The Tipping Point

As we move past COVID-19 the 2025 New Years comes to Brooklyn with a massacre of blood across the city and within the Subway. And nobody cares. The MTA has been given a blank check to tax all transportation within the city with the congression pricing scam. Meanwhile, this agency which rapes NYC of its life will not take even basic responsiiblity for clean and safe trains. The subway is not better than a dog kennel. The elected politicians who are supposed to represent us have fallen silent and tell us that it is illegal to remove the homeless and criminals from the trans system while forcing us to pay more and more to use the city streets. It is disguesting and all that is left is for the working class to up and leave this city that has become a bastrin of anti-semetism, racism and hatred. The burning to death of a homeless New Jersey resident who had been shoved off on the NYC subway system, is not just the capper to our distress, but was inevitable. And these politiciasn just don't care. All we have left to save our own souls is to leave New York and to boycott Manhattan.

They keep talking about the failure of homeless services. How about the failure to protect the riders!!! Why are working New Yorkers treated like crap every day. Instead of having camera's tracking every New York and then taxing us to using city streets, how about removing the dangerous homeless people from the subway and the streets. I don't care WHERE you put them... just get them off the Subway and Off the Streets and restore law and order to our regular business.

Iranian Emigrees in Brooklyn

The unreported story of the struggles of Iranian refusees in America Brooklyn

Congrestion Pricing Robbery

It steals from Brooklyn.

What can possibly said that is good about the "Congrestion Pricing" scam that is being foisted on New Yorkers. At a time when the city is filty, and homeless and mentally ill flood the subway system what can be better for New Yorkers than trying to force them to ride the subway or dare them to leave New York altogether. Why should working people not be forced to contend with panhandlers who are terrific vectors for all our epidemics, both real and imagined. There is nothing like the wonderful odor of marijuanna and vaps in the morning with your morning coffe and a danish. New Yorkers need to pay more blackmail money to the worlds largest unaccountable government agency to the tune of 1 billion dollars a year (at least according to Bloomberg).

Is it any wonder than nobody is paying the fare any longer and jumping the turnstyle is record numbers?

Forcing drivers to pay $23 dollars a trip into New York City and giving it to an unelected mass transit company with a history of increasing costs and a total lack of accountability... what could possibly go wrong!

The bais of Congrestion Pricing is based on a malicious lie which can b outlined on Colombia Business School spreadsheets.

Using a detailed benefit-cost analysis that assumes a pricing structure of $15 at peak times, $10 as traffic begins to thicken and $5 at off-peak times, we calculate that the value of those projected time savings to drivers and truckers amounts to nearly $3 billion a year, with time saved in the boroughs and counties surrounding Manhattan exceeding those on the island. These estimates are based on a comprehensive spreadsheet model of the region’s traffic, developed by one of us (Mr. Komanoff). State officials used that model to write the statute authorizing congestion pricing, which the New York State Legislature passed in 2019. The other gift will be the $1 billion a year in congestion pricing revenue that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will use to secure $15 billion in bonds to pay for improvements to mass transit in the city. Those upgrades will reduce waiting times and onboard delays — and the precious time subway passengers lose as a result.

Lets play the game of spot the hidden picture in the illustration, like Radar and Hawkeye played in M*A*S*H.

The first lie is that the MTA needs a billion dollars a year more in funding and that getting funding will improve service. That is a bald faced lie. The MTA has blown billions of dollars and have given us nothing to improve rides but more filth and homelessness and fancy electronic advertising and coutdown clocks that are broken have the time. The MTA is INCAPABLE of making rational decisions about transit and if you object to pay them even more money, they call you childish names. What the MTA will do with that money, as it says in the article, is it will use this revenue source to BORROW more money. That is exactly what the MTA does best, is borrrow endless amounts of money as fares and costs continue to rise. This is what happens when you give a bunch of selfish beurocratcs billions of dollars with no accountability and market competition. The MTA's only competition of the Car and they want to elimintate the car... or Taxis. Our life as New Yorkers is to be prisionors to the MTA.

According to the MTA itself:

The amount of outstanding long-term debt issued by the MTA increased by 37 percent from $25.8 billion in 2010 to $35.4 billion in 2019 and rose to $40.1 billion in 2021. • The MTA expects debt outstanding to reach $47 billion by 2026, including $5 billion of debt paid by dedicated capital lockbox revenues. • If all $15 billion of capital lockbox bonds, including those to be backed by congestion pricing revenues are counted, debt outstanding could rise to $57.4 billion by 2030

These numbers are so large that it is hard to grasp. The MTA keeps telling the public that the world is flat hoping we never notice that actually it is round. For example, The Gothomist reports

“We have papered over our failure to deal with a lot of difficult, long-term issues with more borrowing,” said Nicole Gelinas, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. "To make a long story short, we've gone from zero debt in the early 1980s to close to $48 [billion], $50 billion in long-term debt by 2023." Growing debt payments This year, the amount the MTA will pay on its debt represents about 40% of the agency’s expected fare and toll revenues. Two decades ago, that ratio was about 20%. And two decades before that, in 1984, it was less than 4%.

The MTA is a giant monster consuming everything it can lay its hands on like an addicted gambler they will beg and borrow from anyone they can when they finally run out of money and need more.. and as pointed out, this has been going on for decades with no check!

But the most annoying falsehood in the Columbia report is the make believe "savings" that we all get when the MTA takes a billion dollars a year from the local economy, which is false claim that drivers will save 3 billion dollars a year. That is a totally fake proposition made on bias politically oriented falsehoods that have zero basis in reality. Drivers do not save money if you tax them more. There is zero economic basis for making such false statements. Traffic doesn't reduce economic activity, it is the generator of economic activity. When nobody drives in the City, they will NOT get on their bike, they will LEAVE the city and in fact, they are already leaving this city as retail and business occupancy are now in a freefall of collapse.... so there is that.

The pandemic is slowly receding and life is returning. The cultural landscape of the Borough and the City looks like the scraped granite and arêtes that are left behind retreating glaciers. I've been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art 4 times, trying to cover as much of it as possible. There is an odd and dysfunctional attempt to make the museum more "Woke". The effort usually results in the replacement of one kind of persistent racism with another. It doesn't result in an improved museum and the customer base continues to be overwhelmingly upper-middle class people of European lineage, and tourists. First I tackled the Dutch Masters and the Lehman collection, which today are next to each other. And then I covered the Impressionists and Modern art. The Rockefeller Oceanic section in under reconstruction, as is the Dutch European Arts section and the Near East section, so all the best parts of the museum are essentially being rebuilt. I got one last shot of the Near East collection as you will be able to see on still photos and video's listed below.

On the second trip I went to see the Greek and Roman section, and the statues. The Met has an interesting exhibit on the painting of Greek statues in ancient times, which is mostly in the Mezzanine marked as the Etruscan Arts area. I did not hit this spot on this trip, but did see it later. I did hit the Tudor's exhibit, which was very popular but which I found to be largely drab. We then also viewed an exhibit on the relationship between Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition, which was eh. More exciting was the Chinese Enamel in Decorative arts, and the "Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room".

At this point, I went home and thought that the Metropolitan is actually much larger than I thought it was. I thought it was on par with the Rijksmuseum, or even the British National Galleries, but the Metropolitan is much bigger and after two visits, I felt I only saw about a third of It. I had no idea just how huge the Asian section of the Museum was. On the third trip I went to see the Near East exhibit, which was likely the last time I will see it since it is now closed for nearly 4 years, and the interesting Cyprus exhibit. I moved on the Asia, which opens into a building size Chinese Tapestry and you can go left to China or East to India. I chose east and spend hours lost in the Indian, South East Asian, and eventually made my way to the Japanese section, the Chinese gardens and the Kimono special exhibit. The Chinese house and garden is a barely known part of the museum, that is spectacular and when you visit the Metropolitan, you really should make it a point to see it, and the surrounding exhibit of Japanese and Chinese ink drawings and scrolls.

The fourth visit I was determined to get the very underrated American Arts section. Before I got there I went up to the Etruscan mezzanine which I remembers as a small dead ended detour. It was housing much of the exhibit about color on Greek Architecture. When I got up there I found a vast collection of Hellenistic pottery and arts broken down by era and theme, starting with prehistoric artifacts and extending to Roman glass. It was beautiful and extensive. I loved the carved gemstones that where used for making imprints before coinage. The skill and workmanship is breathtaking for a time before industrialization. These are some of the greatest works in the Museum and little seen or known about. And then around the corner was a breathtaking full sized Roman Chariot, a true highlight of the entire collection, and a complete set of Roman coins on display from the ANS which continued down the staircase back to the first floor. It took two hours to go through that section before getting onto the American Wing which has, "Washington Crossing the Delaware" along with Remington's statues and paintings, American Impressionists, and several works from sculpture Augustus Saint Gaudens who designed several US coins, and Georgia OKeefei, and the Ash Can School and the Hudson Art Movement, In between on this visit I slipped in to see the Denmark exhibit and took a view of the small Baseball Card exhibit that the Met put up in the the storage area.

All done with four trips, I still have about 20 percent of the museum that I didn't see and whizzed through the Egyptian section which enters buttresses the main hall and can not be missed, and I didn't view the Byzantine section, or the customs or fabrics, or the medieval period works, or the interior rooms, all of which I hope to cover on trip number five.

Metropolitan Museum Tour videos and pictures

• Youtube Videos - Youtube steps on the videos and the originals are also on the webserver listed below.
  • 2023 Tour American Wing
  • Baseball Cards
  • Etruscan Mezzanine
  • Roman Chariot - Denmark Art
  • Terracotta and Amber
  • Roman Coins
  • Remington Statues
  • American Wing
  • Washington Crossing the Delaware
  • Medieval Armour
  • Greek and Roman Glass
  • Roman Chariot at the Metropolitian Museum of Art in NYC
  • Tour of the Metropolitiian Museum in NYC Jan 2023 - Post-Covid Crisis III
  • The Near and Far East
  • Impresisonist and Van Gogh
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art Dec 2022 - Greek, Modern Art

  

• Clearer Original Videos and images
  • Dutch Art, Coins, Pottery, European Painting, Greek Vase
  • Hellenist Vases and Coins and Carved Gemstones. Middle Eastern Plates and Tableware, Indian and Persian Drawing, 19th Century European Realism, Denmark exhibit, American Wing, Baseball Cards
  • Greek Coins, Cyprus, Near Eastern Statues, Sumerian, Phoenician, Canaanite, statues, terracotta, and pottery. Indian Statues and Religious symbolism. Nepalian Art, Japanese and Chinese Ink and Scrolls. Chinese Pagoda, Kimonos, and Frank Lloyd Wright house
  • Video of the Metropolitan Tour of the Impressionists and More
  • Raw High Fidelity videos of the Metropolitan that eventually were posted to youtube Download and view

The city has been out of control and the retail businesses have taken a huge hit. Along Kings Highway our local retailers are under extreme pressure and many have closed since the pandemic. Through into the middle of this is an illegal fruit cart operation that is putting 24/7 fruit carts up and down Kings Highway, usually in front of banks or businesses that will be passive about such activities. This one opened on East 19th Street and Kings Highway in front of the Dime Savings Bank. It is blocking the corner and manned by illegal aliens 24/7. The City and City Councilor Inna Vernikov have been pelted with complaints about this as it is squeezing the tax paying businesses along the Highway which are LEGAL.

You can bet the city will do NOTHING about this because they don't care about our businesses or our lives. They care about putting in traffic cameras and exploiting inter-ethnic confict within the City. That is all they care about. But if something changes, I will be posting updates.

Have no sympathy for these creeps. Every Fruit Store in the community is owned and manned by LEGAL immigrants to our fair borough including Chinese, Pakistanis, Russian, and Turks... and they don't deserve to be stabbed in the back by an illegal gang.

The city has been out of control. It is dirty, overwhelmed with homeless, joyless and dangeorus. We need to return to sensible governance NOW. It took 8 years for the left to bankrupt us and it will take time to unburry us. Start with the NY Subway. The subway is not a homeless shelter. It is the life blood of the city and it it needs to be rigiousously policed to be made clean and safe for tranportation. It is essential for our comerce and social lives.

Do you feel safe with that mask on the Subway?

What can one say at this point. The Covid-19 Pandemic and the political response has largely shattered the growth and development of our Borough and our City. The current administrations of Cuomo and DiBlasio and their succssors. have been reckless with our lives, and we are paying the price. Our taxes are stifling. Our City administration nearly non-existence. All of our learned experience has been cast aside and burned on the funeral pier of supposed "social justice". Social Justice has moved thousands of psychiatric patients and moved them onto the streets. We've encouraged communities from around the country to send us their problem cases, and we have people, especially young people, with severe mental illness, wandering the subways and streets creating fear among the working class citizens of the city. The Mayor is dishing out his brand of "fairness". Fairness isn't that people who live in our city, pay rent and work, and who are productive and contributing to our collective health should live in a clean city and travel without fear or harassment. That fairness, that of the common good, is summarily denied. Instead, fairness is that drug dealers, and gang members toting hot weapons are to rule over the rest of use, as we, the people, live in our graffiti filled communities, with total lawlessness, where Pimps pushing whores are just businessmen like the laundryman, and drug dealers are victims of institutional racism. Justice is not to be blind to race, religion and prejudice, but to be used as a tool for social activism. An impartial judge is not a clog in a wheeler of "social injustice" and even language is under attack.

We are to accept that being White and Being Male that we are automatic benefactors of a privileged class that is build on slavery that supposedly was initiated in the 1600's, ignoring the facts that most White Americans have families that have arrived well after slavery and never associated with the Jim Crow south. It ignores the rampant homelessness among white males in our city. It ignores the nearly 2:1 ratio of homelessness of men over women. It ignore the disintegration of the family unit, and destruction of fatherhood, that assault on children. Children without the protection of their fathers suffer their entire lives, and we ignore this completely.

Meanwhile, many Brooklyn friends are very skeptical of government claims about COVID-19, Masking and Vaccination, and the government deserves all the criticism that it gets. But the fact remains, the COVID-19 kills and vaccines are the only proven method to protect oneself and the community. Please get vaccinated. Don't be crazy in a sea of craziness.

Vision Zero means you are blind

We have become nearly immobile. The changes in traffic patterns, and the shear cost of both the public and private transportation infrastructure has destroyed our mobility. The 25 mile an hour speed limit, in combination with traffic cameras, and congestion pricing has destroyed our ability to move freely about the city, accept by bike, which is completely unacceptable for families and people over 40. Drivers are targeted now as revenue sources through the increasing proliferation of camera enforcing insane traffic laws that leave dozens of types of unsafe electric vehicles from scooters to ebikes, unlicensed and deadly to roam streets without any law enforcement while drivers is automobiles are being driven off the road. Taxis, Truck Drivers, and the family station-wagon are being mauled in "Vision Zero", a traffic plan for the city and envisions a fantasy world of zero risk, all the while more and more people are being maimed by unlicensed e-vehicals and unregulated bicycles. Instead of emphasizing law enforcement and civilian cooperation, government has abandoned us and views mobility and cars as a well of money to use for its toxic social programs. The result is that the working class is leaving at a record pace, and is never coming back. People will not live in a circus.

WINS-AM Radio inflaming race relations in NYC

Letter to WINS_AM Radio

I am really sick of your reporting of late, and this on going campaign about a women who lost her cellphone and mistakenly thought it was stolen by a minority youth is beyond the pale. First of all, it is a non-story. People get confused and falsely accuse people all the time of petty theft incorrectly. It is justnot news. Secondly, this report on your part shows fundamental lack of compassion and bigotry by your editorial staff. This women believed her phone was stolen by minority youths, which is a COMMON occurrence in NYC and completely rational thought. To accuse her of bigotry proves your own bigotry.

I've been in retail in NYC for 40 years and minority youth have not only violently mugged me on subway platforms, in trains, and on the streets, but they shop lift every day, all the time. It is perfectly rational for her to have assumed her phone was lifted, and the situation was handled by the hotel, seemingly calmly and efficiently. There is no crime here, other than WINS-AM harassing this women for a mistake that any one of us could have made. WINS is not just making a dangerous and bigoted campaign to victimize an innocent women, but you are inflaming race relations in the city. Obviously, you are take a page from the Sonny Carson playbook for political agitation, which lead directly to the Crown Heights Riots. It is NOT ACCEPTABLE.

WINS-AM Reference

The continued politicization of this Virus and the Lockdown of NYC for the sake of Cuomo's Ego

"If you look at where the cases are coming from, if you do the contact tracing, you'll see they're coming from three main areas: establishments where alcohol is served, gyms, and indoor gatherings at private homes," Governor Cuomo said. "The reason we have been successful in reducing the spread in New York is we have been a step ahead of COVID. You know where it's going; stop it before it gets there. And you know where it's going by following the science. This is the calibration that we've talked about: increase economic activity, watch the positivity rate - if the positivity rate starts to go up, back off on the economic activity. It was never binary -- economic activity or public health -- it was always both."

Coumo just made most Shabbat Meals and Kiddishes ILLEGAL. If you have a family of 14 are you supposed to just execute your 4 youngest children. The science is not "telling us" to close family gatherings. The Science is telling us that whenever we open up society, we get an increase in COVID-19 cases, and that is exactly what we should expect. Any third grader can figure this out. Coumo has NO PLAN to open up NY, because COVID-19 is never going away. So he expects us to do this forever, with him lauding over every aspect of our lives. He tells us when we can go to shule, when we can have fanily dinners, when we can get haircuts, etc etc. He is just a power hungry despot. He is morally corrupt. To his core, he is a bad man.

Here is the turth about Cuomo. He hasn't opened a SINGLE hospital bed since this started. He hasn't ramped any quarantine facilities. He hasn't spent a nickle to actually address this virus. He has effectely destroyed the NY economy, and bankrupted the Government. He has no plan other than destroying the very fabric of our society.

Coumo Edict for 11-10-2020

Delivery and Curbside Pick-Up without Alcohol May Continue After 10 PM

Indoor and Outdoor Gatherings at Private Residences Will Be Limited to
10 People

Gyms Also Required to Close Daily at 10 PM Statewide

New Rules Effective Friday at 10 PM

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced new COVID-19 restrictions on
bars, restaurants, gyms and residential gatherings in New York State.

Effective Friday at 10 p.m., bars, restaurants and gyms or fitness
centers, as well as any State Liquor Authority-licensed establishment,
will be required to close from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. daily. Restaurants will
still be allowed to provide curbside, food-only pick-up or delivery
after 10 p.m., but will not be permitted to serve alcohol to go. The
State Liquor Authority will issue further guidance for licensees as to
what sales are continued to be permitted.

The Governor also announced that indoor and outdoor gatherings at private
residences will be limited to no more than 10 people. The limit will be
implemented due to the recent prevalence of COVID spread resulting from
small indoor gatherings including Halloween parties. These gatherings
have become a major cause of cluster activity across the state. Further,
this public health measure brings New York State in line with neighboring
states including Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. This new
rule is also effective Friday at 10 p.m.

"If you look at where the cases are coming from, if you do the contact
tracing, you'll see they're coming from three main areas: establishments
where alcohol is served, gyms, and indoor gatherings at private homes,"
Governor Cuomo said. "The reason we have been successful in reducing the
spread in New York is we have been a step ahead of COVID. You know where
it's going; stop it before it gets there. And you know where it's going
by following the science. This is the calibration that we've talked about:
increase economic activity, watch the positivity rate - if the positivity
rate starts to go up, back off on the economic activity. It was never
binary -- economic activity or public health -- it was always both."

Governor Cuomo continued: "The rules are only as good as the
enforcement. Local governments are in charge of enforcement. There are
only two fundamental truths in this situation: it's individual discipline
and it's government enforcement. Period. End of sentence. I need the
local governments to enforce this."

The Governor took these actions amid a widespread increase in cases
throughout the nation and an increase in New York, which was expected
moving into the fall and winter seasons.

Clear Evidence of Systemic Voter Fraud in New York City

Fraudulent Voter Registration Cards

These are the pictures of two voter registrations for both my daughter and me, 
with instructions for absentee voting and voter ID cards.

The problem is my daughter is not only not registered in NY, she hasn't
lived in NYC in over 10 years and has resided in Alaska, but in the 7
years I have lived here, she has never so much as set foot in this house.

CLEAR evidence of SYSTEMIC voter fraud in NYC.

Get Used to Power Alerts as the city continues to backslide

 
	Con Edison is reporting an issue with the power grid in parts of Brooklyn, so we NEED New Yorkers to conserve energy today if you live in:
• Bay Ridge
• Fort Hamilton
• South Park Slope
• Greenwood
• Sunset Park

We’ll provide updates from Con Ed when we have them.

We are asking some of our customers on the west side of Brooklyn to
conserve energy while company crews repair equipment. We have reduced
voltage 8 percent in the area to protect equipment and maintain service
as crews make repairs. #safetyfirst http://spr.ly/6018GjI1a
8:38 AM · Jul 30, 2020

Con Edison Asks Customers in Area of Brooklyn to Conserve Energy

MEDIA RELATIONS


New York – July 30, 2020 -- 05:30 AM

Company Reduces Voltage by 8 Percent to Maintain Reliability Con Edison
is asking some of its customers on the west side of Brooklyn to conserve
energy while company crews repair equipment. Con Edison has reduced
voltage 8 percent in the area to protect equipment and maintain service
as crews make repairs.

The area is bounded on the north by Third Street and Fourth Street, by
the Narrows and Gravesend Bay on the south, by Fort Hamilton Parkway and
Fifth Avenue on the east and by Gowanus Bay and the Narrows on the west.

The area includes 96,600 customers in the Gowanus, Park Slope, Sunset
Park, Borough Park, Bay Ridge, Ft. Hamilton, Dyker Heights neighborhoods.

Con Edison has asked customers in these areas not to use energy-intensive
appliances such as washers, dryers, and microwaves until crews complete
repairs. The company also asks customers to limit unnecessary use of air
conditioning. If you have two air conditioners, use only one and set it
to the highest comfortable temperature.

The voltage reduction also affects the Windsor Terrace, Kensington,
Flatbush and Bensonhurst neighborhoods.

Customers can report outages and check service restoration status
at www.conEd.com/reportoutage, or with our mobile app for iOS or
Android devices, or by calling 1-800-75-CONED (1-800-752-6633). When
calling, customers should report whether their neighbors also have lost
power. Customers who report outages will receive updates with their
estimated restoration times as they become available.

Customers can follow Con Edison on Twitter or like us on Facebook for
general outage updates, safety tips and storm preparation information.

The equipment problems in these neighborhoods have no effect on the rest
of the Con Edison system. Con Edison will provide updates to affected
customers directly and through the media as the situation warrants. The
company is in communication with New York City Emergency Management.

Boro Park - Social Distancing and Summer Camps

id = boropark

A picture of the post Coronas Virus lock down in the very packed Borough Park Community

Borough Park in Central Brooklyn is one of the densest areas of the city, famously populated with Orthodox Jews of a variety of strips. This is a community whose central characteristic is the large number of children that live here. Orthodox families tend to be very large. Schools (Yeshivot) play a central roll of daily life. Kids start early in Yeshvia, often for morning prayers at 6AM, and finish at 9PM. Children form tight bonds and deep networks, and through these networks, families are connected. Jewish homes serve more to warehouse children rather than be places where they play and live. The centerpiece of the home is mostly the Shabbos Table.

With the Yeshivots closed, the foundation for child safety, and activities was kicked out of the community, leaving housing overwhelmed, and destroying much of the economic welfare of the neighborhood at the same time, as Yeshivot are the largest employers in the area. Streets are by and large packed with children. During the Summer, the normal routine involves taking the entire family to bungalow colonies throughout the Catskills, often around South Fallsburg. As we head into Summer, camps and bungalows have been closed because "The Science Say they should be". It is a damning statement about the entire government approach to the epidemic. In an attempt to stop the spread of the virus (slowing it down as a goal was thrown out the window in about 30 seconds), our decisions have increased its spread and exposed our most vulnerable populations, the elderly and those with co-morbidities, especially men. This is a photo journal of one of my trips through the neighborhood. I happened to managed to get a hook in my hand, so I went from the Pharmacy, Medical Arts on 55th Street and New Utretch Avenue, to my Doctors office at 44th Street and 9th Avenue. From there I walked to my clients medical office on 40th Street and 13th Avenue, to 50th and 13th to pick up the B11 Bus back to Midwood. The complete Photo Journal is recorded as a slide show at 1024 pixels.

As one views the slideshow of photographs, a few things can be pointed out. First, although there are quieter areas about the community, you see that children eventually find each other, and congregate, socialize and play. Sometimes, this is supervised and most often it is not. Often it is corralled into one gated front yard, but not always. Older children watch younger children, but you rarely see that adults are closely following or supervising children's activities. This is a bit of a throwback to an earlier era when your folks kicked you out of the house in the morning and you were expected to make friends in the neighborhood and play. Parent depend on the safety of the community and the communities invisible structure. One might not be aware of it, but there are eyes all over the neighborhood watching out for children. This is common in all Jewish communities from Jerusalem, where I found 3 year old toddlers wandering around the streets of the Jewish Quarter in the old city, to Brooklyn, Lakewood and wherever Orthodox Jews live.

The second thing one will notice is that the housing is cramped and packed with tall townhouse style homes. You see porches with high gates all about the town. Many of the apartment buildings you see are actually converted to schools or elderly care facilities and such. You see sidelined school buses, and samples of the network of private buses used for public transportation to other outposts of American Jewish life, such and Monsey, and Lakewood. This community is not just packed in, but is mobile through its network of buses, trains, and lastly, cars.

Finally, I would like to point out that much of the retail space, particularly on New Utretch Avenue under the elevated D train, is still closed or now vacant. The pernicious economic clobbering that this community took is similar to the rest of Brooklyn. It has been cataclysmic.

The purpose of spending the considerable amount of time documenting this is because Summer Camps in New York State have been closed, supposedly because the sciences says so. Science doesn't tell government what to do. It informs about probable outcomes, and theorizes about causation in our universe. It is not a moral force, and it is often wrong, especially in the fog of war. Expertise in an area of study doesn't qualify them to produce real policy. Real policy is a political matter. And it is not uncommon for experts to be wrong. They almost always have tunnel vision.

In this case someone is feeding Governor Cuomo bad information and they need to be fired. It is bad science to says sending children into open air environments in the country poses a greater risk to themselves and the community than stuffing them into the sultry streets of the city. This is crazy thought, proposed by a madman. Look with your eyes?!? Do these children LOOK safer from infectious disease than they would in summer camps, isolated from the main streams of civilization for 2 months so they can swim and play securely, in widely open spaces that are within fenced in communities which have minimal incoming and outgoing traffic?

What is wrong with our government? Summer camps were devised and designed to combat the dangers of epidemics in the summer by getting the children out of the danger of New York City. Closing them is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. Get these kids out of danger!

From the very start of this pandemic, there has been a fundamental lack of understanding of the human condition. It has been relentlessly assumed that people can be harmlessly isolated and caged into their homes. This has been an insane presumption from the beginning and it has continued until now. The community needs to step up and end this idea that there is a justifiable consensus on this concept. There is no such consensus within medicine or in the larger community. The statisticians behind these epidemiological models seemingly have no understanding of humanity, other than that people are "things" that can catch disease and die. How else do you explain the over reach, and laziness of government action since this has started. A position, such as the government has taken, that the lose of a single life to disease is not acceptable fails everyone.

Disease is an unfortunate part of the human condition, as is death. It can be prolonged, put off, struggled against, but it can not be stopped. Doing so at the cost of healthy child development for millions of children sets into motion psychological damage that will take years to untangle, if it ever can. STOP. It is illogical.

Open the summer camps, and spread out and protect our children. This is what camps are designed for. If anything, the state should be doing everything possible to make sure every child has a safe, and appropriate summer camp experience in this year of the COVID-19 virus. Deploy buses and allocate land and resources to get children out of the City. The dividend for all of us is safer children, and the beginning of the healing process that this trauma has created.

---

Congressional Elections - 9th Congressional District Election

Vote for Chaim Deutch in the Democratic Primary

Brooklyn is one of the worst gerrymandered communities in the US. After the surprise election of Bob Turner in the District that was Anthony Weiners, the Democratic party has carefully divided the Jewish community of Brooklyn, splitting it between the liberal upper west side, and the liberal community of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights and Flatbush. The Congressional for of the Jewish Community in Brooklyn has been all stolen. That leaves the community with one true candidate, in Chaim Deutch, as an experienced voice for the community. He is not just our best chance to trend against radical leftist candidates, but in of himself, he is a solid choice for the Democratic Primary. Chaim Deutch has the right blend of collaboration and across ideological practicality to make an excellent, moderating voice for the entire district, and maintain solid positions for matters that are key to the Jewish community within the Borough. For too long, the most populous Borough with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel has been blocked from having native representation. Chaim Deutch can correct that situation. On the primary coming June 23rd, voting for Deutch is essential.

Voting and Chaim Detch Resources

1. General 9th District Information
2. Chaim Deutch Campaign Page
3. Deutch Twitter Feed
4. Magazine Article on the Deutch Campaign
5. Message from Chaim on is goals
6. Gay Rights Activist don't like Orthodox Jewish canidate.. Do we call them anti-Semites of Jewishphobes?
7. Chabad Support
8. Detectives’ Endowment Association support
9. Sheepshead Bay News
10. Shorefront News
11. Kings County Politics
12. Chaim's support with the PBA
13. The Jewish Forward

In an ideal world, Black voters, either from the Caribian or African Americans, and Jewish voters would not be at each others neck. There is a large enough population, and enough districts for both to have adequate representation. Democratic gerrymandering has produced this corrosive situation, and in my opinion it serves nobodies purpose.

Riots Return to Brooklyn

It is a toxic combination. We have a huge number of unemployed and out of school young people. We have a mixed message being sent by the city about law enforcement. We have an explosive racial event in the form of the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota. We have warming seasonal temperatures. We have raging homelessness on the streets and people with mental illness who need institutionalization walking the streets and the subway system. We have a tone deaf Mayor who pits one racial group against the other. We've seen this all before. This mayor has been playing with dynamic and dangerous forces forces in a large, dynamic city, that he doesn't understand. The city changes with inertia, but once moving, it is dangerous, and potentially violent. The decisions they have made up until now had no place to end but in violent riots across the city. Welcome to Brooklyn in 2020, and for many there is no escape. Anyone with the means to leave New York City, will do just that, leaving a core of radicalized working class and the victims class to duke it out over the left overs. It will be a long time for Brooklyn to recover, and we are yet to even be on the right track. Bloomberg managed to allow for protests to boil without boiling over. This Mayor has proven to be fundamentally unable to find a balance, and if anything, to add fuel to the fire, because, frankly, he is a bigot and takes sides instead of focusing on the judicious application of the law and law enforcement. All this, and the city is staring down the pipe of a huge fiscal crisis.

Rising Graffiti across the city

With the prolonged closure of schools and universities across the city for months, kids have been running wild across the city, inevitably finding tried and true channel for their frustrations, anxiety, boredom and restlessness. It is a dangerous cocktail setting up a sorry and violent hot summer.

The Wuhan Virus (COVID-19) and the New York State Quarantine : March 28th, 2020

Over the last few years there has been a plethora of politics that is transforming New York and Brooklyn culture. Most of it has been bad for families and bad for middle class Brooklynites. We have a Mayor who was not born in nor raised in the city. This is not a man who played stickball in Sunset Park, or played handball in Coney Island. He never ran through the subway on the way to school, and made passes at girls at the bagel shop. He never burned a day at A&S, cloths shopping for the school year. He never waited for the New York Times at 2AM on Sunday morning, or experienced that violence of ethnic conflict in our communities. He has no concern for the connection those of us who are raising families, who live as middle class Brooklynites intertwined intimately to our communities, and who are the backbone of an ever shrinking part of the city’s labor pool. The people that live and work here, and raise our children here are not part of his core constituency. His obsession is with his “one truth” version of social justice, born from an influx of wealthy liberal financial traders, and arts workers, and has given a clear signal to those of us who have been life-long stewards of our communities that we do not matter.

Until now the lifeline of this borough has been the rich variety of ethnic communities. These populations have been told flatly that they are no longer welcome here. The Borough is increasingly monolithic, with community after community under pressure from wealthy hipsters turning our city into a larger and larger beer crawl. What was cute and interesting in Williamsburg has become saturated in Bushwick, Cobble Hill, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Midwood, Kensington, and Sunset Park.

There are still ethnic holdouts. There are however dramatically fewer of them. And they are dying. What is left is a more monolithic and larger communities. Largely, we have an established Russian community that has spread through south Brooklyn, a large Muslim community (anchored by Pakistani's and Bangladeshi's) about the center of the Borough south of Prospect Park, and spreading south to Kings Highway. A large Chinese community has exploded which is centered about Bensonhurst, and spread through Madison, Midwood, Sheepshead Bay, following Avenue U, through parts of South Brooklyn running through 86th street.

You still have an enclave of Orthodox Jews in Borough Park Brooklyn. But elsewhere, in Midwood and Flatbush, the community is shrinking in numbers and influence, identified by the Democratic political machine as a threat in its continual support of conservatism in the center of the borough. West Indians are being squeezed out of Crown Heights and Flatbush. American Blacks are being pushed out of Bedford Stuyvesant. Latinos are being pressured out of Sunset Park and Bushwich.

The White Catholic communities of Italians and Irish are mere remnants. Norwegians, West Indians, American Blacks, Jews, Germans, Jamaicans, Haitians, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, are all being pushed out by a city policy that is flatly opposed to the growth and building of families. The attack on the automobile cripples multi-generational living for families which have historically had children and grandparents living together together nearby. This has been particulary harsh for the large Jewish and Hispanic families, and the large extended Italian families. These largely conservative political bases within the Borough are being stamped out. The coalition of communities that enabled the Guilliani revolution is no longer here. The results of this are evident everywhere. Homelessness is rampant. It has been a city policy to encourage homelessness. This is a direct result of city administrative decisions to dump homeless and emotionally unstable individuals, from mental institutions and from Rikers Island's psychiatric ward (where many were being treated), on to the streets

Traffic is brought to a stop because a bicyclist who is stupid enough to try to sneak between a large truck and parked cars, and getting themselves killed. This individual idiocy then justifies reworking large backbones of traffic and business avenues until there are just not usable. Coney Island Avenue, Ocean Avenue, Kings Highway, Jay Street, Utica Avenue, Ocean Avenue, Atlantic Avenue, Livingston Street, Court, Schermahorn, Bedford Avenue, 86th street, 13th Avenue, 65th Street, Ralph Avenue, etc., etc are being rendered unusable and shunting traffic to otherwise tranquil side streets. The SBS Buses (totally a waste of public money) created Bus lanes through our central business districts, while encouraging people to not pay the fare. They have destroyed our shopping districts. The attack on the middle class of Brooklyn just goes on and on. And they have blanketed our neighborhoods with patrol cars being pulled from Manhattan details to ticket drivers all over Central and Southern Brooklyn. Avenue J and Coney Island Avenue has become ground zero for a massive campaign against drivers. Now we come to face a pan-epidemic in the Wuhan Virus (Covid-19) and the city and state are faced with important life shaping decisions. These decisions are being made by politicians who care nothing for the economy or the personal freedom of the citizens of New York. The response to the virus has been neither constructive (in that it cannot reach its stated goals) nor is it healthy for the people of New York City, especially families living in the Brooklyn. It is a historically unprecedented response to disease epidemics. There is no justification for the exaggerated response. In doing what they are, they are destroying the economic foundation of the city, if not the region and entire country.

It starts with a hypothesis stated by our Governor that is false. The hypothesis is that if we can save a single life by a radical action, then we are justified and have a moral obligation to do so. This is fundamentally wrong. It is lovely sounding rhetoric, but it is impossible. You can not evaluate and treat patients using that absolutism as a measure of your actions. Nor can one prevent epidemics like this. Medicine is ALWAYS a balance between acts where we measure the morbidity and mortality of both individually and for a population. We are not God, and we can not save everyone. In the healthcare field, every day decisions are made balancing competing results, and attempting to do what is best for the individual and the population at large. It is very personal, as we are often on the front line of disease, and suffer the emotional trauma of losing patients.

We restrict antibiotic use from patients to preserve susceptibility for the population as a whole. We sit in rounds and debate if an activity has a chance to work or if it is just using nursing resources without likely outcomes. We deal with women that are pregnant who are sick, HIV patients with resistant Tuberculosis, drug shortages, and the cost of drugs and procedures to be used in a variety of cases. These all have not only dollar amounts attached to them, but equally important, they all consume resources that are not infinite. As it is, medicine uses technology and resources that in ones common experience, they could never imagine. The magic of the MRI, and genetic research is mind numbing. And we still can not save everyone and still have to make hard decisions, economic ones, every day, on how to allocate medical resources.

Today we have insurance companies and Provider Benifit Management companies interjecting there own business interests into the process. The skim the top of every healthcare transaction. And they have no interest in patient safety, and they are supported by the Government. They make life and death allocations of resources every day, with no consideration for human life, or the economy needed to provide adequate healthcare, not just for the immediate moment, but for an uncertain and increasingly global future. So, the Governor is just wrong! Everyday government and medicine makes life and death decisions, placing economic consideration at the forefront of the healthcare debates over the last 30 years. In fact, it is inherent to healthcare. As for the Mayor is not even responding rationally to the epidemic and it is not worthy to even consider his rants at this point

Before we even discuss and statistical analysis of the epidemic and the virus itself, let’s just look at some of the actions that the government has in place, and the likelihood that government mandates might be effective. I am going to pass by the entire (and laughable) argument about shelter in place that took place between the Mayor and Governor. I will also not glaze over the discussion about “the percent of allowable non-essential workers” (which went from 100% to zero in 3 days) with a retort. Your neighbors job is non-essential and your job is always essential in order to pay your bills. Instead I will focus on what actions the government has taken, and the expected and actual results. We can then look at what government should and should not be taking and how they can or cannot lead to the containment of disease.

On the surface, the Governor and the Mayor has locked down all of society. The theory is that if everyone stays home, then the spread of the virus can be slowed or stopped. They have already admitted that this can’t stop the virus, but they want to “flatten the curve” of transmission. Government officials are begging for the population at large, the entire population (elderly, adults, children and infants) to remain locked in their houses with no end to this in sight.

People have largely cooperated with this under the assumption of it being a temporary condition which will last a week or two. But that is a lie perpetrated by the government, the Department of Health, and CDC. There is no statistical model or prediction about this virus and its spread which includes the entire population remaining indoors for 2 weeks, reemerging, and it will be over, i.e., no more threat. So in order to be effective even at "flattening the curve", this complete societal shutdown would need to take place for at least 4 months... and that is ridiculously optimistic. As I am editing this, I am hearing on the BBC radio that the Governor of California is going to continue the lock up there entire population “until the curve flattens”. That might well be a problem if the curve never flattens. Realistically we are looking at an epidemic that will come in multiple waves and last more than a year before herd immunity develops. (Herd immunity is just a fancy way of saying that the virus will have killed off as many people as it is destined to, leaving the rest of the population behind with immunity). Unless we can intervene with a vaccine, or fight it its severity through anti-viral therapy, the spread will continue. That means that we will be locked into our houses for a year! And that is BULLSHIT. There has never been a disease that has every been effectively stopped by shutting in the entire human population, or any subset thereof.

You can't lock down 8.5 million New Yorkers and a region of 24 million people for a year! This, conceptually, cannot work. It cannot flatten the curve. People will not comply. For 2 weeks they can be convinced to comply and law enforcement can support and take care of those that won't/can’t, but they cannot do this indefinitely.

Now, let’s not assume Andrew Cuomo and Warren Wilheim are idiots. They know this can't work, and they know that not even the national-guard can sweep up hipsters in mass out of Madison Park and put them all in lock ups. So they spring this on the public gradually, trying to prevent hysteria about the virus and we move forward. But they slip up, get excited, and it is off to the races. People panic. Most importantly, our elected officials have their constituencies and priorities that have to take care of. Never let medical facts get in the way of theology. With these motivations intact, we have NO CHANCE to contain this.

The first political priority is that no one is to starve. So grocery stores and supermarkets need to remain open and well stocked. That wasn't immediately apparent to our government. After the run on toilet paper, condoms, thermometers, rubbing alcohol, masks and hand sanitizers it finally occurred to our governmental bodies that the hysteria the Mayor created by screaming on the radio was causing hording, price gauging, and real panic. So since then the truckers and supermarkets are categorized as "essential" businesses, along with (and here come the constituencies) illegal workers in the restaurants trade and ancillary food services (grubhub, etc), electric bicycles businesses, bicycle shops, bodegas, marijuana dispenses, vape shops and the MTA. Good, problem solved! Except it is not.

Instead of going to supermarkets we are asked to call for delivery, and so we have non-monitored and untrained, delivery people trying to scrape out a buck in this catastrophe that the Government created. Any protection we have gained is lost.

You see, it is nearly impossible to put 8 million city-dwellers in isolated bubbles. First of all, the psychological pressure on most city-dwellers is enormous. Our apartments are very small, and our mental health is directly attached to our interactions with our communities. We pay high rent to live in locations near our friends, families, synagogues, and communities. Stripping us of that interaction is to isolate us in inadequate cages. And even with that, as we isolate, our dependency is not reduced. Instead of directly contacting each other face to face, the contact occurs through a wholly unregulated and unsupervised delivery systems which bring these items door to door. They will delivery your Chinese food (a racist comment about food if ever there was one), your pizza, sushi, your groceries and coffee. And if that is not enough, there is no stopping us from our "Virtual Life".

We shop at Amazon for socks, shampoo, condoms, fishing gear, computers, cellphones, electric shavers, and even summer dresses. After all, we all have to look our best when this is over in a week or two. And all that stuff is also delivered. Delivery is virus free! It is delivered since delivery is an all essential businesses, by people who are touching your stuff, and packaging it, and shipping into the city, and putting it on the truck, and driving the truck and dropping it at your door. These are all invisible people, and according to our government. These people are also superheros who can never get this virus, or transmit it right to your door, with your sushi and pizza.

This is a huge failure of basic logic and the results are predictable. There will be no flattening of the curve until we reach saturation because this model cannot work (and the best part is that we are likely already saturated with the virus). The President is now talking of placing the entire region on enforceable quarantine. Wholly cow. We are totally screwed. Rhode Island is locking up people from New York. Essex County is blocking traffic to vacation homes. New Jersey is shutting down the Jersey Shore. The fear that we all have of being quarantined in a disease hot zone and unable to escape is becoming a reality. While it would be obviously in the best interest of everyone to thin out the density of New York City at this point, resistance to this is happening everywhere.

Now, let’s return to the essential part of public health and the practice of medicine. Not too long ago, New York had a large healthcare network largely created by non-profit agencies based on ethnic and religious organizations. This provided broad care across the City of New York. Many of them were funded by state programs designed to promote healthcare for needy, and not so needy New Yorkers through state funding. This system and capacity has been largely taken apart and healthcare centralized, which is exactly the opposite of what you want in an epidemic. In recent memory, Long Island College Hospital that was closed in a real estate swindle involving both the Mayor and the Governor (the grand-daddy of closing hospital beds of them all). Also included were such stalwart institutions of Brooklyn Jewish in Bedford Stuyvesant, Bushwick Hosptial, Caledonian, Baptist Medical Center, Hamilton and Harbor Hospitals, Lutheran Hospital, St Johns Episcopal, St Mary's, Sister Elizabeth. There are almost 70 hospitals from Brooklyn (representing dozens of needs and thousands of beds) sited in Wikipedia that have closed or subject to “consolidation”. Many of these institutions were built and facilitated when battling epidemics and when fatalities from disease was common, and beds were needed.

By the mid-1970s the discussion about hospitals in New York took an ugly turn. Increasingly, the 1199 Nursing union came to represent minority workers and the founding communities for many of these institutions moved to the suburbs. Our Medicaid system became increasingly expansive and the entire conversation about healthcare, with no help from Denis Rivera, or Andrew and Mario Cuomo, took and increasingly racist tone. Nursing had become an economic refuge for West Indian women, and other minorities, allowing them to earn a living and raise children, despite the high numbers of single parents within those communities. Couched in the battles over healthcare was conflicts over ethnic strife. Like many discussions over city policy, rational decision making was overwhelmed by intransigent positions fueled by mutual ethnic hatred. Somehow it got lost that we were all living in the same geological location and with epidemics largely conquered, the government lost focus of what was important. Hospitals and Medicaid became stand-ins for disgust with drug abuse and high crime. Government began to decide to close down facilities across the city. Our capacity has become razor thin. This has turned into our current disaster.

Despite the fact that we have known that a pandemic has been coming for over twenty years and known that it would most likely originate in China, we have failed to account for what even a mild epidemic like the Wuhan Virus (covid-19) would cost us as a society. Now, due to the medical institution consolidation fiasco we don't have enough beds, ventilators, or locations to care for a virus with even a 3% death rate (which is only a moderately deadly disease in the overall history of epidemics). This is not like Typhoid, Small Pox, or Cholera or the days of yore, or even the Spanish Flu. Yet, in those days, society faced these diseases without completely self-destructing, and that is largely because it understood how to quarantine effectively! We had a surplus of beds available and the institutions needed in order to separate out individuals from general society, so that necessary routine services could continue (e.g., garbage to pick up). Closing down society broadly was never a consideration. Major League Baseball never lost a single game to an epidemic, not in 160 years of the sport.

The problem here isn't that this disease is particularly deadly. The problem here is that our government is so particularly fucked up that it can no longer deal with inevitable public health events. They are afraid of ending up with stockpiles of dead bodies on youTube videos because we don't have enough ventilators. And our government is too stupid to make an effective vaccine in less than a year and a half.

Think about this. We have an pandemic that is shutting down the world economy to the cost of 100s of trillions of dollars, and suffering of billions of people, and the best vaccine candidate can't be released because they are waiting for 45 volunteers, for over six week for just a single stage. You can't make stuff like this up. We are being lead blindly by experts so singularly focused on their jobs that they can’t get past “We need 45 volunteers and SIX WEEKS just for phase one” while while our society is crumbling under our feet. They need 45 volunteers and SIX WEEKS while we are all made political prisoners in our homes. Here is a rundown of vaccine candiates listed in the Jerusalem Post ^[1]

Moderna

The first dose of the mRNA-1273 coronavirus vaccine, developed by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Moderna’s infectious disease research team, was given to the first participant in their Phase 1 study on March 16. The trial of the vaccine, built on previous studies of SARS and MERS, is intended to provide data on the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine, and is expected to enroll 45 healthy adult volunteers over six weeks.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based drug discovery company emphasized that it is "still early in the story," with no approved drugs to date emerging from its vaccine program and no previous human trials. The current trials are being carried out at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, described the study as "an important first step toward" finding a safe and effective vaccine.

CanSino Biologics

Authorities in China granted approval last week for Phase 1 clinical trials of a coronavirus vaccine developed by researchers at Tianjin-based CanSino Biologics and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences.

Tests of Ad5-nCoV in animals, researchers said, showed that the vaccine candidate can induce strong immune response and demonstrated a good safety profile. Prescreening for the first human study has already begun, and is expected to enroll 108 healthy participants at Wuhan's Tongji Hospital.

“Having committed to provide unconditional support to fight against the global epidemic, CanSinoBIO is determined to launch our vaccine product candidate as soon as possible with no compromise on quality and safety," said CanSino chairman and CEO Xuefeng Yu.

MIGAL

Located in Kiryat Shmona, the MIGAL - Galilee Research Institute is working to adapt a vaccine initially developed to prevent the Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV) in poultry. Funded by the government, the institute hailed a “scientific breakthrough that will lead to the rapid creation of a vaccine against coronavirus" in late February, based on the genetic similarity between the avian coronavirus and the novel coronavirus. Human testing of the oral vaccine, the institute said, is expected to begin within eight to 10 weeks, and safety approval is expected within 90 days. "We are currently in intensive discussions with potential partners that can help accelerate the in-human trials phase and expedite the completion of final product development and regulatory activities," said MIGAL CEO David Zigdon.

INOVIO Pharmaceuticals

Pennsylvania-based INOVIO announced the receipt of a new $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on March 12 to accelerate the testing of its novel DNA vaccine for COVID-19, known as INO-4800. Currently in preclinical studies, INOVIO plans to advance into US Phase 1 clinical trials next month, backed by up to $9m. in funding from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. The company says it aims to deliver one million doses of INO-4900 and handheld intradermal delivery devices to administer them by the end of 2020. "Our team of vaccine experts are working around the clock to advance INO-4800 and we look forward to attracting additional partnerships to expedite its development to meet this urgent global health need," said INOVIO president and CEO Dr. J. Joseph Kim.

CureVac

Reportedly the target of an acquisition attempt by US President Donald Trump, German biopharmaceutical company CureVac announced that it is leveraging its mRNA-based drug platform to produce a vaccine against the novel coronavirus. The European Commission has offered up to €80 million of financial support to CureVac, which plans to launch clinical tests in June 2020. If proven, the commission said, millions of vaccine doses could be produced at low costs in the company's existing production facilities. "The combination of mRNA science, disease understanding, formulation and production expertise make CureVac a unique player to fight against any infectious disease, no matter whether they are seasonal or pandemic," said CureVac CTO Mariola Fotin-Mleczek.

BioNTech

German immunotherapy company BioNTech and American pharma giant Pfizer signed a letter of intent last week to codevelop and distribute an mRNA-based vaccine against the novel coronavirus. The partnership, originally formed in 2018 to develop flu vaccines, will accelerate BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine program BNT162, which is expected to enter the clinic by the end of April. Just one day earlier, the Mainz-based company announced a strategic development and commercialization collaboration with Fosun Pharma to advance its mRNA vaccine in China. Fosun Pharma will pay BioNTech up to $135m. in upfront and potential future investment and milestone payments. "We feel a duty to exploit our full technology and immunotherapy expertise to help address the COVID-19 pandemic emergency," said BioNTech founder and CEO Prof. Ugur Sahin, adding that the company is also working on a novel therapeutics approach for patients who have already been infected. Details, he said, will be disclosed "in the coming weeks."

This is not the behavior of a Government that feels pressed by an emergency. For all the press and yelling, and media drama, and propaganda, this is not how the government would react if it truly felt threatened. Evidently, the tipping point hasn't yet reached. But when the government gets done destroying the economy, they might well be ready to react appropriately – this is a strange application of the Peter Principle.

So why is there not more panic? Well, the truth is, aside from overwhelming the hospitals, the mortality rate of the Wuhan virus, while very serious, is just not the kind of disease to destroy a civilization. Only we seem to be able to do that.

On March 4th, 2020, Slate Magazine, a more serious and reliable internet publication on many issues, published an article with the title "COVID-19s Mortality Rate Isn't As High As We Think". It is a fairly sensible article with a subtitle of "Don't hoard masks and food. Figure out how to help seniors and the immunosuppressed stay healthy." This would actually be solid public policy. It looks at the example of the cruise liner the Diamond Princess, where the entire boat was exposed to the virus and isolated.

In this case, six deaths have occurred among the passengers, constituting a case fatality rate of 0.85 percent (i.e. less than 1%). Other mortality rates data disagree, but here are the hard facts. The vast majority of people that get this disease will suffer from cold like symptoms, and never skip a beat of their regular life, except they are locked up in their homes getting pizza delivery. But it is the luck of the draw. Some people, about 0.67% of the total US population, will die from this. That is a lots of people, actually. And they will die from this, and they will piled up at the local hospital for wonderful photo ops. My back of the envelop calculation is that nearly 50,000 people will die from the Wuhan virus with reasonable precautions within New York. Historically that puts the virus at a mortality rate near the measles, before vaccinations, and the Spanish Flu. But the terror that we have generated about this disease is flatly a creation of the internet age and twitter feeds and a government which thinks it can control everything, and is attempting to do so.

Our problem here, aside from not moving faster on vaccination testing and usage, is the unreasonable expectations we have created that we can control everything. We can't fix everything and people will die of disease. We die of disease all the time, and nothing in our science or our culture is going to change about this in our lifetimes. But this is NOT a biblical level plague and we must calm ourselves before we truly jeopardize our civilization. More people will die and suffer from an economic catastrophe than this disease. Our best weapon to fight this disease is a healthy economy.

We need to be released from our prison. This is not because we defeated this virus, but despite that. This policy of locking everyone up is not maintainable. People can't do this. It is cruel. They won't and aren’t complying. We can't even get people with cancer to stop smoking. They sneak out the back of the hospital and smoke. We could not stop people from drinking during prohibition. We can't get them to stop shooting heroin into their arms. And we sure as hell can't lock up the entire population for much longer, even with pizza delivery. And the economy is collapsing. It is not on temporary hold. The economy is a living thing and as we bankrupt every non-essential business, the foundations for the essential businesses are also being undermined. If air traffic, as an example, continues to die, airplanes that require huge maintenance and a steady flow of spare parts, will be inoperable and the parts manufacturers go bankrupt. Employees get laid-off. Before you know it, you can't get cheese into New York City for the essential Pizza, and people will starve. Communist economies don't work. Despite Mayor Warren Wilhelm Jr demanding that Trump snap his fingers and make Ventilators just appear, it just can't be done. It can be done even LESS because we are dependent on China for parts and materials. We are totally screwed. But most of us, hopefully me as well, will live. The only question is what kind of life will we have going forward. The media is talking that this is a new normal. There is nothing normal about this and political oppression is not new. I don't want this new normal that they have planned for me (living alone in my apartment living on sparse government controlled rations, fearful of disease after disease, wasting my life on facebook) rather than being at the ballpark, learning Torah with my friends and children, playing ball with my grandchildren, and fishing. To the all controlling Pharaoh, I tell you, “Let My People Go”.

New York City is Heading to Bankruptcy

As tax-fleeced businesses and individuals flee en masse, and city public spending surges into the stratosphere, financial analysts say Gotham is perilously near total fiscal disaster. Long-term debt is now more than $81,100 per household, and Mayor de Blasio is ramping up to spend as much as $3 billion more in the new budget than the current $89.2 billion.

This is the news report nobody is discussing, but it is coming and coming soon
Politcal Ideology before practical governance always destroys the city

According to the Washington Examiner, the state of New York shells out 32 cents from every taxpayer dollar that comes in for welfare payments to those who can't or won't work. According to the State of New York's Office of the State Comptroller, which pays attention to New York City's government spending, in just the last year, New York City has outspent the rest of the state in public assistance (up 3.7%), safety net assistance (up 6%), family assistance (up 1.7%), while assistance for other programs, such as SNAP, decreased at lower rates than the state as a whole on all fronts.

The annual cost of servicing New York City's long-term debt and pension obligations continues to consume an increasing share of its budget, with more than $1 of every $5 in the operations budget being spent on these legacy costs, according to an analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission, a non-profit fiscally conservative think tank. In fiscal year 2019, the expenditure on items like debt service for capital construction will account for 21.1 percent of the city's annual operating budget. "By fiscal year 2022, legacy costs are projected to reach $21.9 billion or 22.7 percent of total expenditures," the CBC reported. "These liabilities totaled $252.5 billion at the end of fiscal year 2017 - approximately $81,100 per household."

Efforts to kill the outrageous plan to shove the SBS B82 down our throats is starting to boil over

People are truly fed up with the MTA and the DOT's war on drivers and the land grab on Kings Highway in Brooklyn. Read about the local opposition.

MTA raises fares again and but can't keep homeless off the trains - Welcome to 2017 and 2018

To celebrate, today is National Jump the Turnstyle Day!!

What else can we do? We riders don't matter. They spend money without any consideration. Nothing but the best for the MTA. Billions for wifi, but they can't keep the cars clean and the homeless of the trains, and off the stations, and they raise fares at WILL.

So have fun and jump a turnstyle!! And Protest. And READ about the MTA and its Funding History to date.. The MTA Crisis of 2017

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I don't usually borrow others write ups or works, but this segement about Brooklyn's living conditions is assute and well written and worth you looking over.

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Well, 2016 has seen quite a summer in Brooklyn. Our Mayor has allowed the Borough to be run over by the homeless. The boardwalk at Coney Island has been overwhelmed by the homeless and so has the subways. The City Coucil is passing a new tax on poor people who buy groceries and walk to the store. They are charging 10 cents a shopping bag. The 4th of July, however was nice and we had a great time as for the first time in quite a few years, Macy's fireworks have been on the east river, giving Brooklyn a first class view. See these great pics taken on the Ocean Eagle from Sheepshead Bay.

The NY Mets win the NL Eastern Division for 2015. Anyone growing up in the 1960's and 1970's lived in the wake of the Dodgers leaving for Los Angeles. Brooklyn of crazy for Baseball and the Mets were adopted by the Boro. But even in the mid-1960s, people around Brooklyn were still intimately familiar with Koufax and the Dodgers, watching the team from afar with great interest as their hero entered the WS many times, lead by the Jewish boy from Brooklyn who refused to pitch on Yom Kippur.

Gil Hodges was well planted in the Brooklyn community, as was many other Dodgers. Gil's Bowling Alley was a local hangout and my parents met the Hodges and others ballplayers at the Lanes. By 1969, the town was NY Mets nuts. Green Buses were filled, leaving from the Junction to the outland of i Shea Stadium, a service long gone. Mets colors few all over town.

The beloved Mets, were the only team I knew growing up. My mother would tern in here grave to know of any other team being cheered for by the locals. So now the Mets meet the Dodgers again the playoffs. Unlike 1988, there are almost no more Dodger fans alive anymore. But I miss you all.
Here is a list of NY Mets Resources

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The 25MPH Speed Limit is Worthless

The current activist Mayor has decided that if you need to get from one point to another in NYC then tough! People are dieing on the roads! What is the solution, stop them from driving. We should all just sit here on our buts collecting welfare checks rather than running to JFK on Atlantic Avenue.

The really upsetting thing about the latest move to change the speed limit to the crawling 25 MPH is that the cause of the majority of fatalities on NYC roads is not the 35 MPH limits, but the lack of enforcement and the reckless driving that is permitted. A case in point is Atlantic Avenue. Atlantic Avenue is an absolutely essential thruway from Central Brooklyn to JFK airport and Queens. In truth, we need a highway there but we don't have the space and the road shares the LIRR. Posted speed limits have been 35MPH for years but drivers never drive less than 50MPH on large stretches of the road. It is an essential access artery without which we are completely locked into the borough. So this idiot Mayor changed the limit to 25 MPH. Pedestrian Deaths Problem Solved!!! Not!! The drivers still drive at 55. The street is still impossible to see around. The crosswalks still don't leave enough time to cross over. There is still zero enforcement. But the SQUEEGIE Man is back! Now though, it can be a huge money generator as ten more MPH on speeding tickets is a huge cash cow for the working class New Yorkers who most use the road.... you know the guys who have to get to work Damn It.

Want to read a lie? The NY Post reports

"The epidemic of traffic fatalities and injuries are unacceptable," said NYPD Transportation Chief Thomas Chan. The speed limit drop is part of a larger plan to create slow zones on thoroughfares throughout the city, as Mayor de Blasio seeks to end traffic deaths in 10 years.

Arterial roads, which are major roads but not highways, make up only 15 percent of the city streets but represent 60 percent of pedestrian deaths, according to the DOT.

Really? Are we all stupid? Those 15% of the city streets are responsible for about 80% of the traffic because 100% of us depend on them to get the hell around, and in and out of the city. There is no epidemic.

The Brooklyn Fishing Report

Well, summer is here and few people can put together a NYC and Brooklyn summer vacation like Ole Mrbrklyn here. This has been a great summer for fishing and the water front. I've spent considerable time, over the years, as a passenger on most of the Brooklyn based boats including the old Pilot, Explorer and current boats like the Ocean Eagle, Captain Dave, Flamingo III, and, the Marilyn Jean IV.

Last Year we have fished the Marilyn Jean day and night, rain and shine, and the pilots of this vessel put me on the fish every time and have also attracted a very decent group of traveling companions. Tony Pelican, Frank, Felix, Anthony, Joe Joe and Ralph never fail to make good company, and to freely help with a tip or two on how to bring them in. We've had some memorable times.

Here is the new fishing section on Brooklyn Fishing and Fishing Reports

Heading: 2013 Politics The term limits are finally taking affect, which is presenting the public with a bewildering number of new candidates for city council. Within Brooklyn, the large block of ethnic Jewish voters have a chance to put elected officials into office. Since Jewish political power has been gerrymandered from existence within the Boro on the federal congressional level, these local elections are perhaps alone in allowing for Jewish representation. Furthermore, many minority areas have been left with minimal leadership development as politicians of the Democratic Party sit on districts and have discouraged constructive participation. Meanwhile areas of the northern borough have not yet unlocked their political voice as newer residents of redeveloped communities. All this can change with the term limits. There has been a lower level leadership vacuum in the city since Koch administration. There are just not enough experienced and decent candidates to even make a field for a Mayoral race. Term limits can change this starting this year.

Chaim Deutsch

In the 48th Council District, the best Democratic Candidate, by far, is Chaim Deutsch. Chaim Deutsch has been in city government for nearly 20 years, but that would not alone be a reason to elect him. In fact, that might be an argument to keep him out of office except that Chaim Deutsch has a record which when examined shows someone who truly understands the essential meaning of representation of a community and supporting its needs. Chaim Deutsch has raised, and continues to raise his children in the community and has done the foot work for decades, working to protect our interests, may it be from working with the people who suffered losses from Hurricane Sandy to something as small as registering bicycles with the police department in the 70th precinct. But he doesn't just bring city services, but he motivates the community through his enthusiasm, hard work and example, to come to the city's agencies and political structure to bend the city to the community's needs. Chaim is a community worker who isn't just trying to pluck the greatest prized pork for specific constituencies. He does not view the City Government as a huge Thanksgiving turkey to be carved up to the bone and left empty after a feeding frenzy. Chaim has a record of organizing people to work for and with the City for the community, and that, not pork barrel politics and payola, is the very cornerstone of good governance.

In the wake of the Bloomberg administrations 12 years in office, a lot of change will be rushing it. Bloomberg has left a good part of this City fundamentally broken. His mayoralty has all but ignored the outer boroughs needs, in his rush to regulate everything that moves, and stamp out the rest. He has pushed his agenda of bicycles, commuter taxes, and fattening the MTA relentlessly, making expensive changes to the city's landscape that would make it difficult or near impossible for future governments to undo. It has become a city that can't pick up the trash on Kings Highway and Pitkin Avenue, but has lined up pretty new bicycles all over downtown Brooklyn by the thousands and planted trees in the middle of Ocean Avenue. It can't motivate the MTA to hold down expenses and provide services, but it can fine outer borough eating establishments in a discriminatory manner, raising record amounts, and forcing local businesses into bankruptcy, while the rats run naked all over the subway tracks. Meanwhile, the City Council has been asleep at the switch, concerned mostly with their pet pork, allowing itself to be steamrolled for a price. Over site, budget and control as been the last thing the council has been concerned with.

The 48th Council district deserves a City Council member who can represent us, not just cut deals for more pork. He understands that each of us must feel like they are participants IN government, and not just clients OF government.

Weiner and the Brooklyn Representation Fallout

Brooklyn Historical Tours

The Brooklyn Museum has over 2000 photographs of historical Brooklyn which are not on display by Photographer George Bradford Brainerd who lived from 1847 through 1887. Over 200 of them are reproduced on the Museums Website and it deserves a look (not to mention an exhibit). This is a marvelous and critical collection which preserves our heritage.

More MTA DEBT: The MTA is still out of controll
Live Big Gun Amuminition Dump found off of Bensonhurst waters

The latest news from the MTA is that they are taking over Nostrand Avenue with a exclussive new Bus Lane, dividing one of the tightest and busiest streets in the Boro, in half, and harrasing Brooklyn Residents for years to come. All this is from an MTA that cancelled the Cortelyou Rd bus supposedly because it didn't have enough money.

One of the worst aspects of this Bus Zone will be the ability of the Bus Drivers create total mahaim by controlling the lights through the Junction, one of the hardest intersections in NY to travel through because of the blocking action of the lights on the crossing over the Flatbush and Nostrand avenue crossing

The biggestest Secret in NY is the Department of Educations's phone number, which 311 doesn't have and which isn't listed on their website.
The number is 718-935-2000

From WNYC:
Just how bad are they? MTA Chairman Dale Hemmerdinger earlier this week predicted riders would be calling up their legislators later this year, saying, "My God, I can't get to work on time!"

While Brooklyn has always been where America is at home, small neighborhoods, tight communities, and strong culture, a new element has sprung open on our shores, one of hipsters, world acclaimed artists, craftsman, fashion and youth. And as the world has flooded into our borough, few places could have been better prepared to accept them. And while the industrial brawn of this city has waned, new centers of craftsmanship, theater, film, technology and commerce have found homes all across this borough. In case you haven't heard, Brooklyn is now the place to be. The flurry of activity in our burg has ripples all across the world from the salons of Paris to the tech hubs of India. Brooklyn is going through a historical transformation, such as the likes which the world rarely witnesses. Come join Brooklyn-Living in the celebration this great place.

Coney Island
Brooklyn Fishing Report
The MTA Crisis of 2017
Full tour of Cobble Hill, Long Island Hospital, Atlantic Avenue, Gowanus Canal Zone 2007
Church Avenue and the NYLXS - Marcus Garvey Workshop
Fishing off the shores of Brooklyn, USA
Kendall "the Crook" Stewart Watch - getting rid of those who voted to tax the East River
Run Up to MTA and Transit Extortion Proposals
The Call for Free Subways
Congestion Pricing Plan and it's impact on Brooklyn
Photos of Williamsburg 2006

Photos and Movies of Dumbo 2008
Fifth Avenue 2008 Street Fair

Photos of Bastille Day in Cobble Hill 2007
Photos of Coney Island Summer of 2007
Brooklyn Water Front Adventures
The Battle of Brooklyn
Notary Services in Brooklyn

NY Animal History