RUNNIN' SCARED

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End of Day Blitz: Links, Plus the Smith Scandal, As Told Through TV Show Comparisons

Most of today's news focused on the unraveling Smith scandal, but here are the links to which my eyeballs stuck and briefly considered exploring:

A Vermont rice farmer is raising money through Kickstarter to build a boat and ship his produce down the Hudson River. (Inhabitat)

Community theater is bringing Henrik Ibsen to the oozing banks of the Gowanus. (Brooklyn Paper)

Oh, almost forgot to mention the superFUNd canoe race. (DNAinfo)

The city has $1.77 billion to spend as part of a Community Development Block Grant in Hurricane Sandy aid and rebuilding. You have until Thursday to insert your two cents on how it should be allocated. (Staten Island Advance)

New York City and Verizon will start "microtrenching" fiber optics cables in the sidewalk. (Businessweek)

And I would have been remiss if I didn't make more of these:

"Sometimes politics is just an episode of 'The Sopranos.'" - Rachel Maddow

"This is something that belongs in ‘House of Cards,’ not an election to decide who will run our city or any part of our government. Regardless of the outcome of the criminal charges filed against Senator Smith, he has lost the public trust — and he should resign.” - State Sen. Daniel Squadron

“You have all those people circling around -- and then of course you have `Malcolm in the Middle.'” - U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara

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Bleecker Bob's Won't Sell Records Inside a Fro-Yo Store After All

Last month, Greenwich Village institution Bleecker Bob's Golden Oldies announced on its Facebook page that it would be turning over its lease to a frozen yogurt chain. DNAinfo reported that there was a possibility that a vestige of the fabled record store would remain--perhaps a music counter next to the gummy bears--but today management confirmed that Bleecker Bob's will be vacating completely.

From DNAinfo [[NOTE: WOULD SPEAK TO SKI, BOB PLOTNIK, OR GRAB COMMUNITY MEMBERS' REAX FIRSTHAND RATHER THAN POST THIS. SEEMS LIKE VV'S WHEELHOUSE FOR A MORE REPORTED PIECE.]]:

The store manager who has been brokering a potential arrangement with the Chicago-based company Forever Yogurt said he appreciated the effort to pay homage to the 118 W. Third St. shop's legacy, but the notion of a dessert shop with only a "small space" devoted to music was "insulting."

"They were nice enough to consider us, but being in the back of a yogurt shop is a slap in the face," said the manager, who gave his name as Ski. "This is Bleecker Bob's."

Can't really blame them for that.

Bleecker Bob's is now officially moving out this weekend, though it did announce on the store's Facebook page that the owners were holding a bid on a location in the East Village. Still, if no deal is reached by the end of April, DNAinfo reports that the 35-year-old business will have to move its inventory into storage.

To read a short, sweet tribute to "Bleecker" Bob Plotnik and watch to staffers reminisce about punk's vinyl heyday, head on over to Dangerous Minds.

(h/t DNAinfo)

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NYU President Says Book Proceeds Will Go to Students' Financial Aid

Fielding tough questions from his student body about the university's controversial local and global expansion plans, NYU president John Sexton told students Tuesday night that a third of his new book proceeds would go toward their financial aid. It's a comforting thought until you remember that Sexton makes a nearly $1.5 million annual salary (not counting the $800,000 he receives toward his retirement fund, nor the $2.5 million bonus that awaits him in 2015) and that NYU students graduate, on average, more than $36,000 in debt. Baseball may be a road to God, but a debt load roughly $10,000 deeper than the national average still seems like a fast track to living with your parents.

One student questioned the importance of planting NYU satellites on new turf worldwide while financial aid lacked at home. "[Financial aid] has increased considerably more than our tuition has increased,” Sexton said. Later, in response to a question about new technology, Sexton explained that the university now has the ability to share more resources across campuses and "do telepresence." All that, he said, is being funded by the school's program in Abu Dhabi.

(h/t Washington Square News)

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Smith Corruption Scandal Highlights Campaign Finance Reform Efforts

Outside of the Smith scandal, New York's political corruption problem is large. It contains multitudes. These aren't just a couple of politicians that dipped in and out of White Plains hotels to cut electoral rigging deals over "the fucking money." As the New York Times' Albany bureau chief Danny Hakim pointed out earlier today, "Three of the last five NY State Senate majority leaders have been indicted or are in jail." And that's not even counting all the other state lawmakers who have been charged with corruption crimes since 2007.

"Today’s charges demonstrate, once again, that a show-me-the-money culture seems to pervade every level of New York government," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement yesterday. "We will continue pursuing and punishing every corrupt official we find, but the public corruption crisis in New York is more than a prosecutor’s problem."

That would make it a legislator's problem, according to a coalition of unions and community organizations that have been rallying for campaign finance reform in New York state. It couldn't have been better timed: Bolstered by Governor Cuomo and the organizers involved with President Obama's presidential campaign, Fair Elections for New York, the coalition's main force, had planned to hold several events across the state this week.

"The real scandal is that so many regular New Yorkers will read tomorrow’s papers, and will check out of the process completely, because it reinforces what they already believe – that money has more influence than their votes," the coalition said in a statement in response to Tuesday's corruption scandal. "Now it’s time to stand shoulder to shoulder with Governor Cuomo and the growing bipartisan majority of New Yorkers who support comprehensive campaign finance reform, which must include a system of publicly financed elections at its core." [[WOULD BE BETTER TO SUB DIRECT QUOTE FROM KAREN SCHARFF, PRESS PERSON FOR FENY]]

An op-ed penned by former Rep. Mike Arcuri (D-NY) and published on Monday in the Syracuse Post-Standard shared a similar, premonitory sentiment about candidates who find themselves scratching wealthy backs. Instead, the way to a "New Albany," Arcuri argued, was through instituting public funding of elections through small donors, as is done in Arizona, Maine, and Connecticut.

"Candidates for office spend inordinate amounts of time and energy courting special interests and wealthy individuals that are able to provide the funds necessary for election and re-election, even if those donors have business before them," he wrote.

But unions and scrappy reform organizations aren't the only groups pushing to remove big money from politics. Wealthy individuals like Jonathan Soros (son of George) and activist Sean Eldridge (fiancé of Facebook co-founder and New Republic publisher Chris Hughes) have also launched efforts for campaign finance reform in the state. Eldridge's group, Protect Our Future, is a 501(c)(4) non-profit or a "social welfare" entity that does not have to disclose its donors—though the irony that these kinds of shadowy organisms have outspent super PACs in previous election cycles is not lost on the political activist. Earlier this year, Eldridge explained to Mother Jones that the paradox was part of the plan, and a necessary aspect of what he considers a wake-up call.

"The ultimate goal is we need to create a majority for reform in the Senate,” Eldridge told the New York Times last year.

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"Every time a politician is arrested in New York it should not feel like a scene from Groundhog Day. And yet it does.” - U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on endemic political corruption at a Tuesday press conference.

We're sorry. We had to.

(Above: Councilman Dan Halloran and State Senator Malcolm Smith, two prominent Queens politicians arrested yesterday on charges of bribery.)

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State Senator Daniel Squadron compared yesterday's massive corruption fallout over a plan to rig New York City's mayoral election to an episode of House of Cards. But unlike the show's comfortable, 12-part Netflix package couched in foreboding music and sex scenes, the scandal that shook up New York's political scene after the FBI arrested State Senator Malcolm Smith, City Councilman Dan Halloran, and four political operatives is outlined in a meticulous, 28-page federal complaint. As Nick Pinto pointed out Tuesday, details of the sting's recorded conversations, parking lot envelope swaps, and juicy uses of discretionary funds are well worth a read, but looking at this corruption flowchart from the U.S. Attorney's office certainly makes the story a bit more digestible.

Two mayoral hopefuls aren't shown on the graphic but are important to mention: Gristedes founder John Catsimatidis, a.k.a. Vincent Tabone's recent boss, and Joe Lhota, the former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority who was endorsed by the Bronx Republican Party under Joseph Savino's leadership. Neither have been formally implicated in the scandal, but in a video posted last night Catsimatidis lobbed blame towards the Lhota campaign. "We think there may be another shoe to fall," he told Capital's Azi Paybarah.

(h/t DNAinfo; Capital New York)

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Fat May Protect Pedestrians in NYC Traffic Collisions

Good morning, New Yorkers. Look left when crossing the street, look right, and be ready with your jelly. Crosswalks aren't safe, but a little heft could possibly work in your favor if the city decides to reclaim you in a traffic collision, according to a new study published this week by a squad of trauma doctors from NYU Langone Medical Center.

Between winter of 2008 and summer of 2011, researchers examined more than 1,400 pedestrians and cyclists involved in roadside accidents at Bellevue Hospital Center, assigning an “Injury Severity Score” (ISS) to each. The team then broke down how that score related to certain demographics and behaviors—like an above normal body mass index, for example, where the victims were walking, or whether those involved were drunk.

Their findings, published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, reveal that a Big Gulp might cut both ways. From the New York Times:

Perhaps the most surprising finding was that excessive weight may prove a boon for pedestrians in a collision. Victims with an above-normal body mass index were found to have less severe injuries than their counterparts. “It is not implausible that a greater proportion of torso and extremity fat may protect against injury,” the report said.

Dr. Frangos noted that generally, overweight and obese patients fared worse once admitted to a hospital, but that perhaps “that extra layer offers some protection at the time of the injury.”

Some of the study’s conclusions were more intuitive—like the fact that 40 percent of battered cyclists were swiped by taxis, and less than a third of them had protective headgear. Others showed that nothing is sacred: Slightly less than half of all pedestrians injured on the street were actually hit in a crosswalk with the proper walking signal, and an amazing six percent were hurt while strolling on the sidewalk. Consider that last one for a minute. What's next? Folks getting hit while hugging the buildings and shuffling sideways?

(h/t NYT)