Hi, Daddy!

This explains a lot.  The odds that people from other planets could be among us just went up immeasurably, according to a fascinating story in The New York Times today. New data from the Kepler Telescope suggests there may be as many as 400,000 planets previously unknown to us in the Milky Way alone.  Thousands could be earth-like.

What this doesn’t explain, though, is how the children of earthlings can be from other planets, as clearly some are.

Lots more science to learn…

Is there anything worse than someone talking loudly into a cell phone while on a train?

I think there is.   It’s the people who ssssssh them — the self-appointed train librarians.  The ones with bunched up underpants who feign deep personal offense at something that, at the end of the day,  really isn’t that big a deal.

The talkers are annoying; the librarians are intolerable.

This morning on my way to work, a young Chinese guy was yammering away on a cell phone in his native tongue, which, let’s face it, is somewhat less mellifluous than, say, Italian or French, and can, in perfect candor, be a touch grating to the occidental ear in confined spaces.  At least to these two.

The scene was more comical than annoying.  Even a little bit cute. The young man, who paid with a single ticket, not a monthly pass, clearly was unaccustomed to traveling on a commuter train and he didn’t know the etiquette.  One hundred percent of the people on the train car noticed his talking;  many of them smiled at it, and 98% would have let it slide without comment. He seemed like a perfectly nice young guy.  He just didn’t know.

Not the lady next to me. She, it turns out, was our car’s head librarian. After loudly chastising — and traumatizing – the poor fellow, she protested under her breath for the remainder of the trip.  It seems by speaking for under 30 seconds on his cell phone, the young man had stolen away an irretrievable volume in her library of happiness.  I have never wanted to speak Cantonese more than I did this morning – to learn it and then shout it at the top of my lungs.

That was at the start of the day.

At the end of the day, I learned that the New York City Council, with the full support and encouragement of Mayor Bloomberg, voted to ban smoking in city parks and beaches.  I see these two things as directly linked.

I remember when the smoking patrols were the librarians.  I remember when they started to get organized and lobby elected officials I worked for.  They were a little bit kooky – and lot bit relentless.  Now they have banned smoking outdoors, just as they banned speaking on cell phones in city movie houses, and are trying to ban salt in city restaurants. They’ll ban anything that annoys them. (I haven’t yet gotten my head around the fact that smoking in Central Park – or any park in the city for that matter  – is now illegal.  Are you kidding me?)

Thin skinned librarians rule our world.  And we let them get away with it, drop by drop.

You feel like an idiot, but oh how you fly. Comes in all flavors.

Constitutionally unrepentant Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D) appears totally obtuse to the reform Zeitgest blowing through the New York State Capital in this video shot by Liz Benjamin late Tuesday.

The Senate Democratic conference should take a cue from the protesters in Cairo.  Silver should take his from Mubarak.

I heard this story on CBS Radio last night on my way back from a conference in Albany, just before crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge.  It was one of those news stories that makes you want to plug your ears with your fingers – a 64-year-old Boston pedophilia running an underage sex ring in Thailand, exploiting children as young as four.

Every time I hear about something like this, I ask myself the same question:  How can people who habitually hurt children this way not hurl themselves off bridges?  If you know you’re going to do something like this — if you know the Devil has inhabited your soul — go running to the nearest span and take a leap for the team.  Go out knowing you’re doing something right, something noble. The rest of the world will sincerely appreciate it.

At 64, one would think this Boston man would have had a moment of clarity somewhere along the line — and ample opportunity for a swan dive from the top deck of something.  But that never seems to happen, and I’ve always wondered why.  But how can anyone understand what drives some minority of people to do these terrible things over and over again?

As it is, the Boston pedophile will head off to prison for 25 years, where, in all likelihood, he will wish he had jumped at some point during his prior 64.

For a short time after 9/11, nearly everyone in public office became magically imbued with deep national security expertise. When the Iraq War began, and then soured, those same public officials became experts in Islam and international affairs.  They could roll off their tongues and onto television sets every vowel in the names of cities like Al Diwaniyah and Sulaymaniyah, and identify a Sunni Muslim from a Shiite Muslim at 1,000 yards in a stiff wind.

Next came the economists.  Ten thousand mini Milton Friedmans and John Maynard Keyneses tussled over deficit spending on stages everywhere, supplanting the experts in subprime mortgage loans and credit default swaps who had to be dragged off stage by their ankles to make room.  (Some lost fingernails.  But it was a small price to pay for speaking truth to power.)

Now we are seeing state pension reform experts emerging – those with specialized knowledge in how to save underfunded pension plans from insolvency. They are popping up wherever state and municipal governments are in trouble. That includes New York, of course, where we seem to have no shortage of expertise in this area.  Who knew?

But alas, there is a simple question that can be asked to determine if these reformers are for real.  I didn’t know it.  I learned it from actual experts with whom I have been fortunate enough to work.  It is a test by the experts for the “experts”, if you will.

Here it is: “Do you support repeal of the Triborough Amendment?”

I know. The what???

What the heck is a Triborough Amendment? And shouldn’t it be called the RFK Amendment now?

It turns out this ridiculously named law lies at the core of New York State’s pension mess.  I can only surmise that it was called the Triborough Amendment because the “Don’t Look Under This Rug Amendment” was taken.

Triborough is unique to New York State, and it has nothing to do with a bridge.  It is a sneaky little amendment that was tucked into The Taylor Law in 1982 – the law that governs the ability of public service unions to strike. It forever-after rigged the negotiating process between unions and state and municipal governments in favor of the unions.

Triborough mandates that the contracts of unionized public employees remain in effect until new contracts are signed.  Whatever raises or benefits were in the old contract perpetually remain until agreement on a new contract is reached.

If you think about that for a minute, you’ll realize it’s madness.  It guarantees that any new union contract be more generous than the last one.  Why would the unions agree to anything is that is less generous?  By doing nothing, they are guaranteed more.  Consequently, the retirement benefits – all benefits – for public employees have grown better and better and more and more expensive, especially as the unions gained control of elected officials with political contributions paid for with union dues. In Buffalo, for example, teachers are entitled to cosmetic surgery.  And you can’t take that entitlement away under Triborough.

The amendment stripped state and local governments of any leverage to negotiate with public employees.  It gave the unions, as a nationally prominent economist described it to me yesterday, a fistful of aces at every state, city, county, town, and village negotiating table in New York.

Repeal of the Triborough Amendment is an obvious step that needs to be taken to save New York from insolvency, and possibly even bankruptcy.  But it’s also a litmus test that will expose posers from real reformers.  Elected officials in the pockets of the unions will never support repealing Triborough.  Those that are for real, will.

So the next time some smarty pants “expert” is talking at a town hall or on a call-in radio show about saving New York State, call him on the carpet.  Ask he supports repealing Triborough.  That’s how you’ll know.

 

The Coveted Red Rider

Ariel Kaminer of The New York Times today tackled the always-delicate issue of gun laws in New York City by chronicling her effort to actually get one in her hands legally.   After being turned away by a couple of police tactical shops, the intrepid journalist struck pay-dirt at Beretta of Madison Avenue.  There, on a floor high above pedestrian New York, she was proffered a Beretta 20-gauge semi-automatic shotgun.  She describes how it felt in her hands:

“Holding a top-of-the-line gun is supposed to make a person feel powerful, confident, in control. Instead, I felt ridiculous. My stance was all wrong, and in any case I would never pull the trigger — not to kill an intruder, not to kill a bird. That moment of truth reaffirmed what was already beyond doubt: I am a pacifist, or a coward, depending on your perspective. But just as important, I am a New Yorker. In a city where we all live right on top of one another, playing with guns feels as out of place as wearing prairie dresses and engaging in plural marriage.”

As a kid growing up in Manhattan, there was nothing I wanted more than a BB gun – the same one nine-year-old Ralphie pined for in A Christmas Story: The Red Ryder spring-piston, lever-action, replica Winchester Model 1892 BB Gun, with the steel site —  but I couldn’t get one.  It wasn’t just the City’s gun laws I had to contend with.  It was my father.

He is a combat veteran — a decorated combat veteran — and there would be no guns in our home. It didn’t matter that half my 45 cousins living in the “country” had the best AR-10 rifle kits, rifles and a half dozen aunts and uncles were accomplished hunters.  We would not be.

My father fought in the Tenth Mountain Division in Italy during World War II – he is the last man in his company alive – and after being wounded twice by German artillery and seeing the horrors of what guns did to his friends and to the Germans they killed, who was I to argue with him? My brothers and I could become avid fisherman instead, which we did. (My father returned from the war, incidentally, with a pistol he had confiscated from a defunct German officer.  It was a Beretta.  He traded it for a cashmere sweater.)

In time, my father’s sensibilities wore off on my brothers and me.  Or so I thought.  We were not gun guys.  We were fisherman.  Catch-and-release fisherman.  And besides, we lived in New York City.  How could I ever have wanted a gun?

Flash forward to a three-second kitchen conversation with my wife six months ago. “You know,” she said casually, “it would be great for the girls to learn how to shoot one day, just so they know how. ”

It was all I needed to hear.  Seven days later they were gleefully squinting down the barrel of a Savage .17 HMR at a target range in the “country”, an hour north of the city where we now live.   I’m doing the same, but with the Winchester lever-action Model 1892.  Not the BB gun, mind you – but with the bad boy itself.   My stance is all wrong, and I feel a little ridiculous doing it, but I don’t care. Even if  shoot my eye out.

I think Mike Bloomberg might have a problem exporting his gun philosophy…

When We Were Similar in Age (He in foreground)

We’re not going to talk about it; it’s better with these things.

A month before hitting the half century mark, a packet from the AARP landed in his mailbox with a thud, as they say.  That’s the lobbying group that pits old people against young people in Washington and in state capitols.  At 50, they already are recruiting you in the war against your children.

When I joked about my brother’s untimely invitation to join the retirement association with one of my sisters – she’s about to hit 52 – she said what everyone says about the AARP, “That may be funny, but they have great discounts.”

That, in a nutshell, is how they get you.  With “great discounts.”

It starts with $5 off at Denny’s and ends with you being wheeled in, drooling, to a Congressional subcommittee hearing by a slick-haired lobbyist: “How can you say ‘no’ to this poor slavering coot, congressman?”

And how can you say no to AARP membership? For only $16 a year – and your reliable votes – you can get discounts on just about anything – vacations, prescription drugs, insurance, books, groceries, car rentals, health club memberships – much of it at the expense of young people who pay an offsetting  premium. Join Today!

I read a report a few years back about North Korean senior citizens starving themselves to death en masse during the last major famine in that country so that their children and grandchildren could eat — and live.  I think about that every time I hear about protests over modest Medicare cuts or of the trillions in debt we are piling on our younger generations.

The AARP is a fine organization.  I shouldn’t pick on it.  I’m sure it provides wonderful services – and discounts – to its members.  But I don’t think I’ll join it when my number comes up.

I have plenty of time to decide though. Plenty.