Does South Cove really have a floating trash problem?

As the city and state battle over the income generated from Battery Park City, some have tried to have the South Cove water area filled in and developed into more unsightly crackerbox condo units for pure tax generation benefits. One argument in favor of doing this has been that South Cove collects trash from the Hudson.

On March 6, these two photos were taken. South Cove was actually debris-free, while the North Cove marina was full of driftwood and trash.

North Cove

South Cove

Sharks gone wild

Our Shark posting went viral. It was picked up by New York Magazine now, and look at all the comments!

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/11/shark.html

It all started out by being picked up by the Gothamist

http://www.batterypark.tv/outddor-events/shark.html

The new Tire Swing Pork Park

May 8, 2010

The old “Tire Swing Park” was bulldozed last year over the protests of many families in Battery Park City. It was a park design with natural materials such as wood, sand, grass, etc. Families loved it because it offered rare shade in the summer time, among other reasons.

The new park is almost completed. The design incorporates considerable amounts of modern steel, concrete, and rubber.

The reviews are coming in, and they are not good. We realize that it might shape up over the next month.

One local resident wrote, “Not an ounce of F-en real grass!” Another wrote, “It resembles a new subway station or Frank Gehry building more than a natural playground.”

Decide for yourself. Post some comments.

St Vincent’s hospital closure: The first of many across the country?

April 7, 2010

St. Vincent’s hospital in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, is closing due to mounting debt and New York State cuts in funding. St. Vincent’s is the last tertiary care catholic hospital in the city. How can a business entity with surplus demand go out of business due to lack of revenue? The answer lies in the low payment rates.

St. Vincent’s has been an important source of care for the area. It treated the wave of AIDS patients in the 1980’s, for example. Lately, it has become a magnet for the uninsured or poorly insured Medicaid population.

Hospitals survive by cost shifting the losses from the uninsured, Medicare, and Medicaid patients to the private insurance pool. That is why private insurance hospital bills are so exorbitant. The surrounding hospitals in Manhattan were siphoning off the lucrative private insurance patients and the higher mix surgical cases (e.g. coronary cases, orthopedic and spine, etc).

Bruce Nudell, PhD, healthcare analyst at UBS commented, “Medicare believes in applying financial pressure to hospitals so that they will manage their input costs. Overall Medicare margins in hospitals tend to be negative. In 2006 and 2007, for instance, overall Medicare margins in fee for service hospitals were between -5% and -6%…Unlike Medicare margins, which are currently negative, the payment to cost ratio for commercially insured inpatients is currently positive by around 32%”

The bigger story to this closure is that St. Vincent’s will likely be just the first of many across the country. Unemployment has caused a surge in the uninsured and Medicaid patients, while at the same time state revenues are down forcing budget cuts.  In Miami, proposals were made to close two of the Jackson Memorial hospitals.  In New York, other than St. Vincent’s, layoffs are pending in the public hospitals. In San Francisco, the prestigious UCSF medical center is running a deficit of more than $200 Million, although no plans to close UCSF have been announced.

Critics of the new health insurance reform law argue that it will further stress the system with Medicare cuts and expansions of the Medicaid population. More than a dozen State Attorneys Generals have recently filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the federal government requiring states to spend more without providing federal funding.

For a thorough discussion of the looming problem in Florida, The HCC interviewed Dr. William O’Neill, Dean of Clinical Affairs at the University of Miami medical center.

Use medical device technology to seal the Gulf oil leak

May 16, 2010

It is now painfully obvious that the team of “expert engineers” working on ad hoc solutions to seal the oil-spewing pipe at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is incompetent. Saturday Night Live lampooned them on May 15^th. British Petroleum (BP) needs to look outside the box and learn from surgeons and the medical device industry how to seal a tube leaking fluid; whether it be high pressure arterial blood or oil at the bottom of the sea.

Every trauma surgeon and vascular interventional doctor knows that the first thing to do to stop a gusher is to apply pressure to the leaking pipe. Doctors do not try to suck up the blood, store it in a vessel, then rapidly reinfuse it back into the patient (although this can be done in surgery, but not as the first step). The latest solution by BP is to insert a pipe into the leaking broken pipe, bring the oil to the surface, then store it in a tanker. This is an idiotic idea. BP should be focusing on ways to seal the pipe.

The medical device industry has invented catheter balloons that can apply massive amounts of pounds-per-square-inch pressure to surrounding walls: enough pressure to expand bone during kyphoplasty spine procedures. Within 24 hours, if a team of engineers from Medtronic were dispatched to the Gulf to advise the BP team, a crude rubber balloon bladder surrounding a “catheter” could be devised, inserted into the leaking oil pipes, inflated, and seal the oil leaks. BP, the White House, and the medical device industry need to make this happen ASAP.

Are ABC News and Bloomberg News partnering?

May 14, 2010

Are ABC News and Bloomberg News partnering? ABC News has been promoting Bloomberg news stories within their programs and introducing the stories with sentences such as, “A new report from the business giant Bloomberg news…” (see video below).

At the same time, the two news companies are intermingling their reporters. Bloomberg has hired former ABC report GiGi Stone, and the NY Times reported that ABC reporters have appeared on Bloomberg. In addition, Willow Bay, the wife of Robert Iger, CEO of Disney (parent company of ABC), was hired by Bloomberg.

All of these changes are coming as ABC has slashed head count to prepare for the new digital age of news. Other networks are making similar changes. CBS News is considering eliminating its news altogether and outsourcing it to CNN.

The iPad to have a cell phone feature added

By ANDREW JACOB and MARC McDONALDSON

Published: April 1, 2010

Cupertino, California

Apple announced today the reason for the short delay in shipping the new iPad. A cell phone feature has been added. AT&T will be the carrier.

The first generation will require the user to speak into the iPad as they do with the smaller iPhone. A less cumbersome method will be implemented later.

Steve Jobs of Apple said, “For the first time, people will be able to read a book and talk on the phone at the same time. Or if they prefer, they may download an e-book and listen to the book as they chat with friends.”

Apple will hold a press conference today at 2:00 PM Pacific Time for more details.

Steve Jobs demonstrates the new iPad cell phone feature as he listens to a book and talks on the phone

April Fools

Did the Daily Show copy BatteryPark.TV?

The May 10^th Daily Show on Comedy Central featured a video segment poking fun at the way the TV news covered the false “fat finger” trader rumor. Their choice of segments, including obscure Fox Business footage that BatteryPark.TV first selected, indicates they might have been influence by our May 9^th video. Skip to the 10:00 mark of the Daily Show video and decide for yourself.

Exclusive: Citigroup is considering legal action over false rumors

May 10

BatteryPark.TV has learned that Citigroup has assigned their legal department to collect all of the video and text stories from last week that erroneously linked Citigroup to the “fat finger trader” rumor. Citi is trying to find the source for the rumor, and is also considering suing news outlets.

How network TV spread a false rumor about the collapse of the Dow

May 9^th, 2010

On May 6^th, 2010, the Dow crashed 1000 points within 20 minutes. As with all unexplained market movements, unsubstantiated rumors popped up to explain the movement. The most sensational one was that a single human was to blame. A “fat fingered” trader supposedly punched in a B for billion instead of an M for million, and ordered 16 Billion shares of stock PG to be sold, triggering electronic selling of the entire market.

For a few experienced investors, this was an obvious erroneous rumor for a variety of reasons. First of all, PG stock has less than 3B shares in total, so a 16B order would never have been accepted. Moreover, traders have been well aware of the problem of programmed trading that can drive massive volatility and short selling.

Nevertheless, the TV news ran with the unsubstantiated rumor that a “fat finger” trader was the cause. They cited no sources other than, “We are hearing”.

This is the story of just how bad some aspects of national TV network journalism can be at times. Watch the video sequence of events as the “fat finger” rumor went from a NYSE floor rumor, to a speculative comment on the business shows, to becoming fact on the regular news that evening. Finally, the next day, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos began to correct the mistakes, and Fox Business confirmed that human error was not the cause.

Coalition to save Tire Swing Park

Battery Pork City

April 13, 2009

The New York Post writes about the corruption scandal of the BPCA

Should Tiger Woods fire his inner circle?

Op-Ed

April 9, 2010

Tiger Woods roared back to competitive golf at The Masters after taking a five-month hiatus to repair his marriage and undergo rehab for an undisclosed addiction. In true champion form, he posted his best first round ever at the tournament. The fans cheered him and welcomed him back. America could use a nice role model and comeback story at this time of economic gloom and high unemployment.

Lurking behind this good story, however, is an inner circle of people around Mr. Woods who may have enabled his past indiscretions and abuses. If true, should Tiger make some changes to his staff?

Contradicting statements made by Mr. Woods that none of his closest staff knew about his numerous episodes of philandering, the current Vanity Fair reports otherwise. The article asserts that Byron Bell, President of Tiger Woods Design, may have assisted Tiger in arranging his affairs with young women. It also asserts that Tiger’s agent, Mark Steinberg, assisted on at least one occasion of covering up an affair once a national paper learned about it. Also, some of Mr. Woods’ few personal friends include infamous gamblers and womanizers Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan.

The New York Times reported that Tiger’s inner circle of staff and friends are fiercely loyal and that he has fired previous staff when they sought personal recognition. Has Tiger now just really assembled a team of enablers to his addictions? Can he possibly recover with these people still closely attached?

Walking off with Tiger after the 18^th hole of Augusta on the first round was Mr. Woods’ sports agent. Why does a sports agent need to even attend the Masters, much less be so close to him during play? The rest of his circle is also at the Masters including Mr. Bell, his publicist, and a reported 90 bodyguards. Charles Barkley was in the media for “reaching out” to Tiger after his rehab. Jack Nicklaus, Bobby Jones, and Arnold Palmer never had such an entourage at major tournaments.

Addiction expert George Kolodner, MD, co-founder and Medical Director of the Kolmac Clinic, one of the most respected rehab facilities in the East Coast, commented, “We encourage our patients to establish a sober social network. We ask them to look at their current relationships and decide which people are understanding and supportive of their recovery and which ones are not and are unlikely to change. It is the last group that we suggest the patients keep at a distance until their recovery is more stable.”

The fact that Tiger Woods has made no changes to his inner circle of staff and “friends” who were around during his dark days of abuse is very concerning for his prospects of a long-term recovery. The similarities to the opportunists surrounding Howard Hughes, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith, etc, are eerie. Do Tiger’s closest friends know too many details about his bad behavior making them difficult to fire?

The only close confidantes that Tiger Woods should have around him are his caddy, swing coach, doctors, reputable accountants, wife and family. A priest or Buddhist monk might help as well. The recidivism rate for some addictions is 90% and he needs all the help he can get.