@mikebloomberg: chill with the tweeting

The City of New York is hiring, in a big way. While that is good news for the ranks of the unemployed, it may be bad news for the City itself. That's because the hiring is concentrated on the "exciting" and "forward-thinking" fields of social media and digital communications. And if past examples count for anything, New York just can't afford to go there right now. 

Remember the story Juan Gonzalez broke on CityTime, the admitted disaster of a computer project for which the city pays some 230 consultants an average salary of $400,000 a year to manage, despite it being seven years behind schedule and is hundreds of millions of dollars over budget? Yeah.

As just one element of this new project, Mayor Bloomberg will roll out his own social media arsenal consisting of Facebook and MySpace pages, a YouTube channel, and a Twitter feed.

I'm all for creating jobs, but this seems like it could be more like the most pricey bid for status points in the history of cool.

This Is A Beautiful Thing

Laid Off Mondays

free tequila shot with proof of unemployment, no cover / 12am

The Delancey 
168 Delancey,
btw. Clinton and Attorney Streets.
Lower East Side
(212) 254-9920

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Put all your belongings in a polka-dot handkerchief, then tie it to a broom-handle. Then make your way here and show off your poverty, for a prize. It's like the Depression, except with the added vagaries of global warming-era weather patterns.

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Schooling in a Slump

During the Great Depression, the high school graduation rate in the U.S. jumped from 30% to 50%, bringing on its heels an increase in skilled labor that helped save the economy.

Not surprisingly, the recession has sparked a similar phenomenon, but in higher education. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that the share of new high-school graduates enrolled in college rose to 70.1 percent last fall. That was up from 67.2 percent in 2007 and a new record. What's more, a 2009 study by the Pew Research Center found that the increase could be mostly attributed to community colleges, which tend to serve the very students who have been left behind in the past.

The problem is, college enrollment has actually been rising for the past few decades, with no such increase increase in actual graduations. Apparently, we're great at getting our kids to college, but we kinda suck at keeping them there.
Taylor Momse