this time we really, really mean it

Here is something I thought was a hoot.

The NY Times article is titled "A Retailing Czar, Looking Out for Mom and Pop" and discusses a newly-created and filled bureaucratic position called "executive director of retail development" whose job is ostensibly to help spur retail development around the city.

Anyway, here is the money quote, familiar to those who know anything about the typical government efficiency of utilizing looted capital.

"We've been dividing up the community development corporation money, doling it out a little here and a little there, and it just wasn't helping anyone," said Robert W. Walsh, commissioner of the department. "What's been produced with that money is a lot of calendars, bad directories and tchotchkes. So we hired a specialist to oversee this."

A nagging voice tells me that all NY City will ever get out of this will be yet even more calendars.