Five Borough Plan?

There's an interesting story that ran on NY1 yesterday about a vacant shopping center in Queens: "Empty storefronts are becoming common in the current recession, but one Queens shopping center has had vacant stores for years and no sign of new tenants..."Before it was like 42nd Street around here, very busy," said local Olga Hill. Now residents call the center a ghost town, after more than a dozen stores closed in recent years with no other businesses taking their place."

This is the underlying reality behind the Mike Bloomberg misdirection on how he's going to revive the city's economy that cratered-particularly in the neighborhoods of the five boroughs-under his less than watchful eye. The reality? The mayor's tax and regulatory policies have exacerbated the problems of small business-and his current plans simply are palliatives that don't address the essence of the severity of the economic issues he himself has helped to create.

This relentless campaign barrage should be the next agenda item for a newly invigorated press corp. They will find, if they simply take the time to take a close look, that the Bloomberg five boro plan resembles the love instrument of the Master of the House in Les Miz:

"Cunning little brain, regular Voltaire,
Thinks he's quite a lover but there's not much there."