Required Reading

REFORMS

Before we get to the story, be warned in advance that it might elicit an f-bomb or two. One out of me, the other out of you. Ready? OK:

What’s the problem with the city’s welfare-to-work program? If you ask L. Daneek Miller, chair of the New York City Council’s civil service task force, it’s that people got jobs.

“It’s a broken system that placed low-skilled workers in low-wage jobs,” he thundered at a recent hearing.

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What the hell else are you supposed to pay people who can’t fucking do anything? And how are they going to learn the skills for higher-paying work if they never do the lower-paying work? For Somebody’s sake, L. Daneek Miller is too bone-crushingly stupid to be trusted with anything more complicated than socks, much less the chair of the New York City Council’s civil service task force. And I have my doubts about the socks.

Let us continue, if we dare:

Instead, Miller supports Mayor de Blasio’s plan to shift low-skill workers into higher paying jobs, through the magic of municipal statism for social services. Wall Street, Madison Avenue and the city’s growing tech sector will foot the bill.

I’ll pause here for you to mutter your own f-bomb.

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How long do you imagine the city’s tech sector will remain growing, if sockless morons like L. Daneek Miller (and his race-and-class warrior enabler in Gracie Mansion) are put in charge of its profits?

But we aren’t done yet with the sockless morons. Please meet Stephen Banks:

That hasn’t stopped de Blasio from turning the city’s massive aid agency over to Stephen Banks, a leading “welfare-rights” advocate who plans to undo welfare-to-work.

Dependency today, dependency tomorrow, dependency forever!

Do read the whole thing, if your stomach is up for it.

Last spring, Melissa and I made a project out of watching every James Bond movie (minus the original, parody version of Casino Royale) in order. I meant to take notes, or even live-tweet it, but one scene still stands out in my mind. Roger Moore took over the role of Bond in 1973’s Live and Let Die. The franchise’s Cheese Factor was growing, but hadn’t yet descended to Total Cheese, such as Moore wearing clown makeup for the entire big finish of 1983’s Octopussy. What an unforgivable thing to do to James Bond.

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But we were speaking of Live and Let Die. In that one, Bond’s pursuit of a bigtime heroin supplier takes him to Harlem — and Harlem 1973 could have served as the stand-in for Beirut ’78 or Berlin ’45. As someone who got comfortable with Rudy Giuliani’s New York City, it was a shocking and painful reminder of just how bad things had gotten in the Big Apple.

Would you care to place any bets on whether NYC 2020 looks more like NYC 2000, or more like NYC 1973?

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