Was NY Gov Spitzer Felled for Supporting Tunnel?

Gov Spitzer was busted as "Client #9' at an exclusive "Emperor's Club" - a name suggesting a sexual services business for 'emperors' (government officials) - though with precious little attention on any other clients.

Such timing, together with the Pentagon's continuing defferrence to an outmodeled, doctrine against any new urban freeway capacity, suggests a plausible reason that transport subversion emanates from the political pyramid's highest levels...

http://www.lohud.com/article/20080522/COLUMNIST/805220439/Despite-setbacks-would-be-tunnel-developer-remains-optimistic

A funny thing happened on the way to the Cross Sound Link.

Actually, two things happened almost simultaneously in March. One was about greed and the other involved lust.

The first event was the sudden and surprising collapse of Bear Stearns, the Wall Street firm that fell in love with the subprime mortgage market. The second event was the sudden and surprising resignation of Eliot Spitzer, the governor who found love in the arms of prostitutes at 400 bucks an hour.

Both the investment bank and Spitzer had figured in an audacious plan to build the Cross Sound Link, a $10 billion (or more) vehicular tunnel that would travel 16 miles under the Long Island Sound, linking the eastern end of Long Island with Westchester County at Interstates 95 and 287 in Rye. Bear Stearns was going to float the bonds and sell the stock necessary to pay for the project while Spitzer supposedly was going to grease the political machinery to move the project through the approval process, according to the developer, Vincent Polimeni.


"Everything stopped when Spitzer had the disaster, coupled together the same week with Bear Stearns, who were obviously the people who were going to be funding the whole thing and spearheading it," Polimeni told me. "So, I'm retrenching."

Polimeni said the Spitzer sex scandal probably set him back at least two months because Spitzer, with whom he had met, understood the tunnel proposal and was at least willing to take the first steps needed to tests its merits. Now, he said, he'll have to explain the idea to the new governor, David Paterson.

"I know him," Polimeni said of Paterson. "I know all these people and I wanted the dust to settle before I got him into the loop. We'll try to set up a meeting with his people next month, to bring them up to speed with the tunnel.

"I think he'll be completely for it."

Polimeni said he was shocked when he heard the news of the Bear Stearns debacle and the axing of his contacts there. But he remained undaunted because he knew that the high-powered people who were key players in the Cross Sound Link would eventually be recruited by other firms.

'Congestion' Tax Scam With THIS Sort of Book-Keeping Tradition?

Within days of the NYC City Council's approval of the 'congestion' tax
Mass Surveillance CamScam ...

Bloomberg Praises Quinn's 'Principled Leadership'

(excerpt)

Mayor Bloomberg appeared at a Red Room press conference with Council Speaker Christine Quinn soon after the City Council passed a home rule message for his congestion pricing plan and lauded her "principled leadership," which he said "shows this time, as it has in previous times, that she cares about the city and the interests of the city come first with her."

"It is not easy to corral a lot of people; it’s not easy to tackle some of the controversial issues," Bloomberg continued. "But Christine Quinn really did stand up and, with the power of persuasion and the arguments that we all know make a lot of sense here, she managed to get 30 votes when I think most people did not expect this to pass."

The mayor said it is now "completely clear that congestion pricing has the strong backing of the people of New York City," adding:

" And so this evening’s historic vote by the Council really is something that they all deserve congratulations, all of those who voted for it. I think everybody in this city either believes today or will come to believe that this is the right thing to do for New York City and I just wanted to personally applaud those who had the courage to stand up and do what was right, starting with the Speaker and all of her members. So thank you very much."

Quinn Says She Was Unaware Of Multimillion-Dollar Slush Fund

(excerpt)

"I hope what New Yorkers see here is that this was a long-standing practice, not one that we began in the council, and that as soon as we saw what was going on, we took action and turned the information over to the authorities,” Quinn said.

Quinn acknowledges office hid millions of dollars

(excerpt)

The New York City Council for nearly a decade tucked away millions and millions of taxpayers' dollars by securing the payload for imaginary public groups, Council Speaker Christine Quinn said Thursday after revealing the same bogus bookkeeping practice occurred in her first term.

Quinn also said the council had a practice of adopting and holding funds dating back to 1988. In keeping with her pledge for a "transparent" budget so New Yorkers can see exactly how their money is being spent, Quinn said she condemned the 20-year-old practice.

Phony Allocations by City Council Reported

(excerpt)

The New York City Council has appropriated millions in taxpayer dollars in recent years to organizations that did not exist, Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn disclosed on Thursday.

The maneuver, in which funds were set aside for fictitious groups like the Coalition of Informed Individuals and Senior Citizens for Equality, allowed Council members to spend the money later on community programs they supported without obtaining the mayor’s approval.

The practice dates to at least 2001 and encompasses the tenures of the previous two speakers, Peter F. Vallone Sr., and Gifford Miller, according to Ms. Quinn.

Since 2001, about $17.4 million has been budgeted for dozens of fake community groups, according to documents provided by Ms. Quinn’s office.

"I think everybody in this city either believes today or will come to believe that this is the right thing to do for New York City"- NYC Mayor Bloomberg

That many people approve being doubled and tripled taxed within the context of such a tradition of "book-keeping?" Is that Bloomberg the businessman? Or Bloomberg the puppet- tool of the super elite who suppose that the food appears in supermarkets via magic?

How much $$$ has been so siphoned since say September 1985 when officials surrender the Westway Highway project giving Manhattan but a single north-south highway route usable by trucks, to a political movement dedicated to subsidizing questionable mass transit bureaucratic book keeping via an array of domestic surveillance cameras, and to distracting from this ever growing inquisitional monster this represents?

How many activist man hours were fretted over the $$ to be spent on Westway, versus the multiples of that spent on Pentagon bloat and the sinfully wasteful socially counter productive pharmacratic inquisition?

Truck Strike Needed to Educate Elites About Importance of Highways

As exemplified by the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" Manhattan and D.C. elites have about zero understanding of road transport infrastructure, as if the food just appears in supermarkets like magic.

This strike regards fuel costs, but it really is needed to educate the elitists in places as N.Y.C.'s Manhattan and Washington, D.C. NW about their pathological-jesuitical "new urbanist" disregard of highway maintenance and expansion.

The strike is to be nation-wide, but since truckers like everyone must earn to live, the strike is only to last one week (April 1 - April 7).

A better approach would be a far, far longer strike that targets the areas of the wealthy elites: aka Manhattan below 116th Street and the entire NW area of Washington D.C. and its adjoining area inside the I-495 Beltway and northward to Potomac where significant elitists live.

Also, places as Bayville and especially Rye N.Y.

http://www.topix.com/forum/business/truck-drivers/TN8JSAN3IIVG779D9

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=60155#

'Congest' Pricing for More Bureacrats, Not Infrastructure

"Congestion" Pricing Advocates have a religion that's against any new roads, but which favors creating many new bureaucratic jobs to produce little or nothing in benefits.

Any politician voting in favor of this jesuitical tax scheme ought to lose their job!

City jumps the gun on 'congest' jobs

By PATRICK GALLAHUE Transit Reporter

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03282008/photos/news004.jpg

March 28, 2008 -- The city is already seeking résumés for high-paying gigs with its congestion-pricing initiative - despite the fact it might never be approved.

And, according to the salaries being offered, drivers aren't the only ones who'll pay if the plan gets off the ground.

The Department of Transportation posted 10 positions - paying up to a combined $1.2 million - for engineers, planners and spokespersons who would work in a variety of capacities promoting and managing Mayor Bloomberg's contentious plan to charge drivers $8 to enter Manhattan's business districts.

"Starting the search now is necessary, so we can quickly hire the engineering and planning professionals we need to implement the many components of congestion pricing efficiently within one year of approval," said DOT spokesman Seth Solomonow.

The gigs, advertised on the DOT's Web site and on Craigslist, run the gamut from press officers to planners.

The position of "administrative city planner" can earn a maximum of $162,790 while an "administrative public-information specialist" can make up to $135,240.

Even low-end salaries in DOT's want ads are in the ranges of $50,000 to $60,000.

But several lawmakers - who must approve the plan to charge $8 to drive below 60th Street during business hours before it can go into effect - said they felt the city "put the cart before the horse."

"[It] still has several major hurdles to clear before becoming a reality and it is shameful that DOT has already taken the liberty of posting employment opportunities," Queens City Councilman Tony Avella said.

He and several other council members plan to rally against congestion pricing today at the 59th Street Bridge.

Even Councilman John Liu, who chairs the Transportation Committee and is a supporter of the plan, said, "I think it will happen, and I know the time frame is short, but this is jumping the gun."

The federal deadline for the plan to be approved by the City Council and the state Legislature is April 7, but the closing date Albany set for itself is Monday.

If the council and Legislature do not approve the plan, the city could miss out on $354 million in federal mass-transit funds.

The jobs are in DOT's Office of Sustainability and Planning, and the salaries would be paid from congestion-pricing revenue.

patrick.gallahue@nypost.com

Obama Endorses 'Congestion' Tax Scheme WITHOUT Anything for Roads

ObUma- PLONK!

Not because what he says is necessarily bad in the abstract.

But rather, it's bad in the context of the strict doctrine of no new highways and that of NYC's infamous book-keeping, along with its new cameras that would be most useful for dissident tracking.

Without elaboration upon 'infrastructure' that takes a stance against the religious doctrine of no new urban highway links, this translates to just some 'mass' transit with bloated bureaucracy.

Just another panderer to the elites who want to raise more taxes without providing more benefits!

Obama: Congestion Pricing ‘Thoughtful’ and ‘Innovative’

Mar 28, 2008 in Congestion Pricing, Politics, Transportation

In an exclusive interview with a New York television station, Senator Barack Obama described congestion pricing as a thoughtful and innovative approach to the problem of congestion. In the interview he described it as a way to reduce congestion, reduce pollution, and invest in infrastructure and mass transit. With an April 7th deadline approaching, New York City appears poised to approve a historic congestion pricing plan. (See Streetsblog for exhaustive congestion pricing coverage.)

More room on the existing roads for our limos, frat brother...

and no new urban roads to offend elites...

NY Times Calls for Conjestion Pricing to Ignore Highways

From today's NY Times editorial page:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/opinion/26wed4.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

(excerpt)

Riders have a right to be skeptical, especially after the M.T.A.’s recent flip-flop. Lawmakers must include tough language to ensure that all congestion pricing revenues are dedicated to promised improvements in transit. That is essential for public support and to coax commuters out of their cars and on to mass transportation.

Wrong. Pay back the Westway funds as a start before embarking on any new such tax schemes.

Open up the MTA books to the public, as canceling Westway was a subsidy for dishonest mass transit bureaucratic bookkeeping, and a distraction from all of the funds squandered by the Pentagon and such criminal entities as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (tobacco cigarette mercantilism protection scheme).

'Conjestion Pricing' Tax Scheme's Disregard Highway Planning

Proposed new tax schemes to fleece vehicularists -- $2.75 billion annually around and within Washington, D.C. -- with ZERO capacity additions.

Report for the Greater Washington, D.C. 'Council of Governments' limits new lanes to a single new I-395 Virgina HOV/HOT lane, and NONE anywhere within Washington, D.C.

Yet it's estimated $2.75 billion revenue intake could pay for a $25 billion capacious primarily existing corridor footprint new design underground Washington, D.C. "Big Dig" with a linear park covered "North Central Freeway" multi-model Grand Arc Mall Tunnel that includes an undergrounded and capacity added Red Line (Metropolitan Branch B&O Corridor) connection to an underground 'Inner Loop' described here....

Nonetheless the 'COG' report bears false witness about the physical feasibilities any such highways -- a Washington, D.C. "Big Dig" enjoys far more favorable soil conditions than Boston's.

Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Bloomberg is pushing hard for such a program with likewise ZERO highway additions- despite the clear needs and feasibilities.

The problem is not physical, but rather political.

Earthquake Hazard Battery Park City Underscores Official Plannings Disregard for Safety

Foolishly Placed Buildings on Landfill WITHOUT Foundations to Bedrock May Imperil Vital Transportation Links.

http://www.greatgridlock.net/NYC/nycadd4.html

As for the subsoil conditions in NYC itself, the well-known Manhattan bedrock rises to the surface in the northern part of the island, extending also to the north. The bedrock falls deeper as we go to the south and east, forming still a reachable foundation for buildings in Midtown, but generally not as far south as in Downtown. Because bedrock forms a solid base for a building, it, despite also transmitting seismic shockwaves effectively, will be a better choice than soft soil. The ample soft soil in New York would be the cause for the city's major harm in case of an earthquake. Not only does it amplify the seismic waves and direct them to the surface, but parts of the city land are also prone to so-called liquefaction, an abrupt loss of soil cohesion. The sand particles lose their friction resistance under the earthquake vibration and get mixed up with water beneath the ground surface, naturally losing any support it gives to a structure. A particularly clear example of its effect was the accident in Brooklyn, where building a sewer in reclaimed land with a vibratory pile driver collapsed four houses within two blocks with the loss of a life. The agitated soil had given way even from that distance and led to the collapse. Much of the waterfront is filled-in and reclaimed from the rivers with soil that is prone to liquefaction, especially below water level. The most notable of these landfills is the Battery Park City in Downtown Manhattan, which would face severe problems in a major earthquake -- as would do many other vital services, like several major hospitals or the Long Island airports on fills, with JFK also near Rockaway.

An earthquake could make BPC buildings tilt, possibly towards the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel portal approach, requiring their subsequent demolition as a hazard to transport.

Perhaps this is also applicable to the irresponsibly placed Chase Manhattan buildings immediately along the south side of the Holland Tunnel in New Jersey? I would not be too surprised given the extreme disregard to transport amongst 'new urbanist' planning.

New N.Y. State Gov. Patterson Sells Out on 'Conjestion' Pricing

Gov. Patterson

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/nyregion/22congestion.html?em&ex=1206331200&en=85525bdb332c0d91&ei=5087%0A

Gov. David A. Paterson added his support on Friday to the idea of charging drivers to enter the busiest sections of Manhattan, rescuing the controversial program from the brink of death by submitting a bill to the State Legislature to establish it.

The turnaround came after an impassioned pitch to the governor from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg behind closed doors at City Hall on Wednesday, when Mr. Paterson privately expressed support for the proposal, city officials said. He warned the mayor that he first had to tell Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who has shown little inclination to approve it, the officials said.

Mr. Paterson’s blessing, which came as Bloomberg aides have been furiously lobbying the city and state lawmakers whose approval is needed for the program, could prove crucial in making the proposal to charge most drivers $8 to enter the zone below 61st Street on weekdays a reality.

Congestion pricing addresses two urgent concerns of the residents of New York City and its suburbs: the need to reduce congestion on our streets and roads, and thereby reduce pollution, and the need to raise significant revenue for mass transit improvement,” Mr. Paterson said in a statement.

Winning the support of Mr. Paterson, who has far more experience and good will among state lawmakers than his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, represents something of a coup for Mr. Bloomberg, who has made congestion pricing an important element of his second-term agenda.

The Throgs Neck Bridge, which opened January 11, 1961, and which represents Long Island's only continuous modern interstate highway route to the mainland (via the Clearview Expressway to the Long Island Expressway) is in such poor shape that trucks are limited to using the middle lane in each direction with a 30 mph speed limit.

The Verazano Narrows Bridge, which opened November 21, 1964, with its lower deck opening June 28, 1969, represents Long Island's only other modern interstate highway route to the mainland (though without a continuous modern interstate highway route connection via the pre-WW2 spec Gowanus Expressway), and is the latest such structure constructed. Although it was to have a easterly connection via a proposed Cross Brooklyn Expressway that would connect to an Atlantic Expressway along the Sunrise 'highway' (surface street) corridor, that, along with every other planned but not yet built highway was canceled en-mass by then New York City Mayor Lindsey in 1969-71. A planned modern interstate highway bridge connecting Long Island's Route 135 to Westchester County's I-287 would be canceled in 1973, while a modern replacement for Manhattan's antiquated West Side Highway would be politically raped for appropriating its funds for non-highway subways by 1985.

Although 'conjestion' pricing funds shall come from vehicularists, who already have their toll monies so diverted, all we seem to hear about these funds being used is non-highway mass transit.

Obviously, this is sustained by a nexis of political money power largely centered around Manhattan's Central Park of people who exemplify a near total disregard of the importance of road infrastructure that we saw in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" about a Manhattan flooded and frozen, with nothing coming into the city, yet no one seems to mind the lack of food.




A look at Gov. Patterson's Secretary 'ex' Jesuit Charles J. O'Byrne

NYC Building Collapse Highlights Real Estate/Road Proximity Issues

March, 2008 collapse of building in Manhattan next to Metro North RR

New Jersey side of the Holland Tunnel with buildings recently erected close

This building collapse shut down the use of the neighboring adjacent Metro North RR, even without directly having a physically conflict.

What then about such things as the recently erected real estate ventures -- with the logo of the Chase Manhattan Bank -- that immediately along the southern side of the New Jersey approach of the Holland Tunnel?

NYC area Toll Hike RipOff

Cross-Hudson vehicular tolls to go to $8 tomorrow;
not a single lane built since the lower deck of the GW Bridge some 45 years ago!

A Beholden Doctrine

From Urban Transport.org

Unfortunately, about 1975, politicians and planners began to embrace the idea that we were in an "era of limits" - the notion that there were "smarter solutions," that "we can't just keep on building more roads," that "transportation demand management" could help wean Californians off their irrational "love affair with the automobile" and into "modern, efficient, high-capacity mass transit."

Then-governor Jerry Brown's aides openly proclaimed, "Our job is to pry John Q. Public out of his car (and) to make life miserable for the single motorist."

http://www.urbantransport.org/sole.pdf

Jerry Brown, pictured above on the front cover of an April 23, 1979 issue of Newsweek magazine with the singer Linda Ronstadt, about mid way through his 1975-1983 service as Governor of the State of California; he has a long political career including service as Mayor of Oakland from 1998 to 2006, and in 2007 is California Attorney General. In 1976, 1980 and 1992 he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nominations, and in 1982 was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate.

Jerry Brown- Wikipedia

(excerpt)

Brown was born in San Francisco, the only son of former San Francisco lawyer, District attorney and later Democratic governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Sr. He graduated from St. Ignatius High School and studied at Santa Clara University. In 1958, he entered Sacred Heart Novitiate, a Jesuit seminary, intending to become a Catholic priest.

A Sampling of Attitudes Towards D.C. I-95

Whatever happened to the idea of additional evacuation routes?

Shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, there was talk about constructing additional evacuation routes within the U.S. to better serve the evacuation for major metropolitan areas in a future emergency event.

Yet within all of the 100s of billions of $$ spent since on the war in Iraq and with over-sightless surveilling the general public, there is nothing for new evacuation routes- particularly from such metropolises as Washington, D.C., and New York City/Long Island.

Logical projects would include:

I-287 Long Island Sound Bridge/Tunnel, either a full tunnel, or a bridge with tunnel (cut and cover box with full lanes and shoulders to mitigate the highway at the shore areas) to a Route 135 re-signed and improved as I-287

I-78 Cross Harbor-Brooklyn Highway-Railway Tunnel towards JFK Airport , preferably with an eastern extension along the Sunrise Highway corridor

Lincoln Tunnel 4th Tube
Midtown Manhattan 3rd Tube
Holland Tunnel Parallel Tubes

Northern and Eastern Washington, D.C. radial highways, in particular, the I-95 Grand Arc Mall Tunnel

Homeland Security Goal Better Served by Reviving I-70S through NW Washington DC- Mark Robinowitz

Envirofraud - unscrupulous road haters

Posted Sat, 2007-09-15 12:42 at TollRoads

http://www.tollroad snews.com/ node/3136

Air pollution scaremongering long been used by environmental groups to block the road building needed to alleviate congestion - even though the resulting stop-&-go and idling traffic worsens emissions. In many US metro areas air quality data have been misused by environmentalists and their friends in the regulatory agencies to bar all lane additions - except for HOV lanes. And they are wastefully empty.

Their logic is that extra highway capacity will increase vehicle-miles traveled and applying average emissions/vehicle mile traveled (vmt) that means more total emissions and greater difficulty meeting air quality goals. Totally ignored in this logic are the benefits to emissions per vmt of managing traffic for free flow at moderate speed.

Anyone serious about air quality will see toll managed traffic lanes as being a contribution to cleaner air.

But most environmentalists are more stuck on fighting the car than they are on cleaning the air.

Maybe it's time the USDOT's congestion busters promoted some research to quantify the air quality results of:

(1) toll managed lanes,

(2) extra free capacity and

(3) congested constrained capacity.

[Click URL for more]

Any Excuse to Track the Public

Why spend billions on transponders and readers?

Why not just raise the fuel tax?

I think you are going to see fairly hefty increases in subsidies for Amtrak and transit. Remember transit usage is up because of the increase in gas prices.

I am certain government will become more controlling over travel. Of course to travel we all need proper paperwork and submit to government demands. Since we already need clearance from homeland security to leave and re-enter the USA (of course those people being allowed in to flood the labor market and over burden the US taxpayer don't have to do jack, they just walk through a hole in the fence) we may see that for domestic travel as well.

What I think you are going to see eventually is a mileage based tax usage fee. Just like you have to register a vehicle, you will have a transponder that keeps track of mileage and road use, combined with readers on the road, that is the way vehicles will pay for road usage.

That's what the self proclaimed owners want and with it tracking the travel of each and everyone of us. Central planning in command.

Congestion Pricing (as proposed) Stabs Poor

On 7/24/07, Michael T Packard <michaelpackard1@ peoplepc. com> wrote:

The Minetta Transportation Institute published a report in 2002 titled, "Lessons from the Most successful Transit Systems in the 1990's". At the end of that study, in a section on review of literature-( p.117 ), they quoted a European Commission Transport Research study to the effect that,

"Road pricing is potentially the most effective way to shift riders to transit."

We all know it won't be middleclass or upper class car users being forced out of their cars by these targeted road tax hikes. Low income drivers will have to make multi-transfer ride trips on transit and sacrifice much time. Or they can travel or on crowded side streets and still sacrifice their time.

The central city snots who "love all mankind" just can't stand people living in suburbs, especially the poor. The snots will make them pay one way or the other.

Mike

Nor can such people stand any sort of road project, irregardless of the environmental consequences - e.g. its utility and its use of existing corridors.

It's as if such people don't think of the environmental footprint importance of infrastructure for accommodating greater human population and activity.

To them it does not matter whether the project respects existing properties and landmarks. They may have cut their teeth opposing a cross town Lower Manhattan or Mid Town Manhattan elevated highway that would have cleared a swath of buildings. But ultimately as of this writing, they oppose any new vehicular road that lacks traffic lights.

Apparantly our political elites don't include any truck drivers.

Just think of that movie "The Day After Tomorrow" with Manhattan flooded and frozen, obviously with no food coming in, yet the people are shown dancing in the streets after being holed up for weeks in the New York Public Library, with a blissful ignorance of infrastructure matter. For instance, a pay phone in a subway that works during a flood, with not a mention of any inoperable toilets, nor regarding drinking water.

Such is our intellectually bankrupt criminal apostate shadow government.

Pushing it Away: New York Times Enshrinement

From page A18, New York Times editorial page: "Editorial Observer" by Verlyn Klinkenborg-
"Trying Times Ahead: The Prospect of 60 Million Californians"

Recently, the California Department of Finance predicted that there will be some 60 million people living in the state by 2050. At present [2007] there are 36 millions. The numbers in themselves are frightening enough, but what I find terrifying is the bland assumption that a two thirds increase in population is inevitable and that the main problem will be creating the infrastructure necessary to house, feed, educate, transport and govern all those people. To me, the main problem is how to keep them from showing up in the first place [emphasis added].

Representative aristocratic myopia, with its unspoken assumption of some sort of major disaster in order to bring about the population reduction of others that they desire.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/opinion/18wed4.html?ex=1342497600&en=7c88d647ee1ac26c&amp;ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink