The big news today will be yet another clusterf**k in Lower Manhattan as the House Judiciary Committee (aka the Committee to Re-Elect the Former President) has a field hearing at Federal Plaza over Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's decision to charge a former New Yorker with fraud for allegedly doctoring his business records to cover up an affair.
It's weird to make a federal case out of something a city DA probably does about 100 times a year, but then again, upstate Rep. Elise Stefanik says the hearing is really about local Democrats' failed policies (which is an even weirder thing for a federal judiciary committee to meet about, but still, there you have it). Here are the details from the elephant's mouth itself:
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) April 10, 2023
If the GOP lets anyone with any real knowledge on the subject actually testify, of course, the members of Congress will hear the truth about New York City: that crime isn't really as big a deal here as it is elsewhere, as Gothamist pointed out. But our guess is this hearing is not a real exercise in fact-finding.
We'll, of course, be on hand anyway because major news events provide the Parks Department with regular excuses to allow everyone to park on and in Foley Square and Thomas Paine Park, desecrating Lorenzo Pace's monument to the horrors of slavery, "Triumph of the Human Spirit."
In other news from a busy weekend:
- The Daily News had heartbreaking details of motorcycle rider Jason Gans, who was killed on Friday near Fort Hamilton by a trucker making a U-turn. That driver was not charged, by the way.
- The Daily News and the Post wrote a roundup story about two pedestrians killed minutes apart on Saturday, but left out the third pedestrian death from a day earlier, as we did. But both papers continue to ignore crash statistics in their stories, which leaves readers with the impression that road deaths are just "accidents." They're not — they're results; results of decisions we as a city fail to make to keep the most vulnerable road users safe.
- This time, Elon Musk fucked with the wrong people. (amNY)
- At least Community Board 5 is trying to hold Madison Square Garden accountable! (Crain's)
- What a huge end of the week it was for Upper East Site:
- The site covered the arrest of a driver for killing a woman almost a year ago.
- The site accurately pointed out that you can install anything you want on a sidewalk and no one seems to care.
- The site showed that a $1.7-million Parks Department project will make a long-suffering green space less green.
- But another open space project seems to have gotten better.
- Oh, and a sinkhole swallowed a truck.
- Larry Penner rode the nostalgia train to Yankee Stadium, both literally and figuratively. (Mass Transit)
- Mark our words: We are going to lose the curb to the "EV revolution." (Washington Post)
