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The city often uses tax breaks as incentives to entice businesses (and the jobs they provide) to stay in town, which is how they were able to keep Jet Blue here. In this way, the tax breaks are like the city's desperate pleas during pillow talk, the equivalent of Mayor Bloomberg cooing breathlessly in the ear of his paramour would-be investors. Taken in that light, it's completely appropriate that several high-end nudie bars have been getting such tax breaks under an obscure property tax exemption.

Under the exemption, known as the Industrial and Commercial Incentive Program, the owners of Manhattan's Penthouse Executive Club saved more than $37,000 on their tax bill this year. Many businesses have been getting the breaks for nearly a decade: Starlets Gentleman's Club in Astoria saved over $10,000 this year, and the recently closed Hunts Point Triangle in the Bronx saved more than $12,000 this year.

The Daily News is confused as to why strip clubs are getting these incentives; Manhattan borough President Scott Stringer agreed, telling them, "We shouldn't be giving tax breaks to firms that would otherwise operate fine without them, and that certainly includes strip clubs." But think of the dozens of scantily-clothed jobs created, shimmied, and maintained! Think of what a boon this is for the pole-making industry! These places are the only thing standing in the way of the dollar bill becoming extinct, for chrissakes!

Some will never see the bigger picture though: "Subsidizing strip clubs shows how far afield the program has gone from its original intent," said Bettina Damiani, director of the economic development watchdog group Good Jobs New York. If only we had a Governor who had both an appreciation for unmerited tax breaks and the skilled eye for unusual views and acrobatics.