A Stitch in Haste

I'm having trouble coming up with a non-expletive term for our infamous local megalomaniac:
After being dealt a rare public embarrassment by the City Council, which forced his administration to acknowledge on Monday that he was legally required to send out $400 rebate checks promised to hundreds of thousands of New York homeowners, a defiant Mr. [...]

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You may have noticed the current Sidebar Sidetrack, which links to a survey of ugly buildings.
By sheer coincidence, word has come down that New York City's out-of-control Landmarks Preservation Commission continues to justify its own unjustifiable existence by finding new sharks to jump:
Silver Towers/University Village, three concrete towers designed by I. M. Pei that were [...]

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While I was not surprised to learn that the online dating site eHarmony would eventually be compelled to cease its policy of not accepting gays as clients, I was surprised to learn that the compulsion would come from New Jersey:
Under terms of the settlement between Eric McKinley, a gay match-seeker from New Jersey, and eHarmony, [...]

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To review: There was a flash in the blogospheric pan a few months ago over a controversial book called Nudge, the authors of which (a law professor and an economics professor, both of some renown) insisted that "libertarian paternalism" is not an axiomatic oxymoron. I, along with almost every other libertarian commentator, was skeptical.
Through sheer [...]

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Mitt Romney, January 14, 2008:
Michigan is enduring a one-state recession, and the problem has only been exacerbated by poor choices made by some of the leaders in Lansing to raise taxes and take that course instead of cutting spending.
…
A lot of Washington politicians are aware of the pain, but they haven't done anything about it. [...]

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Some hasty stitches regarding calls to use TARP money to bail out the Big Three automakers:

General Motors is not "the U.S. auto industry." The Big Three are not "the U.S. auto industry." There are many different metrics (vehicle production, revenue, employment, etc.) but a good benchmark is that the Big Three represent only about one-half [...]

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Scientific American recently published a collection of "special report" articles on the general topic of "HIV — 25 Years Later." From the Editor's Introduction:
In 1983 and 1984 scientists established that HIV (the human immunodeficiency virus) causes AIDS, which had recently begun cropping up in gay men in California and New York. The discovery quickly led [...]

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What constitutes a "small business"?
Apparently, Dell Computer. And Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and other S&P 500 companies, at least according to the federal government:
SBA acting Administrator Sandy Baruah estimated that federal agencies overstated their progress by $5 billion to $10 billion last year by improperly claiming that small firms received work that actually went to [...]

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Barney Frank calls for making Wall Street bonuses illegal:
"There should be a moratorium on bonuses," Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, told reporters yesterday in Washington. "They have a negative incentive effect because they are the ones that say if you take a risk and it pays off you get a big bonus," and if it causes [...]

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Without prologue:
–Today's Treasury press release insists that the direct preferred equity stakes are "a voluntary capital purchase program." That's quite the reversal from 24 hours ago, when Paulson insisted that the stakes were, um, "not voluntary." Apparently the investments are being underwritten by the Bank of Orwell.
–Regarding those preferred stock shares, the President insists:
And the [...]

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