I was easily bribed as a child. If I was good, mom would give me a TV dinner if she and dad were going out. I loved the fried chicken and medicinal mashed potato. It was a win-win. This election season we’re bombarded with bribes. Some New Yorkers are ...
I was easily bribed as a child. If I was good, mom would give me a TV dinner if she and dad were going out. I loved the fried chicken and medicinal mashed potato. It was a win-win.
This election season we’re bombarded with bribes.
Some New Yorkers are slated to receive almost $200 before the midterm elections. Checks ranging from $100 to $200 in Governor Hochul’s Protecting Our Wallets Energy Rebate [POWER] program will go to 8.2 million of us. The $1billion program is designed to ease high utility and energy costs. Eligibility is based on 2024 New York State resident income tax returns.
I don’t sneeze at $100, but FYI: According to AI, “the average electric bill for a 1-bedroom apartment in New York City ranges from $90 to $175 per month during mild months, but can spike to $200 to $400+ per month in the summer if you run air conditioning frequently.” Friends have received theirs. I haven’t seen mine.
President Trump sent $90 to seniors to offset Medicare Part B premiums. The standard deduction from Social Security is $202.90/month, though depending on income can reach $694.
Do you think these incentives are enough for Republicans or Democrats to switch their midterm votes?
I’ve written about the Trump Dividend–$5,000 we’ll get if Republicans win both House and Senate. As he skirts the country to inspire Republican votes, he’s promising everything from pardons to $500 Obamacare refund checks. In Kansas. farmers were offered an $8 billion aid package to help offset higher diesel costs.
“Trump announced the Iowa project [on Monday, October 19] at an Oval Office event featuring Senate candidate Rep. Ashley Hinson and many others. It was for a new $15 billion Mesabi Metallics steel plant in Lee County in eastern Iowa — one that could create thousands of jobs and make Iowa the second-largest steel-producing state in the United States,” according to Aaron Blake, CNN.com. He added, “The story is quite similar with another Trump announcement on Wednesday: that South Korea would spend more than $50 billion on a struggling natural gas pipeline in Alaska.”
Do you remember receiving or hearing about so many bribes at election time? Are they enough for people to change their vote?
Caramelli cat, Cassie dog, Prunella the almost dachshund and Cat were my love animals. I’m lucky to live in a building overflowing with dogs to pat in lobby and elevator. A walk around residential city neighborhoods is a treat especially at traditional dog walking hours.
The thought of being forced to give up a beloved family member for lack of funds to feed him or her would have broken my heart. Those who have been blessed with furry family members can’t imagine life without them. But if budgets are stretched to the breaking point, feeding them becomes impossible. Losing a source of comfort at such a sad time is cruel.
Today NYC is launching a program to deter this potential heartbreak. The Mayor, NYC Council, Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare and Department of Social Service are funding free pet food at 22 city food pantries in the boroughs. Halleluiah!
I suspect if pets have not enhanced your life, you might think this is a waste of money. I think it’s a humane and wonderful improvement.
Caramelli cat took advantage of the spring sun in upstate New York.
I’d planned to write a post today about the gruesome December live-streamed public execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, former U.S. Army psychiatrist who killed colleagues at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. Firing squad and streaming were ordered by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
This morning the president put the kybosh on the streaming. I guess it’s too much to ask him to deep six the firing squad. It’s so 19th century third world. While he’s at it, he might question the judgment of the mastermind for such a ferocious idea.
Might this poll have something to do with the decision? “A new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll finds 80% of Americans oppose live‑streaming the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, while a slim majority (53%) support the execution itself,” according to AI.
Also, “Countries that currently allow execution by firing squad include China, North Korea, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Yemen, Belarus, Nigeria, Somalia, Uganda, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, and parts of the United States such as Utah and South Carolina.”
AI reports: “As of May 2026, 42% of U.S. adults identify as ‘pro-life.’” I wonder how many of them land in the yes column for capital punishment.
Once a proponent of the death penalty for beastly, dastardly crimes I changed my mind about 30 years ago. What do you think of it? Does a firing squad give you pause?
All of a sudden, I noticed a bunch of things that inspired this post. Kudos, New York!
I just wrote about two consumer protection initiatives that apply only to New York: a law banning personalized pricing so a company can’t spy on consumers to determine how much to overcharge and the click to cancel rule for NYC. This makes it as easy to cancel as to order subscriptions.
A printed information guide for the midterm elections that’s sent registered voters by NYC Votes is clearly written, not in the convoluted, confusing voice of some lawyers that we used to struggle through. In addition to the standard foreign languages, it’s available in Arabic, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Polish, Punjabi, Russian and Urdu.
Last week I discovered I’d lost my OMNY card, a contactless “tap‑and‑pay” fare system for NYC’s subway, buses, and other MTA services.It must have slipped out of my handbag as I left the bus. Because I have automatic renewal, I blocked the account until I could get to one of the subway stations that offer replacement cards. Customer service on the phone worked like a dream. My suggestion is that there be additional venues to get replacement cards. I was on the upper east side and my nearest choices were the 125th or 42nd Street subway stations. Thank goodness for Apple Wallet that paid for transport to Grand Central.
Congrats to the Imperial Theatre on Broadway where I recently attended a [fabulous] show. One of my friends wields a walker. The ushers became a team of professional guardian angels—one announcing our arrival via walkie talkie to others inside. We were expertly guided to our seats.
“A nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there,” will never go away. I love it here and am filled with pride when things work as they have been lately.
Have you noticed an uptick in service where you live?
I heard an eye-opening segment on Brian Lehrer’s morning show on WNYC recently where he interviewed Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative and the author of a new book “Gouged: The End of a Fair Price–and What That Means for Your Wallet.”
Her mission is to restore honesty to the economy.
Some highlights of their conversation follow.
Her findings illustrate that inflation doesn’t only fall at the feet of tariffs and war. Pricing is carefully calibrated to reflect how much a company can get away with. Using AI and other tech aids companies are reinventing the ripoff. Pricing is now a highly scientific engineered skill. Loyalty programs and junk fees raise prices.
Did you know that on rainy days, children’s museums charge more as does Expedia when potential customers log on from wealthy zip codes? Walmart has applied for a patent to allow smartphone technology to add to the price of mayo when a customer puts tuna on the shopping list.
She wrote about an initiative in collaboration with Consumer Reports involving Instacart. Some 400 volunteers ordered the same 23 items like eggs and cereal and the prices were different –as much as 23 percent–for 75 percent of the items. Two weeks after the report was published Instacart stopped running the experiment.
What’s to be done? She praised a law that’s ready for NY Governor Kathy Hochul to sign that bans the “creepy” practice of personalized pricing which allows a company to spy on consumers to decide how much to overcharge each. She said there was some movement in other states.
Lehrer and Owens congratulated New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection Commissioner Samuel A.A. Levine for the first “Click to Cancel” rule, which bans subscription traps, making it as easy to cancel as to sign up. She called the practice “set it and forget it.”
On the program, she described a landlord price fixing algorithm and one that impacted the cost of gas.
Shopping shouldn’t be exhausting, she said. There should be a Shopper’s Bill of Rights as proposed by her Groundwork Collaborative, “a proposed 12‑point set of consumer protections aimed at curbing hidden fees, dynamic/surveillance pricing, and barriers to cancellations in today’s tech‑driven marketplace.”
“AI should work for consumers, not companies,” she said.
Have you suspected this all along or are Owens’s findings news to you?
