Neil deMause: The Website

The D.C. sick-leave bill saga finally reaches its denouement, I hope:

Details of Washington, D.C’s. new law requiring all city businesses to provide paid sick leave to their employees were finally released this week, clarifying the last-minute amendments to the legislation that will exempt recent hires and certain classes of workers, as well as allowing hardship exceptions for employers… [read more]

For those interested in the issue, it’s also worth checking out the FSB discussion page on sick-leave legislation, which is surprisingly thoughtful as online forums go.

The bike bomb someone set off outside a Times Square recruiting station last week had most of the city news media thinking about terrorism; me, it had thinking about the odd things being done in the name of fighting terrorism:

It was interesting, in the wake of Thursday’s Times Square bike bomb, to contrast the excited headlines with the actual stories that followed: New Yorkers were by and large unfazed (“What blew up, did you say? Wake me when it’s a gas main”) while security experts shrugged their shoulders and said there’s only so much that a free society can do to prevent bombs.

If so, maybe it’s time to revisit some of what we are doing under the rubric of “stopping terrorism.” Take the subway bag-check program, which turns 3 years old this summer, having sucked up untold amounts of money and manpower… [read more]

Just got word that Field of Schemes: The Next Generation (ed. note: not the actual title) is now shipping from Bison Books’ website, notwithstanding the official release date being a month away. This edition has all the stadium-swindley goodness of the original FoS, plus four new chapters and annotations to the original chapters that make the whole thing clock in at a hefty 400-plus pages.

For more on this, visit fieldofschemes.com. And if you’re a potential book reviewer, radio producer, or bookstore that might want to host a speaking/signing, drop me an e-mail. (Bookstores, you might want to get one of your staffers to send the e-mail; I know how hard it is for brick and mortar to type.)

It’s been a while since I’ve had an excuse to do a new tally of the public costs of the Yankees and Mets deals, so I was pleased to see New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg put his foot in his mouth about the stadiums last week:

On his weekly radio show Friday, Mayor Bloomberg was asked why the city was subsidizing stadiums for the Mets and Yankees. His response: “The city and the state, to my recollection, each put in $75 million” for each new stadium — a mere fraction of the total cost. “It was a really good deal,” he added.

For a data-crazed mayor, Bloomberg can be awfully loose with his numbers… [read more]

I’ve also put up a new spreadsheet of the public/private cost calculations underlying this article, for those interested.

A two-fer from Tom D’Angelo in the Palm Beach Post:

Loria, making his first appearance at spring training, is so eager to start construction that “I’d like to hit the button,” he said when asked about the razing of the Orange Bowl. The $615 million stadium project will be built on the Orange Bowl sight.

Followed a bit later by:

The Marlins could loose its fans from Palm Beach County when they move into the new stadium.

Freedom at last for Marlins fans imprisoned in Palm Beach? Now that would be a site for soar eyes.