The Times reports up on News Corp.’s media consolidation strategy in Brooklyn.

On 24 March, the Landmarks Commission will hold a public hearing on two local designations – Williamsburg’s first historic district on Fillmore Place, and Bushwick’s Ulmer Brewery.

Best Western is big on Brooklyn – in addition to a hotel going up on Flatbush Avenue near the Manhattan Bridge, they have hotels planned for Sunset Park and Bed-Stuy. The Bed-Stuy version (at Atlantic and Nostrand) is described thusly:

[Williams] said the exterior design is “a pleasing blend of materials — red brick, cast white stone, concrete block, stucco, glass and polished granite panel systems — that have been expertly coordinated into what will most assuredly be the center of attention for the entire block.”

Most assuredly. Clearly this gem is from the more-is-more school of design.

Yes, he did. And most of the money discussed here is pretty routine stuff. Some of it is even bargain basement – 25,000 copies of the Zagat Survey for less than a $1 each? Staff yoga classes for $450? Even $50,000 for office furniture doesn’t buy that much.

The real news may be that some vendors also contribute to Markowitz’s campaign coffers, but if that’s the point of the article, why wait until the end to spring it?

What’s more interesting is that DN’s comment section seems to censor out the word “ass” – even when its part of the word “class” (comment #5) or “assistant” (comment #1).

Stupid rule.

There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to bring a bottle of wine to a restaurant. (I can understand not allowing a bottle of Cuervo, or a keg to be wheeled in.) SLA exists mainly to ensure that excise taxes are collected, which a) fills the State’s coffers, and b) fills the coffers of the liquor lobby, distributors and distillers, et al. Maybe if SLA gave a shit about actual quality and safety of life issues when issuing licenses their position on BYOB would come across as a bit less hypocritical.

[via Brownstoner]

Maybe we (as in “We the People”) should buy the 20% of AIG that we don’t own and fire the all the geniuses behind the meltdown.

Yes, the bonuses are probably legitimate, in that they are contractually sound. And yes, the AIG bailout was pretty clearly a necessary evil, given how many other institutions and states might have gone down as a result of playing the credit default swap sweepstakes (and it was nothing more than a sweepstakes, with AIG playing with house odds).

But Barney Frank is right – “These people may have a right to their bonuses, they don’t have a right to their jobs forever”. The “we-need-the-bonuses-to-retain-good-talent” trope is a bit ridiculous when you consider that there is a hell of a lot of good Wall Street talent sitting idle right now. The vast majority of whom probably had nothing to do with an engineering a global credit meltdown. But maybe there is some merit in retaining AIG’s good talent, if for no other reason than that they are the ones who best know how much they’ve fucked everything up. (Besides, they’ll be easier to find when it comes time to indict them.)