What If It Never Actually Becomes “State-Of-The-Art”?

Keep in mind that a capacity of 14,500 would be smaller than every other NHL arena:

Bruce Ratner, who will welcome the NBA’s Nets to Brooklyn next season, is hopeful of the arena’s potential NHL prospects as well, perhaps even the New York Islanders, who are looking for a new home. In fact, the building already has ice and locker rooms for both sports.

. . .

“It holds 14,500 for hockey,” Ratner said.

That’s fewer people than the minor league facility that the Winnipeg Jets play in . . .

We’ll Always Have Singapore

The other day Clyde Haberman quipped that unlike some other recent mayors who traveled abroad and got wacky ideas, Bloomberg “should be able to resist some undesirable ideas that will fall his way in rigid Singapore, where it doesn’t take much to step out of line.” Actually, the mayor sounds like he’s right at home.

Which is to say, it’s not Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr that makes people think ideas are bad, it’s that bad ideas make people take to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Which is also to say, happy constituents don’t have any reason to bitch on Tumblr:

The mayor noted that technology, despite its benefits, can add new pitfalls to an already grueling process. “Social media is going to make it even more difficult to make long-term investments” in cities, Mr. Bloomberg said.

“We are basically having a referendum on every single thing that we do every day,” he said. “And it’s very hard for people to stand up to that and say, ‘No, no, this is what we’re going to do,’ when there’s constant criticism, and an election process that you have to look forward to and face periodically.”

Later, Mr. Bloomberg noted that long-term urban planning “requires leadership, and standing up, and saying, ‘You know, you elected me, this is what we’re going to do,’ and not take a referendum on every single thing.”

At that, the mayor’s interlocutor, the Singaporean professor Kishore Mahbubani, took back the microphone.

“I think the Singapore government sympathizes with your point about social media,” Professor Mahbubani said, prompting loud laughter from the audience. “We are having the same daily referendums in Singapore.”

Next Time They Parade Around Some Dumbshit Who Says He’s Angry At “Obama” Or “Jews” Or Whatever, Remember That This Is The Same Police Force That Fills Quotas By Picking Off People Who Rest Their Feet On Subway Seats

The biggest misconception in the issue of whether it’s OK to have the NYPD act like the CIA is that they’ve prevented actual terrorist attacks. Take Mike Lupica’s fawning column today, for example:

Let Kelly continue to use NYPD surveillance of conversations inside an Islamic bookstore in Bay Ridge, one attached to a mosque, that helps New York cops keep a Herald Square subway station from being blown sky high.

The names you want to know about on that one, guys who certainly were a threat to public safety, were Shahawar Matin Siraj and James Elshafay, eventually arrested and tried and convicted in federal court. Siraj, who worked in that bookstore, ended up getting 30 years. And there is the “spying” that last year resulted in the arrests of Ahmed Ferhani and Mohammed Mamdouh and a plan from radical Islam to bomb a Manhattan synagogue.

This is just the start of a much longer list of how the countersurveillance blueprint Kelly has given his city and all big cities in a Sept. 11 world has worked.

The problem is that both the Herald Square and the 2011 synagogue bombing “plots” were actually NYPD sting operations. And federal prosecutors even declined to pursue the synagogue “plot” case.

(And then there are the times when the NYPD is actually in the way of legitimate counter-terrorism efforts, like in the Najibullah Zazi case.)

Supporters of the NYPD find it easy to twist the details of alleged plots, but there’s a huge difference between a plot that is actually a terrorist plot and some cheap sting operation where informants give some dopey kids the idea in the first place. This kind of cheerleading is dangerous and relies on the fact that no one really pays attention when they hear a “terrorist” has been caught, because everyone hates terrorists, right?

Terrorism won’t be fixed by a NYPD sting — limit stings to stuff like teens stealing iPods — because those kids really are pieces of shit.

Everyone [Hearts] Fashion Week

Another year, another park where Fashion Week has worn out its welcome:

Since 2010, when the New York Fashion Week shows moved to Damrosch Park from Bryant Park, residents say, Damrosch Park has been all but taken over by one special event after another, making it off-limits nearly 10 months of the year.

. . .

On Tuesday, a group of residents and NYC Park Advocates, a nonprofit group, announced that they had sent a “cease and desist” letter to the city and to Lincoln Center demanding that Damrosch Park be returned to its proper use as a city park.

City officials brushed aside the criticism, saying that Damrosch Park was a hard-surface plaza with few visitors in winter. They argued that residents had ample access to nearby parkland, including Central Park, and said that many thousands of New Yorkers were able to enjoy the circus and the fashion shows.

“Fashion Week generates $865 million in economic activity each year and helps create jobs in one of our city’s most important industries,” said Julie Wood, a spokeswoman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Nearly $1 billion in economic activity? For reals? How can this possibly be? And if it is true, why don’t we do something truly altrustic and send it to Camden or Detroit for a season or two . . . ?

And In A Year Or Two When The Statistics Don’t Look As Good, It Won’t Matter Anyway

If the unemployment numbers and school test scores don’t cooperate, you can always take credit for fewer fat kids:

New York City is the biggest loser — and Mayor Michael Bloomberg is delighted.

Obesity rates among New York City public elementary and middle-school students have decreased during the past five years across all race and ethnic groups, marking the biggest decline in childhood obesity reported to date by any large city in the nation, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control.

At a news conference in the Bronx Thursday afternoon, the mayor is expected to announce new city standards to ensure that food vending machines at city buildings are stocked with healthy options. The Bloomberg administration also plans to launch a multi-agency task force charged with developing new policies to combat obesity.