The whining begins

The Mayor's Imperial Guard disappointed at the fact they will
not be at the groundbreaking for the new stadium. Drat that
Shelly Silver

This is a compare and contrast exercise. See whom you believe:

Shelly Silver: Wrong, wrong, wrong

In the end, there was no reasoning with Sheldon Silver, nor was the Assembly speaker open to good-faith negotiations. Dead set on smothering development on Manhattan's West Side, he voted down the $2.2 billion stadium and convention center planned for the area. His stubborn, high-handed wrong-headedness was breathtaking.


Silver created many losers and only one winner. Thanks to him, New Yorkers lose out on getting a state-of-the-art arena that would have more than paid for itself through increased tax revenue; subway and bus riders lose out on as much as $2 billion for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority; construction workers lose out on thousands of jobs; the hotel and tourism industry loses out on an influx of convention visitors, and the city loses a shot at hosting the 2012 Olympic Games.

Translation= Mort Zuckerman cannot cash in on the Stadium being a few blocks from the Daily News headquarters.

A position not one of the DN's columnists supported, by the way. Mike Lupica quotes Silver in reply. And as replies go, it's a pretty good one.

Then Shelly Silver hit them with a left hook like something out of "Cinderella Man."

"Considering our constitutional obligation to provide each and every child with a sound, basic education, our moral obligation to rebuild and revitalize lower Manhattan, and our public obligation to provide a safe, affordable and efficient mass transit system, I cannot in good conscience cast my vote for the proposal before us today."

Then he went in and abstained, which was the same as voting no, because Bloomberg needed a unanimous 3-0 vote from the PACB to get $300 million from the state of New York to help build Woody Johnson his football stadium.

So now, Silver's on the phone. He said he was hearing that Bloomberg, as a way of blowing off steam, was even threatening to go to the United States Olympic Committee and ask that New York's bid for the 2012 Games be withdrawn.

He was asked, "So he can put it all on you?"

Silver said, "And put it all on me." There was a pause and then he said, "It's all right. I have broad shoulders." He was ready to shoot the thing out of the water on Friday afternoon, and let both the mayor and governor know that. Bloomberg and Pataki asked him to take the weekend. It gave them more time to throw money at Lower Manhattan, after having years to do that and still being unable to get a shovel in the ground. These guys think they can buy everybody.

"But I kept telling the mayor the same thing," Shelly Silver said last night. "Building that football stadium doesn't make sense. It just doesn't make sense. And at that point, he finally revealed himself, I thought. He said to me, 'I need the stadium to develop the West Side.' And I said to him, 'I have never believed that is true.'"

It isn't true. It has never been true, no matter how many times the mayor said it. In the end, the shell game Shelly Silver was seeing was even more elaborate than we imagined. It wasn't just the Olympics being tied to the Jets stadium. It was his belief that Bloomberg really wants to shift the financial center of New York City from Lower Manhattan to the West Side. Silver would not go along.

The delays at Ground Zero are unconscionable and need to be addressed. A stadium should come long after that.

And does Bloomberg really think anyone gives a shit if he withdraws his fucking bid. I'll give him a stamp to do it.

posted by Steve @ 9:27:00 AM