A City for the Very Rich and the Very Poor

Right before I moved to New York in 2000, someone told me an interesting observation on New York City: it’s a city for the very rich and the very poor.

When I got here I began to grasp what she meant. It seems everyone you meet here is either a struggling student/artist/actor/writer or they’re an established an successful adult with a fabulous apartment on fifth avenue. The outrageous cost of living in this city makes it hard for a middle class person with an average salary to survive, and it seems that in this city you’re either living in squalor or you’re living it up.

With this in mind it wasn’t surprising when the Brookings Institute published a study today on the decline of middle-income neighborhoods in metropolitan America. The study showed that New York has a smaller share of middle-income families than any other major metropolitan area in the country.

Fiesty Exchange in Vienna

There's an interesting article in today’s Financial Times about the emerging European assertiveness toward the US. It is clear that the wounds of the Iraq war are not going to heal any time soon, and a change in Washington’s tone toward Brussels isn’t going to bring Old Europe back into the “lapdog camp.”

Nowhere was this more evident than in today’s fiesty exchange between Bush and European reporters during Bush's visit to Vienna to meet with EU leaders. Although he opened his statements with an emphasis on how far he had come from the days in which his administration had shown disdain for Europe and its diplomacy, pointed questions from reporters soon drove him into a defensive posture, the following being two of the more nasty retorts:

Europe Caught

The big story today is the Council of Europe report implicating 14 European countries – including Britain, Germany and even Sweden – of aiding or being complicit in the illegal kidnapping and transfer of suspects by the US. Swiss Senator Dick Marty, in a press release accompanying the report, said despite their protestations after the Washington Post revealed the existence of secret detention centers in Eastern Europe, certain individual European governments knew of the plan.

What the report doesn’t include is hard evidence of the existence of these detention centers or the transfers, but concludes it is nearly certain they exist in Poland and Romania. The reaction by those two governments has been laughable, with some representatives claiming to be incredulous that such an outrageous accusation has been made, and others candidly admitting that the findings are true.

One thing is for certain: this entire debacle will cause lasting damage to US-Europe relations, and European countries will be extremely hesitant to cooperate with the US when it requests assistance in the future. In fact, I suspect some countries, like Germany, may question whether the US base presence in the country can still be justified, and may insist that these bases be put under NATO control.

Moving to Switzerland?

It’s been quite some time since I’ve written. The reason is I’ve been incredibly busy at work, which certainly isn’t a bad thing. It tends to be feast or famine here, the feast (of work, or famine of free time, depending on how you look at it) comes around deadline time, and then after deadline passes it relaxes again. That sounded remarkably gastrointestinal.

Interesting side note, my friend Alison just got hired as a new reporter here. I’m officially recruiting people for my publication. Go me.

In other interesting news, my family is moving to Switzerland. Strange eh? Not my entire family to be precise. My father and 16-year-old brother are moving there. My parents are divorced and my mom lives in Connecticut with her husband.

The city they're moving to is Zurich, Switzerland's largest city in the Northwest of the country near the border with Germany. I actually just wrote an article last month about how the city was just named the best in the world for quality of life (Geneva was second). My dad was going to have to move to Zurich eventually, he works for a Swiss company in an executive position and has moved up over the years to the point where he should really be operating out of the company’s headquarters in Zurich. But, he had convinced them to allow him to work out of his Connecticut office until my brother, who lives with my dad, graduated high school. About a month ago they changed their mind, and said he had to come to Zurich. So they’re going to do it.

Cheney's Russia Rant

At the “Common Vision for a Common Neighborhood” (sounds very common) conference in Lithuania yesterday,Vice President Dick Cheney essentially told a gathering of former Soviet and Eastern Bloc countries that Russia is an anti-democratic menace to Democracy and has a decision to make very soon: to be either an ally or an enemy to the West.

"From religion and the news media, to advocacy groups and political parties, the government has unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of the people," Cheney bellowed. He talked of the problems facing a country that, “has compromised the rule of law” and has “little official respect for human rights, a corrupt beaurocracy, and an intimidated press corps.”

Cheney knows that Russia-bashing is a popular sport in the former Eastern Bloc countries. For the last 15 years the former Eastern Bloc countries have been worshipfully devoted to the United States in a misconception that America single-handedly ended Soviet domination over them. But as they join the EU, neo-cons are increasingly concerned that they will fall into the European camp of geopolitical thought and develop interests contrary to those of the United States over the long term. These eastern bloc and ex-soviet countries were some of the most vocal and demonstrative supporters of the Iraq war, for instance. But of late that support has been slipping.

Best Gas Price Medicine? Build Public Transportation

Americans need to get something through their heads. The price of gas is not going to go down to $2 a gallon again. Ever. Period.

The emergence of China as a global power has and will fundamentally change our world, and we need to adjust to it. And part of that adjustment will be paying real prices for oil.

Congress is getting all in a tizzy about these gas prices, pointing their fingers this way and that. But Republicans seem to be forgetting about the enormous gift they gave the oil industry last year, an energy bill that gave huge subsidies and tax breaks to big oil. Last year the five largest oil companies, Exxon Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips took home more than $111 billion in profits. As CNN’s John Roberts noted recently, that's greater than the GDP of 174 of the world's countries

To a large degree the US has brought this upon itself by not investing in an even rudimentary public transporation system. We are a nation obsessed with the car. So much so that in all the recent news reports asking how high gas would have to go before Americans stopped driving, noone’s thought to point out the obvious: They can’t stop driving no matter how much you charge for gas, because they have no other way to get around. Gas could go up to $20 and they’d still have to pay it.