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Mayor Bloomberg Wants to Spend $20 Billion to Protect NYC from Global Warming

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Photo Credit: Newsmax

Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a $20 billion plan on Tuesday to transform how New York City girds itself for storms and global warming, including removable flood walls that would be set up for much of lower Manhattan, a 15-to-20-foot levee to guard part of Staten Island, and a system of gates and levees to protect a Brooklyn creek.

Bloomberg’s proposals also include building dunes in Staten Island and the Rockaways, firming up the shoreline with bulkheads in various neighborhoods and considering building a levee and a new “Seaport City” development at the South Street Seaport that would echo nearby Battery Park City.

The mayor also is suggesting giving $1.2 billion in grants to property owners to flood-proof their buildings and $50 million to nursing homes to improve theirs; making hospitals even in rarely flooded areas to upgrade their pumps and electrical equipment; and expanding beaches and marshes.

“This plan is incredibly ambitious,” Bloomberg said in a speech at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, acknowledging that much of the work would extend beyond the end of his term this year. “This is urgent work, and it must begin now.

“Piece by piece, over many years and even decades, we can build a city that’s capable of preparing better, withstanding more and overcoming anything.”

Read more from this story HERE.

False: NY Times Says that NSA’s Surveillance Foiled Terror Plot Against NY Subways

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Yesterday both the NY Times and Reuters claimed the Zazi terror plot against New York subways was foiled by an NSA email collection program called PRISM. That was not the case. The key to stopping the Zazi plot was an arrest and investigation by British authorities.

Breitbart News reported the claim, made yesterday in a widely circulated Reuters story, that NSA’s PRISM program had helped foil the Zazi terror plot (including an expression of skepticism that PRISM was necessary to foil the plot). The claim that PRISM was responsible was also made by the New York Times. In a A1 story the Times claimed, “To defenders of the N.S.A., the Zazi case underscores how the agency’s Internet surveillance system, called Prism, which was set up over the past decade to collect data from online providers of e-mail and chat services, has yielded concrete results.”

But the mass collection of emails under PRISM apparently had little to do with stopping the Zazi plot. A blogger at a site called emptywheel raised questions about the Reuters story yesterday. Ben Smith built upon that in a piece at Buzzfeed. As Smith reports, already public information on the Zazi case shows the email account in question was flagged on a tip from British authorities following an arrest.

Read more from this story HERE.

California vs. New York as Nation’s Worst State

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Photo Credit: Kyle Platts

Whenever a free-market research or business group releases a “best and worst” list of states, my eye goes straight to the bottom: To see whether California is last or was edged out for the lowest rank by one of the other mismanaged liberal bastions. Illinois seems to exist to boost the self-esteem of Californians.

I can raise a glass of zinfandel to California’s great victory in the Mercatus Center’s recent “Freedom in the 50 States” study. The state didn’t place last. That distinction went to New York, thanks to its highest-in-the-nation tax rates and entrepreneur-crushing economic regulations. I owe an apology to residents of the Land of Lincoln.

For all the study’s detail about tax rates and regulation, this information jumps out as the most telling about New York: “9.0 percent of the state’s 2000 population, on net, left the state for another state between 2000 and 2011, the highest such figure in the nation.” Moving is the surest sign of dissatisfaction, especially when people relocate from a state that has long been an economic and cultural magnet.

Californians talk incessantly about high-tailing it to Texas or Nevada, yet New Yorkers flee at about double our rate. Migration numbers aside, I would still rank the Golden State as the Most Hopeless State. There are other studies that bolster that case, including Chief Executive magazine’s “2013 Best and Worst States for Business” that places California dead last, with New York in 49th place.

The magazine ranks states based on three categories: taxation and regulation, workforce quality, and living environment. Even with its natural advantages in the last category and high ranking in the second one, California still flopped because its officials have adopted a punitive environment in the first category. That takes some doing.

Read more from this story HERE.

NYC May Give Non-Citizen Immigrants the Right to Vote

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Photo Credit: AP

A controversial proposal in New York City to give voting rights to hundreds of thousands of non-citizen immigrants could make them into a key vote in America’s largest city.

The Big Apple proposal, though, could resonate with other municipalities, inspiring them to follow suit — and, if Congress approves an otherwise unrelated immigration overhaul, the number of newly eligible immigrant voters could swell into a potent voting bloc on the local level.

That’s because the national overhaul being considered in Washington creates a so-called pathway to legal status for millions of illegal immigrants. By itself, this does little in the near-term to give non-citizens the right to vote. But if New York City approves its plan to give its 800,000 legal immigrants a say in city politics, illegal immigrants could eventually join the voter rolls there as well. And they wouldn’t have to wait for citizenship to vote.

Read more from this story HERE.

Empire State DA: I Won’t Prosecute Cuomo’s New Gun Law

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Photo Credit: Human Events

An upstate New York prosecutor told Human Events he will not go after an individual for a misdemeanor violation of the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act, signed into law on Jan. 15, in a extraordinary two-minute-drill session of the state’s legislature.

“As I do in all cases, I considered all of the circumstances surrounding the summons,” said Columbia County District Attorney Paul Czajka.

“I declined to prosecute one particular offense,” he said. If the DA had moved forward, it would be one of the first attempts to bring a violator of the new law to trial.

The incident in question took place May 12 at 9:45 p.m., two New York State police officers stopped 31-year-old Gregory Dean from Dutchess County on Route 22 in the town of New Lebanon after noticing that the license plate light on Dean’s car was broken, the DA said.

Thereafter, three summonses were issued, said the former Columbia County judge. “Dean was charged with driving with a suspended license; an inadequate license plate; and for unlawful possession of ammunition device, which is a Class B misdemeanor.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Student Tweets that School Should Enact Budget Cuts, Starting With Principal’s Job, Gets Suspended

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Photo Credit: WNDA high-school student in upstate New York has been suspended and accused of trying to incite “a social media riot” after he suggested budget cuts for his public school – beginning with elimination of his principal’s job.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that students have a right to self-expression, as long as that expression doesn’t disrupt classwork or school activities or invade the rights of others.

And that’s where the conflict about the student’s action lies, because the Syracuse Post-Standard reports the superintendent of Cicero-North Syracuse High School accused senior Patrick Brown of using Twitter to incite “a social media riot.”

Whether the purported “social media riot” was disruptive to classwork or school activities remains unclear.

Brown was suspended for three days Thursday after starting a Twitter hashtag, #s–tCNSshouldcut, that solicited ideas for district budget cuts for next year after voters rejected a $144.7 million budget plan. The hashtag quickly became popular, and students posted ideas during the school day.

Read more from this story HERE.

Long-Lost Dog Tag Returned to NY WWII Vet Who Dropped it in French Barley Field

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Photo Credit: APIrving Mann has been in business long enough to be skeptical of out-of-the-blue offers that seem too good to be true.

So the founder of Mann’s Jewelers in Rochester was cautious but intrigued when an email arrived at his store from a woman wondering if he could possibly be the Irving Mann whose military tag she said she’d found a day earlier in her barley field in France.

After all, the World War II veteran didn’t recall losing a dog tag after landing in Normandy with the 90th Infantry division on D-Day and fighting across Nazi-occupied France.

“It had to be false,” thought Mann, who’d recently celebrated his 88th birthday.

“You hear of so many scams going on, that somebody’s going to fake it, do some research and say, `I would be willing to return your dog tag. However, it will cost you X number of dollars.”‘

Read more from this story HERE.

Where’s the Global Warming? Upstate New York Gets 3 Feet of Snow

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Photo Credit: APA Memorial Day weekend storm has dropped three feet of snow on a New York ski mountain near the Vermont border.

Whiteface Mountain spokesman Jon Lundin says 36 inches of white powder has blanketed the nearly 5,000-foot tall mountain in the Adirondacks. That has forced the Olympic Regional Development Authority to close Whiteface Veteran’s Memorial Highway on the backside of the

Lundin says the snow began lightly falling Saturday and steadily dropped Sunday, finishing in the evening.

Read more from this story HERE.

N.Y. Man Arrested New Gun Control Law – His Offense? Two Extra Bullets

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Photo Credit: ShutterstockGregory Dean, Jr. was pulled over in New Lebanon, N.Y., Sunday for a light on his license plate being burnt out. But what began as a simple traffic stop ended up with Dean being arrested over two bullets in his registered firearm, which put him in violation of the state’s new law, the Journal News reported.

Last month, a provision in New York’s strict gun control laws went into effect, making it illegal to have more than seven rounds in a magazine unless said firearm was being used at a range or in a competition.

The state troopers saw a .40-caliber pistol on Dean’s passenger side when they approached his window…

Read more from this story HERE.

Indian Point To Become First Nuclear Plant To Operate With Expired License

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Photo Credit: Mario Tama/GettyImagesOne of two reactors at the Indian Point nuclear plant north of New York City will soon be operating with an expired license.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials said Monday that the situation resulted in part from a complicated license-renewal process for nuclear reactors, the Journal News reported.

Indian Point 2′s 40-year license expires on Sept. 28. NRC regional administrator Bill Dean said that’s at least a year before any decision will be made on whether to extend it for another 20 years.

Dean said the reactor can keep operating because Entergy Nuclear, its owner, filed for renewal more than five years before the expiration date.

Read more from this story HERE.