Via Wiki Commons.

I first heard that “Isaac may cause some devastation” over a week ago and it was startling. My son, like most toddlers, is capable of creating a little mayhem, but I was certain he was not planning anything to concern the national media.

Storm predictions indicate his name won’t become synonymous with massive death and destruction—this year. So “Isaac” will almost stay in the rotation of Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane names, and get another crack at weather infamy sometime in 2018, when my son will be 8.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher and editor of The Nation, wrote soon after her namesake hurricane of 2005 that “it has been eerie hearing and reading my name all over the news.”

At the end of the year, Time asked her about any “personal consequences” to being an outspoken liberal commentator, and the only thing she mentioned was the “very personal and mean way” Rush Limbaugh called the deadly event “Hurricane Katrina vanden Heuvel.” The cruel nickname persists to this day in the rightwing blogosphere.

And although “Barry” Obama could suffer the same fate next year, conservative leaders are also vulnerable. Chris Christie and Karl Rove escaped making big hurricane news this year, but their names will be back in the hopper with my son in 2018. William Kristol lives with the daunting double whammy of a possible Hurricane William this year and then Bill in 2015.

The United Nations’ all-powerful and historically sexist naming body (female hurricane names were used exclusively until 1979), the World Meteorological Organization, tends to like short names, but nevertheless Paul Ryan. John Boehner, and Mitt Romney are safe from being connected with devastation, at least until a hurricane starting with P, J or M is so catastrophic that the name is retired and replaced.

As for the name Katrina, nameberry.com, a popular site for expectant parents, says simply “the hurricane blew this one out of the realm of possibility.” The name’s popularity dropped precipitously starting in 2006 but surprisingly it wasn’t until last year that it fell out of the top 1,000 of female US names, according to the Social Security Administration

To quote many politicians, it doesn’t have to be this way. Hurricanes and tropical storms do need names since they move rapidly and are often active simultaneously, but there’s no reason to connect them to hundreds of millions of real people.

The World Meteorological gods could opt for things like Greek letters, alpha, beta, etc., but the better choice would be to take fictional villains. Hollywood, comics and other pop culture sources provide an endless supply. Spider-Man alone is a gold mine of names, my favorites being Boomerang, Hammerhead, Jackal and Carnage. Simon is a real name that should be used since Simons already share with the villains of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Underdog (Legree and Bar Sinister). Underdog also gives us Riff Raff.

Bane, Batman’s nemesis, is another good one, although that one should wait for whenever Romney leaves active politics, perhaps as late as 2021. That would get Bill Kristol off the hook.

Josh Rogers is a NYPress.com columnist. Follow him @joshrogersnyc.

A realistic way to disarm the electoral college, so every voter has a voice

New Yorkers just don’t thank the one percenters enough. Of course the wealthiest seldom get thanked at all. It’s not at all surprising given their not-so-flattering name was coined by their opponents, Occupy Wall Street

But regardless of whether you think billionaires should be taxed a lot or not, they do deserve our gratitude. If not for all of the Wall Street money floating around, we’d never see presidential candidates at all and they would have no interest in helping the city. New York has been solid blue for almost 30 years, and one of the 40 or so things that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney can agree upon is that the president will carry all of New York’s 29 electoral votes.

Only about 10 states are being contested this November, so “200 million Americans are ignored,” said Patrick Rosenstiel, spokesperson for National Popular Vote, a nonpartisan organization trying to make presidents accountable to all voters.

His group has figured out a clever and apparently legal path to circumvent the Electoral College short of a constitutional amendment. Already eight states and Washington, D.C., which controls 132 electors, have passed laws to someday award all of its presidential votes to the popular vote winner. “Someday” comes when states with a majority of electoral votes, at least 270, sign onto the compact. The Electoral College would remain, but it would be tied to the popular vote.

The idea seems to have a good chance to win enough support. For one, conservative and liberal states have equal incentive to join the effort. The Electoral College is a nonpartisan weapon that can be unfair to either party. Republican George W. Bush of course won the White House despite losing the popular vote in 2000, but four years later, Democrat John Kerry came very close to doing the same thing to Bush. Had Kerry changed about 60,000 votes in Ohio, he would have won the presidency.

The classic civics defense of the Electoral College is that it protects small states and all regions of the country. National Popular Vote blows that argument up, pointing out that the 12 smallest noncompetitive states have roughly the same combined population as a key battleground state, Ohio, but twice the number of electors. Even though these small-state dwellers are twice as powerful on paper as Buckeyes, they are ignored like most New Yorkers.

The electoral college in its current form hurts states small, medium and large, most notably California, a compact signer, Texas and New York. The Constitution doesn’t require winner-take-all—originally most state awarded electors by Congressional districts—but making the Electoral College fairer with a uniform proportional system is dependent on 50 wise and functional state legislatures (insert joke here).
The beauty of the Popular Vote effort is that all Americans could get a voice even if their representatives didn’t think it was a good idea.
New York may actually be one of the next states to act wisely. The national vote effort has twice passed the State Senate, most recently in June with strong Democratic and Republican support.

Jeffrey Dinowitz, the bill’s chief champion in the Assembly, said, “We’re bystanders in this election. I usually tell voters that every vote counts, but the truth it is every vote doesn’t count equally.”

He told me this week he has the votes to pass the bill, about 100, and he will try again to bring it to the floor next year. Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver of Lower Manhattan supports it although an aide says there’s “not yet enough support” to bring it to the floor.
Dinowitz thinks he has 76 Democratic votes, the usual unwritten threshold number, which means the bill could pass without GOP support, but in this case he might need more because Assembly Member Denny Farrell, the powerful chairman of the State Democratic Committee, is an opponent. His spokesperson did not explain his opposition.

Nationally, the effort has gotten more support from Democrats. If Obama wins re-election with fewer votes than Romney, Republican support would rise. With the president polling better in swing states than nationally, the scenario is plausible.

If that happens, “I don’t think there’d be any bigger catalyst to change,” said Rosenstiel, although he anticipates continued momentum regardless of this year’s outcome.

Meanwhile I hope—as people living in Arab Spring countries once did— to one day be able to help pick my country’s leader. This week, I’m heading down to vacation in North Carolina and to see what it feels like when candidates care about winning votes. I understand that down there, political ads are actually paid for, and don’t get aired as news items.

Maybe I should be careful what I wish for.

Josh Rogers, contributing editor at Manhattan Media, is a lifelong New Yorker.

Bodegas, you see, are some of the New York City businesses that will clean up at the expense of the “little guys,” like pizza parlors and McDonald’s, if, as expected, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s new soda policy goes into effect in September. That was just one of several hollow arguments opponents made at last week’s Board of Health public hearing.

The argument, advanced by Council Members Melissa Mark-Viverito and Letitia James, among others, is that because the limit to large sugary drinks applies to restaurants but not many bodegas, supermarkets and candy stores, it sets up an unfair advantage.

Here’s the apparent theory. You go into a shop for a pizza slice. You’re desperate for more than 16 ounces of soda—not so desperate that you’ll buy two or three sodas at the parlor, which would still be permissible, but just thirsty enough to take the slice into the bodega next door and wait on line again to buy a large amount of soda in one container. Or you are so determined to have a Big Gulp that you’ll choose your meal based on the available drink size.

Jimmy Alix, who works at an East Harlem candy store barely wide enough to squeeze in two-liter bottles of soda, is not expecting a rush of business from the pizza shop across the street or the other two a block away from his shop on Lexington Avenue and 124th Street.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “People are going to buy whatever size they have there.”

At least three other nearby places would be permitted to sell large sodas: a small grocery, another candy store and a Pathmark. Large soda consumption would undoubtedly continue, but some people would clearly drink less and, perhaps as important, the debate has likely made many people more aware of how many empty calories they drink.

Former Gov. David Paterson tried to talk truth to powerful bodegas and others a few years ago with a soda tax, but Big Sugar beat him. An industry ad back then showed a small grocery owner saying his customers calculate their food bills down to the penny. It was meant to trigger outrage that working-class people would pay more, but it really showed that the tax would lead to healthier choices.

Another of the absurd arguments by lobbyists and opponents is that it limits free choice. Although not a goal of the Bloomberg plan, it would actually expand choice in places like movie theaters.

The misnamed group leading the opposition backed in part by movie theater chains, New Yorkers for Beverage Choices, didn’t have anything to say about their effort to keep limits on consumer choice.

At least one opponent “expert” said there’s no proof that people will take in fewer calories. It shouldn’t take an Ivy League professor to point out the obvious—people tend to drink all that they are served—but it did.

“The science on this is quite clear:  As people are served larger portions, they generally consume more food,” said Kelly Brownell, director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity.

The Council members do care about the problem—James said she sees obesity in her Central Brooklyn district every day and it sends her to too many funerals. They’re right that the policy is not a complete solution, and other measures, like youth fitness programs, may be more helpful. But it seems they’re saying that if you don’t do everything you can to battle obesity, don’t do anything.

David Jones, a plan supporter and CEO of the Community Service Society of New York, said he has spent too much of his career trying to improve social services to wait for the perfect idea.

“I have to do something now,” he said at the hearing, “because this is really ripping through poor communities.”

Josh Rogers, contributing editor at Manhattan Media, is a lifelong New Yorker.

Still far from a continuous bikeway and walkway along the East River

“You’re better off on the West Side.”

The man in the bike shop wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know, but since it had been a few years since I had ventured over to Manhattan’s East Side to ride what purports to be a riverside bike path, I figured there might be a good place to get on in the 20s, 30s or 40s.

There isn’t.

I found myself riding into the same unscenic dead ends that I used to whenever I had the urge to give the East River waterfront another try. Until I backtracked at East 35th Street and headed back to ride with the traffic last weekend, it took mere minutes to see several groups of riders forced to do the same thing.

One was a family of six German tourists, ranging in age from about 12 to 70. The father said biking in Germany was “very better.” Looking at the cars whizzing by us on the foreboding FDR Drive, he added, “New York—you can’t ride bikes, you ride cars. Germany, everyone rides bikes.” I might have explored the irony of the country’s apparent aversion to cars in light of the autobahn and Mercedes-Benz, but he had to catch up to his family, and his English probably was not up to it.

The sorry state of affairs on the East Side affects more than just bikers. People who like to stroll, jog and sunbathe would benefit from a better waterfront, as would lots of others. But however big the group of beneficiaries is, they do not make a good argument for government investment in park space during tough economic times. You have to balance it against more pressing needs such as public safety, maintaining infrastructure and education.

Squishy, tree-hugger-type arguments can never survive in austere times, but what should hold up and seldom does is the notion that parks are actually smart economic development investments. Just look at real estate prices around Central Park, Hudson River Park and even the High Line, which surprisingly, has helped spawn luxury buildings even though park visitors generate noise and get close-up views into some of the homes.

The elevated FDR hovers over and haunts the East Side waterfront, making it difficult to make improvements. Civitas, an Upper East Side nonprofit, recently organized an international design competition to “reimagine” the waterfront from East 60th to 125th streets. (The group looked at the more problematic area below 60th Street a year ago.) Most of the top designs, now on display at the Museum of the City of New York, proposed expanding the land out in the river to create enough space for real parks.

It’s easy to dismiss these design competitions as folly, but as an editor who has seen way more than my share of pretty pictures of things that will never be built—at the World Trade Center and elsewhere in Lower Manhattan—I know these efforts can be the first step to making progress eventually.

After the pictures, what you need are savvy advocates, powerful government supporters and large public use. Significant park construction did not begin on Hudson River Park or Governors Island until many people started going there to see how good they were and how great they could be.

Let the East River imagination continue. In the meantime, how about better signs to avoid the dead ends?

Strom Thurmond in the twilight of his tenure. Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons.

“Charlie Rangel might be the Strom Thurmond of Harlem.” It sounded like something one of Rangel’s primary opponents would have said Tuesday just after losing to the congressman, but it was actually said by a staunch supporter, Assemblyman Keith Wright, who made the curious statement to the New York Times at Rangel’s victory party.

Like the late senator from South Carolina, Rangel, 82, has served in Congress for more than four decades. Wright set the bar pretty low for his hero, who is now well on his way to another term after defeating his Democratic opponents Tuesday. Rangel is getting closer to Thurmond’s remarkable longevity, but surely Harlem residents as well as Rangel’s new constituents on the Upper East Side and in the Bronx deserve more vigorous representation than the people of South Carolina got from Thurmond his last few years.   

C-Span devotees will no doubt recall Senate hearings with an ailing Thurmond reading questions without any indication he was comprehending what he was saying, let alone the responses from the witnesses.

Rangel looks to be in much better shape than Thurmond was at the end, so let’s just hope Wright was merely engaging in the classic political maneuver of lowering expectations to make your ally look better when he exceeds them.

What is it with boys and trucks?

by Josh Rogers

The fire truck backed up, and West Side parents scrambled with their little boys to where they hoped the line would start to get on board. Almost immediately, there were over 100 people waiting

Were there any girls at the West Side YMCA’s Touch-a-Truck event a few weeks ago? Certainly, but as my 2-year-old son and I stood on lines to board the big vehicles, I noticed only a few girls waiting with us; most went to the activities that aren’t stereotypically male.

It seems we haven’t come a long way with our babies.

Boys and girls, certainly with exceptions, do, in fact, tend to play differently with different toys. Apparently, the research backs this up across different cultures, although we’re a long way from settling the nature vs. nurture debate on how much male and female behavior is taught.

Lego took some flack this year for its new line marketed to girls. A change.org petition collected nearly 60,000 signatures protesting things like the pieces’ pink colors and a new emphasis on people over buildings. Girls have been playing with Lego for a long time, but they apparently appreciate the new line, judging from reviews of the toys posted on Amazon.com.

“I was delighted that Lego finally came out with something a little girl could get excited about,” was a typical comment from a mother who had played with Lego and bought the new set for her daughter.

I’m sure I wasn’t the spark for my son’s love of trucks. When it comes to wheels, I know a lot more about strollers—even though I may never buy another one, I still check out the new models and colors. I could tell you the type of stroller used by a dozen or so neighborhood children, but I hardly remember the cars my friends or relatives drive.

I now know the difference between a front-end and backhoe loader, and have learned more about trucks in the last year than I ever knew before.

So Isaac’s fascination with big wheels started somewhere else. That’s not to say that dad, mom and others haven’t played a role. Had he been drawn to dresses, dolls and long-haired wigs, I don’t think I would have done anything he’d have to someday tell a therapist, but I’m sure I would not have been as enthusiastic and encouraging as I am about the trucks.

Last weekend, at a small family reunion, my father-in-law, a devoted grandfather, used much more gas than necessary to drive his pickup there for my son and his cousins. All four preschoolers had fun playing in the back of the truck, but the two boys stayed in longer.

On our seven-hour drive back, no easy thing for a toddler, we had the perfect scenery on the last leg. The New Jersey Turnpike’s construction work provided enough excavators, cranes and backhoe loaders to prevent a meltdown.

Josh Rogers, contributing editor at Manhattan Media, is a lifelong New Yorker.

If you are a parent who has to fight off boredom reading to your young child, the humor in Stephen Colbert’s new children’s book is probably enough to do the trick. If you are just an adult Colbert fan, stick with his TV show. The Colbert Report segments previewing the book featuring author Maurice Sendak, who died Tuesday, and the actress and children’s writer Julie Andrews, were much funnier than I Am A Pole (And So Can You).

Colbert’s first foray into children’s literature follows a pole searching for his or her “true pole role” in the world. The rhyming 30-page book is full of double entendres: “I tried and failed at other things/ That I shouldn’t talk about. Like that summer with the phone poles/ Getting totally strung out.”

The book includes what may be Sendak’s last illustration. The final page has a large space for a child to draw a pole next to smaller ones by Sendak and Colbert.

Sendak, in addition to his appearance on Colbert’s show, is a big part of the marketing. His blurbs, “The sad thing is, I like it,” and “terribly supremely ordinary” are featured on the front and back covers.

Some parents, like me, will be put off by the “stripper pole” page with a bikini-clad dancer.

The drawings by Paul Hildebrand, who is falsely credited with inventing collages and founding Cubism on the book jacket, are engaging to children. Wisely the stripper page is opposite a drawing of the pole in a firehouse with a Dalmatian. Hildebrand could have added to the distraction with a fire truck.

My son, just over two, paid attention to  I Am A Pole from beginning to end on the first read although he did not stop and point out objects he recognized as he does with some other books. I was relieved that he didn’t seem to take notice of the stripper. I don’t want to ever have to explain what a “grind” is so it won’t be put in our regular rotation although, Mommy permitting, it’s worth an occasional read.

The jacket promises plenty of sequels, some of which are plausible if book sales justify it.  How the Pole Stole Christmas and Pole Learns About Copyright Infringement appear to be the least likely.

Follow Josh Rogers @JoshRogersNYC.

Children playing in New York City in the 1970s. Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.

The city was less safe then, but parents were also less protective

By Josh Rogers

The name Etan Patz conjures up so much for so many in New York City.

If you’re under 30, it is likely to draw a blank stare, but for many others it’s different, particularly if you were growing up in the city around 1979, when Patz, a 6-year-old Soho boy, disappeared on his first solo trip to school.

“Mom used to say, ‘You’ll end up like Etan Patz and no one will ever see you again’ when I walked too far ahead in NYC as a kid,’” @AlexSalta wrote on Twitter last week. “It worked.”

Patz was a trending topic this week and last as investigators went back to a Soho basement to dig for clues with a new suspect in the case. It’s the kind of story that grips you every time it resurfaces, although it probably didn’t change behaviors as much as people think.

Peggy Schneider, naturally, was thinking about Patz this week, since she was in middle school in Manhattan when the boy disappeared—but then again she thinks about Patz and his parents a lot.

“I can still see his smiling face; I have probably thought about it once a month for my entire life,” she said in a phone interview.

Her friend was Patz’ babysitter, so she had a personal connection, but even that was not enough to change her habits. She still traveled the city on her own as a young teen.

So did I and most of my friends. The city was less safe in the ’80s, yet many parents then were much less protective than they are now.

Columnist Lenore Skenazy got a lot of mileage a few years ago when she wrote about letting her 9-year-old son ride the subway alone, and has since expanded the column into a movement to promote raising “Free-Range Kids.” Her column would never have drawn the uproar 30 years ago that it did in 2008.

I was a few years older than Skenazy’s son when I began riding the subway with a friend, but around the 3rd grade, I began walking to school alone—of course, that simply involved crossing a street that my parents could see from our window. My friends and I would play ball after school with other neighborhood kids, and we managed to do it without refs or adult supervision.

Still, I didn’t have to cross any streets to get to the concrete “field,” and I know things will be different when my son reaches the age when we have to start making these impossible decisions. There is a lot to be said for letting kids figure it out for themselves, but the rub is deciding when to do it and how much to let go.

Schneider’s youngest sister, Zoe, 40, is a year older than Patz would be today. She doesn’t remember being reigned in much growing up, but somewhere between then and now, city parents began tightening the leashes for better and, perhaps, for worse.

She may be more tapped into this generation of New Yorkers than anyone; she is the organizer of Magic Garden, a large monthly party for people who grew up in the city, giving them a chance to meet people who don’t ask “what was that like?”

She used to come home late at night from babysitting gigs when she was young, but her immediate neighborhood in Tudor City was shielded from cars. Now in Harlem, she said “it is really scary” to think about her children someday walking by themselves near so much traffic.

“Babysitting at age 9 is crazy, but it was what it was,” she said. “It all worked out and everyone made it through.”

Not that parents didn’t worry quietly. Mine are fuzzy about how Patz affected their thinking, but my mother does remember me taking the train to high school in the Bronx. It wasn’t all that long after Patz disappeared.

“I always say I spent four years looking out the window,” she told me.

Illustration courtesy of Wiki Commons.

By Josh Rogers
John Edwards’ name resurfaced in the news last week with a report that he was a client of the Upper East Side’s “Millionaire Madam” during his 2008 presidential campaign. Regardless of the truth in the allegation, there was a better reason to bring him up again.
It’s hard to remember, but before the first caucus four years ago, Edwards appeared to have a plausible chance to win the Democratic nomination over the two better-financed candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
All three had roughly similar plans to provide health insurance to more Americans, but Edwards talked about a strategic maneuver he planned to pull in the face of certain Congressional roadblocks. His idea was to introduce a bill to end health coverage for Congress, thus challenging opponents to vote for their health care while denying it to others.
With the two-year anniversary of the passage of President Obama’s health care law coinciding with the Supreme Court debating its legality, congressional opponents have had a chance to revive their “rationing medicine” criticism. It’s as if they believe we live in a country where doctors, not insurance companies, decide on the best treatment for patients.
It may work that way under Congress’s gold-plated health plan, but it is not typical in the United States, where medications, tests and doctor referrals are often held up for approval by insurance companies.
When Republican opponents debated “Obamacare” two years ago, they clung to fantasies about what health care is like for many people with insurance. It was so easy for them to say that Obama’s plan would “lead to rationing” that it sounded like a misstatement borne out of genuine ignorance.
Rationing has been going on for a long time. Bureaucrats do make medical decisions. Those decrees are just not the ones we usually hear about because they are made in the private sector.
It still has not sunk in that Obama’s plan was an outgrowth of what used to be conservative mainstream thinking. The Clintons probably could have gotten a similar plan passed almost 20 years ago, but they rejected Republican counter-proposals. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were not only for Obamacare before they were against it, they were for it before Obama was.
In more recent years, Republican health care plans have become less reality-based.  When Rudy Giuliani ran for president four years ago, he repeatedly said that he would let individuals shop for the best health insurance at the lowest price. While it’s possible to imagine companies getting into bidding wars to insure young people who have no health problems, the free market is not so kind to people with red flags in their medical records.

Health insurance has become so expensive it can often be an overriding factor in families’ job decisions. I left my full-time job a few years ago to take care of my infant son.  It’s something I wanted to do, but it was also something my wife would have wanted to do. The difference was that I worked for a small company with a health plan that would have cost me many thousands of dollars more to add my wife and son. She works for a large corporation which can bargain for better rates—it costs her an extra $10 a week to cover me.

Ours is by no means a hard-luck story. We were fortunate to have options and were able to pick one we liked. For too many others, health costs forces people to make choices they hate and live in fear

That’s the real-world health system Obamacare is trying to change.

Josh Rogers, contributing editor at Manhattan Media, is a lifelong New Yorker. Follow him at @JoshRogersNYC.

Josh Rogers, contributing editor at Manhattan Media, is a lifelong New Yorker. Follow him @JoshRogersNYC.