Shock...

What happens to all those offices sitting eerily empty? 

Covid 19 virus isn’t only a short-term problem. Even if we get a vaccine tomorrow, many commuters have found that they like staying home. JPMorgan Chase and Facebook both, prior to this, planning new Manhattan office towers  are now saying people can work closer to home or at home.

It has huge implications, too, for restaurants, stores, theater, hotels — all of which depend on business travel and on commuters spending a little extra time in Manhattan. Outer-borough restaurant and retail also depends on residents’ wealth — earned in Manhattan.

Any big change is a shock to the city’s tax system well beyond a few months. For its annual $66 billion in tax revenues, New York depends on high, and high-volume, property, income and sales taxes, all now imperiled. It could see double-digit adjustments, beyond what any one-year federal rescue can cushion.

It’s a shock to the region’s tax system.  Just a thought.

Walking...

A white dog-walker, who called 911 on a black man when he asked her to leash her cocker spaniel in Central Park, allegedly stalked a former love interest and chided him for voting for President Barack Obama, The Post has learned.

Martin Priest claimed the asset manager developed romantic feelings for him and began “stalking” and “harassing” him when those feelings went unrequited, leading him to report her to the police twice, once in New Jersey and once in New York City. The Post confirmed that reports were made in both jurisdictions.

Amy Cooper eventually filed a lawsuit, which has since been dismissed, against Priest back in 2015 alleging he was an ex-boyfriend who bilked her out of $65,000 after an alleged torrid love affair with her and two other women. 

Too much dog walking.          Just a thought.

Looting...

Minneapolis residents woke Friday to smoke-filled skies and the sounds of sirens. Rioting in south Minneapolis overnight delved deeper into the neighborhoods of the city’s south side, with fires gutting businesses before firefighters could quench them.

Firefighters worked through the morning to control the fires set at Ivy Building for the Arts in the city’s Seward neighborhood. The historic building housed artists and craftspeople. Regina Marie Williams and her husband had space in the building. 

Clash...

 

A  clash of the social network titans is taking shape after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called out Twitter for adding a fact-check to a tweet from President Trump. On Tuesday, Twitter added a fact-check label to Mr. Trump's tweet about mail-in voting, along with a link directing users to information debunking the president's false claims about mail-in voting fraud.  

In an interview with Fox News' Dana Perino, Zuckerberg differed with Twitter's approach, saying "I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn't be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online," and neither should other private companies.

Zuckerberg's reaction to the situation comes after President Trump threatened to "strongly regulate" or even shut down social media companies. "Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016," Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.

No one is making the social media a guardian of the truth. Just a thought.

Landscaping...

Mic...

Tears...

Rupture...

Manhattan needs its people back. But do the people need Manhattan? COVID-19 may not be a pause, as Gov. Cuomo puts it, but a rupture  one that has vast implications for New York.

For half a century, New York’s growth policy,  has been as follows:

Step one: Build up a dense corporate office hub centered around 150 blocks of Midtown Manhattan. 

Step two: Improve transit, so that you can move these millions of commuters onto the island of Manhattan every day in crowded metal tubes, and then, at the end of the day, move them back out.

Moving people back and forth from Westchester, Long Island and New Jersey during the day. Manhattanites who no longer walked to work from tenements to the docks or the Garment District could take the subway to new jobs in restaurants, retail, cleaning  serving a huge office market.

Yet this system was in peril even before the outbreak. Subways and commuter lines were beyond capacity at peak hours, and even off-peak. Developers had overbuilt, thanks to cheap global money and the politicians hunger for collecting taxes.

So when Covid 19 hit, New York City became death trap.  Just a thought.

Andy...

Andy Byford, the popular former boss of New York City’s subways and buses, will take the helm of London’s transit agency, the city’s Mayor Sadik Khan announced Wednesday.

“I look forward to working with Andy as we build a greener city with clean and environmentally-friendly travel, including walking and cycling, at the heart of its recovery,” Khan said in a statement.

Byford, 54, who previously ran the transit system in Toronto, began his career in 1989 as a station foreman in London’s subway system.

He left the NYC MTA in February after just two years, during which he clashed with Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

In his dramatic exit, Byford said Cuomo made his job “intolerable” and “yelled” at transit staff behind his back.

The cheery Brit was also known for taking public transit to work with his nametag on, and a cult of personality developed around him — with fans dubbing him “Train Daddy” and designing stickers with his face in front of a subway car.

Failed...

Whether there was a specific timeline for the next phase of reopening, the governor of the Empire State had a surprisingly candid response.

“Now, people can speculate. People can guess. “I’m out of that business because we all failed at that business. Right? All the early national experts. Here’s my projection model.  They were all wrong. They were all wrong.”

Cuomo continued: “There are a lot of variables. I understand that. We didn’t know what the social distancing would actually amount to. I get it, but we were all wrong. So, I’m sort of out of the guessing business, right?”

The state has reported over 362,000 Covid-19 cases and over 29,000 deaths from the highly contagious virus.

Now is the time to blame all this failure on everybody else. Is not only me, look at the experts.

The governor earlier rejected the experts in remodeling La Guardia air port since he new it all.

Just a thought

Mumble...

Tsunami...

Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Sunday warned that key employees -- including health care workers, firefighters, police officers and teachers -- could be laid off if the state does not receive additional funding from the federal government.

The Democrat  have called for additional federal assistance while the White House is reluctant to provide additional funds to states. On Friday, Murphy announced the state is estimated to have a revenue loss of $10 billion.

Governor Cuomo’s budget office is due to release an updated financial report, and the numbers are grim. Cuomo says the pandemic and the resulting “economic tsunami” caused by stay at home orders has meant a 14% drop in state revenues to $13.3 billion dollars, which is projected to total $61 billion dollars over the next four years.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett on Sunday said " there should be a data analysis on state budget shortfalls and that some state's requests are "radically more money than the expected shortfall for the year."

Rotten...

Mask...

Please wear it. WE don't have any remedy but the mask and the Social Distancing.

Sold out...

Livelihood...

Yearning...

With a budget of 182 Billion Dollars annually, and three months warning, the State of New York got caught completely unprepared. Needed equipment, beds, ventilators, face masks, and other needed protective items were not available. The front line healthcare workers faced these disastrously condition by themselves.

New York has the largest number of death of Covid 19 virus compared to other States of the Union by 10 to 15 folds. Nursing homes  also been devastated.

The Covid 19 virus exposed the way the State and the City are run. Tax and Tax some more, to waste spend and waste some more. The State just approved Congestion Pricing, taxing whoever needs to drive to work in Manhattan. 

Guess...

The classification of essential workers and non essential is a bad classification of people. It should be classified as safe or unsafe condition to work.  Just a thought.

Rebutted...

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley criticized CNN for “media indulgence” after they ran a selectively edited clip favorable to former Vice President Joe Biden.    

“CNN's John King just began a question on how 'some are trying to make a big deal over' Biden's 'you're not black' comment.” 

Turley, a George Washington University law professor said on Twitter. “CNN then played the clip ending with ‘I extended the Voting Rights Act 25 years. I have a record that is second to none.’”

CNN just replayed the same edited clip in another interview, preceded by a derisive comment about those 'trying to make hay about this.' 

In a story where Biden is proclaiming his support among black voters, CNN omitted the line where he falsely claims multiple NAACP endorsements.”

“However, the quote was edited to exclude the next line: 'The NAACP has endorsed me every time I’ve run. Come on, take a look at my record.' 
That is a false statement that the NAACP has publicly rebutted.

Ensamble...

 A nurse in Russia was suspended from the hospital where she worked in Tula, 100 miles south of Moscow, after she arrived at her shift in the all-male coronavirus patient wing with no clothing save for her skivvies under her transparent personal protective equipment.

The unidentified staffer told her managers at Tula Regional Clinical Hospital that she was “too hot” to wear clothing underneath the head-to-toe vinyl gown, which protected her from contracting COVID-19.  

 “A disciplinary sanction was applied to the nurse of the infectious diseases department who violated [uniform] requirements,” the Sun reports. 

The two-piece ensemble was possibly a “swimming suit.”

View...

Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley slammed the media for widely dismissing the recent revelations of the unmasking requests of former national security advisor Michael Flynn.

In a column published on Sunday, Turley pointed out the "unsettling" details surrounding the declassified list of top Obama officials, including former Vice President Joe Biden, who had requested Flynn's name to be revealed from his conversations with the Russian ambassador in the final weeks of the Obama administration, which followed the "chilling details" of released transcripts showing that the most prominent figures who pushed the Russian collusion narrative admitted to investigators that they never saw evidence that the Trump campaign worked with the Kremlin during the 2016 election.

Turley, the constitutional scholar who is widely known for his congressional testimony opposing President Trump's impeachment during the Ukraine scandal, pointed out how the media "universally mocked" Trump in 2016 for claiming that the Obama administration placed campaign officials under surveillance, saying "that statement was later proven to be true," referencing the  Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants that were issued against Trump campaign officials like former advisor Carter Page.

Sell...

Two executives at drug firm Moderna quietly sold nearly $30 million of stock when they unveiled a coronavirus vaccine and value surged, before the share price quickly fell again amid skepticism from the medical community. 

Moderna's chief financial officer Lorence Kim and chief medical officer Tal Zaks dumped the staggering value of stocks on Monday and Tuesday when the share price skyrocketed following the company's announcement of what it described as 'positive' results from its vaccine trial. 

The biotech company released results from its COVID-19 vaccine trial after it became the first US company to start a clinical trial for a vaccine back in March.  

This sparked hope that a vaccine for the deadly virus could make it to market by January and sent Wall Street investors into overdrive.  

Stocks in Moderna surged as much as 30 percent to $87 a share, and the company's market value climbed to $29 billion.

Say...

Ain't Blak...

Joe Biden said in a Friday interview that a black voter who can’t decide between him and President Trump in the 2020 elections isn’t really black.

“If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” Biden told radio DJ Charlamagne tha God on The Breakfast Club. (The comments come at around the 17:15 mark.)

Biden received criticism as vice president during the 2012 campaign, when he told a largely African American audience in Virginia that Republicans wanted to “put y’all back in chains.”

Just a "not so presidential" thought.

Blame...

ProPublica recently released a report outlining catastrophic missteps by Cuomo and,  de Blasio, which probably resulted in many thousands of needless coronavirus cases.

By mid-May, New York City alone had almost 20,000 deaths, while in San Francisco there had been only 35, and New York state as a whole suffered 10 times as many deaths as California.

Cuomo initially “reacted to De Blasio’s idea for closing down New York City”, saying it “was dangerous” and “served only to scare people”. He said the “seasonal flu was a graver worry”.  Later, Cuomo would blame the press, including the New York Times for failing to say “Be careful, there’s a virus in China that may be in the United States?”

Former CDC director Tom Frieden said ‘so many deaths could have been prevented’ had New York issued its stay-at-home order just ‘days earlier’ than it did. On March 19, when New York’s schools had already been closed, Cuomo said ‘in many ways, the fear is more dangerous than the virus.’”

The governor has failed to take responsibility for the obvious failures, consistently blaming others and at one point even saying “governors don’t do pandemics”.  But much of the press has ignored this completely.

Spread...

The coronavirus primarily spreads from person to person and not easily from a contaminated surface. That is the takeaway from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which this month updated its “How COVID-19 Spreads” website.

The revised guidance now states, in headline-size type, “The virus spreads easily between people.” It also notes that the coronavirus, which causes the disease covid-19, “is spreading very easily and sustainably between people.”

The CDC made another  new heading “The virus does not spread easily in other ways,” the agency explains that touching contaminated objects or surfaces does not appear to be a significant mode of transmission. The same is true for exposure to infected animals.

Hate...

Ahmaud Arbery

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has arrested the man who recorded cellphone video of Ahmaud Arbery being shot and killed.

William “Roddie” Bryan, 50, shot the video that showed what appears to be Gregory and Travis McMichael shooting and killing Ahmaud Arbery while he was out jogging in February.

In a news release, the GBI said it charged Bryan with felony murder and criminal contempt to commit false imprisonment.

The GBI said Bryan will be booked into the Glynn County Jail. A news conference with the GBI is expected Friday morning at 9 a.m. 

Just a "bad" thought.

Subpoena...

A senate committee voted along party lines to issue a subpoena as part of the Republican-led investigation into the Ukrainian energy firm that hired former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden.

The subpoena is one of several steps Senate Republicans are taking to ramp up probes related to the Obama administration and Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee who will likely challenge President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

Democrats denounced the investigation as a partisan effort to help Trump's reelection bid.

It's pay back time. Never forget, never forgive. An Eye for an eye and a subpoena for a subpoena. Just a thought.

Elder...

NYC had over 20,000 Death from Covid 19- San Francisco    35.

Plan...

Open...

Restaurants and bars should consider installing sneeze guards at their registers. Mass transit workers should close every other row of seats on their buses. Students should eat lunch in their classrooms instead of congregating in a cafeteria.

These are among the social distancing measures that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed in a document it quietly released on its website this week outlining recommendations for reopening restaurants, mass transit, schools and childcare programs across the United States amid the coronavirus pandemic.

For all institutions, the CDC recommended thorough disinfection for high-traffic areas: door handles of businesses, turnstiles in mass transit stations, playground equipment at schools. 

It urged face coverings in any area where it would be impossible to socially distance, including for staff in childcare settings and for older children in schools. And it encouraged plentiful hand sanitizer in schools, as long as it was safely stored away from children, and on tabletops at restaurants.