By Jim Benton

New Yorker

Bizarro by Dan Piraro, Nov. 7, 1998

Today, bollards are concealed as everything from flower pots and seating areas to dustbins and sculpture works. At Arsenal's Emirates Stadium, the 12ft-high concrete letters spelling out the club's name outside the venue are part of the anti-terror defences – and now a popular place for selfies. Belfast's Titanic Museum has bollards dressed up as deck seats at its forecourt.

Gary Larsen, The Far Side, October 15, 1986

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily barred the Trump administration from cutting funding from the MTA and New York state over their repeated refusals to shut down congestion pricing.

The ruling from the U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan federal court came one day before Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had warned that the federal government could begin implementing “compliance actions” to delay approvals or withhold funding on key projects in New York state.

Liman spoke out in favor of state sovereignty before issuing a temporary restraining order that, until June 9, is supposed to stop the Trump administration from engaging in any punitive actions against the Manhattan vehicle-tolling program that the feds have repeatedly tried to terminate.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28804484

A 12-person jury has been seated in the federal corruption trial of former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada and his ex-chief of staff Cade Cothren.

Lawyers late into the afternoon April 23 were still debating alternates for the jury, but the trial is expected to move forward April 24 with opening statements.

Casada and Cothren each face up to 20 years in prison for charges including bribery and money laundering tied to an alleged kickback scheme involving a fake political mailer company.

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A 12-person jury has been seated in the federal corruption trial of former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada and his ex-chief of staff Cade Cothren.

Lawyers late into the afternoon April 23 were still debating alternates for the jury, but the trial is expected to move forward April 24 with opening statements.

Casada and Cothren each face up to 20 years in prison for charges including bribery and money laundering tied to an alleged kickback scheme involving a fake political mailer company.

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New reports have begun to circulate among city lawmakers and planners that set the table for major housing reforms. Conclusions describe a city lacking sufficient supply and housing diversity, a problem attributed to limited and outdated zoning restrictions ripe for reform. City planners are expected to deliver two more major studies — a unified housing strategy and an ecological conservation report — as well as formal policy recommendations to the Metro Council in June.

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When the bollards go up, the people come out. The freedom for Gaslamp goers to walk throughout Fifth Avenue without the fear of cars coming through is just one of the factors of its bustling nightlife. But as of February 1st, the bollards stopped being installed due to budget issues with the city.

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Andrew Cuomo Still Doesn’t Get Why His Workplace Harassment Was Offensive

On Monday, New York Magazine dropped a new Andrew Cuomo profile that details a purported (and partial) “reinvention” during his campaign for New York City Mayor. Earlier this month, writer David Freedlander followed the disgraced former Governor of New York, Zionist, accused sex pest, and proponent of a police state, on a series of campaign stops in Harlem. The takeaways? According to Cuomo, progressive ideology is the most pressing problem in the city, and he still thinks saying “ciao bella” to his female employees is molto bene.

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If Adams was troubled by the unit’s actions, he hasn’t shown it. Instead, for more than two years, the mayor has repeatedly championed the CRT and his allies who run it, even as NYPD officials have warned its policing has been too aggressive.

In 2023, for example, Pontillo wrote a scathing internal audit after finding that some CRT officers were wrongfully stopping New Yorkers and failing to document the incidents. Weeks later, the mayor took to Instagram to boost the unit. “Turning out with the team,” he wrote, showing a photo of him wearing a wide smile and khaki pants, CRT’s official uniform.

The mayor has been so closely connected to the unit, former senior officials said, that at one point he had special access to a livestream of the team’s body-worn cameras.

“The unit effectively reported directly to City Hall,” recalled a former top NYPD official with direct knowledge of the interactions, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal. “If you raised concerns, they would go directly to the mayor. All the time. It was insanity.”

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So much is going on in the world, but I think it’s important to take time to savor simple moments of pure pleasure — like watching state Rep. Todd Warner (R-Chapel Hill) complaining about people at the state Capitol wearing wires.

Y’all know that I am gleefully following the soap opera that is the Phoenix Solutions scandal. For those of you who haven’t been following, let me try to quickly bring you up to speed. Oh Lord, even that sentence makes me laugh. OK, back in the day, Republican Rep. Glen Casada was the state's House speaker. Casada was like if an oil slick and a used car salesman had a baby. He had an aide, Cade Cothren, who was like if the cocaine bear and Gavin McInnes had a baby and abandoned it before teaching it about good facial hair. Casada is all, “I will make my friends and enemies kneel before me on my quest for power.” Cothren’s out here dropping all kinds of racist and sexist slurs, and for reasons that have never been adequately explained, regularly calling Casada “daddy” and helping Casada on his quest.

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An actual, good-ol'-fashioned train robbery!