Sen. Chuck Schumer Is Harrassing Me

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In the recent election season I was subjected to harassing telephone calls from Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY). Before the Democratic primary, although I am on the Do Not Call Registry, Schumer robocalled me several times urging me to vote for his candidates — City Council Speaker Christine Quinn for Mayor and  State Senator Daniel Squadron for Public Advocate. His calls always came at inconvenient times when I was trying to eat a meal or balance on a stepladder. His endorsements were as ineffective as they were unwelcome. Both Squadron and Quinn lost their races decisively. In Brooklyn, however his candidate for District Attorney Kenneth Thompson prevailed. Schumer may be running out of juice in more ways than one — in previous election cycles he robodialed me many more times than he did this year.

So imagine my surprise when I learned that Schumer has proposed legislation to raise fines and increase punishments on telemarketers violating Do Not Call rules. Has he no self-knowledge whatsoever? Of course not. Does he not know he violates the spirit if not the letter of these laws himself? Obviously not. How could it be? Self-centered self-importance provides the thick hide that pols are always telling us they must have. Of course, Schumer is not the only pol to robocall. He has just made himself the most ridiculous.

The legislation that needs to be proposed is the expansion of the Do Not Call Registry to  include charities, political organizations, and telephone surveyors as well as debt collectors. In enacting the law, legislators gave the Do Not Call Registry no sway over these groups, which serve the politicians themselves. Chief among them are telephone surveyors, whose calls harass us as surely as robocall scam artists. They take the surveys that enable elected officials and wannabes to figure out which way the wind blows so that they can amend positions on public issues.

The Senator says the number of unwanted telemarketing calls has skyrocketed. His press release notes, “As of August 2013, the FTC was logging 140,000 to 200,000 robocall complaints monthly compared to 65,000 in October 2010, according to published reports.”

He is right about that, and I support whatever curtails telemarketers. Unfortunately, relevant laws now on the books allow Sen. Schumer and his ilk to call us whenever they wish and as often as they want. I would like to opt out of these as well. If politicians and non-profits believe their messages are important, let them use the mails, which they already do anyway. That way they would help the U.S. Postal Service (but admittedly add to junk mail to be recycled). They could also continue to spam us via Internet, which generates no paper waste. Meanwhile, I challenge Sen. Schumer to figure out the number of unwanted robocalls he is generating and stop generating them. It is for his own good too — the electorate is less likely to know that he supports candidates they don’t.

Biking with de Blasio – End the Cold War Against Pedestrians

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The other evening a 40ish delivery man artfully rode his bicycle between another woman and myself who were walking on a Lexington Avenue sidewalk. The cyclist frightened us both but did not physically injure us. He was breaking the law that forbids anyone over the age of 14 from riding on the sidewalks, but no matter. The police were elsewhere — frisking doctors, lawyers, job-seekers and others who are guilty of having too much pigment in poorer neighborhoods. Even if the police department decided to make its presence visible in “safe” neighborhoods, police don’t enforce N.Y. ADC. LAW 19-176. Through the years on those rare occasions when I have seen uniformed policemen walking through Manhattan’s East Side, I have seen adult cyclists weave around them. The police have never broken stride.

Terrorizing pedestrians in New York City is not regarded as serious if the person doing the terrorizing is on a bicycle and does not seem to be an Arab. It doesn’t seem to matter much that cyclists cause serious injury to pedestrians. Each year more than 500 NYC residents are injured badly enough to be treated in area hospitals, according to data collected between 2007 and 2010.

The Stuart C. Gruskin Family Foundation is working on this, partly because Stuart C. Gruskin was slain in an incident involving a cyclist riding the wrong way up a Midtown street. (Could this indicate that cyclists disobeying laws are a threat to public safety?) The foundation works to promote safety for cyclists and pedestrians and as well. In fact all of us, whether we are walking, riding a bicycle or operating a motor vehicle are supposed to obey the law. The cyclists have defeated me: I now stop on red. When I have the right of way I for one feel safer in the path of an approaching truck than I do in the path of a bicycle. Opinions can differ, but I have learned that the trucker will at least try to stop.

So here’s how we get to Bill de Blasio, who happily is New York City’s incumbent Mayor and who has promised to look out for people who have felt ignored for the last dozen years or so. He has said that if elected he would expand bike lanes and the bike sharing CitiBike program, with a goal of raising the percentage of city trips taken by bike to 6 percent by 2020. Fine, but he has another shoe to drop before it is knocked off by a speeding cyclist.  In addition, Mayor de Blasio, working with the City Council, needs to insure that all cyclists are subject to laws that govern commercial cyclists and he needs to insist that those laws are enforced.  He also must see that even non-commercial cyclists are licensed.

Cyclists should be required to wear  “a jacket, vest, or other wearing apparel” with a number printed in large type by which they can be identified. This number needs to link to CitiBike or to city records. If Citibank marketers have to create jobs and hire New Yorkers to issue licenses at their blue racks, so be it. Most cyclists already wear helmets, so let them sport license numbers as well. Motor vehicle drivers and dog owners need to buy licenses – why shouldn’t cyclists? Why does a toy poodle need to wear identification and not a human racing through red lights and over sidewalks? Such identification would help to apprehend those who do not properly follow city laws and it might even remind cyclists that they have responsibilities to others as well as to themselves. They seem to believe they are saving the planet…how about sparing pedestrians as well?

Outgoing Bloomberg Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, known to some as Bicycle Woman, spent tax dollars on education programs for cyclists – although you would think everyone everywhere knows that a red stop light or sign means stop and that enforcement of laws might have been the way to go. The next Transportation Commissioner, or whoever is supposed to be in charge, needs to put energy into making the privileged class that is cyclists responsible citizens as well. There is more to being responsible than donning a helmet for one’s own protection. No mention of bike lanes was made in this post — they have been good for CitiBike and Citibank, but I don’t see how they have helped pedestrians who use fewer public resources than cyclists when they are allowed to walk in safety.

Confessions of A Poll Worker

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I volunteered to work the polls to improve voting in New York City. Instead I became part of the challenge. If you meet me Nov. 5 I will do my best, but now we are using optical-scanning machines. I have not so much as seen one since I was trained on August 19 when 12 hours of training were crammed into six because we had to learn the scanner as well as the lever machine for the primary. My section never discussed write-in voting, but no matter. That wasn’t on the test.
Don’t despair. Assisting the first few voters on Election Day might enable me to get the hang of it, and I may have the guidance of a more experienced poll worker. I myself voted on a scanner last year when the confusion at my polling place during the presidential election inspired me to volunteer with the Board of Elections so I can help you this year.
You might remember me from the primary election, if you are one of the 22 percent of registered Democrats and 13 percent of registered Republicans who bothered to vote. Less likely, you encountered me at the Public Advocate run-off when only 6.7 percent of registered Democrats appeared. On that day to break the afternoon lull we poll workers broke into spontaneous applause when voters showed up. They must have known they were special because when they departed, they waved good-by in the grand manner of the British royal family.
Do you wonder what motivates us poll workers? Some believe in civic duty. Most are in it for the pay, which works out to about $13 an hour for a sixteen-hour day with two hours of breaks that are not always honored. We start at 5 a.m., sometimes far from home. One colleague, a social worker, told me that he volunteered after receiving a notice to tell his clients to sign up to be poll workers and earn extra cash.
Meanwhile, here’s a peek at a few things we’d rather you did not know: on primary day, one of the two coordinators at my election site whom we will call Susie told us to forget what we had learned in training. She observed that everything we were doing was irrelevant because “things are being decided at a very high level.” Whether her problem was corruption or medication levels, I will never know. However, detecting certain mood swings and her lack of interest my colleagues and I turned to the other coordinator, whom we’ll call Mary, who had conducted trainings and insisted on doing everything “by the book.” When the polls closed, Mary announced that as a result of working with Susie, she would never work the polls again. She may have meant it because when we returned a few weeks later for the runoff for Public Advocate, Susie was the only coordinator on site and she managed alone.
Also, the closing of the polls, when tallies and back-ups are recorded, gets a bit slapdash because we are all eager to leave. On primary night I ended up as chairman of my election district because no one else wanted to sign the time sheets and tallies. After hurried hubbub or retrieving forms, I signed and sealed support materials and gave them to a police officer who signed a receipt. But then Susie discovered I had left out something important. No matter. I snatched the package away from the surprised officer, peeled off the seals, inserted the missing item, and sealed it up again. Work done! A few weeks later on the night of the runoff Susie hurried me even more, herself pressured by the menacing woman collecting our blunt-end scissors who was ready to go.
If you don’t like our methods, you could demand that the New York City Board of Elections do a better job of training and recruitment, possibly calling for volunteers at places of worship, libraries and through public service announcements. Possibly outreach should be less about a payday for good people who need money and more about voting. However, what matters most is better training and improved management. You could write officials to demand a more organized process and back that up by actually turning out to vote yourself.
I swear it does matter. When I was a teenager in the segregated South people died fighting to claim the right to vote. Partly because of them, I saw candidates elected throughout the country who expanded possibilities for millions of Americans and for the mandate for peace. Then officials were elected who put the brake on those expansions. So that’s why I get a little serious about voting. Often I don’t like the candidates, so I write one in, which reminds me to check my manual to learn how you can do that too.

But whatever happens, I don’t think you have to worry about the accuracy of the vote unless it’s really close. Poll watchers from both parties and from all candidates check on us through the day and each writes down the final count at night. Checks and balances for an accurate count are in place, but they are above my level, which is not the level where I deal with you.

Your Identity or Your Life, Jobseekers, Submit to Abuse

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Target Corp. just announced that it would stop running criminal background checks on potential employees. Good, because among other things the practice discriminated against needy, capable senior citizens who committed minor infractions during the Summer of Love. Worse yet, job applicants must supply their Social Security numbers and birth dates to people who may expose them, however unwittingly, to identity thieves.  No one could quibble if responsible Human Resources personnel checked into those in the final stages of the hiring process on any level, but today a job application form with a low wage employer — or even a classy one — is like something one should fill out before being approved for a U.S. ambassadorship. This has disturbing implications for all of us.

Some (not Angela Merkel or Edward J. Snowden) would say we are paranoid to protect our little-people identity and guard the on-ramp to all our financial information, so let us monetize this issue. The Internal Revenue Service says it mistakenly pays as much as $5.2 billion annually in tax refunds to criminals filing false returns using Society Security numbers they have stolen. The IRS estimates that known identify fraud cases have grown by 650 percent since 2008. I suspect that is due in part to exposure of personal data on the Internet. I myself was amazed to obtain the foreign passport number of my pesky neighbor when I entered his distinctive name alone into a Google search. I, of course, will use this power for good, but protecting my own information from faceless or over-eager strangers has worked against me.

Three years ago I was dumbstruck when two sympathetic, responsible women at the New York Botanical Garden asked for my Social Security number and birthdate the first (and only) time they interviewed me for a position in their public relations department. Not having looked for a job in a while, I said I knew they would need that information if I became a finalist for the job. I never heard from them again. The request shocked me and felt like a horrible violation. Common sense indicated it was a terrible risk.

Yesterday to prove my point I applied for entry sales jobs at New York City stores. Target’s on-line application required my Social Security Number. When I did not supply it, I could not proceed. CVS asked for my date of birth explaining that it wanted to send age-appropriate ads (mascara and condoms vs. adult diapers and Medicare spam). Then CVS “proposed” that I take an optional survey. When I tried to take advantage of my proffered right to decline, pop-up boxes insisted that CVS really wanted me to take it. Then I had to agree to a privacy policy that would have permitted robocallers to “contact” me and would have allowed CVS to disclose my information to “third parties.”  I declined other CVS opportunities (I don’t know how many jobs they have anyway because they use check-out machines instead of cashiers).  Macy’s wanted me to take a tax survey. I declined, but after more coaxing pop-ups, I agreed because this was clearly the only way to apply. The first question on the survey was my Social Security number and my age — literally whether I was over or under 40. Then we proceeded to the question about the year I graduated from high school. I would hate to be a 41 year old single mother, unless I had a job in a human resources department. What do these people do nowadays or have they all been laid off? We might not be getting jobs, but we sure are getting ads and robocalls.

Color The City Black and Blue

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Delia Ephron wrote a wonderful piece Color Me Blue about Citi Bikes, Citibank and Mayor Bloomberg’s desire to mark and monetize every aspect of New York City. She pointed out that the jarring blue blight of the bike racks advertising Citibank is also an occasion to remember how banks pay scant interest to consumers and how they charge outrageous monthly fees . I also recall how Citibank drove me off as a customer when it raised its monthly balance requirements.  Maybe the increased minimum balance it requires from beleaguered middle class New Yorkers is how it sponsors the bike blight. Ephron also points out that Citibank’s $41 million sponsorship is billionaire chump change — it is about twice the $23 million recently paid for a co-op at 640 Park Avenue. While thinking about Citibank’s sponsorship of cycling, we might also remember the mortgage crisis and hasty foreclosures.

But let us always be mindful of public safety so that someone is. Last night I experienced stark evidence of how lopsided and contemptuous of the public Bloomberg’s cycling agenda has been. As I travelled from Manhattan’s East 70s to the Red Rooster on West 125th Street, crossing wide streets in the early dark of an October evening and changing buses and subways several times, I encountered many cyclists. All were dressed in black riding on black bikes in the black evening. It was hard to discern them, much less avoid them. No headlights, not even a red hazard reflector — certainly not visible clothing or sneakers — to provide a clue that moving objects were honing in. The Bloomberg bike explosion, of which he and his associates are so proud, has not been accompanied by a single rule regulating bikes — no requirement for licenses (make them large, readable white ones, please), headlights or even red reflectors. Cyclists might not care to see where they are bearing down on a human being, but pedestrians in the dark need to see that cyclists are coming. A short-lived program of posted reminders on bus shelters a few months ago observed that cyclists should follow traffic rules, but there has been no noticeable enforcement of any laws, certainly not the one that says no one over the age of 14 should ride on a sidewalk. Why can’t the police make streets safe and enforce laws on the books instead of stopping and frisking people of color standing in their neighborhoods? If all those men and women of color walking on sidewalks in their neighborhoods would just start cycling on them, they could move around with impunity.

The Grim Reaper Is Watching You

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I was reading news on my computer when the image of a charming little building caught my eye. Clicking on the irresistible piece of architecture in the corner of my screen led to a true experience of what targets we have all become and why the Internet is “free.” It made me wonder if the National Security Agency could think I am dying. Here’s what happened:

When the weather turned pleasant I decided to make a pilgrimage to Woodlawn Cemetery and the graves of Herman Melville and Nellie Bly. Having visited Père-Lachaise, Novodevichy, Forest Lawn, and Greenwood in Brooklyn, I expected Internet searches to produce tourist-friendly information about public transportation, the visitors’ entrance gate (Jerome Avenue or Webster Avenue?) and a map of notable resting places. Since I would lead a friend through the 400 acres of this National Historic Landmark in the Bronx, and I had the energy for only a few relevant ones, I kept going back to the website, checking the directions, and studying the MTA trip planner. I googled Woodlawn Cemetery many times.

At the last minute, I went alone to the Bronx. While I did not have a map, I did have one particular experience – the sight of a miniature Parthenon set in the middle of an oval of velvet green lawn maybe 60 feet in diameter. It was the resting place of none other than Jay Gould. I was brooding over his robber baron ways, his capture of 19th century railroads and corner of the gold market, when I stumbled badly. I found that my foot was buried in a rare hole on that smooth expanse of lawn. I limped away, a wounded sophisticate unwilling to believe that the wily Gould had reached out to a disapproving mortal.

Hole is obscured to the far right

Hole is obscured to the far right

Woodlawn Cemetery fascinated me and inspired more research into various mausoleums and their contents and architects while I iced my ankle back at home.

Soon thereafter the charming image appeared in the corner of my computer screen. My click detonated it into an ad exhorting me to “Prepare for Eternity.” The charming dwelling, a cross between a folly and an arboreous weekend retreat, was in fact a little house of death. For weeks a mausoleum border appeared on every site I visited. It was on the New York Times, the Guardian, the Telegraph. Whatever site I visited, I was greeted by the same call to “Prepare for Eternity.” Swimoutlet.com had been insistent too, but I had bought their goggles. Turns out that mausoleums are products too. One even erupted into my face on a pop-up ad.

I can live with mortality, but I don’t like being stalked. Death haunts us all, but algorithms hunt us down. Research “Woodlawn Cemetery” and “mauseolum” fifteen times in three days and see what happens. You’ll be preparing for something too.

Don’t Shush the Libraries!

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I don’t know whether the New York Library — its wonderful buildings or the system itself –can be saved from its Board of Trustees and the administrators that serve it, but I do believe that everyone who has promoted or rubber-stamped the destruction of the library and the privatization of public property into private hands — all on the cheap — will be exposed. In the meantime, please read and follow Noticing New York and Citizens Defending Libraries. These blogs should be read, evaluated and acted upon. Our libraries are being turned into event spaces for galas and privatized on the cheap. Those of us who need them and who support them with our tax dollars are being robbed. Remember the Donnell!

Democratization in Action at the New York Public Library

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I brought my camera to the New York Public Library to take pictures of tourists taking pictures of me. They seemed annoyed about it. Maybe I distracted them from shooting door jambs, windows, and people who were actually using books – books that arrive as many as five days after we request them. Welcome to the Rose Main Reading Room of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, once better known as The New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

Good thing no patron needed these books

Good thing no patron needed these books

Library trustees and administrators have proposed a controversial $300 million-and-counting renovation involving starchitect Norman Foster, and the proposed sale of two major branches at prices attractive to developers, in part to “democratize” the library. One can infer that they want to rescue the library from overuse by those elitists known as Researchers who have hogged the place for years for their own narrow purposes. The library board and trustees might disdain academic scholarship, but they should know that Researchers using the New York Public Library include DeWitt Wallace who co-founded The Reader’s Digest; Robert Caro whose magisterial biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson have corralled multiple prizes and illuminated significant aspects of our history; and Betty Friedan, author of the world-rocking Feminine Mystique.
Although there are rooms dedicated for researchers who qualify for them, through its century of history, scholars and the public have used the library side by side, not as a carnival boardwalk but as a place to learn and grow. Alfred Kazin wrote in New York Jew of tracing the development of American literature as he delighted in the Americans he found there: “Street philosophers, fanatics, advertising agents, the homeless – passing faces in the crowd. I liked reading and working out my ideas in the minds of that endless crowd walking in an out of [Room] 315 looking for something – that Depression crowd so pent up, searching for puzzle contests, beauty contests, clues to buried treasure off Sandy Hook…” Kazin felt himself “entangled” in their hunger and was glad of it.
As I read Kazin’s words in the North Hall, that half of the Reading Room that is designated a “quiet zone,” two howling children surged past crowded tables of readers. Their mother caught up to them at the door of the Rare Book and Manuscript and Archives Division at the far end of the room and hauled them back past us all the while continuing to drown us in a river of noise. The harried guard who finally caught up to her was clear: “You brought them into the wrong room.” So she carried them into the South Hall of the Reading Room that is not a Quiet Zone where their sounds proceeded to build.
Is the success or value of a hospital measure by how many patients have visitors and how many screaming children fill their cafeterias? Would it help the trustees and administrators, who clearly don’t use the library, to know that the library is sufficiently democratized so that it is hard to find a seat in the Reading Room if one arrives after noon Monday through Saturday or after the Library opens Sunday at 1 p.m.?
Meanwhile, tables and chairs are virtually unused in The Edna Barnes Solomon Room on the third floor, formerly for special exhibitions. It has been repurposed for wi-fi, with no book deliveries allowed. What a pity that this near empty cavern, which the library rents it out for parties, could not have been used for the Asian, Middle Eastern and/or Slavic divisions that have been closed. Many other less specialized research collection books have been moved off-site to New Jersey and the Bronx, which is why it takes several days to get a book. One might not complain if archaic texts on obscure topics (the kind undemocratic Researchers would want) had been exiled, but books in demand are out of ready reach as well. “Childhood and Society,” Erik H. Ericson’s classic study that won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and has been seminal to Researchers (those creeps!) seeking to foster human development and to thousands of college students through the years, is kept off-site. After I requested it from my home computer, it took three days to arrive at the Reading Room. I read my long-awaited book as far as page 219 when I discovered that the next 18 pages had been cut out. The librarian I brought it to advised me to buy a copy at The Strand Bookstore “for very little money,” because he solemnly said, “This library is not about books anymore.”
Another librarian checked the computer to learn that two other off-site copies of “Childhood and Society” were also in use, one at the Science Industry Business Library, which library trustees seek to sell off at an attractive price to a developer, and the other at the Schomburg Center in Harlem. I had waited longer than I intended and I needed to finish that book by nightfall, so I used more of the day travelling. “Childhood and Society” was sold out at the Strand, where I hoped to find a discounted used copy, so I went to Barnes & Noble where for $18.95 plus tax I bought a copy of the book that my tax dollars had purchased for the public library patrons. Even as an author myself with my own books to sell, I want New York library patrons to be able to use the books that their tax dollars pay for. However, Mr. Schwarzman, chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group, a private equity and financial advisory firm, a man whose name is on the building, might approve that I had been forced to spend my Researcher finances instead of using up his library. Could it be that someone could consider a member of the public who uses public resources a deadbeat? Maybe that is the whole mindset behind “democratization” of a library that was once maintained as a resource to be used by the people and not just photographed by them as it turns from a temple of democracy into event space.

Here’s A Clue About Future Jobs in NYC For Politicians Who Wish To See Them

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The city’s mayoral candidates are talking about job creation and rethinking workforce development programs, as well they should. The Stack, a new apartment building on Broadway and 204th Street in Manhattan, was largely pre-fabricated — meaning that it was built in a factory. That is a promising in a city where on-site construction in tight spaces, often under difficult weather conditions, is expensive and has adverse effects on surrounding blocks. After reading about The Stack last month on the  NY1 website I queried the broadcaster about where the factory was located. An executive was kind enough to reply that the factory was in Pennsylvania, but said via e-mail that he did not see why that mattered. Here’s why the location matters: We need jobs in New York!

Learning that the building wasn’t made in China or Canada but in the U.S.A. was a relief, but here’s the point: if this is the future of construction, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the city’s next mayor and its construction trades and unions need to be planning pre-fab construction in New York State and in the city — how about the Brooklyn Navy Yards and/or manufacturing areas that Bloomberg is turning residential? How about upstate? Here is a potential source of real jobs, hopefully ones that can support families and offer health care and advancement. Politicians we elect should not allow our jobs to be sent out of the city, much less out of the state and New Yorkers need to find ways to make sure that they don’t.

Cramming for New York

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Kenneth T. Jackson, a professor of history at Columbia, editor in chief of The Encyclopedia of New York City, and a past president of the Society of American Historians, to which I belong, is in favor of the East Midtown development plan that would build new and taller skyscrapers around around Grand Central Station. In a N.Y. Times op-ed, Prof. Jackson, whom I  respect, says that those who oppose the idea of building big and bold would compromise the city’s future as “the world’s greatest city.” He says high density is good where there is strong public transit and that those who balked at development would have prevented the building of the Empire State Building.

Having just fought my way through pedestrian traffic on Fifth Avenue on a Labor Day Saturday, when many residents are out of town, I have one word for him: Sidewalks! Midtown Manhattan sidewalks are so clotted with people — especially around Grand Central but including the pedestrian malls that the Bloomberg Administration has fostered at Times Square and the Macy’s area, that the idea of quadrupling the foot traffic in dense Midtown is a horrible idea — even if vehicles were banned from 42nd Street. There are plenty of other spots for over-building — how about the West Side Yards? Or how about grand schemes that would bring jobs and density to the Bronx, which is well-served by Metro North?

If you build it, they might not come. As Yogi Berra once said about a restaurant, “No one goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”