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