The Pitch, Right Down Broadway, Hit Out Of The Park

“The mayor’s budget relies on a $29 million increase in revenue from fees and fines.” And if nothing else, the City has gotten particularly efficient about collecting fines:

A few hours after Mr. Bloomberg spoke, a team of police officers set up in SoHo for one of their twice-daily exercises in shooting fish in a barrel: nabbing drivers going south on Broadway just below Houston Street in Manhattan.

During the morning and evening rush, there is a virtually unlimited supply of law-breaking drivers who encroach on a lane reserved for buses. A relatively new traffic configuration limits cars to a single lane from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., a change that is announced on signs hanging over the lane, and to which the drivers must adjust immediately after they have crossed Houston.

So police officers, crooking a single finger, have ordered scores of drivers to the curb for breaking the law and issued them a fine for $130. Whatever the virtues of bus lanes, and there are many, this one is a trap — a lucrative one. One police officer, giving a summons at that spot recently, conceded that traffic would be backed up to 14th Street if some drivers did not make their way into that Broadway bus lane.

That’s Why You Want A Businessman In Office

Because only a businessman really understands creative accounting:

Mayor Bloomberg will be able to balance next year’s $70 billion budget because higher pension costs are being spread over 22 years — with the largest part of the bill coming due at the tail end, The Post has learned.

Sources said that arrangement means Bloomberg only has to spend an extra $575 million next year for pensions, instead of the $1 billion he had already set aside.

“It’s going to give them $425 million more for balancing the budget,” said one source. “That’s basically how they’re getting through this.”

But what does anyone care as long as headlines read “Brighter Bloomberg budget is on tap: Budget watchdogs predict this year’s $70 billion budget will be far rosier than last year” or even “As Fiscal Cloud Lifts, Mayor Offers a Budget Free of Tax Increases or Broad Layoffs”?

That, And Blair Waldorf Still Won’t Think You’re Good Enough To Be At Constance Billard

And aren’t some of the schools that cost this much places that snobs sneer at anyway? In other words, it’s more expensive to attend these places than it is to enroll at Harvard, with a fraction of the prestige:

Over the past 10 years, the median price of first grade in the city has gone up by 48 percent, adjusted for inflation, compared with a 35 percent increase at private schools nationally — and just 24 percent at an Ivy League college — according to tuition data provided by 41 New York City K-12 private schools to the National Association of Independent Schools.

. . .

“Within one to two years, every independent school will cost more than $40,000,” said one board member at a top school who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the school had not yet set tuition.

That, And Howard Wolfson Has The Shittiest Job In The City These Days

Clyde Haberman takes the City to task for the “Photochop” (Post headline) debacle by asking if what the Health Department did crossed an ethical line:

Legally, there was no problem with altering the actor’s picture; he had signed a release permitting it. But did the ad agency — and thus its employer, the city — act ethically? Doesn’t a photo so heavily doctored amount to cheating?

. . .

Sunday night, in an exchange of messages with me on Twitter, Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson rejected any suggestion of cheating. The poster’s claims about the perils of diabetes are “100% accurate,” he wrote. As for relying on an actor, Mr. Wolfson said, “many institutions, including your own, feature actors in ads.”

The problem for me is that the actor’s image goes way beyond a simple portrayal of the perils of diabetes. When you see ads like that, the idea is that you’re supposed to be scared straight to change your eating habits. Seeing a relatively young man who looks otherwise healthy — except that he’s fat and his leg was Photoshopped out — makes you really freak out that you’re going to lose a limb or whatnot.

Here’s another example: If the Health Department showed a 28-year-old bedridden and hooked up to a hospital doodad with the caption, “Stop Smoking Or You’ll Die Of Lung Cancer” you’d think you should probably stop smoking because there’s a young person who is very sick from lung cancer — or whatever. Seeing that image is what sends the message. Imagine if the fellow without the voicebox in the anti-smoking ads wasn’t actually without his voicebox — it’s misleading, mostly because it undermines the idea that this is an actual person.

Repeat the thought experiment with other diseases and you’ll see what I mean . . .

All of which is to say that the Health Department is wasting a lot of money hectoring us about cutting back on soda pop, and it should make us rethink what we’re paying them to do. That, and Howard Wolfson has the shittiest job in the city these days when he has to run debate club interference for crappy decisions made by city agencies.

The Man May Have Lost His Leg But He Sure Didn’t Lose His Sense Of Humor

The guy whose legs were lopped off by the Health Department isn’t mad or anything. Sort of:

“I’ve always wanted my photo in an ad all over the city, but I was hoping it would be for a TV show or something, not — this,” [the actor from Los Angeles] said.

He even offered to represent the health department’s archenemy, possibly for less than his usual rate. He said if a soda company “would like to call me so we can do a commercial, I’ll sing and dance for them and I won’t charge an arm and a leg.”