COMMENT: In regards to the frivolous tickets issued in New York: You do realize that the New York Post -- a shrill, conservative tabloid -- has spent the entire year harping on this issue and blaming Bloomberg for it? For a more balanced point of view, I would recommend that you read the year end wrap up in the New York Times on Bloomberg's accomplishments.

A lot of people don't like Bloomberg for reasons that seem to have more to do with his personal style than his actual accomplishments. (Well, that and the smoking ban.) In a city of eight million people, six tickets (admittedly unjustified and frivolous tickets) does not seem so terrible. It appears to me that in these stories it is more likely that the paper is finding the sorts of tickets that happened with similar frequency in the past and publishing them to reflect (and feed) the dissatisfaction with the mayor. I, of course, don't have the numbers to back this up. But in general, the amount of noise that has come out of the tabloids this year seems completely disproportionate to the actual problem. -- Finn Smith <fcs@modcult.org>