How A NYC Authority Lost $476,400 Of Your Money On eBay

In these dire economic times, citizens are being asked to sacrifice in terms of taxes and city/state programs. The Mayor is asking for this, the Governor is asking for this and in the Legislature, at least Majority Leader Smith is on their side for this type of 'shared sacrifice.' With that, you would hope that the money the city and state does have, that they would spend and save it wisely. Unfortunately, the Authority in charge of Governor's Island development took a page out of Sarah Palin's book and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

From PolitickerNY:

In 2007, the city-state agency charged with developing Governors Island, the 172-acre former Coast Guard base off of Lower Manhattan, bought a Martha’s Vineyard ferry for $500,000 to help open the island to visitors.

This morning, the vessel was sold by the agency on eBay. The winning bid: $23,600.

The auction closes a less-than-glorious chapter for the agency, the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation, which is also facing major budget constraints (i.e. the state budget proposal doesn’t provide any money at all for GIPEC). When officials first bought the boat from the Woods Hole, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Steamship Authority, supporters of the island seemed rather pleased with the purchase, which would double its fleet size and allow for far more traffic (there's a smaller ferry that runs from Lower Manhattan to the island).

I understand that cars, boats, planes, trains, etc depreciate in value once used, but by that amount in less than two years is absolutely ridiculous. It just goes to show that while elected officials talk a good game about fiscal responsibility, their control over related agencies is practically non-existent. Now the winning bidder, r***7, has never purchased anything on eBay and no information is available. Well, lucky them and have fun with the boat sir or madam.

What really gets me though, is that the starting bid for this boat that cost the taxpayers $500,000 was a measly $10.00. Fiscal responsibility...the joke would be funny if it weren't such a sad state of affairs about how our government works.

A Cold, Callous And Clueless President

I've been harping on George Bush all day, but the stories just keep coming fast and furious and this one can't escape mentioning it. Several mothers of fallen soldiers went on NPR to talk about their experiences and one of them, Elaine Johnson, had quite the one-on-one with the President. It is another example of how truly, dare I say evil George Bush really is. Elaine was mostly neutral on the war until she met the President face to face. She asked him why we were there but couldn't get a straight answer.

From The Chicago Tribune:

"President Bush, he just didn’t see that, and he told me I was kind of, seemed like I was kind of hostile. I said, ‘yes I am hostile, because you sent my son over there.’ So my thing is -- all the questions that I asked him, he didn’t know nothing then, and he definitely don’t know nothing now, because the United States is in worser shape now that it was in 2003 that my son died.''

Martin asked: "So when you left that meeting did you leave with determination to do something or did that happen over time?''

Johnson said: "When he told me -- I said what’s, what’s the mission? He couldn’t give me an answer. I says, well I’m going to tell you what: I’m on my mission now. My mission had just begun. And my mission is to fight to bring these troops home, to take care of these troops when they get home.

"Then he gave us a presidential coin,'' she said. "Now you check this out: He gave six of us a presidential coin, tell us not to tell the rest of the people that was there, and then after that he told us don’t go sell it on eBay. Now you tell me how insensitive that can be? What kind of caring person is that?''

Who wouldn't be hostile after that? If I were a parent that lost a child in Iraq, only God would know what I'd do to him. Elaine is right, he does not care. There is no empathy for the troops, their grieving families or anything else that our nation holds dear. Cold, callous and clueless; and the worst President our country has ever seen.