The secretary of defense of the US many times has not served in the military.

https://smartpolitics.lib.umn.edu/2014/12/02/ashton-carter-would-become-7th/

I thought when I read it something seemed off. You are 100% right the headline is clickbait. The MTA spends twice the amount on design and consultants. Which is about an extra 9% of the project cost. Though they don't say how the in-house people in Europe are budgeted for. Is the fully loaded costs of consultants and designers added. You can't just take the engineers hourly rate and say how many hours are allocated to a project. An engineer working for the government will have downtime between jobs, vacation and sick, benefits costs like Healthcare and pension, that worker uses other government workers who's costs are not included like government payroll and HR, IT workers to keep their computers running, office space such as rent amd electric costs. What about management costs all the way up the food chain. Plus when the project is over is Europe adding the fact that municipal workers are impossible to fire. Even if there is no work they will sit at their desks getting paid till they retire or just milk whatever they are working on to look busy. When you write a check to a consultant or private engineering firm 100% of the workers payroll and benefits costs and all the costs included to keep the worker working is included.

The best take. The NY Times finally decides to actually do a local story and it's this complete nonsense.

Every immigrant I ever met were generally the hardest working people. Not sure where all of these welfare queen immigrants you are talking about are. All I have ever seen is immigrants who work very hard at jobs I don't want to do.

If you ask the immigrants virtually zero want handouts. They just want to be able to compete in the job market. The large majority are here for economic reasons, not really refugees fleeing a war zone.

So you support letting mentally ill people who can't help themselves die in the streets? You like the current situation and would want more of it?

Maybe government can to more to fix the situation and help the mentally ill homeless. Or maybe everytime someone actually tries to help they are shut down by people who walk by someone with schizophrenia and thinks wow they are living there best life and anything done to help them is actually hurting them. I think your divisive opinion without trying to actually solve a public health crisis in a relatively small population of people is why nothing substantial is done to help people with severe mental illness who cannot help themselves.

I feel bad for the person working overnight as a porter in a restaurant for 40k a year who has to take the subway at night and can't find a car without a homeless person who smells. The same person having to walk by an encampment while they are on their way home from work at 3am but have to deal with a mentally ill person who yells at them everyday while the person has to think to themselves this is why I have to carry a knife for the 1 day the homeless person with untreated schizophrenia has a delusion and decides to attack. For every millionaire trope there are hundreds of thousands of people trying to goto work or school that have to deal with him homeless often. I care about the people who are not rich. These are the silent majority in NYC who have to deal with street crime and homeless way more than rich people.

It's a misleading headline. New Yorkers reported more homeless encampments than past years not necessarily saw more. Under Deblasio's administration the public knew he would not lift a finger to do anything people did not bother reporting encampments. Now that the public knows the Adam's administration will do something about it they report more even though I would bet there are less encampments now.

I don't know why induced demand is a bad thing. That means a lot more people are using something they did not do before because it was crowded. Even of its crowded today there are more people using it.

I would avoid lex and 125th. Been there 2 times in 4 years and both times people were passed out (nodding out from heroin) in the middle of the sidewalk and street and people just walked over them as its such a common occurrence. Plus know a doctor who commuted through there. After his second mugging he is moving out of NY.

Most other stations I have gone too have been fine. Just the occasional person with severe mental illness who if left alone usually leave people alone.

I agree the housing in a park did not necessarily work. I would agree it was probably a net even. Though I do think Moses was trying to make life better for people overall. Many if the things he did have had great benefits to society even today. There are good things he did and bad.

So now we are onto a value juadgement between slums and public housing.

When the public housing was built the housing that was destroyed was old, small and antiquated. The public housing was bigger apartments modern and in a park like setting. Today the poor depend on the public housing that was built then.

Which would you rather have? Would you knock down the public housing today and give it back to private landlords at market prices?

Moses built basically all the public housing that exists today. Moses was one of the biggest builders of housing in the cities history.

A real bad look by the AG. She is undermining her credibility. This smacks of bailing out a politician getting pummeled everyday for trying to force a developer to bend to her political needs then having the developer call her bluff. Now the AG is going after the developer.

The AG needs to at least keep some of the stink off them that everything they do is not for political gain of a particular party. Leave that to Bill Barr.

You don't have to wait 6 months. Reports of a gun. Police investigate everyone runs away and are amazed the police chased them and made l they were treated very suspect due to the initial reports of a gun. Plus apparently someone was punched.

Then the protest due to the young age of the people involved. Though there is a spike in gun deaths around people under 18.

https://qns.com/2023/01/101st-precinct-police-brutality-far-rockaway/

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/nyregion/new-york-teen-shootings.html

Not true. Bragg was proud to show off his ideas in his day one letter. It was picked up by all the local press and extensively reported on.

https://gothamist.com/news/manhattan-da-bragg-tells-staff-stop-prosecuting-certain-offenses

This is exactly right. If business or people can't turn to the government to protect them they will turn to the mafia type organization or the A team.

Here is an article on delivery workers forming a the beginning of a mafia because the police can't protect them. It's not there yet but give it a couple of years and some leader will emerge that will enforce a protection racket.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/business/delivery-workers-thefts-neighborhood-watch.html

This is not apples to apples. Just to get off the LIRR then get to the subway platform takes time. They just ignore this

The tolls mostly go to support mass transit. Do you hate mass transit?

Developers don't want to build? Is that why air rights sell for between 200 and 400 a square foot. In many parts of the country actual construction costs $200 per square foot. In NYC that is the minimum to buy the right to construct a square foot of space.

OMG some people parrot the same lines over and over again without critical thought or reading. I am not proposing the workers don't have Healthcare. I am proposing they just have the same government funded Healthcare that is good enough and every other American in the country.

Why does NYC have to pay for lifetime Healthcare when a the federal government will pay the bill.

Ugh yes I get that and it's unaffordable. The city needs to take a stand and stop this wasteful and unaffordable practice in contract negotiations. Everyone complains how expensive things are and then wonder how could this be. Why is the infrastructure crumbling? Because money that should be used for infrastructure or additional teachers or cops is used to pay a good portion of its budget for something that would be provided by the feds. It's stupid.

I did not say Medicare advantage. I said why does NYC pay for retirees Healthcare at all. Almost every other American relies on Medicare in retirement. If it's good enough for every other American why is it not good enough for workers in NYC.

Paying for Healthcare for city in retirement cost the city I bet costs at least 10% of the NYC budget and there is zero reason for it.

It makes no sense that city workers don't go on Medicare like every other American. It's unaffordable to fund retirees Healthcare when there is a good federal system. I have read 20% of the city budget goes towards retire costs. Then ask yourself why city infrastructure and many other programs are underfunded.

It seems like there is some fuzzy math here. While there is no doubt Hudson Yards got some benefits. Half the 6 billion was the cost if the 7 line extension. That is something that should of happened one way or another. It's not fair to say the cost of a subway extension is a subsidy to a large building project.