Columnists: Nicole Gelinas

Latest Columns

• Head in the clouds

  One World Trade Center may symbolize not victory over terror but miserable commutes.  The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns both the skyscraper and the transportation links between the two states,...   October 22, 2012

  From Oped Columnists

• Tip for transit bosses: Don’t throw city’s middle class under the bus

  It was easier when you could grab a handful of tokens out of your change jar. Yesterday, the MTA announced possible fare-hike combinations that are more complicated than bubble-era mortgages.  The MTA can keep its...   October 16, 2012

  From Local

• Leave New York alone!

  One issue went unmentioned during the debates so far: cities. Neither President Obama, Gov. Mitt Romney nor their running mates thought the nation’s urban population was worth a phrase. This omission is not an outrage,...   October 14, 2012

  From Oped Columnists

• Losing NY’s golden goose

  ‘Five years after the beginning of the financial crisis,” Wall Street “remains in transition,” state comptroller Tom DiNapoli reported Tuesday. The industry is “still working through the fallout from the financial...   October 11, 2012

  From Oped Columnists

• Bloomageddon

  The final budget season of Mayor Mike’s reign is starting — and he’s going out the way he came in: Absent radical moves in the next nine months, the next mayor will face permanent multibillion-dollar deficits — the same...   September 21, 2012

  From Oped Columnists

• The worst scandal

  The scandal surrounding Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez is about more than the groping, more even than the coverup. It’s about Albany’s lack of checks and balances when it comes to sending taxpayer money out the door....   September 17, 2012

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• O’s stimulus & The rotten Jobs news

  Friday’s job report was a post-convention headache for President Obama. But it’s also a hangover from early in his term: He could’ve avoided this problem had he thought harder about stimulus three years ago.  Private...   September 10, 2012

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• New Orleans owes W

  With Hurricane Isaac menacing New Orleans as Republicans meet in Tampa, the national media are reminding everyone how badly President George W. Bush screwed up the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But Bush’s real...   August 30, 2012

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• A foul fare ruling

  Their reaction to last week’s court ruling against the MTA’s payroll tax makes you wonder why we have state Republicans. Why are these supposed conservatives relying on one rogue judge to solve problems that elected...   August 28, 2012

  From Oped Columnists

• Cuomo’s big bank heist

  Is the Cuomo administration’s rough justice for a British bank meant to fight global money-laundering — or grab cash to plug New York’s bottomless budget hole?  Two weeks ago, New York levied explosive accusations...   August 22, 2012

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• To buy a new bridge

  New York is getting a new Tappan Zee Bridge, finally — and Gov. Cuomo is rightly getting the credit. But, in five years or so, the Thruway Authority could get the blame. Cuomo has made building the bridge the...   August 13, 2012

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• This benefits bill is sick

  A year ahead of the mayoral race, pro-“labor” advocates are trying to strongarm City Council Speaker Christine Quinn into holding a vote on a bill requiring employers to offer sick leave. Quinn should keep resisting, as...   August 07, 2012

  From Oped Columnists

• Bumps down the track

  The MTA’s recent message to riders is that half a decade of “doomsdays” — regular fiscal crises and too-frequent service cuts — is over. But the doom — in the form of debt and employee benefits — hasn’t gone far. And...   July 30, 2012

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• Fight protester cruelty

  Last week, after a hansom cab driver was caught on video yelling anti-gay and anti-black slurs, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn demanded that carriage drivers sign up for sensitivity training. Sure — but the...   July 25, 2012

  From Oped Columnists

• Pension tension & the crime spike

  Crime is up — and cops are down. City taxpayers are paying so much for yesterday’s crime-fighting that they can barely afford today’s. A bloody start to July reminded New Yorkers about the bad old days: 21 people killed...   July 16, 2012

  From Oped Columnists

• Tappan Zee detour

  Will the new Tappan Zee get built before the old one falls down? Reading the news and blogs, you’d think no. A dispute between Gov. Cuomo (a Democrat) and Westchester County Exec Rob Astorino (a Republican) could...   July 13, 2012

  From Oped Columnists

• Fifty shades of pay

  What are you doing for the summer? New York state’s public authorities are borrowing — nearly $1.9 billion in new debt from now ’til September. In a decade, this debt has soared 35 percent, to $141.9 billion. And it’s...   July 09, 2012

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• Crime wave below

  The NYPD has taken fire (literally and figuratively) from all fronts lately. But to see how hard it is to keep New Yorkers safe, look at the latest subway-crime stats.  Transit crime is up: Major felonies in May were 12...   July 02, 2012

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• Hello, one-shot city

  As she stood with Mayor Bloomberg on Monday to herald a “balanced” $70.3 billion budget, Council Speaker Christine Quinn showed that she can play Bloomberg’s stunt of looking responsible while showering everyone with...   June 27, 2012

  From Oped Columnists

• The Tappan Zee mystery

  This summer, Gov. Cuomo is supposed to announce a financial plan for building a new Tappan Zee Bridge. But hot weather won’t cook up a miracle:  The numbers don’t add up any more than they did in spring.  The risk is...   June 25, 2012

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• The giveaway gang

  Yesterday, the Democratic mayoral candidates debuted at the first “roundtable” ahead of election 2013. The gang didn’t so much debate as present an hour-long lesson in how not to run for mayor.  It’s never a good day...   June 13, 2012

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• The next bank-bailout blame game

  Twenty-three months after President Obama gave us Wall Street “reform,” the results are in — and they’re not pretty. The Dodd-Frank law didn’t end “too big to fail”; it just gave Washington someone new to blame for the...   June 07, 2012

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• The jobs of NYC’s future

  New York City can take pride in having replaced all the private jobs it lost in the ’08 crash — but pride may goeth before the fall. Too many of Gotham’s pols (including would-be mayors) take economic success as an...   May 29, 2012

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• Taylored for the unions

  Last week, a set of arbitrators gave a small MTA union, covering Staten Island and Queens bus workers, the same generous contract that a different arbitration panel awarded to the Transport Workers Union three years ago...   May 21, 2012

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• Bankers & mayors

  JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon’s admission last week that the bank blew $2 billion — maybe mor e — on a “terrible egregious” trading mistake isn’t just a warning that President Obama hasn’t fixed finance. It’s also...   May 15, 2012

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• After Mike, the deluge

  Mayor Mike unveiled his second-to-last budget yesterday, musing over how many of “these things we’ve done together.” But his budget was as much about the future — and things aren’t looking bright for the next mayor. For...   May 04, 2012

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• Wages of Quinn

  What’s worse — screwing up the city’s economy through left-wing social engineering, or pretending to? New Yorkers should find cold comfort in the fact that City Council Speaker — and mayoral wannabe — Christine Quinn...   May 01, 2012

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• Andrew’s transit travesty

  Bad news for straphangers: Gov. Cuomo has named ex-Gov. David Paterson to the MTA board. This is business-as-usual New York — on track to a crumbling transit system.  The governor said Paterson would be a “powerful...   April 25, 2012

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• Zero to crash speed: NY’s next peril

  Four years after the 2008 financial crisis, Wall Street still isn’t fixed. Yes, it looks healthier, thanks to the bailouts. But it also seemed healthy before the mortgage bubble popped. When the bailout bubble bursts,...   April 23, 2012

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• A bogus comparison

  New York’s private-sector service unions have been going gangbusters — inking two great deals for their workers in two months. Congrats to them. The danger for New York is that public-sector unions will point to these...   April 16, 2012

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