This Is Why We Hate You

Fuck you, cab driver:

About 3,000 New York City taxi drivers routinely overcharged riders over two years by surreptitiously fixing their meters to charge rates that would normally apply only to trips outside the five boroughs, according to the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission.

. . .

The Taxi and Limousine Commission directed meter manufacturers to modify the equipment, to warn riders when the rate rises.
The drivers’ scheme, the commission said, involved 1.8 million rides and cost passengers an average of $4 to $5 extra per trip. The drivers, officials said, flipped switches on their meters that kicked in the higher rates, costing New York City riders a total of $8.3 million.

What If Instead Of Being “Inappropriate” It Was Actually Kind Of Cool?

The mayor weighs in on the JFK intern flap and helps make two nine-year-olds neurotic for life:

An air traffic controller’s stunt in letting his 9-year-old twins direct planes has landed with a thud — on the kids.

The brother and sister are blaming themselves because their father has been suspended for bringing them to work at Kennedy Airport, a relative said Thursday.

. . .

Mayor Bloomberg also weighed in, saying he was mystified by Duffy’s stunt.

“It was certainly inappropriate,” said Bloomberg, a licensed pilot.

I’m almost more offended by where some people take their dogs than where these children were and what they were doing . . .

Location Scout: JFK.

Bloomberg Discovers New Meaning For “Limited Partnership”

Tom Robbins notes the irony of Bloomberg being showy offering $120,000 to encourage minorities and women to get involved in New York’s film industry while at the same time doing little to encourage an open call for higher-paid managers for his troubled NYC Media division:

The Bloomy Law & Order event also conveniently came a couple weeks after the Voice reported that the mayor handed the son of a close friend a $114,000 a year job at what’s now called NYC Media. The mayor’s managers never even bothered to interview anyone else for the post, or comply with the city’s own equal opportunity rules.

The mayor’s Law & Order minority hiring plan is also a step or two divorced from everyday reality. Since Wierson, Scotland and a few other miscreants were booted last spring, Bloomberg’s managers have filled at least four top jobs at the city station, all of which have gone to whites who either worked at Bloomberg’s own private TV outfit, or who are friends of station executives. Not a single minority has been hired.

City Department Of Education Comes Out In Favor Of Processed Foods

The greatest of all unintended consequences:

It has come to this: Pop-Tarts and Doritos have trumped homemade brownies as acceptable foods allowed to be sold at bake sales inside the city’s public schools.

More Like This And I Really Won’t Care That You’re Behind A Pay Wall

The Post has a reporter go “undercover” as an obnoxious cab-sharer on the first day of the TLC’s new program to allow riders to share taxi rides down Park Avenue just so people “get a taste” of what they’re in for:

As the shared-ride program was unveiled yesterday, an undercover Post reporter rode along with three Upper East Side women and gave them a taste of some of the uncouth behavior they could encounter when crammed in the back seat with fellow commuters.

Turning on the dreaded taxi TV was the first of countless annoying ways our reporter was able to disrupt the ride.

Reading too much into actions, manufacturing an “issue” where nothing is there and proving the negative — sounds a lot like blogging actually! And this after fewer than two dozen people actually took advantage of the shared-ride program.