More Evidence Of Quotas On Staten Island

With an overtime angle, to boot:

Two Staten Island cops are accused of writing motorists more than 40 bogus tickets while assigned to overtime duty, authorities said.

. . .

The accused officers submitted paperwork to their bosses to make it look like they were doing their jobs, but never gave the summonses to the unsuspecting motorists, sources said.

First They Came For Our Mink Stoles, But We Didn’t Care Because Who Has The Dough For A Mink Stole?

Then they came for our live octopus, but we didn’t speak up because, well, eating live* octopus — as adventuresome as that sounds! — also looks pretty icky:

A clash of cultures arrived outside two Flushing restaurants last Thursday evening as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals members protested the Korean culinary tradition of eating live octopus and the techniques sometimes employed when doing so.

The practice caught the attention of PETA members in recent weeks after the animal rights organization received numerous complaints about YouTube videos depicting diners eating squirming octopus, known as “sannakji,” at East Seafood Restaurant on Northern Boulevard and Sik Gaek on Crocheron Avenue.

*5/4: See nerve-tingling update, then make reservations at Sik Gaek.

Say It Ain’t So, Bill!

If you weren’t already discouraged enough by the city’s recent mayoral election, Wayne Barrett piles on:

If voters had a vague sense that this was a mirage of a mayoral election, what follows is a damning set of facts that shows that these two supposed opponents were actually far more connected than we ever knew. They shared a very personal and subterranean agenda, the funding of a project dear to Thompson’s heart. Remarkably, Bloomberg continued pouring new money into a project that benefited Thompson even in the heat of the campaign. It is a connection begging for explanation, but Thompson would not answer virtually any of the post-election questions posed by the Voice.

Stranger still, Bloomberg’s press managers refused to provide any public information about that project — a museum — in the lead-up to the election, prompting me to tell the mayor’s press secretary, Stu Loeser, that he was more helpful when I was writing an exposé about the mayor than when I was reporting on the mayor’s opponent. Since November, however, the city agencies that once stonewalled me have piled public papers on my desk.

Here, then, is the story about Bill Thompson that Mike Bloomberg didn’t want you to know when he was running against him.

It starts with a single, unsettling fact: The mayor has directed or triggered between $43 million and $51 million in public and personal subsidies into a museum project led by Thompson’s current wife and longtime companion, Elsie McCabe-Thompson, dumping $2 million of additional city funding into it as late as September 30, in the middle of the mayoral campaign.

. . .

We do know, though, regardless of what the museum becomes, that this is not the way it should have been built, one compromise atop another, a memorial to machination. The sheer size of the Bloomberg subsidies, as well as his eagerness to add to them right into October, has cast a cloud over an election already darkened by the unprecedented end-run around two popular referendums. The bizarre specter of a mayor unloading public funding on a project so tied to his public bookkeeper and eventual opponent has distorted democracy, both in the years before this election, and in the only moment when New Yorkers, at least theoretically, had their say. If legitimacy is necessary to govern, even for the richest man in New York, he cannot rig consent.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Things You’d Rather Not Know Include . . .

Mayoral candidate William Thompson owns lizards and David Yassky, candidate for comptroller, owns guinea pigs.

I Pooped Twice Today

In the Bronx Supreme Court lobby. Not one, but two piles, no witnesses:

Authorities were disgusted to find two piles of human waste on the carpet in the lobby of Bronx Supreme Court around noon.

. . .

The incident immediately became part of the rich courthouse lore, taking its place among colorful tales of a woman who set dozens of toilet paper rolls on fire, a woman who stood at the entrance for days holding a spear and shield, and the visitor who tried to smuggle in a parrot.