on the Broadway line?

And Those Are The Whitest Shoes You Can Buy

The Daily News learns that the MTA is using a law firm whose partners charge up to $540 an hour for strike-related litigation:

The MTA has paid a white-shoe law firm more than $560,000 to help fight its contract clash with transit workers – even though the agency has hundreds of its own lawyers and the state attorney general’s office on its side.
The Proskauer Rose law firm has billed the Metropolitan Transportation Authority up to $540 an hour for its talent, documents obtained by the Daily News reveal.

And the tab is growing. The $560,000 covers legal battles and maneuvers from November through January, but not the past four months.

. . .

MTA spokesman Tom Kelly said Proskauer Rose provided crucial support throughout, preparing papers, doing research and making in-court arguments.

“They are considered, to my knowledge, to be one of the best in the country in what they do as far as labor law,” Kelly said.

The MTA and its Transit Authority both have labor relations and legal departments with a combined staff of more than 500, many of them lawyers. Kelly said strike-related litigation is not their expertise. He said the union is to blame for the legal bills.

“All of this money that was spent was spent as a result of the illegal actions and rhetoric that the union took part in,” he said. “Do we wish we didn’t have to spend it? Absolutely. But it was precipitated by the actions of the union.”

. . .

Proskauer Rose partners Neil Abramson and David Zurndorfer charged the highest rate, $540 an hour, according to documents provided by the MTA.

Others charged between $176 and $420 an hour, according to MTA documents, which say that the firm provided the authority a discount from its usual fees. [Emph. added for obvious in-text sarcastic commentary]

Money Well Spent!

Just imagine how this article would sound if they hadn’t convicted the kid:

The NYPD may wind up getting only one investigation and trial out of its $100,000 terror informant.

Egyptian-born mole Osama El Dawoody, who infiltrated Muslim communities in Brooklyn and Staten Island, may have to find another job now that Shahawar Matin Siraj has been convicted of scheming to blow up Manhattan’s 34th Street subway station, sources said.

“They can’t use him again,” a law-enforcement source, referring to El Dawoody’s NYPD handlers. “They don’t want to take the chance that somebody would recognize him.

“He’s not going to remain on the NYPD’s payroll forever,” the source added of El Dawoody, 50, who started working for the cops in 2003 and earned a weekly salary for his services — about $100,000, according to his testimony.

Backstory.

I Tip My Trucker Cap To Ya, Big Spender

I don’t know which is worse — drinking cans of PBR in East Village bars or expecting the rest of us to tip $2 for them.