Moynihan Developers Court Homeland Security Cash

The state economic development agency and the private developers behind Moynihan Station have targeted an unlikely pot of money to help build the proposed $3 billion transit center in midtown west: homeland security dollars.

“This is a logical place for people to invest homeland dollars,” said James Dyer, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist who is Read More

That Race on Long Island

Here’s another House race that has turned out to be sneaky-competitive: Republican Rep. Peter King versus Nassau legislator Dave Mejias.

They’re debating tonight on Long Island and Mejias’s campaign is planning to post a video of the debate on their website tomorrow (barring any tech issues). King and Mejias already debated this Read More

Tamperproof ID Cards? Bush Must Be Dreaming

When the President gave his little immigration speech, he wanted his listeners to be clear on one point: Americans speak English, and if you don’t speak English, you aren’t an American.

“I believe that illegal immigrants who have roots in our country and want to stay should … learn English,” he said and then, in Read More

Updike Does Islam, Colonizes New Jersey

A delicious tension animates the best passages of Terrorist, a tug of war between the severe faith of a devout Muslim teenager, who sees everything in black-and-white dichotomies (straight/crooked, clean/unclean, faithful/infidel), and the lush, various, subtly shaded prose of John Updike, who can’t resist a gorgeous sentence. The greedy eye of the novelist grabs at Read More

Brownie: FEMA Cannot Succeed

Today’s “Cities at Risk” conference, organized by Milano, The New School for Management and Urban Policy, could not have been planned more appropriately. Yesterday, President Bush named R. David Paulison to replace former FEMA director Michael Brown.

Held in the Tishman Auditorium, Mr. Brown joined James Lee Witt, (FEMA Director under Read More

Fighting for Kerhonkson

Whenever The Politicker notes all the security-related pork Hillary is bringing home to low-risk Upstate communities, the Senator’s defenders argue that the allocations in question are set by federal agencies, not legislative whims, and that all she’s doing is announcing them.

Anyway, in her latest announcement of $1.8 million in federal grants –
Read More

Security Pork Revisited

The Observer has, at the greatest length here, followed Hillary‘s fight to steer resources from the Department of Homeland Security to rural fire departments and other agencies across New York State, which use them for things like buying pickup trucks and “hardening” the arena that is home to minor-league hockey’s Albany River Rats. Read More

Hillary: More Security Pork

We weren’t sure whether Hillary had abandoned her quest to turn the Department of Homeland Security into an arm of the Hubbardsville Fire Department.

Well, she’s still going strong.

In a letter to congressional leaders she sent out today, she cited 9/11 in her fight to preserve the Homeland Security program that issues grants Read More

Politics

Clinton: Fighting for Security Pork

In December, we reported on how local politicians spend half their time denouncing the Bush Administration for sending Homeland Security grants to Wyoming, and the other half fighting for equally ridiculous grants for Upstate New York. The money winds up getting spent on things like anti-drug programs and pickup trucks for cash-strapped rural communites Read More

Skewed Priorities Make Us Less Safe

Two years ago this week, our country suffered a momentous disaster that ought to have prompted a sharp change in the Bush administration’s foreign and domestic security policies.

On that awful day-after standing outside my home and watching the World Trade Center fall-I hoped that George W. Bush would reconsider his rejection of America’s Read More