Comparing an Islamic mosque by ground zero to a porn shop?

Update: August 15, 2010

ABC Nightly News used the same distorted logic as did the New York Times back in May and made the moral equivalence of pornography shops and strip clubs many blocks away from Ground Zero to a proposed Islamic mosque. Presumably, ABC did this to make the point that Ground Zero is not the “hallowed ground” that mosque protestors claim. Therefore, to oppose the proposed mosque based on the grounds that Ground Zero is special is hypocritical. Read below our original commentary on the flaws of that logic.

Op-Ed May 28, 2010

In what could be one of the poorest uses of logic in recent mainstream media history, the New York Times featured a column by Clyde Haberman supporting the construction of a five-story Islamic mosque near “Ground Zero” (The name for the former World Trade Center sites demolished after the Islamic terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 that killed thousands). In his column, Mr. Haberman compares the insult of an Islamic site of possible future anti-American teaching to a strip club and off-track betting shop that are already nearby ground zero.

He wrote, “No one is known to have protested the fact that three blocks from ground zero, on Murray Street off West Broadway, there is a strip joint. It prefers to call itself a gentlemen’s club. A man stood on the street corner the other day handing out free passes to willing gentlemen.”

Huh? How does a passive purveyor of porn compare to militant murdering terrorists? Pornography and incubators of mass murder are not morally equivalent.

The organizers of this unfunded mosque idea have tried to soften it up by referring to it as a cultural center. Will the mosque really be this multi-religious “cultural center” that it claims to be? Will women be allowed inside without being covered up with various forms of head shrouds? Will the acts on 9/11 and radical Islam be condemned? Of course not.

Mr. Haberman does not seem to be willing to admit publicly that the terrorists who attacked us on September 11, 2001, were all brainwashed by Islamic radicals in extremist mosques. Perhaps he is pandering to the mayor who supports the mosque. The NY Times would benefit from an acquisition by Bloomberg News.

The authorities will undoubtedly keep close tabs on this “Ground Zero mosque” if it is ever built, but critics are justified in raising concern. In contrast, no adult porn shop or off-track betting site ever produced a jihad of America-hating murderers.

How to eliminate head injury in football

Op-Ed August 21, 2010

Serious head injury in American football is commonplace and has received national attention within the last two years. The New York Giants quarterback, Eli Manning, is sitting out a few games due to head injury. Last season, star quarterback for the Florida Gators and Heisman Trophy winner, Tim Tebow, suffered yet another concussion that was witnessed by millions of sports fans, as did Super Bowl champ Ben Roethlisberger and many others.

Bryant Gumbel of HBO’s Real Sports was an import factor in bringing this problem to the mainstream. As a result of his show and subsequent coverage in the press, the NFL was pressured to make changes. There is now a mandatory time-off for players suffering concussion, and new posters have been placed in locker rooms. The concern is extending to off-the-field injuries as well. In 2009, then Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien gave head injury more national attention with his on-air concussion.

A recent study commissioned by the NFL found an astonishingly greater prevalence of Alzheimer’s-like memory loss in ex-NFL players. Young athletes in high school or lower grades are even more vulnerable to permanent brain damage after the initial concussion than adults. In addition, there is now new credible evidence from the same scientists at Boston University that Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is caused by head injury.

Concussions are one of the dirty secrets of football. What can be done to make America’s favorite sport safer?

The cause of the vast majority of concussions in football is the lack of enforcement of the rules dictating proper tackling and blocking. The helmet is currently used as the primary ramming tool, particularly at the higher levels, when in fact the facemask and helmet should theoretically never be used in contact. It is against the rules for a defensive player to dip his head and tackle headfirst with his helmet. On the offense, a proper block should use the arms and hands as the initial point of contact, and runners should not dip down and ram headfirst. In reality, however, virtually every block on the interior line and every running play uses the facemask and helmet as battering rams.

It would be quite feasible to enforce the existing rules of football that dictate the helmet should not be used as a weapon and the quality of play as seen by the spectator would not be diminished. Running backs should run with their facemasks up at all times. If a running back were to dip his head and spear forward, it should be a 15-yard penalty and loss of down. Likewise, offensive and defensive linemen should be penalized if their helmets clash.

The ground collisions with helmeted heads that cause injury cannot be easily prevented. However, a simple enforcement of the blocking, tackling, and running rules should eliminate a significant portion of the head (and spine) injuries in football. Also, preventing the premature return of head injured players will help reduce further injury as well.

Hines Ward of the Pittsburgh Steelers can lay out some the most vicious and entertaining blocks in all of football just by using his shoulder pads. Using the helmet as a weapon is cheating, unnecessary, and should be banned.

Big decline in apartment prices

July 7^th, 2010

The WSJ is reporting today an update on apartment sales prices and number of units sold. The good news is that the number of units increased 179% yoy to 383 units (137 in April of 2009), and a 20% increase from last month. However, the bad news is that prices are way down. Compared to 2009, the selling price of apartments in Battery Park City and the Financial District had the largest drop of Manhattan: down 17%.

Red areas represent the largest price declines.

Keep in mind that 2009 was the bottom in the economic recession in NYC. Despite the ample bonuses paid out in 2010, it has not seemed to impact selling prices.

Joke of the day

August 6, 2010

Jay Leno: Giuliani scolded his daughter after shoplifting “You go to Harvard. You don’t start stealing till you go to Wall Street”

The pretentious way to pronounce Muslim

Op-Ed August 14, 2010

The old media TV news is infamous for using pretentious odd pronunciations of common words or new words of the day. Some examples include the numerous ways to botch “Qatar” as Cutter, etc, pronouncing Pakistan as “Pawkeestan” and Taliban as “Tollyban”.

The basic word Muslim is now being changed. Watch ABC Nightly News pronounce it multiple ways in the same story.

Taxi driver violent behavior on the rise in NYC

August 11, 2010

BatteryPark.TV previously reported on the rising rate of violent behavior among New York City taxi drivers. A TLC official had confirmed in April, 2010, that TLC internal databases had an increase in passenger complaints and that budget cutbacks had caused slower responses by the TLC to complaints. The taxi driver community is now aware that misconduct is being prosecuted less swiftly, according to one driver interviewed.

A case example of this problem involved a violent yellow cab driver that assaulted a passenger in Battery Park City back in July of 2009 (see video below). The incident involved a person related to BatteryPark.TV. A complaint letter was sent to the TLC and received no reply. Two more letters were sent with no reply. A telephone call to TLC administrators finally elicited a response and a hearing was scheduled approximately one year after the incident.

Last month, during the TLC hearing, the administrative lawyer dismissed the case based on a technicality without commenting on the merits of the complaint against the driver. An appeal was sent to the Deputy Commissioner of the TLC, Pansy Mullings. Ms. Mullings informed BatteryPark.TV that the TLC refused to open the case on appeal. The taxi driver is now currently still operating a vehicle and has no reprimand on his record despite video evidence of the assault and numerous other infractions made by the driver.

If you have had any similar problems with taxi drivers and have received slow or no response from the TLC, you can contact:

Pansy Mullings

Deputy Commissioner

Taxi and Limousine Commission

2455 BQE West

Woodside, NY 113377

April 23, 2010

If you seem to have noticed more whackjob taxi drivers in NYC behaving outright violently toward you, you are correct. BP.TV spoke with a representative of the TLC who confirmed that the statistics from their complaint database support the notion that violent behavior is on the rise since the TLC instituted the credit card payment option.

Cab drivers have to give a small percentage of fairs paid by credit cards to the credit card company. Offsetting this is the fact that many more business travelers will be inclined to take a yellow cab and use their company card rather than take a town car. Nevertheless, to this day, many cab drivers try to play games with customers at the end of a trip, such as not triggering the meter to stop, asking for cash, or by pretending that their meter is broken and cannot accept credit cars. Many of these drivers then become hostile or physically violent with the passengers.

BP.TV has obtained this video of a cab driver becoming violent to a passenger.

The Trump SoHo dissapoints

August 27, 2010

The real estate speculators who started large condo projects at the height of the bubble continue to struggle. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump SOHO is discounting prices by 25% to boost slumping sales. Previously, it was reported that the prices of housing sales in the Battery Park City region saw one of the biggest decreases in the entire city.

BatteryPark.TV recently got an exclusive look at the yet to be opened outdoor pool area of the Trump SoHo and we were disappointed. The pool is very small and more of a large hot tub. The “pool” of the new Standard Hotel is also extremely small. It is not clear what zoning or building laws prohibit proper sized pools atop New York skyscrapers.

The “pool” at the Trump SoHo

Kill the Drill

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer discusses his “Kill the Drill” campaign to not allow near New York City’s source of water in Upstate NY a water-polluting method of drilling natural gas called hydro-fracture drilling.

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

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.

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.

The deadly crossing

Construction on Route 9A, also known as The West Side Highway, and closure of the pedestrian bridge south of Albany Street have created a very dangerous situation. The ground-level crossing of The West Side Highway at Albany Street can be a death trap.

In February of 2009, Battery Park City resident Marilyn Feng was killed and her boyfriend seriously injured when a drunk driver struck the couple. Ms. Feng was an intern in Manhattan Borough president Scott Stringer’s office. In late September of 2009, another pedestrian was struck by a motorist, but he survived.

Funding for the permanent pedestrian overpass has been cancelled. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer discusses the problem.

A Trillion here, a trillion there

In an alarming anecdote supporting the notion that Americans have no concept how much the government is spending, NBC news mistakenly confused $900 Billion with $900 Trillion when describing the healthcare reform cost.