Neil deMause: The Website

Once again, not my headline. (Mine was something about not giving it “a free pass” - baseball reference, get it?) In any case, though, even if we’re not really all at risk by shortstops rampaging across the land with bats in hand, the reality is pretty disturbing:

We’re used to horror stories about the Mets bullpen, but not like this. Last week, it was revealed that reliever Ambiorix Burgos had turned himself in to Dominican Republic police after being accused of a hit-and-run that killed two women; the mother of one of the victims charged that Burgos had intentionally run over her daughter after she refused to date him… [read more]

The bailout bill isn’t exactly working wonders, but one longtime Wall Street critic still think it was a necessary first step:

When millions were cheering on the House of Representatives last week for initially saying no to the Wall Street bailout plan, Doug Henwood was not among them. The founder of Left Business Observer, and whose classic book “Wall Street” argued that the stock market was at best useless and at worst dangerous, Henwood nonetheless watched in dismay as fellow lefties from Rep. Dennis Kucinich to the antiwar group Code Pink argued for rejecting the bill.

Henwood isn’t crazy about the bailout plan, even after Congress trimmed some of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s most grandiose power grabs. But, he says, that’s not the point… [read more]

Now that the House of Representatives has torpedoed the Wall Street bailout bill, maybe they’ll be ready to consider the modest proposal I put forth in this week’s Metro column:

Washington scrambled this past week to approve a $700 billion bill to tackle a crisis that some called “the greatest threat to this country since the Depression:” a crisis that could lead to 35 million people living in poverty.

While critics worried that the cost would be too great, proponents of a bailout for the poor noted that the nation cannot afford to have one in eight members of its productive workforce bereft of cash… [read more]

When is a park not a park? When it’s a parking lot.

Readers of today’s New York Daily News (the Bronx edition, anyway) saw a lovely 1960s-vintage photo of a park near Yankee Stadium, accompanied by a report that the image had “reignited questions about whether the city is actually replacing all of the recreational parkland taken for the Bombers’ new arena.”… [read more]

The economy is crashing harder than Travis Barker’s plane, so why are some New Yorkers breathing a sigh of relief?

I’d say it was about 15 minutes after Lehman Brothers suffered total existence failure that I got the first instant message: “At least maybe now I’ll be able to afford an apartment.”

This wasn’t just whistling in the economic dark. It’s a sad fact that the “good times” that have now ended were great for Wall Street types and those who service them (high-end restaurateurs, yacht salesmen), but less so for the rest of us…

The issue of how the Yankees are funding their new stadium has exploded all over the newspapers in recent days, thanks in large part to state assemblymember Richard Brodsky issuing a 33-page report criticizing the deal, and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich holding hearings (at which Brodsky was the main witness - neither the Yanks nor the city showed up) on the subject. With claims and counterclaims flying, I try to get to the bottom of the Brodsky report:

State assemblymember Richard Brodsky was largely silent during the debates over building the Yankees’ new $1.9 billion stadium — as the Yankees and Mayor Bloomberg have been quick to point out, he even voted for the project when it came up in the legislature. But with Yankee Stadium’s days dwindling, he’s been making up for lost time.

With Brodsky in D.C. today for his star turn before Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s subcommittee investigating the Yankees’ stadium deal (streaming video here), it’s a good time to examine some of the questions raised by the 33-page report on the House That George Built that Brodsky let drop on Tuesday…[read more]

You won’t find it in the paper (they ran out of trees), but it’s officially a Village Voice article, not a Village Voice blog item: My review, in advance of the final games for Yankee and Shea Stadiums, of other ballparks’ final days, and how they’ve changed over the years from poorly attended loot-fests to extravaganzas of nostalgia marketing:

If you’re hoping to attend the sold-out-since-the-Truman-administration final games at Yankee Stadium (this Sunday) or Shea Stadium (the Sunday after), you’d better be independently wealthy. At last check, final-game tickets for sale on StubHub started at $125 for the Mets and $250 for the Yanks. And that Yankees price is for a seat in the left-field bleachers—one enterprising speculator was seeking a mere $16,000 and change for each of four front-row Bronx ducats.

It was not always thus for stadium swan songs…

New York is looking to take advantage of new federal welfare regulations to expand access to education and training. But will it be tripped up by budget woes and bureaucratic foot-dragging?

New federal rules are opening the door for New York state to allow more residents who receive public assistance to obtain education and training, the state’s welfare chief said last week.

Yet the state’s uncertain budget climate and questions about implementation mean the fate of such reforms are uncertain, Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance Commissioner David Hansell told a group of welfare advocates – many of whom have long held that better integrating education into public assistance would help people get off welfare… [read more]

I’ve written about the scene at the Project FAIR help desk for welfare recipients before; today I tell the stories of two women I met last week that exemplify how trying to jump through welfare’s nonsensical hoops can be a full-time job:

If you’ve ever been tempted to think of welfare recipients as lazy, it’s worth a visit to the “fair hearing” site in Brooklyn, where people who get public benefits — whether welfare, food stamps, disability or Medicaid — can go when they have a problem with the system.

Take Crystal Maurin, who was informed earlier this year that she’d failed to show she was doing the 35 hours a week of “work activities” the city now requires. (That she was fully employed at the time as a child-care worker for the city itself — leaving her own 2-year-old with friends while doing so — apparently wasn’t proof enough.)… [read more]

Rumors are afoot that Coney Island’s Astroland may be saved after all. Are they for real?

It seems you can’t keep a good amusement park down: Thursday night, after three days of rumors that the city was hoping to save Astroland from the scrap heap, Save Coney Island’s Tricia Vita sent out an emergency missive to supporters announcing an “urgent last ditch effort to save Coney Island and Astroland for another year,” and including the email addresses of Mayor Bloomberg, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and Coney Island councilmember Domenic Recchia… [read more]