Results tagged “governmentaccountabilityoffice”

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery at 1 Broadway in Manhattan, a person under a train at the Queensboro Plaza station in Queens, and a child struck by a city bus on Parkside Ave. in Brooklyn.
• Thieves are targeting open houses across the Upper West Side--stealing personal possessions after gaining access to homes. Oddly, one of the two woman thieves is suspected to actually be a man in drag.
• Chants of "No justice, no noodles!" were heard outside of Ollies on West 84th St. this week as workers protested substandard wages.
• NJ Governor Jon Corzine said that he'd risk his job to ensure the state's fiscal stability. Essentially, he's willing to raise state tolls even if it costs him the next election.
• A chart shows the relative sizes of different social networking sites (Yahoo! Mail is HUGE!).
• Who orders bacon with their veggie burgers?
• A survey conducted by the Government Accountability Office testing airport security at 19 facilities across the country showed that bomb-like materials could be smuggled through checkpoints at every airport.
• These pictures make us want to lobby for U.S. currency with NYC buildings on them.

Gothamist friend and occasional Opinionist Andrew Bast has recently pulled off a nice relaunch of his site, The New York Inquirer ("We don't break the news; we put it back together") and in the process put back together some interesting stuff worth checking out. This week, for instance, has focused pretty much exclusively on the diamond trade including a five-part series on the darker side of 47th Street, one of the many hearts of the diamond trade.

Various federal officials want to take back $169 million in 9/11 funds because they went unused. Now Gothamist understands that the government is looking for money all over the place, but trying to take $169 million from NYC just seems wrong. Especially when the money was earmarked for victims. Which is not to say that the NY city and state governments aren't at fault for not figuring out how to distribute the money in a timely manner (and the Government Accountability Office reportedly found "$44 million was improperly spent by New York bureaucrats who failed to follow guidelines" because the money was spent towards victims, not towards administrative costs). Oh, and then another $125 million for other victims' funds is being targetted to be withdrawn because the amount of claims for funds was much smaller than the $125 million. New York politicians on both sides of the aisle are in a tizzy, claiming that President Bush promised (he promised, guys!) not just $20 billion, but actually $21.4 billion, while his spokesman says that there's no money beyond the $20 billion. Gothamist would make a crack about the cost of the Iraqi War, but we'll refrain, as we will never, ever, ever understand how the government works. And, yes, New York might be money grubbing, but, damn it, we ought to be.