It’s Giuliani Time
• Rudy and Hillary, together again for the very first time. That’s right — Giuliani all but declared his presidential bid yesterday, filing a “Statement of Candidacy” with the FEC, meaning that the two candidates’ aborted Y2K power grapple for the Senate could finally be revived on a national stage. [NYT]
• Mayor Mike Bloomberg rips into the $330 million hole in city funding created by Governor Eliot Spitzer’s new budget, claiming the cuts will rob NYC of twice that amount — and questioning Spitz’s claim that closing up some tax loopholes will balance out the loss. [NYP]
• Six panhandlers sue the city for illegally arresting them after one of their own, Eddie Wise, scored $100,000 after a similar suit. They are just a few of a possible 7,000 such wrongful haul-ins. [NYDN]
• Having obviously visited the wrong debt-management counselor, a Queens man beats a cop with a bat and steals his gun, aiming to pull off robberies to pay back $16,000. The cop is in critical but stable condition and the arrested thug faces 25 to life, with the debt still unpaid, presumably. [Newsday]
• President Bush is putting $1.3 billion into the federal budget to help complete the Second Avenue subway — not to mention $215 mil to aid in bringing the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal. [amNY]
the morning line
No Justice, No Peace, as They Say
• Several hundreds of people took over Wall Street to protest the police’s killing of Sean Bell and what they see as the NYPD’s failure to punish the guilty. They were met with almost as many police officers, some undercover; for a march that called for a “war on the NYPD,” the protest went without an incident. [amNY]
• The State Liquor Authority is cracking down on all-night New Year’s Eve parties, nixing dozens of bars’ requests to stay open late on December 31. (The permit is usually easily granted.) [NYP]
• In a similar crypto-Prohibitionist vein, the proposed alcohol ban on Metro-North and LIRR is about to deny suburban commuters one of their few remaining joys in life. Or is it? Meet Commuters Aligned for Responsible Enjoyment, or CARE, a quickly assembled opposition group. Vive la Resistance! [NYDN]
• It’s a bit unexpected after all those mayoral pronouncements about the coming population boom, but NYC’s birth rate is way down, at a 25-year low, in fact. Officials call it a quality-of-life achievement, however, since the most rapidly declining subset is teenage births. [NYS]
• And the Times tut-tuts the “phantasmagoric, Disney-esque experience” sweeping the suburbs: giant inflatable lawn figures causing an “intramural disagreement among the Christmas crazed.” [NYT]
the morning line
Like Candy From a Little Leaguer
• Yesterday we told you that Queens assemblyman Bruce McLaughlin was about to surrender on some corruption charges. That was, it turns out, an understatement. The Feds cuffed McLaughlin for stealing a cool $2.2 million in awesome ways and from awesome sources — including Little League teams. [NYDN]
• A report by the state comptroller (yes, our chauffeurless pal Alan Hevesi) says Wall Streeters earn an average of $289,664 — more than five times the city’s average. Even more spectacular, the financial industry’s pay rates grow faster — a shocking 36 percent over the last two years. Of course, someone has to pay for bottle service. [NYP]
• The battle is on for the title of the 300 millionth American (Manhattan’s splendidly named Zoë Emille Hudson is but one contender). The Times raises a great and uncharacteristically naughty point: Why does everyone assume that yesterday’s arrival was born yesterday? And not, say, smuggled across the border? [NYT]
• LIRR is shifting 2,000 feet of track to fix the dangerous gap between the train and the platform at Shea and plans to do the same at other stations. Each year about 60 people fall in; we recall that last month one such victim was a former state senator. Coincidence? [amNY]
• And the Village Voice’s “Best of NYC” issue is out, complete with the ailing weekly’s trademark mix of picks offbeat (Best Aroma Inside an ATM), earnest (Best Bus), and unfortunate (Best Performance Art Space for Dinner and a Movie goes to Monkeytown, which announced its closing weeks ago). [VV]
